For Gaza

This is the University of California, Berkeley, Free Palestine Encampment.It is another day of car nage and strug le in Palestine and a new day of encamp ment here.Ours is the lon gest-run ning encamp ment thus far.Protest art and ban ners announce the encamp ment."Free Palestine Encampment until UC Divests," "Student Intifada," and "Ya Gaza ya gamrati" (Oh Gaza, my heart).Assembled from our bod ies, tents, and visual mate ri als-all out of their proper placethe encamp ment punc tures the offi cial time of the uni ver sity, which has made no time to oppose the geno cide of the Palestinians.The encamp ment repo si tions Gaza in a pres ent that attempts to elim i nate it.There is full ness to the time of the encamp ment.Every day feels like a month.We hope and despair and hope again.We rise and col lapse and rise again.We no lon ger remem ber the sequence of dates.We've gained a new sense of time.It is as though we had not lived a full life before we started this round of Palestine sol i darity strug le.An audio record ing of the mar tyrs' names is played every day.Like the names of many encamped stu dents, the mar tyrs' names accu mu late.They become famil iar, less for eign, more and more of us.They anchor the encamp ment.To recite them is to insist on our love for the Palestinians, killed and alive.The demands of our encamp ment are straight for ward: end the silence about the geno cide in Gaza; cease profiting from the anni hi la tion, dis pos ses sion, and sub ju ga tion of Palestinians; and boy cott insti tu tions that nor mal ize Palestine's oblit er a tion.But the encamp ment also exceeds our demands.It is a ral ly ing cry.It syn chro nizes, coor di na tes, and col lec tiv izes a ges ture toward both colonial destruc tion and anti co lo nial strug le in Palestine.Such is our sol i dar ity.It is a per se ver ing echo of Palestine in Berkeley.This echo not only exposes but also con fronts the hypoc risy of our aca demic insti tu tions.They pro claim their