The ‘Micro-Intifada’: How American Protesters Are Being Trained in ‘Militancy’

The Free Press ^ | 5/4/2024 | Francesca Block

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Students participating in the Gaza Solidarity Encampments at universities across the country are being taught to become militants, according to nine manuals obtained by The Free Press.

Many of the manuals, which are being shared via phone group chats with students across the country, encourage “militancy” and instruct protesters to break laws, seize buildings, vandalize them, and then use tactics to evade police detection and arrest. One guide, called “De-arrest Primer,” teaches protesters to physically resist arrest or, in some cases, assault police officers or throw projectiles at them to protect fellow “comrades” from arrest. “Each de-arrest,” the guide states, “is a micro-intifada which can spread and inspire others until we may finally shake off this noxious ruling order all together.”

Another manual, called the “The Do-It-Yourself Occupation Guide,” contains detailed diagrams on how to break into buildings using tools like crowbars, clamps, metal cables, chains, bolt cutters, and a miniature saw known as an angle grinder.

Instructions show how to barricade doors with “heavy furniture,” create a “shield” against police using trash cans, ropes, sheets of cardboard, or a “corrugated metal banner,” and to pick locks using a “technique” developed by “firemen and criminals.” “If these less-destructive methods don’t work,” the guide states, “more aggressive options are abundant,” such as using a crowbar to “open a window.”

Many of these techniques were employed by Columbia students on Tuesday night when they stormed Hamilton Hall, an administrative building at the heart of the university. Protesters smashed through the windows of the hall’s main door with hammers and used metal chains to lock them shut. After cops arrested 119 people on the Ivy League campus, they discovered multiple glass doors had been broken and barricaded using chairs, refrigerators, and vending machines, according to NYPD’s Deputy Commissioner Tarik Sheppard.

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Not successor but addition.