for the demonstrators beaten and arrested by police at the two UT Austin student-led protests calling for the university to divest from companies linked to Israel’s 75+ year genocide against Palestinians, April 2024
In the aftermath, a viral photo shows a line of cops in riot gear. Beside
them, a big orange sign with a slogan many of you likely heard
at orientation – “What starts here changes the world.” The Tower’s
shadow loomed like a vulture, overlooking demonstrators brutalized
in broad daylight on South Mall. The backdrop of batons and stun
guns comical against bright green grass. Heads smacked into concrete
by those claiming to protect and serve. A wheelchair, tossed aside like
litter, its inhabitant thrown to the ground. It was April, and nearby,
pomegranate trees were flowering on campus. In the center of it all,
where students would celebrate graduation a month later, the assault
on free speech. You could say this is where it started, but that would
be hyperbole. Older now, I can see the Tower from my window
the same way I did at 18. Still a symbol of possibility, but the kind
where overpaid adults have the gall to attack unarmed teenagers,
alumni, those against tuition dollars saturated in Gaza’s blood. The
price of becoming critical thinkers, beaten when demonstrating
a mastery of learning outcomes. Outside agitators did this, it was said.
And isn’t the university environment ripe for that kind of rhetoric.
Isn’t violence just business after all, the kind we’d watched across
our screens for the last six months, and before that. And before
that. Your bravery was your weapon, the willingness to go on
stamped as exile, as suspended, unable to live in resolute oblivion
just trying to get to class, just trying to mind your own business.
There were others, arms locked with chins defiantly lifted, journalists
tackled for doing their job. (Sometimes, the irony writes itself.)
Later, the rest of us waited outside the jail, distant slamming on your
windows several stories up in rhythm with our chanting all night
until voices ran hoarse. As you all trickled out over many hours,
mockingly bowing or dancing, eyes rimmed red, the marks of zip
ties still on your wrists but keffiyehs proudly in place, we celebrated
an inevitable freedom, joyful for the day’s heroes. History will remember
you kindly, and we’ll make sure of it. Guess you just had to be there.