Apr 26

Apr 26 CCNY Protests

New York City, Public Declarations, Protest

“
Well, we got no choice
All the girls and boys
Makin’ all that noise
’Cause they found new toys
Well, we can’t salute ya
Can’t find a flag
If that don’t suit ya
That’s a drag

[Chorus]
School’s out for summer
School’s out forever
School’s been blown to pieces”

— School's Out, Alice Cooper, from School's Out (1972)

“Everybody’s talkin’ at me
Can’t hear a word they’re sayin’
Only the echoes of my mind”

— Everybody's Talkin', Harry Nilsson, from Aerial Ballet (1969)

On Friday, April 27, 2024, I headed to 141st and Convent Avenue in Harlem, where City College of New York is located. While on Columbia’s campus the prior day, I learned that CCNY students had started their own encampment, as had students at other colleges and universities throughout the United States.

I’d like to focus on whether today’s student movement constitutes a “return” to the magical Sixties, but before doing so, here are some quick observations about the CCNY encampment:

The students in the CCNY encampment struck me as more hostile than those at Columbia. One speaker devoted the entirety of his remarks to a polemic against the media, while another addressed capitalism and existing U.S. power structures. According to that speaker, the students and underclasses must become highly organized because those at the top of U.S. society are quite adept at putting in place structures that keep those with money in power. Neither speaker focused on the Palestinians’ plight, although both referenced it.
Shortly after I arrived, one woman approached me, wanting to know who I was and why I was present. Her questions were meant to intimidate. Fortunately, I passed inspection. Keep in mind that CCNY is a public university, with city streets running through it. While regulations most likely give students more rights while on campus than I have—for example, I was not allowed inside university buildings—I did have a right to be in this public space.
If you have been to one student Gaza Solidarity encampment, you have seen them all. Like Columbia’s encampment, this one had: (i) colorful tents spread out in a quad-like area; (ii) several makeshift food pantries stocked with what amounted to processed food staples; (iii) areas roped off that were apparently off-limits to outsiders; (iv) lots of signage; and (v) students who spent an inordinate amount of time looking at phones and laptops. Unlike Columbia’s encampment, CCNY’s had an area designated for “Faculty Support.” Clearly, some Columbia faculty members were supportive of the Columbia students engaged in protesting, but CCNY’s faculty outwardly appeared to play a more active role.
Shortly after noon, some students gathered for an Islamic religious service being held on a green space adjacent to the encampment. Not only were there prayers, but I also heard what sounded like a sermon. The organizers requested that no one photograph the participants. To make photography “impossible,” a number of students circled the area, holding up large signs, blankets, and tarps to prevent photographers from capturing images. I am respectful of ‘No Photography’ requests when people are engaged in solemn religious observance, but during other demonstrations that I have covered, the organizers have not restricted photographic activity when people perform salat, so I wonder whether the limit today was more about virtue signaling than creating an environment conducive to prayer. I like being able to include images of people praying in my photo essays about demonstrations because those images depict the participants as peaceful and reverent individuals. From a purely public relations perspective, the CCNY organizers made a mistake.
As I was thinking about heading back to Soho, I heard some chanting coming from the elevated driveway running just west of the encampment. The students had joined together with CCNY staff, marching in a large oval formation. The marchers were demanding higher wages for CCNY employees. I don’t take issue with a labor action, but once again, I believe demonstrations are more effective if the demonstrators stay focused on just one issue. By staging the march, the organizers were diluting their Gaza messaging—although they may have been bringing CCNY employees into the Gaza fold. As has been the case for the last two weeks, the campers made themselves the center of attention rather than keeping the spotlight on the Palestinians subsisting in Gaza.
Somewhat to my surprise, two members of the anti-Zionist group Neturei Karta International showed up. One was Rabbi Yosef Rosenberg, who I have seen on at least three other occasions. I listened to him give a lengthy interview to a reporter explaining why Israel should not exist. For the uninitiated, seeing a highly Orthodox Jew speaking out against Israel and Zionism is a jarring experience. One thing is for sure, the members of Neturei Karta aptly demonstrate why being anti-Zionist is not equivalent to being anti-Semitic.

Rabbi Rosenberg offered several explanations for his opposition to Israel, all illustrated with photographs from a well-worn portfolio holding plastic sleeves, each one containing a photograph. First, Jews and ‘Arabs’ lived in peace and interacted with each other for centuries before the founding of the State of Israel. Israel’s existence, according to the rabbi, has upset what was a beneficial equilibrium.

Second, the Israelis, particularly since October 7, have inflicted far too much death and destruction upon the Palestinians. Third, the desire for a Jewish state in Palestine runs counter to Talmudic teachings. According to Neturei Karta’s website:

The prohibition on creating our own state is found in the Talmud, Kesubos 111a. The Talmud derives from a verse in the Song of Songs 2:7 that when G-d sent the Jewish People into exile, He make them take three oaths: not to go up to the Holy Land en masse, not to rebel or fight wars against the nations, and not to force the end of exile. Having a government in the Holy Land is a violation of the oath not to force the end of exile, since sovereignty inherently contradicts the concept of exile. Furthermore, the State was established through mass immigration and wars.

Now, permit me to address today’s big question. People who know that I have attended dozens of demonstrations pertaining to the Israeli-Hamas War have been asking me the same question: Do you think we have returned to the halcyon days of the Sixties?

I don’t think the Twenties are the new Sixties. Nor do I think the Zoomers are the new Boomers. By and large, this is a question without an answer.

I was hitting puberty in 1968, which meant I was at an age when everything is new and exciting, exerting a strong magnetic pull. Music, film, art, politics, and love (or perhaps sex); there was so much to experience. At 14 or 15, I had yet to travel enough miles to warrant even a tiny bit of road weariness. All I saw were endless possibilities to explore without the journey being impeded by the cynicism that eventually takes hold.

I assume that the kids (students) in the tents share the same universal feelings that come with youth, but that they also lack the perspective every human develops as five or six decades fly fleetingly by. When today’s students look back in forty years, it will be their ‘Sixties,’ but not mine. The world is a different place, or at least the context in which their consciousness exists is different. I am not tuned into their music, their literature, their art, or their TikTok videos. Presumably these students share some some commonality when it comes to what they watch, read, and listen to, but as a society, we now largely lack a singular media stream, so what will become cultural artifacts in the decades ahead have not infected the populace at large.

Those who ask the question whether what is happening on college campuses is a return to the Sixties are simply trying to return to an earlier place on their life’s arc, which is nothing more than a nostalgic reckoning with mortality. Setting aside the haze that accompanies the passage of time, I don’t think this period of turmoil possesses the zeitgeist that I associate with the Sixties, but Boomer sensibility has likely taken my mind hostage.

The Internet is the problem, or more to the point, the resulting democratization of the media and the algorithms that offer each of us a mirror reflecting our tastes and biases back at ourselves. Back in 1968, three corporate television networks offered what was deeply homogenized news coverage; Top 40 radio forced musicians into a popularity contest; independent filmmakers had yet to undermine Hollywood’s monopoly; the art world was dominated by just a few artists, some of whom ended up on the cover of Time Magazine; and fashion was dictated by a few designers.

The world reflected a top-down hierarchy. As hip and radical as the Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe and the Fish, Miles Davis, Kurt Vonnegut, Josef Heller, Ken Kesey, Dalton Trumbo, Mike Nichols, Jean Luc Godard, Rolling Stone Magazine, and The Village Voice might have seemed at the time, years later, I learned that millions of other teenagers were listening to, reading, and viewing the same stuff that I was eagerly consuming. Mix those iconic creatives with the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement; and voilà, the 1960s became the Sixties.

The Internet has given many more creatives exposure, but that exposure is siloed, and therefore, diluted. Can a decade become an era when each individual controls the media he or she consumes? There no longer is a Catcher in the Rye. In the Age of the Internet, we all go down our own rabbit holes (go ask Taylor). Back in the Seventies, Saturday Night Live could parody Andy Rooney or the pairing of Shana Alexander with James Kilpatrick because everyone had experienced those cultural touchstones, but that is no longer the case.

Top 40 may have been reviled and ridiculed in 1968, but everyone alive knew Hey Jude, White Rabbit, and I Heard It Through the Grapevine. Not so today. Streaming offers infinite possibilities, but little cultural consensus.

Every issue of Mad Magazine offered proof of just how much people in the Fifties and Sixties held in common. It lampooned films, books, and personalities endlessly. Parody doesn’t work on a mass scale unless everyone is in on the joke.

Imagine the film that will be released in 30 years about the pro-Palestinian gay man who falls in love with a transgender member of Jewish Voice For Peace; a romcom set in the Columbia University Gaza Solidarity encampment. What songs will be included in the film’s soundtrack? What memorable book did they discuss late into the night? Who was the gay man’s favorite living artist?

While there are probably answers to those questions, I am not convinced that enough people will share the sort of signpost memories that will create a collective consciousness known as the Twenties. Without shared memories, the student encampments most likely will be forgotten.

If I am correct, how can this era be characterized as a Sixties revival?

[Click on an Image to Enlarge It. The Images Are Not Necessarily in Exact Chronological Order]