Like Zeynep, I don't have any simple solution to propose. The too-simple answer is "keep organizing!" And that's true, but that's also pretty much always the correct, too-simple answer. But we should at least get the mechanics right.

At my university, the union did not take sides on the protestors' demands but took a strong stance on campus free speech and student safety, going so far as to link arms to form a barrier between police and students. With the memory of labor power in our recent strike, I think that meant something.

Step 1 is Dems hold the presidency. Everything else depends on that. Obviously, taking the house and holding the senate is vital as well just now as critical in the near term.

My "solution" (definitely only partial & far from simple) is student journalism. That was the most impressive thing that came out of Columbia last spring and hopefully it endures: students telling stories that mainstream press does not from a situated perspective can help take down the powerful!

it also matters that universities aren't the right target. vietnam had students/colleges with much more direct connection to the war effort

Social media and virality isn't the big thing that changed. Wealth inequality, and the downstream effects of neoliberal defunding of basically all public goods, is the big change. A few stakeholders now wield so much power that mass protests on-par with decades past are less of a counterweight.

The correct too simple answer is to increase public funding for higher education by taxing Ackman and the donor class enough, so they have less to bribe with and on net, the universities have more.

The actual answer is that the right needs to be made more afraid of consequences and at this point the only way that will happen is if non-conservatives show more willingness to escalate to violence against conservatives.

I’ve learned in this very thread that their demands were not communicated by their actions or supported w message discipline. I already knew that failure to engage over those demands (which I attended many useless briefings on) was exploited by universities to bury what the protesters were asking.

“universities used to take student disruption more seriously because they took *their students* more seriously.” Yes and no—ppl always read univ. motives vs protesters as motivated by donors and pols but it’s *also* (over)solicitousness toward non-protesting students, for whom campus is kept “safe”