Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network salutes the CUNY 27, the detainees in New York who were seized by the New York Police Department as part of their violent assault on the campus encampment in solidarity with Gaza and the Palestinian liberation struggle on 30 April 2024, the same night of the violent raid on the Columbia University encampment.
The NYPD’s record of extreme brutality and repression targeting the Palestine liberation movement and Arab, Palestinian and Muslim communities in New York has been extensively documented. The attacks on protesters and the broader solidarity movement have come hand in hand with the NYPD’s ongoing violent repression and occupation of Black communities and have strikingly illustrated the alliance between imperialism and Zionism and the role of militarized policing in protecting genocide. It has also exposed the role of universities in research and development, study abroad programs, and joint initiatives with Zionist institutions, as well as their function in service of US imperialism.
At the same time, the growing student movement — the Student Intifada — has sparked panic in the governing halls and corridors of empire. From members of Congress to Genocide Joe Biden to New York Mayor Eric Adams to a seemingly endless parade of politicians, the student movement has been met with threats, violent police raids, beatings, and thousands of arrests across the United States, Canada and Europe. Students and community members at public universities, often working-class students and students of colour, have been hit particularly hard; for example, the CUNY 22 were hit with felony charges. Columbia students refused to take favourable agreements because the CUNY 22 were being hit with far more severe charges. Now, the CUNY 22 have learned of five more defendants arrested outside and facing even heavier allegations at the hands of the NYPD — meaning that they are now the CUNY 27.
We join the mass movement demanding the immediate withdrawal of all charges against the CUNY 27 and all arrestees, detainees and prisoners facing charges or jailed due to their involvement in the movement for the liberation of Palestine. As over 9700 Palestinian prisoners are held captive in Zionist jails, hostages for freedom, thousands detained with no charge or trial, organizing amid severe torture, abuse and forced starvation, building and leading a resistance movement from behind bars, we must take inspiration in their leadership and advance our struggle for their complete liberation and to bring down the systems of repression targeting the global intifada.
Escalating to end a genocide is not a crime — indeed, it is a duty, particularly in the heart of the imperial core, at a moment when the resistance forces of the region, from Palestine to Yemen to Lebanon to Iraq and beyond, are on the front lines sacrificing and fighting for the protection and liberation of humanity. We must all make clear that the raids and arrests will not intimidate our movement nor cause us to de-escalate our tactics and methods of struggle, but will only lead us to greater unity, resistance and confrontation, to end the genocide and for a free Palestine from the river to the sea.
As the CUNY 22 say:
We are not just fighting for a Free Palestine but for the liberation of all. The fight for liberation requires sacrifice. We fight for ourselves and our communities. Palestine is everywhere, we cannot free Palestine until we free ourselves, and we cannot free ourselves until we free Palestine. The city of New York and their pigs are going to keep brutalizing and escalating, and so will we. Remember, “we are all outside agitators”. Whether we are fighting in Atlanta, New York City, Sudan, or Palestine, the enemy remains the same. The zionist entity escalates, so does the Palestinian Resistance. The pigs and institutions escalate, so do the agitators of the world!
source: Samidoun