Take the start of this school year, when the jaded voice inside me assumed that all trace of last spring semester’s solidarity encampments would be wiped clean, not only by the machinery of the university-military complex, but the short-term memory of college students.
Yet at the two-hour “student walkout” at McGill University last Friday, some 500 people, creating a sea of keffiyahs (themselves now an act of disobedience on school grounds, where chalking has been criminalized as well), demonstrated remembrance, persistence, bravery, and intentionality.
Contingents from multiple Montreal colleges and community groups converged at McGill, and with a loud sound system, alternated numerous chants with powerful speakers—including a faculty member who grew up under occupation and war. Some smashed admin building windows were the backdrop. Thousands of returning and new students couldn’t help but be (re)oriented to this movement against the genocide in Gaza and McGill’s role in that. Folks handed out chalk and sidewalks came alive with messages of love and rage. Others handed out Palestine-shaped cardboard signs, each bearing different drawings and words crafted by students. And so many people reunited with each other, with hugs and hellos, after a summer apart, rekindling connections.
You could feel the energy mount as we marched up and into another building, chants echoing off the central stairwell. It seemed “for sure” a preplanned occupation. Instead, folks streamed out and made their way toward the large, now-pristine, shutdown field that for 75 days last spring had been home to the encampment.
Just when it felt predictable—a walkout simply to walk—people tore up the red caution tape and tore down the red “field closed” signs, and then began ripping up the grass—installed to cover-up, literally and figuratively, the former “autonomous zone.”
“We have torn down their superficial red tape,” an organizer proclaimed. This is only the first week! This is only the beginning!”
