Thursday, January 4: Next Moves
How can we best support a protest movement that makes an impact?
Another Biden administrator has chosen to quit over our government’s support of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Tariq Habash, a policy advisor appointed by the president in the department of education, quit yesterday to protest Biden and his administration’s military support for the apartheid state as well as its handling of the conflict’s repercussions both at home and abroad.
Habash was doing good work, trying to help overhaul the student loan system and address inequities in higher education, but he chose to quit after he and others had “done everything imaginable” to work within the system to try to register their objections to administration leaders. But it’s growing more evident every day that our objections don’t matter to our elected representatives. Our calls, our letters, our words at city council meetings have all fallen on deaf ears. The peaceful gatherings and protests with placards have been insufficient in conveying our frustration.
Our only remaining options are to either do more, or do nothing. Doing more means continuing to attend protest actions and make calls to elected officials, but it also means extending into areas outside our comfort zones in order to spread awareness for what our tax dollars are funding. Doing nothing is the easier option, requiring nothing but a willingness to overlook war crimes and sacrifice our humanity.
And what would doing nothing and staying silent even do for us? Harvard’s former president Claudine Gay wasn’t any kind of outspoken anti-zionist or advocate for Palestinian liberation. She was investigated and eventually ousted because she wasn’t adequately serving as a mouthpiece for the zionist project. That alone was enough to get her to step down. This article tells the story of Bill Ackman, a billionaire hedge fund leech and a Harvard alumnus who led the push to force out president Gay.
So staying silent won’t protect you and speaking up could get you in trouble. Tough choices.
Side Items
NJ Mosque Shooting: The imam of a mosque in New Jersey was shot to death yesterday while sitting in his car outside the mosque before dawn. Clueless police are still hunting for the shooter and saying they’ve found no evidence yet that makes them suspect a hate crime. Imam Hassan Sharif was shot more than once at around 6am near the Masjid-Muhammad Mosque in Newark
Another School Shooting: Police in Perry, Iowa, say there was a shooting earlier this morning at the city’s high school. The Perry police department confirmed the shooting at Perry High School but didn’t provide any further information. There were a large number of emergency vehicles surrounding the building that houses the middle school and high school and there are numerous reported injuries. More to come on this tragedy