You Can’t Hide Anymore

 

Jack Yordy, guest posting:

Last week, I spent roughly seven hours watching videos of student protestors being beaten and brutalized by police. If I didn’t have final exams and projects, I’d likely be watching many hours more this week. There are endless high-definition photos and videos of police violence at universities across the country. But that’s not all I’ve been watching. 

In the months since October of last year, I watched people being torn to shreds by bullets and bombs from the comfort of my apartment. Nearly every day I see the aftermath of an airstrike on a school, or a hospital, or a home, or a body. If you’re wondering why young people care so much about this war, and why they’re willing to be expelled, arrested, and brutalized, there’s your answer. We’ve been watching a genocide through the eyes of its victims. We have lived fleetingly in their perspectives for seven months. 

In 1970, students protesting against the Vietnam War were watching their friends be drafted and never return. They heard the horror stories and saw the names of the dead falling down the TV screen every night. They did not stop protesting after four students were murdered at Kent State by militarized thugs. Fifty-four years later, students are watching their friends and people they follow document the daily deaths of their friends and family. They watch the bombing of homes and hospitals, the withholding of food and water, and so many more atrocities available to view at any time. 

When the media began churning out lies last month in response to protests across the country, it was already far too late to change the minds of GenZ. No statement or spin could make me forget about the body of a child and the aid worker who was trying to save her when they were hit by an American-made, university-funded, missile. Israel, AIPAC, and their U.S. propaganda proxies can’t hide what is happening from us even if they ban TikTok. There is no hiding from us and there is no backing down from demanding our government stops supporting genocide. 

I don’t believe this is going away. In fact, I’m almost sure it is not. For the first time in my four years at Appalachian State University, I am seeing large networks of students forming in response to policies that they disagree with. These students are committed to connecting, organizing, assembling, and dissenting peacefully, regardless of the consequences. They’re not going to forget about this over the summer. They’ll be back after spending the summer planning, not playing. No one can watch what we are watching without feeling a duty to stop it. With Israel continuously gearing up their war machine to escalate this genocide, as sad and angry as it makes us, we are not going to stop watching or dissenting in accordance with constitutional rights. 

Jack Yordy is president of the AppState College Democrats.