Meet Me at the Gates, I Will Always Wait for You

Abstract

This essay reflects on the author's experience of participating in the Columbia University student protests of Spring 2024, which were part of a broader movement against the war in Palestine, state violence, and academic oppression. Drawing on Foucault's theory of subjectivity, the author explores how the Columbia Encampment redefined contemporary notions of selfhood and political engagement. They also incorporate Hugh Farrell's idea of "permeable" political formations, thus emphasizing how the movement's flexible, open structure allowed diverse voices to unite against oppressive systems. Beginning with a narrative of incarceration and ending with an anecdote from the encampment, the essay ultimately argues that solidarity and care are central to insurrectionary movements.

Sitting on the floor of the cramped holding cell at One Police Plaza, I stared intently at the CCTV camera that was insidiously mounted on the wall directly opposite the cell's toilet. Time moved unhurriedly. Four women and I had been grouped together in this fashion for over seven hours. Of course, the jail was at capacity, and as such, the police had placed four to five people per cell. Three of my cellmates sat on the uncomfortable metal bed, while I and another woman crossed our legs and leaned our backs against the wall. All my muscles were sore, and the laceration marks on my wrists were throbbing. As the commotion had settled, and as the officers had busied themselves with our court dates, I had noticed how laden my body felt. I looked at the sleepless figures of my peers. The youngest, only a freshman in college, covered her face with her hands. They were beautiful—the hands, I mean. My eyes darted around once again. The toilet had stains and the faucet no running water. When one of us tried to use the facilities, a female officer slinked by and said, "I wouldn't do that if I were you, there are cameras everywhere." She chuckled as her poorly dyed red hair bounced off her shoulders.

Allow me to explain the circumstance of our shared incarceration: on the evening of April 30, 2024, less than a day after Hind's Hall was liberated, over a hundred students from Columbia University and CUNY/CCNY were brutally arrested for participating in peaceful protests. We were all efficiently taken to One Police Plaza, which is the largest police precinct in Manhattan, to be processed and jailed. So, as I sat in the cell, it was almost impossible to not take in the violent, highly surveilled, and humiliating topography of our surroundings. But what became apparent to me in the early hours of the morning was that our material conditions spoke to something much deeper, much more painful that simply the reality of our arrest. I am not unfamiliar with the faces of fear, trauma, desperation, or violence. This night, though in itself monumental, spoke to a larger structure of being human. In the events leading up to the liberation of Hind's Hall and the mass arrests in the spring of 2024, the students at Columbia University, I believe, not only understood what it means to be in community with one another, but also how collective action and risk create a new form of subjectivity. This subjectivity takes form spontaneously through emergent shared values—it is a direct response to the imminent threats of academic and state repression. That night we understood what it means to be an individual among individuals.

Recognizing the bidirectional relationship between an individual and other individuals, particularly in politically fraught moments, requires an understanding of subject hood that illuminates the ways in which one might form linkages between various singularities. If we trace the question of subjecthood all the way back to Michel Foucault, who famously theorized it in his essay "The Subject and Power," we will come to understand that the way people experience and evaluate themselves directly correlates to the image of the free, autonomous self. He writes: "There are two meanings of the word subject: subject to someone else by control and dependence, and tied to his own identity by a conscience or self-knowledge. Both meanings suggest a form of power which subjugates and makes subject to."¹ For Foucault, subjectification connotes that the subject is at the center of experience—it captures the way modern power structures mold us via their many apparatuses. But, in the instance of the Columbia Encampment, and the various political movements against state violence in the last decade in the United States, such as the George Floyd protests (2020), the Ferguson unrest (2014), or the ongoing Stop Cop City movement, it is not enough to simply talk about the political relations which primarily govern who we are and what we know of ourselves. While contemporary notions of freedom are based on subjectification and unrestrained individuation (which are themselves the product of the logics of "liberty"), we must look specifically to how the self is constructed. Political ideology alone is not enough to explain the rapid coalescence and proliferation of revolutionary movements. There is something more cavernous and more psychic at play here. We must begin from what is internal and work our way to what is external because it immediately addresses the urgency of our shared circumstance—once we have done this, we can begin to imagine ways of overcoming the bourgeois instruments that perpetuate structures of oppression. While, as per Foucault, the invention of the self is paradigmatic of the obligatory inculcation of discipline into each of us as a necessary subjective condition for the establishment of a given political norm, this does not mean that we must still abide by these norms. What the Columbia Encampment has reminded us of is that we must reconstitute the idea of the self in a way that allows for multiplicity, particularly because it inspired student protests across the globe. Rather than having an isolated effect within the United States, the Columbia Encampment motivated students in Europe and Asia, for example, to erect their own encampments.

In grappling with the governing powers of capitalism, imperialism, and other forms of oppression—which generate experiences that are hurtful, exploitative, divisive, and deeply traumatic—how are we supposed to shed or alter the identities/selves that our society has bequeathed to us? I do not know that I have a definitive answer to this question, but what I witnessed at the Columbia University Encampment gave me some insight as to how people might come together in times of great duress. At the encampment, various forms of life came together to form an alternative multiplicity. In fact, they lived as multiplicities, or, as ensembles and as part of ensembles without any need for unity. The students lived their lives not in opposition to other forms of life, but in opposition to desolation, pain, and death. In one of my archives, I have a photo from that time that most accurately captures this sentiment. In the photo, two faces shaped like the moon smile back at me from an unzipped green tent. Many tents just like this one peppered the encampment—at first, they had been strategically mass-ordered for the first sit-in, but as the movement grew in popularity, students and other individuals began bringing in their own equipment. The second encampment's lawn was a most vibrant mosaic. During the day, colors—primarily red, white, black, and green—clung to the air and wove themselves in between conversations. Chatter surrounding the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the emergence of political subjectivity, and what it means to live in the here and now was almost always present. And in this photo, even though nightfall was creeping in, and a blue haze cloaked the horizon, these colors still reverberated. All around us, I remember, were chirping noises—not just those of students, who tossed their heads back in laughter, anger, or excitement, but of the mockingbirds that, with the onset of spring, were looking for mates. This was the specific condition of the camp: it had become a heterotopic space that reflected real-world discourse through a kaleidoscopic lens, and the students were its caretakers. While the encampment arose out of the material reality of our university's campus, it took on an entirely different quality once the students aggregated on the lawn—this specific tension highlighted a paradoxical relationship to our very real surroundings. The brilliantly white marble of Butler Library was lacerated by a plume of green nylon. In a sense, the encampment reorganized what existed outside of it so as to give it a new breath of life. Students coalesced to grab a hold of their material and ideological realities—the is of the thing, or what Plato calls to pragma auto—and thus to (re)determine not only the nature of a bubbling political philosophy, but the nature of revolution, and more specifically, the significance of violence therein.

To further discuss the vibrancy and radical potential of the movement, it is somewhat necessary to rest on theoretical bulwarks—real-world actions often rely on the implementation of theoretical concepts; we cannot have one without the other. To fully understand the implication of practical experiences, we must refer to the theoretical frameworks that both inspire and are inspired by them. Of course, Foucault has provided the bedrock for the more abstract discussion of the Columbia Encampment and revolutionary movements. However, we must also take into consideration how we can conceptualize and perpetuate political formations after overcoming the initial hurdle of atomism and individuation of the "self." I have found Hugh Farrell's piece "The Strategy of Composition," written for the outlet Ill Will, particularly helpful in this regard, because it effectively pinpoints the unruliness of contemporary organizing practices. He writes,

The conditions under which we now organize are those of what Andy Merrifeld has called the "wild city," the "deregulated city, the downsized city." This is a capitalist reproductive circuit which has shed the stable character required for stable subjects to advocate in ordered ways for a given portion of social goods.²

Although in his essay, he uses the Stop Cop City movement as a jumping-off point, Farrell makes a broader important remark about the mechanisms of political formations. The Stop Cop City movement is not unlike the various university encampments which have popped up across the globe in the last year. Stop Cop City is comprised of mostly young individuals, of varying paths of life, who want to stop the construction of the largest police training facility in the United States in Atlanta, Georgia. Their concerns range from prison abolition, environmentalism, and land-grabbing, to inequality and economic collapse.³ Many of these sentiments echo the tensions that mark the student protests aimed against the genocide in Gaza. Gaza has largely been considered an open-air prison where both human life and the environment suffer greatly. Much like the protesters in Atlanta, students across the world are determined to live in a state of antinomy—that is, in a state against laws that fundamentally oppose human life. The genocide in Gaza is the culmination of a deeply brutal past, present, and future colliding into each other. As long as capitalism, rampant ethnonationalism, colonialism, and land-theft still exist, movements such as those for the liberation of Palestine and Stop Cop City will also continue to form. Farrell continues:

The role of the left can no longer be to teach people fixed truths and bring them into a stable coalition based on a pre-existing program. Political formulations based on a mass identity are no longer possible. Any possible program or strategic platform can no longer be unidirectional, but must instead be permeable, i.e., constitutively open to their outside, and perhaps even defined by it.⁴

Farrell's point about permeability is especially pertinent to the political efforts at Columbia University. Most of the encampment's mobilizations were successful in part because organizations like Columbia University Apartheid Divest were loosely structured; that is, comprised of a plethora of students, from different programs and backgrounds, who were tied together by their political and ideological aspirations, without official leader roles. CUAD's lack of rigidity (though not militancy) falls directly in line with Farrell's insistence on how political formations need to be informed by their surroundings. CUAD, as an organization, had to open itself to the initiatives and ideas and groups formed in the encampment precisely because there were many opposing voices, different strategies, and ways of thinking. This is also what gives the movement its fervor and impact. As Farrell points out, leftist movements such as the encampments should not follow a strict program. Adhering to a prescriptive "revolutionary left" risks to contain and subordinate revolutionary tactics. In fact, such programs are often used to assess leftist successes and failures. The students in the encampment were not inherently divided, however. The plethora of voices and opinions made up a complex political ecosystem. After the first encampment was raided and destroyed by NYPD with the permission of Columbia's President Minouche Shafik, some students quickly realized that they needed to shed the solipsistic tendencies which arise within the context of atomistic societies. While strategizing, talking, and planning were still essential to the movement, they were not the sole proprietors of the movement's subversive potential. As such, in the second encampment, people were much more motivated to cultivate approaches that would best disarm the hostile disposition of the university and its militant arm, the police. The students realized that they did not have to adhere to dogmatic tactical planning. Instead, a fundamental message emerged: We Keep Us Safe. During one of the most contentious nights on the Columbia campus, on April 29, 2024, a courageous group of individuals liberated Hamilton Hall and renamed it Hind's Hall, in honor of Hind Rajab, a six-year-old who suffered an unimaginably horrific death on January 29, 2024, at the hands of the IOF. The night that the liberators went into the hall, I witnessed the most amazing, unified front. The same people who had been homesteading at the camp were now actively placing barriers in front of the doors to the building. Others were linking arms in an attempt to thwart potential threats. In that moment, I witnessed camaraderie, bravery, and determination. The energies that had suffused the camp just days earlier, when people were tending the communal kitchen or holding teach-ins, were now magnificently present. Voices started to pierce the subtle breeze; they slithered over the scaped silence of the dorms. "Your people are my people," someone began to sing. "Where you go I will go my friend, where you go I will go," belted another. And I, too, in a voice I almost did not recognize, began to utter those same words. While the media eventually reduced what happened at Hind's Hall to a simple case of antisocial criminality or perhaps a misdirected (even privileged) ideological pursuit, what actually occurred was the manifestation of riotous joy and insurgency. Despite our differences, we formed a defiant composition. We overcame our individual fears and traumas for the sake of insurrection. Knowing we could not depend on the university to reconsider its foreign political and economic investments, we sought to disturb its carefully manicured environment.

The following night, President Shafik once again unleashed the NYPD on protesting students. The university had waited to lock all gates until the student protesters decided to rest earlier that morning. As a result, not many students were left to defend the camp or Hind's Hall. In addition, the NYPD had cordoned off the streets surrounding the campus in an attempt to curb the presence of so-called "outside agitators." Only students who could provide documentation to prove they lived on those streets could pass. The obviously fascistic measures aside, it became apparent that the university was increasingly afraid of the growing revolutionary student body that had rid itself of restraints of subjectification. It was as if they realized that unilateral subjugation and oppression would not effectively work on us because they were unable to identify the internal logics of our struggle. Revolts are not rational; they are necessary, eruptive moments in the knots of history. Violence, then, was the only language that was available to them—they instructed over 600 officers, including the Strategic Response Group (a designated anti-terrorist group), to arrest all students who had amassed outside the Columbia gates on Amsterdam Avenue. Simultaneously, the police had dispatched officers to CUNY/CCNY in a cleverly orchestrated move to stifle student movements across the city.

Much like in my picture, an indigo sky descended quickly. It was branded with red and blue lights, and a sea of riot shields clamored in unison. As the cops approached us, we stood by the only sentiment that made sense: We keep us safe. Before I knew it, my friend and I were moving barriers onto the street to slow down the marching officers. People I had never seen before gave a helping hand, even though the police forces vastly outnumbered us. Knowing we would probably be kettled and arrested, we collectively and intuitively decided to form a human chain in front of the gates. One by one, we were picked off by the police and arrested for—you guessed it—standing around. I remember how bright the lights were, how tightly my friend held onto my hand. I felt his arm envelop mine; there was not a single trace of fear in this gesture. When one of the captains approached us, he asked us to surrender voluntarily. Perhaps he thought that he would find an audience within us, which was a naïve misconception. I felt the arms of two police officers wrestle me away from my friend, who even in that instance was still trying to hold onto me, and placed me under arrest. The mistreatment of the NYPD, though widely known, is worth repeating because it signifies the global attempt of militarized powers to usurp, intimidate, and halt revolts. Closely following my arrest, my friend was manhandled by three different officers, and we were both taken away to the correctional busses destined for One Police Plaza.

What happened next is the crux: On the bus I was surrounded by people who had mutually decided that this social upheaval was worth it. Despite our demonstration having no leader in the moment, students knew that they had to take action, and this is what made the whole circumstance particularly special. When our arresting officer tried to take rollcall on the bus, we blurted out random numbers to confuse him, or call out fake names. We laughed, sang, and stomped our feet—and it didn't stop there. "The pigs on the bus go oink, oink, oink," said my friend, whose eyes, although bloodshot from exhaustion, were filled with glee. It was his second time in a row getting arrested for the Palestinian cause. I was laughing so hard I almost didn't notice how tightly my hands were zip-tied. As we reached One Police Plaza, we could hear all the students who were arrested before us (from both Columbia and CUNY/CCNY) continue what we had started on the bus. The phrase "Falasteen Hurra!" shook the cinder walls and tacked itself onto every surface. Our revolt, our defiant joy, our smiles—they were all a part of breaking open our private, atomistic spheres into something more, something that matters.

The truth is that I revisit the aforementioned photo of the tent not only because of its purported political significance, but because that night was my birthday. Just before my friends had crawled into the tent and called it a night, they had surprised me with tiramisu—my favorite dessert. In our friend group, surprising each other in this way has been one of the major factors of how we have navigated the often harsh, divisive, and competitive atmosphere that characterizes the academic programs at Columbia. We remember everyone's birthday, we defend each other from feelings of pressure and inadequacy, we watch movies and ignore our seminars and eat until our stomachs are full. We know each other because we have loved each other. Finding and cultivating this kind of deep attention and care, in my opinion, is one of the ways to give rise to an insurrectional subjectivation. As we sat in a circle in the middle of the encampment and enjoyed the caffeinated dessert, I noticed that there were many clusters like mine: students who leaned into the hollow of their friends' necks, or were adjusting each other's keffiyehs while reminding one another to eat a meal or take their medicine. A young girl sporting a large, weathered denim jacket (probably procured from the large donation pile) was passing by our group when she asked, "Whose birthday is it?" Sheepishly, I raised my hand. She squealed with enthusiasm, quickly following up with "It's my birthday, too." I thought that her partly illuminated face looked beautiful against Butler Library's backdrop. Her hair was cropped short and her nose pointed upward in the most delightful way. There was something unmistakably alive and zealous about her. In these small, tender moments, insurrectionary ideals and political autonomy exploded. We no longer subscribed to the dictatorial regime of an atomistic society and instead came to realize that the "self" is not the whole individual. We were everything the university had not anticipated and could not stand for: a forceful group of people motivated by a collective revolutionary imaginary and care for one another. And this remains: in the face of oppression, terror, and trauma, we will always keep us safe.