People saying that student protestors were ineffective in protesting for Gaza really are missing that public sentiment has swung pretty fast and far on that, and they were absolutely a part of that.

April 09, 2026 - 17:36 UTC

13
10
2013
“That singe stick of dynamite didn’t clear the mountainside of snow I told you we needed more!”

It has been 3 seconds, let physics work…

I know it’s hard but people seek to forget that the arc of the moral universe is _long_. It takes time. So the good thing knowing you may not see it succeed!
0
0
8
Yes, and as someone who has spent a long life wrestling with expectations never to criticize Israel, I am deeply, personally grateful to them.
0
0
19
What if Dems didn’t lose in 2024 because they caved in too much to “the groups” but because they didn’t cave to student protesters on Gaza? It’s hard to convince people voting for you is necessary to save democracy if you’re cracking protesters’ skulls.
0
0
24
they still pretty much refer to the people who DID get expelled as "entitled brats" or "pro-Hamas stooges". it's bad faith coming from that wing that still thinks the dems can hug Israel without the base of the party rejecting it.
0
0
20
The brutal crackdown on student protesters is part of why public sentiment has swung that fast

It's a Streisand Effect - they hit those kids so hard that folks who were checked out discovered what was going on and were appalled by it
1
0
84
yes, i think that's true. and people on this website *still* don't know about a lot of the punishments students faced and still face for trying to organize on campus because that organizing is not as visible anymore (because it can't be if it wants to be at all successful)
2
0
63
also, they were effective enough that they prompted a massive freakout and campaign of retribution to the point of revoking degrees.
0
0
12
I feel like we see the same thing with the Occupy Wall Street protests (I'm dating myself). Conventional wisdom is that they didn't do anything, but it's hard to escape that for all its flaws, OWS brought ideas/topics of discussion into the mainstream that are still very present today.
2
0
75
Some of the most effective organizers I've met in this moment come from Occupy.
1
0
53
Yes! It brought inequality awareness into the mainstream.
0
0
1
Like, they didn’t accomplish the immediate aim (BDS for their universities), but they certainly started a sea change of public opinion and outed the university admins and a lot of Dem leadership as ghouls who hate dissent. That’s meaningful success for kids with no structural power of their own.
1
0
48
And it’s worth noting that most people decrying the students protests’ “failure“ and asking where they are now were baying for their suppression at the time. It’s uniformly bad faith and malicious reasoning.
0
0
51
i did some pro bono representation of protesting students in disciplinary proceedings. they are some of the most courageous people i have ever met.
0
0
26
Did they meet their aims 100%? No, not yet. That doesn't mean they didn't accomplish something.
9
1
434
Also, they accomplished enough of their aims that campus protests weren't the most effective use of their time and energy, so they shifted tactics. That's not giving up, that's adapting to the reality on the ground. 🤷‍♂️
0
0
21
Also I have to say, some of the people who are talking shit about people who tried to do something about Gaza truly were not paying attention at any point to any of those people and are just making shit up about what they said, did, and wanted.
2
0
310
There was a student protest at the college near where I live on March 2nd, and the local DA is currently trying to prosecute one of the students involved because he passively blocked a professor from interfering with the protest.
1
0
7
People, very especially people on the Left, have a bad habit of not seeing the value in a tactic unless it's the One Tactic To Rule Them All that efficiently results in victory. Reality is almost never like that. You build the wall one brick at a time.
1
0
15
And what protest meets aims 100% first go?
1
0
18
People don’t want to admit that once again the students were right well in advance of the obviousness of their position.
0
0
28
Clearly the women’s suffrage movement failed too because women weren’t given the right to vote immediately after the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 🙄
0
0
11
Every step, no matter how difficult or maligned, is one step closer to the destination. Keep protesting.
0
0
1
Right? When I started my boycott in 2021, you could barely say "Palestine" online.
0
0
11
Someone needs to write about how "assessment" based only on outcomes that are immediate and measurable is ruining everything.
0
0
30
They may mot have been the only cause, but their goal of Harris losing was also achieved.

I would also guess that Harris losing, which essentially greenlit even worse Israeli actions did as much or more to mobe public opinion.
2
1
1
I too love to make up racist shit about various minority groups I hate for being too vocal about their rights, we probably have a lot in common
0
0
8
Very weird to say that this was their goal when largely Harris was not even running when the protests happened.
2
0
48
The students brought the genocide forward into the public view!
0
0
2