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POLICE LET VIOLENT MOBS ATTACK UCLA STUDENTS. THIS IS WHAT
LAWLESSNESS LOOKS LIKE  
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Judith Levine
May 7, 2024
The Guardian
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_ UCLA watched the chaos unfold in the middle of the night and did
nothing until it was far too late _

‘Something else is sliding past popular attention … vigilantes
staged an assault on unarmed civilians and the state let it
happen.’, Allison Dinner/EPA

 

Things had been tense at the University of California, Los Angeles
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jibes and the occasional shove exchanged between students who support
Israel’s war on Gaza and those who have set up encampments to call
for a permanent ceasefire and the university’s divestment from
companies that arm and otherwise profit from Israel’s occupation and
military incursions in the Palestinian territories.

But what happened in the middle of the night last Tuesday was no
scuffle. It was not even one more of the outsized, excessively brutal
raids that college administrations have invited the police to inflict
on their students.

Since the previous Thursday, groups of ever-more aggressive
counter-protesters had beset the Palestine solidarity tent village on
UCLA’s Dickson Plaza. Then, just before 11pm
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on 30 April, at least a 100 masked young men stormed the camp. They
announced their presence by blasting the sounds of screaming babies
from loudspeakers. They shined strobe lights, sprayed irritant gases
and launched firecrackers at the encampment. One landed in the middle
of the tents, eliciting screams from the occupants. The besieged
protesters called for help – at least five people were already
injured – but none came.

The mob breached the metal barricades around the camp, kicked in its
plywood walls, and began stomping and beating the campers with fists
and poles. At this point, a two-sided melee began. The Daily Bruin
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the student paper, reported that some blasts of gas appeared to come
from inside the camp. A text from the UC Divest Coalition sent around
1140pm, however, said that the encampment members do not possess
teargas and were using “community defense” and wearing goggles to
protect themselves.

Unlike at other colleges – such as New Hampshire’s Dartmouth
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College, where cops alerted by the administration mustered in riot
gear practically before students pitched their tents – UCLA, in the
persons of its security guards and campus police, watched the chaos
and did nothing. Unarmed guards hired by the university retreated to a
campus building and locked the doors behind them. A handful of UC
police officers showed up at 11.13pm and left less than 10 minutes
later. John Thomas, the UCPD chief, said
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that officers came under attack while trying to help an injured person
and left. The Los Angeles police department did not arrive until
around 1.30am or quell the violence until after 3.00am. A video posted
at around 3.30am caught UC security standing a distance away, filming
the action on their phones.

Twenty-five members of the encampment were hospitalized
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overnight. No attackers were arrested. In an editorial
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addressed to the UCLA chancellor the next day, the Bruin asked:
“Will someone have to die tonight for you to intervene?”

On Thursday
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UCLA intervened. It called in the LAPD and highway patrol, who arrived
early in the morning in body armor, face shields and helmets. They
tore down the plywood, shooting flash bangs and at least one rubber
bullet. The protesters sprayed fire extinguishers back at them. In
contrast to the nights before, this time the cops braved the blows and
accomplished their tasks efficiently. By mid-morning, more than 200
students had been arrested, booked and released from custody, the
encampment was dismantled and trash was cleared from the site.
The foreign press called the attacks what they were. Al Jazeera
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described the event as an “assault” that “followed days of
harassment”. The BBC
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that the evidence spoke for itself, simply posted a video under the
headline, “Watch: Counter-protesters attack UCLA pro-Palestinian
camp.”

Most of the US press refrained from assigning blame. They called the
events “clashes” and described the assaults in the passive voice.
“Barriers were breached,” said CBS News
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The New York Times
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reported that “fistfights broke out, chemicals were sprayed into the
air and people were kicked or beaten with poles.”

Since the start, Fox News
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had openly blamed the members of the encampments, many of them Jewish,
for victimizing Jews around campus and applauded the police
crackdowns. But with the police uncharacteristically absent and the
campers unmistakably the victims, it was hard to control the
narrative. Even Fox’s Jew-on-the-scene, student Eli Tsives, slipped,
calling the attackers a “mob”.

Joe Biden weighed in from the White House. In a statement, he strung
together diverse acts –“vandalism, trespassing”, “forcing the
cancellation of classes and graduations”, “threatening
people”– ending each list with “This is not peaceful protest.
It’s against the law.” He added: “We are not an authoritarian
nation where we silence people and squash dissent … but neither are
we a lawless country.”

Like the press and the police, the president performed several
sleights of rhetoric. He mixed violent acts with non-violent acts. He
conflated school policy with law and illegality with lawlessness, a
word connoting anarchy. Apparently, he has not heard of non-violent
civil disobedience – lawbreaking in resistance to unjust laws or
policies – which Henry David Thoreau
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to democracy. In fact, the campus occupations are versions of the
sit-ins of the Black civil rights movement, illegal trespass that has
since been sacralized in the annals of American freedom.

Biden also declined to specify who committed any of the acts he
condemned, letting the impression float that the culprits are the
anti-war protesters.

Who were these UCLA counter-protesters? Tsives said they looked to be
in their late 20s and claimed that they were locals who had “had
enough” of antisemitism. Another witness, Sean Beckner-Carmitchel, a
videographer who has covered political actions around Los Angeles,
knew them better. “I saw people that I’ve seen at Trump
rallies,” he told Al Jazeera
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“I’ve seen them at anti-LGBTQ protests.” Unlike the pro-Israel
students who gather during the day, these guys were not wearing
yarmulkes or carrying blue-and-white flags. They were chanting “USA!
USA!” At Columbia, the Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes was spotted
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trying to enter the Gaza Solidarity Encampment.

The media’s focus on the encampments, simultaneously obsessive and
blurry, has diverted attention from the war itself and the
protesters’ message, which they repeat whenever they speak: the
Palestinian death toll is approaching 35,000. After six months of
merciless onslaught, Israel will receive
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$15bn in unconditioned US military aid. Netanyahu has announced plans
to invade Rafah, where an estimated 1.5 million people are sheltering,
even if a hostage deal is reached. UN workers in Gaza have coined
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a new term for the psychological state of the people: rather than
post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, they are suffering CTSD
–constant traumatic stress disorder.

But something else is sliding past popular attention: the meaning of
the events at UCLA. _Vigilantes staged an assault on unarmed
civilians__ and the state let it happen._ This has occurred many times
before in US history, particularly when the victims were African
American. Still, it is historic.

Is this the mayhem Trump promises at every rally? Is this what we can
expect if he loses the election – or if he wins? Have the
brownshirts been unleashed? Whatever it augurs, the eve of May Day
2024 must be marked. While across the nation law enforcers are being
ordered to commit violence against peaceful, unarmed citizens, in LA
they tacitly deputized a mob to police the political speech – and
people – that both the police and the mob despise. And by action or
inaction, speech or silence, educational leaders, civil authorities
and the president condoned this police-enabled civilian violence, this
real anarchy.

At UCLA we witnessed legally sanctioned lawlessness. It is more
terrible and more politically momentous than anything a civilian can
ever do.

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Judith Levine is a Brooklyn journalist and essayist, a contributing
writer to the Intercept, and the author of five books

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* UCLA; Attack on UCLA Students Encampment;
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