Green Party View: A national issue has reared up in our backyard

Columbia University has been in the national news since President Trump targeted legally resident tenured professors and university students who protest for the Palestinian civilians being starved and murdered by the thousands in their outdoor prison, with the complicity of the United States government. By threatening them with loss of their legal status and deportation, President Trump has gone farther than President Biden, who called for, and arrested, college protestors for Palestine last Spring. 

As Marjorie Cohn recently wrote in Truthout, “targeting noncitizens for removal is arbitrary and capricious as prohibited by the Administrative Procedure Act,… is contrary to the First Amendment, contrary to law, and was promulgated in excess of statutory jurisdiction.”

Although Columbia has had the lion’s share of the news, our local universities and students are also under threat. If you are neither a foreign visitor connected with a university nor a protestor against genocide, nevertheless, please pay attention as this does affect you.

The issues.

Free speech and freedom of assembly are two of our basic rights that we in the United States rightly gloat about. Of course, freedom of speech and assembly is limited to not creating danger (falsely yelling “fire” in a movie theater or throwing molotov cocktails at a demonstration), and we are justly proud of it. We frequently do disagree with some of what is written on social media or what people are protesting about in the streets, but we grant them the legal right to do it. To punish people for expressing their opinion either in words or by their presence, is clearly unAmerican, Perhaps you are not altruistic enough to agree with the famous quote “I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,” but you should have enough self-preservation to recognize that if you deny free speech to someone today, your speech may very well be curtailed by someone else tomorrow. 

So, as with the founders of our Constitution, I maintain that we must grant free speech and freedom of assembly to espousers of all issues that do not put us in imminent danger, whether or not we agree with their cause; be that all sides of the right to life, healthcare and union issues or, as in these cases, objection to war and genocide.  

While this issue ultimately affects all of us, most immediately it is affecting professors and students at Cornell, Syracuse and Binghamton who, whether from the United States or other countries, are becoming afraid to express opinions. This is unAmerican. 

The declared reasoning behind the threats, notably beginning against foreigners of color, is that by protesting Israel’s genocide, the protesters are threatening Jews in the United States. This argument is patently false of course, no one has actually been accused of, or has been documented as threatening or doing anything against Jews or Jewish students whether or not they are Zionists supporting genocide. And students have also been arrested on campus for protesting weapons manufacturers with no antiSemitic excuse for their arrest put forth.

The Green Party is antiwar and antigenocide and is not anti -Jewish. The Green Party’s 2024 presidential candidate, Dr. Jill Stein, is Jewish and was arrested protecting students at an anti-genocide campus encampment in the Spring.

Responses.

Some threatened professors and students are suing President Trump to prevent removal of their visas and deportation as these actions are illegal in the United States (as specified above). It is helpful to show support for them, particularly on court days; writing to politicians and letters to the editor or by showing up.

More active responses are also possible. Students protesting war and genocide welcome community witnesses and support; attend if you can. April 15 (tax day) saw antiwar car caravans of students and their community supporters make the rounds of weapons manufacturers around Cornell and Binghamton universities; this area has a plethora of such merchants of death.

A word here because this issue affects all of us, whether you are one of the 32% of citizens who voted for Donald Trump or the 31% who voted for Kamala Harris or, like me, one of the 37% who voted independent or didn’t vote at all — Jill Stein could have won and been a real peace president, just saying, to keep in mind for next time.

Carol Cositore Sitrin is a retired copy editor, teacher and social worker. She has not retired as an activist. She currently lives in Dryden.