In case you missed it, here are our takeaways from Sasha’s talk on holding in solidarity against authority, which took place on 13 Sep 2024 at The Arts & Civil Space.
The talk focused on the speaker’s experience organising with other academic workers and students at an American university to fight back against institutional and police violence that was wreaked on protestors who were pushing for their university to divest from the weapons and war industries, and end its complicity in genocide, apartheid, and settler-colonialism in Palestine.
Their sharing offered us a powerful case study with many lessons for movement-building, transformative justice and abolitionist work in Singapore too.
Takeaway 1: The movement grew as an egalitarian, ground-up democracy.
Anyone compelled to join the movement joined and had a voice. In the planning stages, strategies were determined democratically through consensus or voting. In the midst of action, the movement’s decentralized but highly interconnected network was able to activate quickly, adapt with agility, and swarm around a moment of change.
Takeaway 2: Students, academic workers, and faculty came together in solidarity to fight and disrupt institutional violence in an educational space, claiming it as their own.
In solidarity with forcibly displaced Palestinians, they set up an encampment of tents in the middle of the university to be visible and tangible. The demands were complete divestment of the university’s funds from war, and a reinvestment to improve quality of life for the campus community in housing, transportation, and food.
Takeaway 3: From a giant marionette to sweeping chalk art across campus grounds, they expressed their protest with creativity.
Art has the power of building community, expressing ideas and emotions, and starting conversations in powerful ways. As a complement to organized direct action, art creates emotionally resonate experiences that move, alter perception, inspire public imagination, and mobilize. Art affects, ultimately leading to concrete effects in the movement.
Takeaway 4: Independent, long-standing, and deeply-rooted unions were the timber beneath the spark: the ecosystem had the foundation it needed for quick and effective mobilization.
Labour unions have a rich history of mobilizing in solidarity with antiwar organizing, and were thus able to provide generational knowledge, refined coordination strategies, and much broader reach in the region to activate tens of thousands of workers.
Takeaway 5: The protest was a credible threat to the oppressive structures, as indicated by the university’s large-scale deployment of police forces and campus workers in an attempt to shut it down.
By being disruptive and extracting a cost, a movement measurably gains traction and make waves.
Takeaway 6: Protesters were able to resiliently hold the line amidst crackdowns because of their power in numbers that enabled the sustainable flow of repair, recharge, and resist.
Organizing people in large-scale numbers means protesters can interchange roles in action, allowing for people to take care of themselves or others so they can keep going the next day. The movement needs everyone, but no action or possibility rests entirely on the shoulders of any one person.
Takeaway 7: Who keeps us safe? We keep us safe.
Be it a couch to sleep on, food to share, or jail support, care extended throughout and beyond the encampment. In the face of the university’s crackdown, actively nourishing the community was essential to instilling hope and strength.
There are many roles to play, allowing people to continually assess their different circumstances, risks and abilities and decide what they feel able to step into. If some people couldn’t be on the frontlines, they were documenting from a safer distance – still showing up for their community.
Takeaway 8: Even if the stated goals of a particular resistance action are not accomplished, the seeds for ongoing and future movement are sowed and nourished.
A People’s University was established as part of the encampment’s efforts to learn, share and dream together through peer-led education, at the same time that they were disrupting classes within the institution. This project continues its work into the new school year through “disorientation” sessions for new students, and teach-ins on various topics linked to justice and liberation. New alliances with other local collectives are also being forged.
Transformative Justice Collective 