There are more than 92,000 homeless people living in New York City. 1.2 million residents are food insecure—about 1 in 8 New Yorkers. Our public libraries are now closed on Sundays due to budget cuts. These were the facts burning in my heart when I watched a whole damn army of police officers descend on Columbia University last night. Dressed in riot gear, they used giant, military-style vehicles to breach a second-story window—deploying tear gas as they conducted building to building sweeps to arrest students protesting U.S. complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza. As I sat in horror, again and again I thought, “Is this what our taxes are paying for?”
I saw students thrown to the ground by police, faces smashed into the pavement. Others dragged; hands cuffed behind them. And we don’t even have a full picture of what transpired because the NYPD created a multi-block perimeter around the campus, expelling journalists covering this militarized response. What videos we do have come from shaky cell-phone recordings made by students themselves, or people watching from nearby windows—even those glimpses are harrowing. I spend a lot of time talking about the rise of explicit fascism within the Republican Party in states that are banning books and stealing people’s bodily autonomy. Watching a Democratic mayor respond to Columbia’s request for help by sending in a jackbooted battalion to conduct mass arrests of those who defy the U.S. war machine, I must name: This is what fascism looks like, too.
This violence is all-too American. Rather than confront protestors’ painful truth—that we are watching mass death unfold in Gaza, aided, and abetted by U.S. military aid—this country prefers to silence dissent. More than a month ago, Oxfam International reported that Israel is “deliberately blocking food and aid from going into Gaza. It has been using starvation as a weapon of war for over five months now. The humanitarian situation in Gaza has worsened since the International Court of Justice (ICJ) specifically ordered Israel to enable more aid.” And yet we are supposed to believe that the students bravely risking their academic futures to condemn this violence are the problem. The echoes of how this country violently suppressed demonstrations against the Vietnam War are deafening—last night police raided the very same building students occupied in 1968. Then as now, protest is treated as a greater danger than our country’s responsibility for war crimes.
When we talk about defunding or reforming policing, this is exactly the context which makes that pressing need most glaring. Our neighbors go unhoused and hungry, our public services are badly starved, yet year after year we give the NYPD millions more in funding. This militarization of society is a self-reinforcing cycle: When people’s basic needs aren’t met, when they see that their government is more concerned with maintaining order than providing just peace, they rise in response. Then, those protests are used to justify for more policing. We can only break this cycle by collectively deciding, “No. Enough is enough.”
What if we spent even half of the city’s $5.83 billion police budget on public assistance, instead? Imagine how much affordable housing we could build; we could dramatically increase food subsidies, so no person goes hungry in the United States’ wealthiest city. We could expand public parks and greenspace, offer additional recreational activities for our young people, invest in mental health, drug rehabilitation, and public arts. Instead, we get to watch as our young people learn a violent lesson about which truths our country will let us speak.
Moreover, we should oppose our city maintaining a standing army precisely because it makes raids like last night possible. When thousands of people take to the streets because our government is participating in grotesquely unethical behavior, a truly democratic society would be forced to respond to protestors’ demands instead of silencing their voices at the end of a billy club.
Though policing itself finds its roots in our nation’s history of enslaving humans, and then chasing them down like animals when they escaped, it’s also important to note that this military build-up of police forces is relatively new. Indeed, much of it has occurred in response to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, after widespread protests and organizing forced dramatic legal changes. Lyndon Johnson may have signed the Civil Rights Act in 1968, but he also signed the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act, which let local governments order military equipment from the federal government to suppress potential unrest. “We’ll give you some additional rights this time,” Uncle Sam told us, “But we’re going to make damn sure there isn’t a next time.”
The United States needs to decide: Do we want to be a democracy? Because a democracy doesn’t send hordes of police to arrest anyone who speaks out against the government, no matter which institution cries for help. A democracy doesn’t let its people shiver and starve while it determines more efficient—read violent—ways to control their outrage. If we truly want to be a nation of the people, by the people, and for the people, we must listen to the people. Right now, the people—including students all over the nation—are declaring without equivocation: Ceasefire now. Allow aid to Gaza. Return all the hostages. AND no army of riot police is going to change that.
The people in my multicultural community are going to keep demanding peace. For the next two Sundays, Rev. Amanda will have a petition you can sign in person that asks Daniel Goldman to take our demands for peace seriously and represent us fully. If you are attending worship virtually and would like to know how you too can participate in this call to action, click here.
And we will keep trying to hold space for all of us. We will celebrate our AAPIDA family this month with special worship each Sunday and at disOrientalism at Joe’s Pub. We will honor Jewish-American heritage this month, as we reflect on the Jewishness of Jesus and the rising antisemitism around the globe. And, in the name of the Marginalized Outsider, born in Bethlehem and raised in Nazareth, we pray peace and healing for all the people. Because all the people are our neighbors, and we are called to love them.
This Unitarian Universalist says Amen.
Thank you for your words. I agree. We need a major shift in this country.