The struggle is more that the release of Mahmoud Khalil, it’s a working class fight
Citizens gather front the Martin Luther King Building & US District Court for the Distract of NJ, (Photo courtesy of Hellie Denman for Public Square Amplified)
Newark, NJ - No matter how much the greedy, racist bosses of the U.S. try to keep us demoralized and cynical, the faint heartbeat of class struggle persists, reminding those of us who are activists that we are indeed on the “right side of history.”
I just left a rally in support of the release of Mahmoud Khalil, the illegally detained Columbia University graduate student whose attorneys were in the Federal District Court in downtown Newark.
The crowd of several hundred was lively and ready to fight, and the speeches nodded toward international solidarity and a common understanding that political prisoners who stand up to the racist, capitalist system all need defense and freedom. That said, the fundamental reality was left unaddressed: that the only force strong enough to defeat the fascist Zionist State of Israel and the imperialist warmongers here in the U.S. and the world over is a united, anti-racist, anti-imperialist working class stretching from the Middle East to the Darien Gap and Greenland to Cape Town.
Citizens gather front the Martin Luther King Building & US District Courthouse (Photo courtesy of Hellie Denman for Public Square Amplified)
As I stood at that rally today, I reflected on one year ago when I was camped out front of the White House carrying on the hunger strike sparked by Larry Hebert, an active-duty U.S. airman, who was himself carrying out the fight for enlisted soldiers against the genocide sparked by Aaron Bushnell, who self-immolated in front of the Israeli embassy in early 2024.
How many of my students at Essex County College, where I am a professor, are aware of today’s protest for Khalil? How many more of these protests will we have to attend? What does it take for everyday people to understand that capitalism's profit-driven nature makes war and its casualties inevitable? How many people at today’s rally want the radical transformation required for this to end?
While the tone of today’s rally was hopeful, it was also mistakenly directed toward Trump as if it is his fascist actions that are at the core of Khalil’s detention: they are not. Trump is merely escalating the decline of U.S. imperialist world hegemony–he is not redefining it.
Citizens gather front the Martin Luther King Building & US District Courthouse (Photo courtesy of Hellie Denman for Public Square Amplified)
It was Biden who ruthlessly oversaw the mass arrest and displacement of the encampments last year. It was Obama who started the recent era of bombings directed against Yemeni Houthi rebels backed by Iran.
Trump is simply escalating the attacks that the liberal bosses spearheaded. Fascism has become the “go-to” term to describe Trump, but fascism is not predicated upon simply demonic figures; instead, it is a systemic response to capitalism in a political and or economic crisis. Dictators command fascist systems, but capitalism itself resorts to fascism when the liberal facade can no longer endure. We have to get used to taking MORE risks, not fewer. As a professor, I have to fight harder to bring my students out and get them involved, not less. This should be a lesson to us all.