I will confess, I've always been drawn to the student and social activism of the 1960s as a topic. Those characters of history and their grand campaigns for one cause or another have always appealed to me, not for the content of their goals, but rather watching how people attempt to exert influence on a society where they have functionally no power in the face of the powers that be. That brand of politics, a grand fight for a good cause, one fought tooth-and-nail, no matter how difficult — that's what I love.
What I often forget in my observations of history is that much of the same battles waged then continue to be fought today, though under other aliases, other names, other titles. It is no longer a battle of "racial integration" today, but a clash over Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. It's not Vietnam that students march over, today it's Palestine, and it is exactly that topic that has captured my attention over the course of the last months.
Starting on March 17, a hunger strike was launched by UBC Divest. The expressed goal of the hunger strike is to fulfill the five core demands of reducing UBC’s complicity in the ongoing genocide, consisting of the following:
- Divest university holdings from select companies known for weapons manufacturing and/or for being on the UN settlement list,
- Boycott Israeli universities and institutions, as well as AMNE archaeological sites within Palestine,
- Condemn the ongoing genocide in Gaza and Palestine,
- Keep the RCMP off-campus,
- Reaffirm the Palestinian right to return and statehood.
Wanting to know more, I spoke with an organizer for the rallies across campus. Sitting at the staircases of the Fipke atrium before a rally of around a dozen students handing out literature to passersby, our conversation went thusly:
Organizer: It's day four of the hunger strike for me, it's Thursday, March 27th, and I'm feeling okay, but I'm more disappointed in UBC [administration] and their lukewarm response to our hunger striking. Yesterday, at our hunger strike zone outside of the UNC our vice-chancellor came by, but she wasn't coming by directly to us, she was passing by on her way to another event. I kinda considered it a sign of disrespect, because for the last four days I've gone without food. I'm only on a liquids diet, to show the university how important it is for the [administration] to divest from weapons manufacturing and other companies that are complicit in enabling genocide.
[As we are speaking, some of the campus organizers are assembling to begin reading aloud to a small crowd of interested students.]
O: There hasn't been any contact except for an email from Ainsley [Carry, Vice President of Students] that I can read to you [...].
[The organizer then read off an email excerpt which can be found at its full length here. The email states that the university has offered nurses to monitor those participating in the hunger strike, and that the Office of the Vice President for Students is open to meetings with those students interested.]
O: A hunger strike is definitely needed at this point, because we have tried every other method to get the university to divest its endowment fund from genocide. We've tried everything from letter writing, petitioning, tabling, a seven-month-long encampment, months of negotiations that led us nowhere, so what should we do that is not the extreme form of protest that is a hunger strike? [...] That's the only response [we've] gotten, and that's really pathetic, honestly. Shame on you, UBC.
Our conversation ended soon thereafter, and the strike officially ended on March 31. With no new developments on the horizon, the movement has now pivoted towards new routes of pressuring the university administration.
"No matter how much the administration hopes and wishes to wait us out, this problem is not going to go away. The long arc of history is on our side," the official statement reads. "The administration may want to extinguish our flames of rage and integrity, but we will reclaim our agency and burn brighter and hotter the longer the delay."
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