California Police Clear Out Pro-Palestine Protesters at UCLA

Who has better crazies? Last night, California law enforcement moved in to start clearing the pro-Palestine encampment of protesters at UCLA.

Not to be outdone by the New Yorkers over at Columbia, which had its own night of arrests just a day prior, the college students at UCLA sprayed cops with fire extinguishers and barricaded themselves with plywood. (They literally built a wall and instituted checkpoints, the irony of which does not seem to register.)

Counter-protesters tried to pull the plywood down. They shot fireworks into the encampment. They reportedly sprayed mace. Violence on both sides ensued:

Dueling groups of pro-Palestinian protesters and pro-Israel counterprotesters clashed Wednesday at UCLA, breaking out in fistfights, tearing down encampment barricades and using objects to beat one another. https://t.co/eLTOkdLARP pic.twitter.com/rlM40wLHDx

— CBS News (@CBSNews) May 2, 2024

So last night, the school sent law enforcement in to attempt to stop the violence and clear the tent city. Video emerged of police using stun grenades. A little before publication time, at least one California Highway Patrol (CHP) officer shot something toward the protesters in the encampment, which was met with shouts of “Don’t shoot!” and “We’re just students!” (The CHP said officers are loaded with nonlethal tools like flash-bang devices. The officers also held off for roughly six hours after issuing orders for protesters to disband; they have only just recently begun moving in and attempting arrests.)

“More than 1,300 protesters have been taken into custody on U.S. campuses over the past two weeks,” reported The New York Times. “Arrests were made on Wednesday at the University of Texas at Dallas, Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and Tulane University in New Orleans, among other places.”

The questions of what type of speech ought to be permitted are fairly thorny here. Restrictions on speech should, of course, be content-neutral. Public and private universities have different obligations. Protests surely run afoul of university policies when they disrupt university operations:

Campus operations will be limited tomorrow and Friday. Please continue to avoid campus and the Royce Quad area. Per Academic Senate guidance on instruction, all in-person classes are authorized and required to pivot to remote tomorrow and Friday. https://t.co/MNiqJ7bu67

— UCLA (@UCLA) May 2, 2024

And protests that devolve into vandalism and violence—as many have—ought to be treated differently than mere speech. One could make the case that encampments, housing peaceful protesters, are civil disobedience, but part of what makes civil disobedience work is being willing to stoically incur harsh consequences for your actions. Universities are well within their rights to clear tent cities from their campuses, but perhaps protesters who believe in their cause would be better served by simply taking the arrest and proving to the interested public that they are willing to sacrifice for this cause.

Absent that, the UCLA protesters—who have likened the waving of bananas near their encampment (since someone has an allergy) to Israeli settlers waving machine guns, and prevented students from attending class—deserve little respect.

Relevance allergies: Yesterday, the Libertarian Party (L.P.) announced a huge convention get: Former President Donald Trump will be speaking, and you can even buy merch in preparation for the big event (never mind the fact that the man already had four years during which he could have pardoned Julian Assange or Ross Ulbricht, yet chose not to). It says it also invited President Joe Biden and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to speak, but to my mind it’s not exactly shocking that Biden ignored the invite.

The Libertarian Party is selling Trump-themed merch ahead of a speech by Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee, at the Libertarian National Convention. https://t.co/S0zelJMszJ https://t.co/msMmma51o2 pic.twitter.com/vN9T0napjF

— Zach Weissmueller (@TheAbridgedZach) May 1, 2024

“I know there are some libertarians who have a severe allergy to relevance, but it is an undeniably great thing that Trump is speaking at the Libertarian Party National Convention,” wrote comedian Dave Smith on X. “It will generate more attention on our party and the issues that we care about, than we’ve ever had.”

Perhaps you’re sitting there wondering why the L.P.—which, at this convention, will be nominating its own presidential candidate (contenders include Chase Oliver, Mike ter Maat, and Michael Rectenwald)—would want to host the former president and presumptive nominee for another party. To answer these questions, I called up L.P. Communications Director Brian McWilliams.

All publicity = good publicity? The media attention “is going to be more than we have ever experienced,” says McWilliams. “Do you think libertarians will be happy about it?” I asked, to a firm yes from him: “This gives us an opportunity to get Donald Trump up there, to make him answer questions from our philosophical base.” When I asked who would be moderating—who will be doing the pushing back, and making sure Trump doesn’t turn this into a bloviating stump speech—he said he did not yet know, but possibly the L.P. chair, Angela McArdle.

“RFK [Jr.] was flirting with [the L.P.] because we are a growing bloc. Trump’s seeing that,” says McWilliams. “Growing bloc via what metric?” I asked. “I think we now are getting to a point where we’re representing more Americans,” he continued, to which I pressed: “Do we have data that reflects that?”

“We don’t have data that reflects that as far as party registration or affiliation,” responded McWilliams. “I’m basically speaking from the point of what we’re seeing from a cultural perspective.” Following the Reno Reset in 2022, at which point the Mises Caucus—essentially, mostly anarcho-capitalist edgelords who spend a lot of time online—took over the party, libertarians have widely criticized the nouveau L.P.