3/25/25
Please submit a brief essay explaining (1) your interest in and concern for civil liberties; (2) the sources of your commitment to protecting and preserving civil liberties and human rights; and (3) your future plans for acting on these commitments.
Fighting for the preservation of civil liberties and human rights within an institutional setting is not always the most flattering story. In the prime of their disobedience, civil rights movements are often demonized, touted as violent mobs, and defamed in countless ways. But after the pressure reaches a breaking point and real popular change is implemented, history forgets the friction. Ask any public school: It’s easier to talk about MLK Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” than the brutal assassinations of Fred Hampton and Malcolm X. It’s easier to celebrate how far we’ve come, and forget the lynchings, the hate, and the bloodshed. We just don’t want to look at it - ourselves, really - in that terrifying light.
I want to look into that light because I don’t want to be afraid of anything. That’s all.
So I looked - and it became the glow of the moon on a cool April night, just as bright as the fluorescent bulbs dotting the perimeter of the field. I watched that moon creep across the would-be starry sky - would-be if it wasn’t busy absorbing an oceanic pulse from the city that never sleeps. Some might have slept, in shifts, but most stayed up chain-smoking cigarettes or looking for cigarettes or talking about their families. It was a quiet night, a long night, one that served as a gentle release from the hours of chanting, marching, mass-arrests, fear and overcoming fear, the exhaustion of the crowd, losing yourself in it. The constant surveilling of the sky for drones and low-flying helicopters and watching the streets for police buses transitioned into a somehow relaxing, whispered,
“Hey, cover your face. Zionists.”
But they were just stalkers with phones and not armed NYPD special units in riot gear. I thought of the Russian girl, Varia - I met her in the cold night as we marched outside campus with the protesters chanting, “Intifada, Intifada, long live the Intifada!” …We met eyes and matched footsteps.
“I don’t know if I can chant. I came here on asylum…”
She told me how she was arrested in Russia, how she saw the anti-war resistance gain confidence only to be crushed by gunfire.
“Jail was fine for me. I wasn’t beaten… In Belarus they organized - fine, until they started shooting into the crowd.”
Over 100 student protesters were arrested violently by the NYPD - the first time non-campus police were allowed inside Columbia University in 60 years.
“They start with this, then it’s beating, and then it’s Russia.”
For a while we walked in silence, until we saw a kid slip in between the bars of the campus gates.
“Shall we?” I felt suave.
“Let’s do it.” She winked. Maybe she did too.
We squeezed in, handing each other our bags through the bars, keeping an eye out for cops like criminals, which we were. Inside we joined the encampment, grabbed some coffee. I gave her my scarf, my hat, my gloves when it got cold.
“I quit three months ago, but if there was ever a moment for a cigarette…”
She left, and watching the moon I passed the night in silence. As the sun crept up so did another low-flying helicopter, marking the 3rd day of the encampment. Cops set up barricades around the lawn while kids played soccer and danced, I did some yoga, we stretched our achey bones and waited in long lines for the restroom. If anything else, the tents, blankets, tarps, and bodies sprawled on the grass remain in joyful dignity… until they were torn down again, with more arrests, more students beaten.
That was the night of April 18th, 2024, nearly a year ago now. I can still feel the fluorescent bulbs on my closed eyelids, the sound of the helicopters, the smell of cigarette smoke and the confused, ecstatic solidarity. Though I write romantically no romantic idealism obscured the political potential of this decade’s student uprising. It was all rough, it was all crisis, quintessentially serious. No love freaks here, no mantras or mala or rock bands or a return to innocence; that’s all been done before. We cashed in the dead-end love-trip for cold, hard reality.
Example: My band held a fundraiser show to help a friend’s extended family pay for an evacuation from Gaza. We set up at a park in Hoboken and jammed until the cops shut it down. We raised over $500, and a few days later the exorbitant payments (almost $6,000 each) were made, and my friend’s pregnant sister and her husband safely crossed into Egypt. A few months later, the baby boy was born. On that same day, three more of her family members who didn’t make it to Egypt were murdered by an Israeli strike in Rafah.
I wonder if that ever happened to the Dead.
Looking into the bright light burns your eyes. How do you handle it? For the new student movement, it was heavy consequentialism. “Turn on, tune in, drop out” became “turn off, shut down, and keep moving.” At first we took turns covering our eyes and hiding under the covers, watching in anticipation as one brave soul at a time ventured out of the comfort zone. They came back with the latest news.
“118 killed collecting flour. Your turn.”
The brave ones collapsed in well-earned ignorance. We covered their shaking bodies with mental health checks and shared trauma. Soon another went to keep watch, and this absurd game of duck-duck goose continued. See, activism isn’t like a hobby that can be experimented with according to convenience and availability. It’s like consciously working through a nightmare that never ends. And when it’s your turn to step outside, there’s no choice but to see it through.
Paradoxically, the more involved you get, the more you’re sucked in; the more you want to give everything. I think of Rachel Corrie, an American activist who was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer while defending a Palestinian home in Rafah. She was 23. In her letters to home, Rachel Corrie wrote, “I think it is a good idea for us all to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop… I still really want to dance around to Pat Benatar and have boyfriends and make comics for my coworkers. But I also want this to stop.” I hear Rachel Corrie’s words when I go to class, and play guitar, and do all the normal things I do. I want to do all those normal things, I want to sing and dance and be free. But I’ve also seen my friends bodied by cops and bitten by their dogs, doxxed online, face death threats and racial slurs all for speaking up against an ongoing genocide. The question of if quickly becomes irrelevant. The answer of how most likely lies in deep introspection on a personal level. But there’s no time for introspection; we only had the cards we were dealt, and we went all in. We gambled our hearts.
I started by converting the connections I had made playing music into activist groups. I reinstated Stevens Amnesty International, which is currently doing great work with the “Dismantle the Mass Deportation Machine” initiative. A group of friends and I created Stevens Students for Justice in Palestine, which quickly grew to include over 200 general board members. We organized Stevens’ first on-campus demonstration since the 2019 Gianforte Family Hall protest, and invited speakers from renowned organizations such as Ceasefire Now and Jewish Voice for Peace. The event gathered over 120 students, faculty, and staff members. We created the Stevens Divest from War Initiative, and met with Stevens’ CFO to discuss avenues towards ethical investing. We drafted a 30-page divestment proposal including sections on university values, campus and community interest, and an approach to divestment within Stevens’ existing endowment management structure. We presented the proposal to the Senate of the Student Government Association with the support of 497 undergraduate students, 67 signatures from local community members, 68 alumni, and 14 faculty members, as well as the endorsements of 21 Stevens student organizations. Over a year’s worth of financial research, diligent editing, and community building culminated in two nights of nearly seven hours of discussion. A few members of the public called us hate preachers, anti-semitic, and seeking to cause division on campus - which we countered by inviting all of the “opposition” to voice their concerns in the editing phase of the second draft. Nobody showed. At the conclusion of the second meeting, the initiative failed to pass the 2/3 Senate majority by 2 votes. Love, it seems, did not win in the end this time; we hit a dead-end.
Now in the interim, there is time for constructive reflection. But instead, self-doubt rushes in; consequentialism meets its match. Did we fail? Was it any one individual’s fault? Could it be the mass colonial-karma of our society to be absolutely helpless while others are massacred in our name? To have no outlet for the guilt and no escape from complicity? To be gaslit for speaking out, to be called a terrorist while advocating for peace? On the surface, we seem to have accomplished nothing in terms of social and political change. Anti-Palestinian racism is just as prevalent now as it’s ever been. And every day I still open my phone to news of increasing death tolls and live images of shredded children. Those murdered children, immortalized in my mind forever by Hind Rajab’s tiny cries… our collective voice voted against their survival.
If nothing else, I think it was worth it to look into the bright light. That cold, harsh reality. That twilight zone of human suffering where the air is still and the mist hangs heavy on the earth. There’s no sound or gravity in that place. It’s a hunter’s anticipation. It makes you bare your teeth and howl at the moon. It’s animalistic. It’s real life. In the midst of social upheaval the diffused light of heaven and earth are interpreted as one mystery. Is the sun just below the horizon or is it rising for a new day? I wish this wasn’t the end of my thought process on the matter. I wish I had a happier conclusion to share. Truth is, I don’t. So for now, here’s to activism, and all my future plans:
Godspeed to another dead-end. And hoping history forgets the friction.