In a way, the black-and-white Palestinian scarf draped over Hannah Sattler’s shoulders this week and the tie-dyed T-shirts of 1968 are woven from a common thread. Like so many college students across the country protesting the Israel-Hamas war, Sattler feels the historic weight of the anti-Vietnam war demonstrations of the 1960s and 70s. “They always talked about the ’68 protest as sort of a North Star,” Sattler, 27, a graduate student of international human rights policy at Columbia University, said of the campus organizers there.
A report came out today confirming that 99% of pro-Palestine protests at US colleges have been entirely peaceful, despite the hysterical rhetoric from Congress and the corporate news media.
I don’t think I’ve seen a greater disparity between the mainstream dialogue surrounding a current issue and the actual reality of it since the 2003 Iraq War.