By John Catalinotto
October 16, 2024

New York City

Students at the Fashion Institute of Technology picked up their well-painted banners, placards and flags on Oct. 10 and demonstrated for hours before the main Feldman Center on the campus in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. Last spring FIT students held one of the longest-duration encampments in solidarity with the people of Gaza.

The FIT administration called in police against the legal protest. Cops arrested six of the students who had defied the police attempt to intimidate the activists. The students were released after being held for three hours.

Unlike the Ivy League Columbia, whose “elite” reputation as well as its history of struggle from 1968, or the massive City University, where students had suffered vicious attacks from the New York Police Department, the actions at FIT last spring got relatively little publicity or attention. At the time, the administration delayed calling in police and even negotiated with the students.

This fall, any sign of friendly behavior disappeared, the administration reneged on its agreements and attempted to repress the student struggle. This hardening of repression fits the pattern on campuses around the country. What’s significant is that the FIT student organization resisted intimidation.

One of the organizers, Jonas, speaking to the demonstrators and the media, explained that the administration had refused one of the meetings they had promised last spring. In another broken promise, it refused to release information about new investments. The administration held only one of the three meetings they promised. And it maintained university punishments of some of the students, including Jonas.

The students demanded that the administration hold to the agreement it made with them last spring. This included providing details about all new investments so students could screen them.

Now the students demand FIT set up a screen for further investments so they invest no new money in military corporations supplying arms to Israel; all charges against students dropped, no suspensions or arrests; a referendum on divestment from companies engaged with Israeli apartheid; and divestment from companies that used forced prison labor at “slave” wages. Students demand that FIT President Joyce Brown make a statement condemning the genocide Israel is carrying out in Gaza.

Showing the development of students’ politics, chants were not only to “stop the genocide!” but “long live the Intifada!” and “liberation for Palestine!”

If FIT students give a fair measure of the mood on campuses in general, student solidarity with Palestine is refusing to diminish and attitudes are sharpening while the U.S.-funded genocidal war expands in West Asia.