Rallies and Protest Against Trump's Attack on Free Speech

Photos: Leon Kunstenaar

Four days after protesting the Trump administration's attack on the funding of scientific research at the nation's universities, students and faculty at UCB again spilled out of their classes and laboratories to protest.

This time it was because Mahmoud Khalil, a legal US resident not accused of any crime, was arrested because of his activism against the Israeli-US genocide of his people. As Trump attempts to dismantle any part of the US government that serves ordinary people, such as education, health care or environmental justice, he attacks the most fundamental tenets of the Constitution and the Bill of Right from which he is completely detached and towards which he has nothing but contempt.

The current head of the US government can only be described as a psychopath that relishes nothing but the accumulation of his wealth and the suffering of others.

As they have become ever more financially emeshed with the corporate state it is becoming ever more difficult for institution of higher education to resist. Resistance will be increasingly up to the students and those who these institution ostensibly serve.

The protest to demand Mahmoud Khalil's release began on the steps to Sproul Hall where a plaque honoring Mario Savio, a protest leader from the actions that rocked UCB in 1968, is embedded in the concrete. Savio was protesting the US slaughter of people far away in Viet Nam. Khalil is protesting the current slaughter of people far away in Palestine. The more things change .....

After speeches, the march through campus began behind a banner saying "Israel has bombed (with US supplied bombs) every university in Gaza." Over a thousand strong, the march held rallies in front of several campus buildings, ending up at the main library.

As I write this, another action is now scheduled for tomorrow 3/13 at Upper Sproul. Hope you can be there.

See all high resolution photos here