Tuesday night, two dozen Columbia University students linked arms in front of the student-occupied Hamilton Hall at dusk. I was one of them.
We sang with broken yet mighty voices, “Your people are my people, your people are mine; your people are my people, our struggles align.” We were a group of activists of differing faiths and none, friends and strangers united, linking arms with one another and, in spirit, with the generations of courageous students who came before us. Electricity crackled through the air from the growing protests echoing just beyond the university gates – gates I had just moments ago slipped through and sprinted from like a bat out of hell.
We knew we were likely to be arrested for being on campus despite the university-mandated shelter-in-place order, but chose we to run into the fire anyway.
As a human chain, draped in keffiyehs and shaking like leaves in the autumn wind, we sang with hushed tones and breathed deeply as hundreds of New York police officers armed with flash grenades and pepper spray marched toward us like a military parade.
As they approached from multiple directions, we sang with frail and cracking voices, “This love that I have, the world didn’t give it to me; the world didn’t give it, the world can't take it away," as officers threatened student journalists with arrest, presumably to ensure minimal coverage of the aggression they were about to exert.
Students in dorms craned their necks and shakily stretched their iPhones out windows........