The Green Party of New York (GPNY) expresses its full support for and solidarity with the student-led occupations at Columbia University, City College of NY, the New School, New York University, and around the nation. GPNY also backs the demands of Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), the coalition of student groups involved in the occupation, which demands that Columbia and other universities divest from companies and academic institutions that profit from or engage in the State of Israel’s acts of occupation, apartheid, and genocide. 

The Green Party condemns the authoritarian and repressive acts by Columbia President Shafik and her counterparts who have, in craven and servile adherence to appease the demands of the both parties of war and Wall Street, allowed police on campus to repress peaceful student speech. President Shafik’s actions after her dismal performance last week in front of Congress reek of desperation to maintain her job. The Party calls for the immediate resignation of President Shafik and any college administrator complicit in criminalization of student protest against the ongoing genocide in Gaza. While the student protestors have loudly and courageously expressed their solidarity with the oppressed people of Gaza, and peoples the world over oppressed by capitalism, President Shafik has openly proclaimed her solidarity with an increasingly fascistic state and its police.

The Green Party also condemns the actions and speech of President Biden, Gov. Hochul, Mayor Eric Adams, and the Democratic and Republican parties, who have hypocritically condemned student protests against the genocide in Gaza while passing military aid packages to rush Israel more weaponry to slaughter Palestinians. Their morally depraved actions have led to over 33,000 dead, 76,000 wounded, deadly disease outbreaks, starvation, the obliteration of whole Gazan cities, and 1.9 million displaced Gazans. While American imperialist politicians have attacked students brave enough to protest the Gazan genocide, they remained silent as every Gazan university was bombed and obliterated, and mass graves of Gazan civilians murdered by Israeli troops have been uncovered. It is not anti-Semitic to engage in protest against ongoing war crimes and genocide conducted by the Israeli state, though the parties of war and Wall Street and their media allies would have you believe so.

Democrats and Republicans, the parties of war and Wall Street in the United States, have marched in lockstep in support of Israel and its genocidal policies. Their actions are backed by their paymasters, the US capitalist class, which benefits from both the intense levels of military spending and in propping up Israel as a client state of the US empire. As they cannot break with these policies, and have become increasingly fearful of protests spreading from campus and potentially engulfing the American working class in political and economic strikes against the increasingly unlivable situation in the United States, they have resorted to slander of activists and severe repression. 

We support the liberation of Palestine, the defeat of the ecocidal imperialist United States government and its genocidal client regime in Israel. We stand with the audacious and heroic student occupations for Gaza, the faculty, community and union members supporting them, and against the despicable actions of cowardly campus administrators and politicians. We are ready to help build and stand with a coalition of students and workers ready to engage in occupations, strikes, and contentious actions designed to bring an end to the genocide in Gaza immediately, and to help free the people of Palestine.

Green Party of New York
www.gpny.org/