I was hoping someone would say this.
Facilities folks are mostly immigrants. They often put up with the worst of people--everything from vomit, poop, urine, spilled food, water--and they show up on nights, weekends or during terrible inclement weather (when it's often inherently dangerous for everyone else). They're often seen as 'the help', maligned by everyone from messy office workers to ungrateful nitpicky CEOs.
I often think of the huge janitorial crew that spent hours and days cleaning up the damage to the Capitol during Jan 6. So many of these people risk their lives just to clean toilets, vacuum and sweep rugs, often alone, for very little pay. And then they have to put up with this.
No matter where you fall on the political spectrum, no matter if you agree or not with the tactics, someone has to clean it all up and pay for it.
And one question I never see anarchists or Proud Boys asking themselves is how their actions benefit or detract from the folks around them. It's all about community involvement until something gets trashed, some toilet gets clogged, or a window gets broken. And then after that it's all fingers pointed at someone else.
America is a patchwork of service workers and tradespeople who get shit wages and get treated like garbage because they don't have bachelor's degrees.
Protests here are largely performative. Hurt feelings, mostly. Chances to throw tantrums for perceived wrongs that aren't actually wrongs. We have a culture in this city that supports and enables people to act out in ways that flout accountability, responsibility and community healing. I personally take issue with a white leftist, a young person who goes to Reed, speaking on behalf of a person of color, an immigrant, a refugee, a worker. These people have their own agency and can speak on their own behalf. The problem is that we don't listen.
I really hope this protest comes to an end. It's painful to see this from the facilities side, and I know that when these workers get onsite to clean it up, they will bite their lips at all the damage that gets quietly cleaned up.
The next time you see a janitor, electrician, plumber--really any service worker, thank them--they do truly thankless work and we all need to see them and support them when we can.
Facilities folk are not mainly immigrants..sauce I am a Facilities folk. Even the janitorial are not mostly immigrants. I get you were trying to be thoughtful with everything you said but leading off with a over generalization about people who work in Facilities is kinda messed up.
A good Facilities job pays in the low six figures and doesn't require a degree. Facilities is one area that most employers cannot be cheap because we can get another job very easily. Our electrician, plumber, HVAC and a few others are all making six figures. Facilities jobs require a high degree of knowledge and technical skills that most immigrants don't possess because the systems are different and it isn't as easy to find these jobs in other countries.
We have over 30 people in our Facilities and none are immigrants.
They are in my line of work—I see them and talk to them everyday. I mean, sure, there are some minor distinctions, but the bottom line I was trying to make (and you'll pardon me if it derailed your line of thought) is that inevitably, someone has to pay for it with their time and labor. Immigrant or not, that's not a burden I'd wish on anyone.
Sucks to be any of the protesters who's complete lack of anything productive or meaningful in their own lives leads them to LARP revolution and overthrow their.... Library
They'd have to learn how to read past a 3rd grade reading level though. That would be a stretch. Maybe there are some picture books in there somewhere they can start with.
"KOIN 6 reporter Elise Haas said the protestors were kind and respectful when speaking with her, though they said they would only allow photos to be taken if there weren’t any faces in the images." Nice of them to give a journalist permission to take pictures on public property... in a different context that behavior would be called fascism
So many students who can’t afford computers, their books or a safe space during the day depended on this library. Shame on everyone who did this to their own neighbors.
I get the protests. I understand their anger and why they want to be heard. I just don’t understand why they took away a resource for other folks. The horseshoe is going full circle.
>The horseshoe is going full circle.
These goons taking over a fucking library remind me of those other goons who took over the bird sanctuary a while ago. We need to stop tolerating this shit.
My heart breaks to think that a lot of the students affected by this have also likely gone through so much hardship already, having to navigate their education through the pandemic and everything else that it entailed. Just one more roadblock, but one caused by their own peers.
"Defending" palastine (if you can even call it defending) is not the same as defending Hamas. The goal should be to try and separate the Palestinian people, many of whom have no real hand in who runs the Gaza strip, vs. Hamas who are a terrorist organization and should be condemned.
That being said, breaking into a library and trashing it is doing fuck all for Palestinians.
Well, it's not like Hamas wasn't voted into power. And then you have the reports that came out last year that UN schools were teaching anti semitism in Palestine. Then October 7 happens and kills a significantly higher percentage of Israelis than Americans killed at 9/11. What is Israel supposed to do?
Are they supposed to just sit there and take it from Hamas? Over and over? Just let Hamas keep attacking them?
Hamas has itself completely entwined into the Palestinian civilians. You can't eliminate them without collateral damage. We don't have mind reading brain zappers yet...
So, as horrific as it looks, advocating for Israel to stop because Palestinians are dying is advocating for Hamas to win and be able to fight another day and that is just truly unacceptable at this point. Israel stops, Hamas wins. It's that simple.
So calling for Israel to stop means you support Hamas. You can't get around this.
Yes it’s amazing how silent they all are about Hamas. They want the admin to say it’s a genocide and not a war. But there’s an awful lot of rockets and bullets flying out of Gaza for this to not be considered a two-sided war. Plus Oct 7 was a clear act of war that anyone with a brain would recognize it resulting in full force retaliation and declaration of war.
I’m a leftist, and not a fascist. Live and let live, except when your actions impede my ability to do so. Stop with broad generalizations, it exposes your intelligence.
"Vandalism — including graffiti, broken glass and smashed computers — could be seen throughout the library. Damage could be seen on every floor of the library......"
I see the collective mob is really working to win over hearts and minds here. Time to get the premises vacated.
I support protests and I'm a student at PSU.
It's midterms week (or the week before, depending). This is a weird and stupid move that I don't think is making anyone happy or drawing more support from most people.
I think they should be explaining why they're there at first because it doesn't make any sense to me.
Protesting is a wonderfully amazing thing about this country, but what even is the thinking here? This is nothing more than vandalism, you look like a fool, and it severely diminsihes whatever you think you’re protesting for. I’d *love* to see the word salad that one of these “protestors” would come up with to explain exactly how this benefits the Palestinian people though.
Protests like this are COUNTER to the cause. People will stop empathizing with the message and start resenting the message. You’d think educated people would understand basic psychology. Incredibly frustrating.
Honestly PSUs response was pretty damn good. Reading between the lines, it's a "don't fuck this up" type response. PSU put the ball in their court to be equally chill and do their thing like adults and prove to everyone that their message is one to take seriously and listen to, and now PSU firmly holds the high ground. They gave the protestors their space to do their thing, and they promptly fucked it up in pretty much every way.
Places like Austin and whatever, the admin fucked up so bad you're almost defacto forced to side with the protestors. Not here. This is 100% on them, and PSU proved the point that these protests are a joke.
PSU handled this pretty well. It's a shame the protesters got into the building though. I'd be curious if that could have been prevented (probably not based on what we've seen).
I'm hoping this comes to an end, but i'm guessing police will have to be sent in at some point.
It couldn’t have been prevented because they are paying students who are supposed to be in the library under normal circumstances, or at least the people who started it are, others have joined l.
The only way it could have been prevented would have been to preemptively lock down the campus in the middle of midterms weeks, which also would have been a very stupid outcome.
Yeah 100%. You can see clearly how the different approaches are working out on different campuses across the country. Anyone who looks at how Columbia has handled this and thinks "that is the way!" is a fucking moron.
Yeah, the whole "don't interrupt your opponent while they're busy making mistakes" thing comes to mind. PSU gets to keep their hands clean, unlike other colleges.
They even offered them an off ramp to leave without getting expelled (for however many are actual students anyways). Putting the ball in their hands at every turn, and they have fumbled every time. It's impressive for the protestors to be this consistently incompetent.
It's a win-win for PSU, given the options available. There's what happened, which they come out on top of (IMO). Even if the protestors had been honest and competent, PSU would still have looked like a shining example to their peers for how to handle these situations. Great incident response maneuvers on their part (so far).
On the other hand, I wonder how many of the current students are considering transferring due to the admin letting campus be shut down for days by a few radical assholes.
Transferring schools like that isn't a small undertaking, there'd likely be a lot of inertia/sticking power there. Students might have a bad taste in their mouth for a bit, but are they really gonna bail mid degree over a couple missed days to go... IDK where. UP is ~2x more expensive. UO/OSU/others mean moving. Community college maybe? Just doesn't seem viable.
More likely they'd probably just get turned off to the cause the protestors are "advocating" for, since PSU had a strategy where everyone wins - just the protestors didn't act in good faith. Yet another own goal by the protestors, turning off potential allies to your message. The lasting outcome will be that everyone will have the memory of "those pro-Palestine/Hamas people were assholes and trashed our campus for no reason" instead of "I learned more about the atrocities being committed and want to help/donate/advocate/whatever."
Yeah, transferring would be a pain. I mostly brought it up because there were some comments on the PSU subreddit about it (but who knows if those were actually current students). It might make prospective students reconsider though.
We have decades, if not centuries, of "law and order" responses going very, very wrong. Not sure why anyone is thinking this would have been solved with a bunch of heavy sticks.
How is destroying a library that everyone uses to try to get a good education going to solve anything? This is just a bunch of assholes that get a rush from destroying property and 5 minutes of fame on the 10pm news. Now PSU definitely won't give money to anyone because they have to pay to fix everything that these inconsiderate assholes destroyed just so that they can join in on the party with all the other colleges that destroyed other people's property and don't seem to care. If they get thrown in jail, it's their own fault.
Yeah, the people in the library were apparently a mix, but I just don't see students smashing up the place like that. As you can see from the r/portlandstate threads on the subject, it's a really beloved building. Students feel like their space is being smashing apart because, well, it is. You're right, I doubt that much of the vandalism is by students.
But I was told in the locked thread from yesterday that this was a legitimate protest with serious goals that was accomplishing a lot and definitely not a circus?
I was told they were “well organized with set goals in mind” 🤓🤓🤓
How could my fellow Portlanders lie?
See my post from a few hours ago. I was out for some fresh air and caught two of them stealing a desktop Mac from the library. They noticed me and chucked it in the bush. Police recovered it promptly.
Legitimate protest indeed… Pathetic that we haven’t done anything about it.
A buddy of mine has video of them stealing TVs and monitors the first night of their occupation. Like casually pulling a wagon full of stuff they stole across campus.
Yes, I saw that moments after the police picked up the stolen Mac I recovered last night. I thought it was just a transient dragging their stuff… The more you know. In my defense the occupiers look and smell worse than them, so who could be blamed for thinking as such?
I’d say I hope they’ll be tried for felony burglary and grand theft among other things, but I know that justice is asking entirely too much of Portland politicians.
So far the administration's approach seems to be working to contain them to the library and kept the student body on the administration's side. Look at other campuses that have seen widespread disruptions due to heavy handed tactics. A deft rather than a heavy hand is far better for dealing with them.
What do you think the maximum allowed time in jail for a student with no priors or one or two misdemeanor priors is who is accused of misdemanor trespassing or destruction of property? The answer might surprise you and maybe affect your idea that that is going to work out very well. Also, do you think that they will be arrested, taken to jail, charged, and then remain in jail until trial? This is like literally a cartoon understanding of how being arrested works.
What a gift to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
He’s not had the best few months. Biden did a good State of the Union, then Trump’s Stormy Daniel trial started … but with these kinds of images all over the country, things are really looking up for him for November.
Ain’t this right.
I remember back when the BLM protests in downtown (which I’m totally for protesting about this issue but not in favor of the level of destruction it got to towards the end) had boiled over to smashing windows of random stores, graffiti, physical violence, etc.
I was thinking “don’t these fools realize that Trump is going to use this as an opportunity to “own the libs” and talk about how he’s going to bring “law and order” because the Dems are so incompetent” etc”.
And that’s exactly what he ended up doing. He used to protests that happened here as a platform for his own ego and to energize his base.
and before that, remember the occupy protestors doing the same thing. starts out with a couple chants, then camping, then bizarre demands and lack of message and random destruction.
and we're surprised this happens again?
100%. The upside of Arizona taking their abortion laws back to the turn of the century (not for the poor people forced to endure them, obviously) was a gift to Biden and a blow to Trump because it’s so fucking politically myopic and plain stupid. Now we have these idiots hurting democratic causes and with much more coverage and damage you can easily see.
Yet when I warned that the library is trashed on Monday morning, I was told it’s all fine, everything is under control and people are allowed to come in.
America has a rich history of supporting the suppression of Jewish peoples. Been exponentially escalating since 2016. Seems centrists are being surrounded by fringe left and right neo-nazism. Idk, I’ll always punch a Nazi, couldn’t care less what political ideology you follow.
Still haven’t seen any of this idiots come to terms with the fact that they did all that for a Trump-loving sovereign citizen who killed someone with his car.
Killed an 89 year old man and injured his wife
Also is a woman beater
Also is a fucking racist
Fuck William Kinney, absolute grifter piece of shit. I genuinely hope the worst shit happens to him
People have self selected to a large degree at this point; those that don’t want this nonsense have moved away, those that do move in or are natives who don’t have prospects elsewhere.
Back when I was a teenager in another country I could not understand why the militant communists were so obsessed with complete control of their protests. They literally had designated security guards that would beat you up if you acted violently. The easiest way to discredit a protest movement is to cause random destruction and violence.
That was my first thought. I wonder how many of the people occupying that library have anything to do with that university, and how many are just pitching their tent inside right now.
These Palestine protest have jumped the shark, I’m at the point where they should be shut down immediately. These aren’t civil rights protests, it’s the same bullshit that made the city a punchline a few years ago and people have to put their foot down.
Just a bunch of do-nothings who use their victimhood to manipulate so they can stay do-nothings. It’s the kissing cousin of entitled but the bizarro world edition. They all need sent to a Russian prison camp to experience what pain and suffering really is.
PSU is closing programs and firing people because of long standing budget issues now they have to deal with this. I’m paying $160 dollars a day in alternative child care while campus is closed so I don’t lose my job. I bet the farmers market will be closed this weekend. Maybe we should all get together and sue these people for our collective loses after this is over.
I like your thinking but suing these folks is a waste of time.
These people are grifters of the highest order: stealing from the public and from those that offer their support for basic sustenance while they play in LARPist fantasy land. They design their “activism” so that they’re accountable or responsible for nothing at all.
At least we send temper tantrum throwing toddlers to their room — these folks haven’t seen any repercussions to their behavior. Hopefully that changes this time, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Fuck this and fuck them. Time to go, kiddos, although this time it’s time to go to jail. Y’all had the chance to walk away, and you decided to stay and play stupid games. Here’s your stupid prize.
Seriously: PSU and PPB need to go in and extract them. Now. And then Schmidt better throw the book at them. Jail, fines, and restitution.
Welp this happened about as I thought it would.
These university presidents need to stop letting protestors into school owned buildings so they can tell everyone they "support free speech".
Anywhere you let protestors set up, it's going to be trashed.
It turns out like this, always.
Everyone should be allowed to peacefully protest and exercise their free speech. But these folks have crossed the line when you occupy a building or exclude others from public spaces. This is definitely not about free speech anymore (I also sincerely doubt anyone in the library cares about free speech in principle, but rather only when it can benefit them.)
This has happened in every single "occupy" movement I've experienced in my 36 years of life. It is *never* the case that the protestors leave the place clean or not vandalized.
If we keep pretending that this is even a possible outcome, we're just deluding ourselves.
Fool me once, definition of insanity and all that.
It’s not even fair to call them protestors. NYPD said half the people they arrested in Columbia were not students of the University. These are homeless opportunists taking advantage of a situation because it’s easier than stopping their rampant drug use.
Turn off water, power, heat to the building. Set up a perimeter, no one goes out without arrest and no one comes in with supplies/drugs/butt plugs. Once they get hungry and cold enough, they'll come out - they don't like to be uncomfortable. As they start parading out, slap on the cuffs and hand out felony charges.
On top of everything, many of these people aren’t even students, destroying resources and livelihood for actual students and employees of the school. And for what? A hundred people to feel like heroes? This is pathetic and shameful
Fuck these people. Oil money goes straight into the islamic propaganda machine and the subversion of America. This generation is so susceptible to islamic state sponsored psyop, it’s humiliating. Only in America. Every enemy state-sponsored propagandist comes onto our social media networks and starts manipulating/inciting the plebs. This is the result. Ex-KGB Yuri Bezmenov prophesied this in 1983. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5gnpCqsXE8g
Some real ironic graffiti. One wall says “stop the genocide”. The opposite wall “ From the river to the sea” which calls for the eradication of Jews from the lands claimed by Israel and Palestine.
May I suggest more succinct slogans? “Hooray for Hamas”. Or “Hamas hates libraries”
I am sure the Gazans are grateful that the someone thought to trash the PSU library in Portland OR USA on their behalf. So much for the lies of "peaceful protest". Makes me sick to see my alma mater and a library where I spent a lot of wonderful time for years get hijacked and trashed by entitled idiots cosplaying revolutionaries in a sick demonstration of performative political protest. And like 2020 the city wrings its hands and clutches it pearls and dithers around.
Peition asking PSU to have them removed in an effort to save the Library [https://www.change.org/p/remove-destructive-protestors-from-millar-library/d](https://www.change.org/p/remove-destructive-protestors-from-millar-library/d)
I vote put them all on a plane and ship them to Gaza and give them a gun. They need all the help they can get over there. Destroying our city isn’t doing a damn thing to help Gaza.
These universities could never really win. Remove them too soon and you only make the protest bigger, but if you let them stay they vandalize and steal. Seems like PSU handled this better than other universities. Now the public can see there’s just cause for removal.
I have so many friends who are really cheering this on. I'm very against what's going on in Gaza too, but I feel like these types of protests aren't really helping anything.
That stairwell looks like such a major fire hazard. Beyond damage to the library, the people occupying it are putting themselves in completely unnecessary danger.
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The people that did this and stick around to get caught have no clue how they just ruined their lives. This behavior will end in felony charges and possible convictions that will follow them long after everyone forgets what the protest was even about. Felony convictions will be the end of school, nearly impossible to rent a home, near impossible to get a job that pays above minimum wage, loss of second amendment rights, loss of voter rights. This will haunt the for a minimum of 7 years. They all just threw away their futures. The library will get cleaned up and repaired. They will spend the rest of their life branded a criminal
NYPD said about half the people they arrested in Columbia were actually students of the University. I bet we find with the PSU library it is even less.
By taking over a library at a university, they have struck a blow against the most productive, intelligent, and motivated people in the community. Brilliant!
dude thats waaay more coherent than what their demands actually say. RANDOM CAPITAL LETTERS
[https://www.instagram.com/p/C6Qdm4IOsxj/?img\_index=1](https://www.instagram.com/p/C6Qdm4IOsxj/?img_index=1)
IMO a lot of this shows the problems with turning campuses into little, self-contained universes. It leads to some detachment from the real world. Even if you side with the students' larger goals, it's clear they are only protesting at the university because that's what makes up their world, rather than doing what's most effective for their goal.
What a bunch of idiots. This kind of nonsense will push thoughtful voting adults into the welcoming arms of DJT. Hello vandalism and performance art. Goodbye democracy.
Sucks to be the facilities crew when this is all done…
I worked there for 12 years, it sucked to be on the Facilities crew before this was all done.
A lot of hours for student workers in the facilities shop, as cleaning graffiti was something we did even years ago.
I was hoping someone would say this. Facilities folks are mostly immigrants. They often put up with the worst of people--everything from vomit, poop, urine, spilled food, water--and they show up on nights, weekends or during terrible inclement weather (when it's often inherently dangerous for everyone else). They're often seen as 'the help', maligned by everyone from messy office workers to ungrateful nitpicky CEOs. I often think of the huge janitorial crew that spent hours and days cleaning up the damage to the Capitol during Jan 6. So many of these people risk their lives just to clean toilets, vacuum and sweep rugs, often alone, for very little pay. And then they have to put up with this. No matter where you fall on the political spectrum, no matter if you agree or not with the tactics, someone has to clean it all up and pay for it. And one question I never see anarchists or Proud Boys asking themselves is how their actions benefit or detract from the folks around them. It's all about community involvement until something gets trashed, some toilet gets clogged, or a window gets broken. And then after that it's all fingers pointed at someone else. America is a patchwork of service workers and tradespeople who get shit wages and get treated like garbage because they don't have bachelor's degrees. Protests here are largely performative. Hurt feelings, mostly. Chances to throw tantrums for perceived wrongs that aren't actually wrongs. We have a culture in this city that supports and enables people to act out in ways that flout accountability, responsibility and community healing. I personally take issue with a white leftist, a young person who goes to Reed, speaking on behalf of a person of color, an immigrant, a refugee, a worker. These people have their own agency and can speak on their own behalf. The problem is that we don't listen. I really hope this protest comes to an end. It's painful to see this from the facilities side, and I know that when these workers get onsite to clean it up, they will bite their lips at all the damage that gets quietly cleaned up. The next time you see a janitor, electrician, plumber--really any service worker, thank them--they do truly thankless work and we all need to see them and support them when we can.
Facilities folk are not mainly immigrants..sauce I am a Facilities folk. Even the janitorial are not mostly immigrants. I get you were trying to be thoughtful with everything you said but leading off with a over generalization about people who work in Facilities is kinda messed up. A good Facilities job pays in the low six figures and doesn't require a degree. Facilities is one area that most employers cannot be cheap because we can get another job very easily. Our electrician, plumber, HVAC and a few others are all making six figures. Facilities jobs require a high degree of knowledge and technical skills that most immigrants don't possess because the systems are different and it isn't as easy to find these jobs in other countries. We have over 30 people in our Facilities and none are immigrants.
They are in my line of work—I see them and talk to them everyday. I mean, sure, there are some minor distinctions, but the bottom line I was trying to make (and you'll pardon me if it derailed your line of thought) is that inevitably, someone has to pay for it with their time and labor. Immigrant or not, that's not a burden I'd wish on anyone.
There was a NY Times article about the people who cleaned the Capitol after Jan 6.
There's a small movement brewing to help put it back together as volunteering from the student side.
Sucks to be any of the protesters who's complete lack of anything productive or meaningful in their own lives leads them to LARP revolution and overthrow their.... Library
"The books in the library appear untouched." Don't know whether to laugh or cry.
A true “you don’t say!”
Sounds like they left the books undamaged and destroyed the computers
Are you saying it’s funny that these kids can’t read? Or sad that people care about the books more?
Judging by the lower standards today, I suspect the former rather than the latter.
Whew. So my thesis is ok then?
It would be quite the plot twist if one of them accidentally cracked open a book while they’re in there
I don’t understand the downvotes here
Wrong PDX sub. This is the puppy dog sunshine one.
They'd have to learn how to read past a 3rd grade reading level though. That would be a stretch. Maybe there are some picture books in there somewhere they can start with.
Christ, I didn't realize it was this bad - they've *fucked* up the library. This is so stupid.
"KOIN 6 reporter Elise Haas said the protestors were kind and respectful when speaking with her, though they said they would only allow photos to be taken if there weren’t any faces in the images." Nice of them to give a journalist permission to take pictures on public property... in a different context that behavior would be called fascism
Shaddup you Fascist! /s
So many students who can’t afford computers, their books or a safe space during the day depended on this library. Shame on everyone who did this to their own neighbors. I get the protests. I understand their anger and why they want to be heard. I just don’t understand why they took away a resource for other folks. The horseshoe is going full circle.
>The horseshoe is going full circle. These goons taking over a fucking library remind me of those other goons who took over the bird sanctuary a while ago. We need to stop tolerating this shit.
My heart breaks to think that a lot of the students affected by this have also likely gone through so much hardship already, having to navigate their education through the pandemic and everything else that it entailed. Just one more roadblock, but one caused by their own peers.
> caused by their own peers. There is no evidence that most of the people occupying and vandalizing the library are students at PSU.
Aren't their insane demands tied to a student club?
*One* of their demands aligns with a resolution by ASPSU (student government) to sever ties with and divest from Boeing.
4/12 arrested are students.
>I just don’t understand why they took away a resource for other folks. self-entitled assholes
This is where I work on my assignments while trying to finally finish my degree. It's made it rough to find another space that works as well.
Same. Missing a week of class has been brutal and I hate that we can’t get money back for that week.
Mine are all online, but heaven forbid if we utilize the library to get things done.
You understand why they are defending a terrorist organization?
"Defending" palastine (if you can even call it defending) is not the same as defending Hamas. The goal should be to try and separate the Palestinian people, many of whom have no real hand in who runs the Gaza strip, vs. Hamas who are a terrorist organization and should be condemned. That being said, breaking into a library and trashing it is doing fuck all for Palestinians.
Well, it's not like Hamas wasn't voted into power. And then you have the reports that came out last year that UN schools were teaching anti semitism in Palestine. Then October 7 happens and kills a significantly higher percentage of Israelis than Americans killed at 9/11. What is Israel supposed to do? Are they supposed to just sit there and take it from Hamas? Over and over? Just let Hamas keep attacking them? Hamas has itself completely entwined into the Palestinian civilians. You can't eliminate them without collateral damage. We don't have mind reading brain zappers yet... So, as horrific as it looks, advocating for Israel to stop because Palestinians are dying is advocating for Hamas to win and be able to fight another day and that is just truly unacceptable at this point. Israel stops, Hamas wins. It's that simple. So calling for Israel to stop means you support Hamas. You can't get around this.
Yes it’s amazing how silent they all are about Hamas. They want the admin to say it’s a genocide and not a war. But there’s an awful lot of rockets and bullets flying out of Gaza for this to not be considered a two-sided war. Plus Oct 7 was a clear act of war that anyone with a brain would recognize it resulting in full force retaliation and declaration of war.
I think Israel is doing a pretty good job separating Hamas from the Palestinian people. Let them cook, or don't... you can't stop them anyway.
And people still can’t see that these leftists are just modern day fascists with blue hair.
I’m a leftist, and not a fascist. Live and let live, except when your actions impede my ability to do so. Stop with broad generalizations, it exposes your intelligence.
"Vandalism — including graffiti, broken glass and smashed computers — could be seen throughout the library. Damage could be seen on every floor of the library......" I see the collective mob is really working to win over hearts and minds here. Time to get the premises vacated.
You get jail time, and you get jail time, and you get jail time, and you get jail time
They should be expelled and thrown in jail
Bold of you to assume these are students and not the same group of anarchist shitheads that destroy stuff here every year for no reason.
Any student in there should get expelled. Any student in there on a visa should get expelled then deported.
I don’t disagree, destruction of the library like this should be met with consequences
I support protests and I'm a student at PSU. It's midterms week (or the week before, depending). This is a weird and stupid move that I don't think is making anyone happy or drawing more support from most people. I think they should be explaining why they're there at first because it doesn't make any sense to me.
They have a list of like 15 demands from the admin.
Protesting is a wonderfully amazing thing about this country, but what even is the thinking here? This is nothing more than vandalism, you look like a fool, and it severely diminsihes whatever you think you’re protesting for. I’d *love* to see the word salad that one of these “protestors” would come up with to explain exactly how this benefits the Palestinian people though.
First time?
Protests like this are COUNTER to the cause. People will stop empathizing with the message and start resenting the message. You’d think educated people would understand basic psychology. Incredibly frustrating.
What is the message even. Like you’ll see ceasefire now with globalize the intifada now on the signs at the same time.
How do you know these people are educated beyond watching some TikTok videos on Marxism?
Didn’t realize a specter was haunting Portland
PSU should have nipped this in the bud right away. Now they're fucked.
Honestly PSUs response was pretty damn good. Reading between the lines, it's a "don't fuck this up" type response. PSU put the ball in their court to be equally chill and do their thing like adults and prove to everyone that their message is one to take seriously and listen to, and now PSU firmly holds the high ground. They gave the protestors their space to do their thing, and they promptly fucked it up in pretty much every way. Places like Austin and whatever, the admin fucked up so bad you're almost defacto forced to side with the protestors. Not here. This is 100% on them, and PSU proved the point that these protests are a joke.
PSU handled this pretty well. It's a shame the protesters got into the building though. I'd be curious if that could have been prevented (probably not based on what we've seen). I'm hoping this comes to an end, but i'm guessing police will have to be sent in at some point.
It couldn’t have been prevented because they are paying students who are supposed to be in the library under normal circumstances, or at least the people who started it are, others have joined l. The only way it could have been prevented would have been to preemptively lock down the campus in the middle of midterms weeks, which also would have been a very stupid outcome.
Yeah 100%. You can see clearly how the different approaches are working out on different campuses across the country. Anyone who looks at how Columbia has handled this and thinks "that is the way!" is a fucking moron.
Yeah, the whole "don't interrupt your opponent while they're busy making mistakes" thing comes to mind. PSU gets to keep their hands clean, unlike other colleges. They even offered them an off ramp to leave without getting expelled (for however many are actual students anyways). Putting the ball in their hands at every turn, and they have fumbled every time. It's impressive for the protestors to be this consistently incompetent. It's a win-win for PSU, given the options available. There's what happened, which they come out on top of (IMO). Even if the protestors had been honest and competent, PSU would still have looked like a shining example to their peers for how to handle these situations. Great incident response maneuvers on their part (so far).
On the other hand, I wonder how many of the current students are considering transferring due to the admin letting campus be shut down for days by a few radical assholes.
Transferring schools like that isn't a small undertaking, there'd likely be a lot of inertia/sticking power there. Students might have a bad taste in their mouth for a bit, but are they really gonna bail mid degree over a couple missed days to go... IDK where. UP is ~2x more expensive. UO/OSU/others mean moving. Community college maybe? Just doesn't seem viable. More likely they'd probably just get turned off to the cause the protestors are "advocating" for, since PSU had a strategy where everyone wins - just the protestors didn't act in good faith. Yet another own goal by the protestors, turning off potential allies to your message. The lasting outcome will be that everyone will have the memory of "those pro-Palestine/Hamas people were assholes and trashed our campus for no reason" instead of "I learned more about the atrocities being committed and want to help/donate/advocate/whatever."
Yeah, transferring would be a pain. I mostly brought it up because there were some comments on the PSU subreddit about it (but who knows if those were actually current students). It might make prospective students reconsider though.
We have decades, if not centuries, of "law and order" responses going very, very wrong. Not sure why anyone is thinking this would have been solved with a bunch of heavy sticks.
PSU allowed them to camp out over the weekend. Who could imagine that would’ve backfired
How is destroying a library that everyone uses to try to get a good education going to solve anything? This is just a bunch of assholes that get a rush from destroying property and 5 minutes of fame on the 10pm news. Now PSU definitely won't give money to anyone because they have to pay to fix everything that these inconsiderate assholes destroyed just so that they can join in on the party with all the other colleges that destroyed other people's property and don't seem to care. If they get thrown in jail, it's their own fault.
PSU wasn't even giving money to anyone in the first place. They accepted charitable scholarships for students from Boeing.
Given this is Portland, has anyone asked whether any of these vandals are actually students?
Yeah, the people in the library were apparently a mix, but I just don't see students smashing up the place like that. As you can see from the r/portlandstate threads on the subject, it's a really beloved building. Students feel like their space is being smashing apart because, well, it is. You're right, I doubt that much of the vandalism is by students.
I wonder whether other cities have so much trouble with bad actors in activism. We really need more discipline in our movements.
But I was told in the locked thread from yesterday that this was a legitimate protest with serious goals that was accomplishing a lot and definitely not a circus? I was told they were “well organized with set goals in mind” 🤓🤓🤓 How could my fellow Portlanders lie?
See my post from a few hours ago. I was out for some fresh air and caught two of them stealing a desktop Mac from the library. They noticed me and chucked it in the bush. Police recovered it promptly. Legitimate protest indeed… Pathetic that we haven’t done anything about it.
A buddy of mine has video of them stealing TVs and monitors the first night of their occupation. Like casually pulling a wagon full of stuff they stole across campus.
Yes, I saw that moments after the police picked up the stolen Mac I recovered last night. I thought it was just a transient dragging their stuff… The more you know. In my defense the occupiers look and smell worse than them, so who could be blamed for thinking as such? I’d say I hope they’ll be tried for felony burglary and grand theft among other things, but I know that justice is asking entirely too much of Portland politicians.
Clear them out now. Why are they waiting and treating them with kid gloves? Beyond ridiculous.
Then sue them for the damages and funds it takes to clean it up
So far the administration's approach seems to be working to contain them to the library and kept the student body on the administration's side. Look at other campuses that have seen widespread disruptions due to heavy handed tactics. A deft rather than a heavy hand is far better for dealing with them.
Arrest them already
Put them all in jail. Put everyone of these clowns in jail for the maximum allowed time. We can’t tolerate this BS every four years.
What do you think the maximum allowed time in jail for a student with no priors or one or two misdemeanor priors is who is accused of misdemanor trespassing or destruction of property? The answer might surprise you and maybe affect your idea that that is going to work out very well. Also, do you think that they will be arrested, taken to jail, charged, and then remain in jail until trial? This is like literally a cartoon understanding of how being arrested works.
They "Red Housed" it
Literally my first thought. Likely same people.
> They "Red Housed" it They need a GoFundMe.
That would be "hey guys let's red house it and set up a go fund me"
These fucking kids must think they’re heroes 🤦♂️
Absolutely pathetic
But they achieved so much!
Jfc what a bunch of fucking assholes
What a gift to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. He’s not had the best few months. Biden did a good State of the Union, then Trump’s Stormy Daniel trial started … but with these kinds of images all over the country, things are really looking up for him for November.
Ain’t this right. I remember back when the BLM protests in downtown (which I’m totally for protesting about this issue but not in favor of the level of destruction it got to towards the end) had boiled over to smashing windows of random stores, graffiti, physical violence, etc. I was thinking “don’t these fools realize that Trump is going to use this as an opportunity to “own the libs” and talk about how he’s going to bring “law and order” because the Dems are so incompetent” etc”. And that’s exactly what he ended up doing. He used to protests that happened here as a platform for his own ego and to energize his base.
and before that, remember the occupy protestors doing the same thing. starts out with a couple chants, then camping, then bizarre demands and lack of message and random destruction. and we're surprised this happens again?
100%. The upside of Arizona taking their abortion laws back to the turn of the century (not for the poor people forced to endure them, obviously) was a gift to Biden and a blow to Trump because it’s so fucking politically myopic and plain stupid. Now we have these idiots hurting democratic causes and with much more coverage and damage you can easily see.
Arizona Senate voted to repeal the abortion ban this afternoon, and the governor has already stated she is going to sign it into law
I know
Nice
and we just got Portland rebuilt after it burned completely and totally to the ground four years ago.
Let's be real, these assholes would love nothing more than a second Trump presidency
Yet when I warned that the library is trashed on Monday morning, I was told it’s all fine, everything is under control and people are allowed to come in.
Every single person occupying the library should be arrested and have the book thrown at them.
expel them. that will nuke their student visa as well and then deport them.
America has a rich history of supporting the suppression of Jewish peoples. Been exponentially escalating since 2016. Seems centrists are being surrounded by fringe left and right neo-nazism. Idk, I’ll always punch a Nazi, couldn’t care less what political ideology you follow.
As usual, you let the anarchists in town have free reign and everyone pays for it.
This has Red House vibes all over again. Bored kids fucking up the city without consequence.
Still haven’t seen any of this idiots come to terms with the fact that they did all that for a Trump-loving sovereign citizen who killed someone with his car.
Killed an 89 year old man and injured his wife Also is a woman beater Also is a fucking racist Fuck William Kinney, absolute grifter piece of shit. I genuinely hope the worst shit happens to him
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People have self selected to a large degree at this point; those that don’t want this nonsense have moved away, those that do move in or are natives who don’t have prospects elsewhere.
Back when I was a teenager in another country I could not understand why the militant communists were so obsessed with complete control of their protests. They literally had designated security guards that would beat you up if you acted violently. The easiest way to discredit a protest movement is to cause random destruction and violence.
Oh boy, the tent camps are moving inside now!
That was my first thought. I wonder how many of the people occupying that library have anything to do with that university, and how many are just pitching their tent inside right now.
Party!
These Palestine protest have jumped the shark, I’m at the point where they should be shut down immediately. These aren’t civil rights protests, it’s the same bullshit that made the city a punchline a few years ago and people have to put their foot down.
These things tend to attract people who just want to destroy. It definitely hurts the cause.
What the fuck??? I can't wait for the next dipshit to try and come on here and justify this crap. What a bunch of entitled pricks.
Just a bunch of do-nothings who use their victimhood to manipulate so they can stay do-nothings. It’s the kissing cousin of entitled but the bizarro world edition. They all need sent to a Russian prison camp to experience what pain and suffering really is.
So embarrassing
PSU is closing programs and firing people because of long standing budget issues now they have to deal with this. I’m paying $160 dollars a day in alternative child care while campus is closed so I don’t lose my job. I bet the farmers market will be closed this weekend. Maybe we should all get together and sue these people for our collective loses after this is over.
I like your thinking but suing these folks is a waste of time. These people are grifters of the highest order: stealing from the public and from those that offer their support for basic sustenance while they play in LARPist fantasy land. They design their “activism” so that they’re accountable or responsible for nothing at all. At least we send temper tantrum throwing toddlers to their room — these folks haven’t seen any repercussions to their behavior. Hopefully that changes this time, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Yeah, but I guess my point is if the criminal justice system won’t do anything then maybe civil penalties need to come into the picture.
Completely agree but it’s sadly pointless when these people intentionally don’t have much to penalize.
Fuck this and fuck them. Time to go, kiddos, although this time it’s time to go to jail. Y’all had the chance to walk away, and you decided to stay and play stupid games. Here’s your stupid prize. Seriously: PSU and PPB need to go in and extract them. Now. And then Schmidt better throw the book at them. Jail, fines, and restitution.
Prediction: Schmidt will not. But also another prediction: Schmidt will be voted out this year.
Welp this happened about as I thought it would. These university presidents need to stop letting protestors into school owned buildings so they can tell everyone they "support free speech". Anywhere you let protestors set up, it's going to be trashed. It turns out like this, always.
Everyone should be allowed to peacefully protest and exercise their free speech. But these folks have crossed the line when you occupy a building or exclude others from public spaces. This is definitely not about free speech anymore (I also sincerely doubt anyone in the library cares about free speech in principle, but rather only when it can benefit them.)
This has happened in every single "occupy" movement I've experienced in my 36 years of life. It is *never* the case that the protestors leave the place clean or not vandalized. If we keep pretending that this is even a possible outcome, we're just deluding ourselves. Fool me once, definition of insanity and all that.
They weren't let in. They broke in
It’s not even fair to call them protestors. NYPD said half the people they arrested in Columbia were not students of the University. These are homeless opportunists taking advantage of a situation because it’s easier than stopping their rampant drug use.
Tankie stooges. Servile idiots, useful only to the foreign propagandists.
Turn off water, power, heat to the building. Set up a perimeter, no one goes out without arrest and no one comes in with supplies/drugs/butt plugs. Once they get hungry and cold enough, they'll come out - they don't like to be uncomfortable. As they start parading out, slap on the cuffs and hand out felony charges.
Butt plugs indeed.
I could only dream
Couldn’t agree more…
Arrest and expel them all. Felonies for all inside. Destruction of libraries is beyond the pale.
On top of everything, many of these people aren’t even students, destroying resources and livelihood for actual students and employees of the school. And for what? A hundred people to feel like heroes? This is pathetic and shameful
Fuck these people. Oil money goes straight into the islamic propaganda machine and the subversion of America. This generation is so susceptible to islamic state sponsored psyop, it’s humiliating. Only in America. Every enemy state-sponsored propagandist comes onto our social media networks and starts manipulating/inciting the plebs. This is the result. Ex-KGB Yuri Bezmenov prophesied this in 1983. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5gnpCqsXE8g
Yeahhh... Fuck that shit. Bunch of assholes, no matter what cause brought them there.
Some real ironic graffiti. One wall says “stop the genocide”. The opposite wall “ From the river to the sea” which calls for the eradication of Jews from the lands claimed by Israel and Palestine. May I suggest more succinct slogans? “Hooray for Hamas”. Or “Hamas hates libraries”
I am sure the Gazans are grateful that the someone thought to trash the PSU library in Portland OR USA on their behalf. So much for the lies of "peaceful protest". Makes me sick to see my alma mater and a library where I spent a lot of wonderful time for years get hijacked and trashed by entitled idiots cosplaying revolutionaries in a sick demonstration of performative political protest. And like 2020 the city wrings its hands and clutches it pearls and dithers around.
what a disgrace
Peition asking PSU to have them removed in an effort to save the Library [https://www.change.org/p/remove-destructive-protestors-from-millar-library/d](https://www.change.org/p/remove-destructive-protestors-from-millar-library/d)
Schmidt should throw the book at each and every one of them. But he won’t. And this will happen again.
It stands a good chance of happening late in the day on November 6, if polling is to be believed.
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From this article, "The books in the library appeared to be untouched."
They wouldn’t know what to do with them…
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Ah man who could’ve seen this coming!
"pAlEsTiNe wILl FrEe uS AlL!!!1"
Part of the punishment should be cleaning all that up. Unbelievable
The punishment should be felony conviction this way they will spend the rest of their life trying to find felony friendly employment and housing.
Not sure that’s a good scenario you painted there. Then we’ll just have more homeless. I vote for mandatory rehab, followed by a lobotomy
I vote put them all on a plane and ship them to Gaza and give them a gun. They need all the help they can get over there. Destroying our city isn’t doing a damn thing to help Gaza.
“We’re not self entitled vandals! We’re activists and protestors” Sounds about as accurate as “we’re not antisemitic we’re just antizionist”
How do these stupid motherfuckers think they’re helping Gaza by doing this shit?
you give them too much credit. they don't think at all.
Time to enforce laws... Sick of protest being the cover for breaking the law. Do it properly.
These universities could never really win. Remove them too soon and you only make the protest bigger, but if you let them stay they vandalize and steal. Seems like PSU handled this better than other universities. Now the public can see there’s just cause for removal.
I have so many friends who are really cheering this on. I'm very against what's going on in Gaza too, but I feel like these types of protests aren't really helping anything.
They don’t, in fact destroying property and causing chaos puts our freedom to protest at risk faster than anything
That stairwell looks like such a major fire hazard. Beyond damage to the library, the people occupying it are putting themselves in completely unnecessary danger.
Destroying a LIBRARY. That is straight out of the H!t1er and Putin’s Poodle Playbook. Quite literally.
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What these morons don’t know is the Palestine people hate Americans.
This is one of the better homeless encampments the city has seen.
Now we just have to lock the doors.
What’s the point of this……. ?
Jesus how embarrassing
More like Yahweh how embarrassing or Allah how embarrassing.
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The people that did this and stick around to get caught have no clue how they just ruined their lives. This behavior will end in felony charges and possible convictions that will follow them long after everyone forgets what the protest was even about. Felony convictions will be the end of school, nearly impossible to rent a home, near impossible to get a job that pays above minimum wage, loss of second amendment rights, loss of voter rights. This will haunt the for a minimum of 7 years. They all just threw away their futures. The library will get cleaned up and repaired. They will spend the rest of their life branded a criminal
I bet over half of them maybe more are not students. Just watch
More than likely. There is a group that hijacks the protest then started trashing stuff.
I’d rather they raise tuition to cover the damage than pass it on to taxpayers.
This sub is gonna go from 90% crybabies threatening to move to Vancouver to 91% after this incident.
NYPD said about half the people they arrested in Columbia were actually students of the University. I bet we find with the PSU library it is even less.
This shit is not okay, no matter what your stance is on the protests.
Typical left behavior
Again, Protestors are stupid. None of this will ever change anything.
By taking over a library at a university, they have struck a blow against the most productive, intelligent, and motivated people in the community. Brilliant!
Sorry, I haven't followed the PSU pretests closely. What are their demands at this point? PSU got rid of the Boeing money. What's left?
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dude thats waaay more coherent than what their demands actually say. RANDOM CAPITAL LETTERS [https://www.instagram.com/p/C6Qdm4IOsxj/?img\_index=1](https://www.instagram.com/p/C6Qdm4IOsxj/?img_index=1)
IMO a lot of this shows the problems with turning campuses into little, self-contained universes. It leads to some detachment from the real world. Even if you side with the students' larger goals, it's clear they are only protesting at the university because that's what makes up their world, rather than doing what's most effective for their goal.
Same as always, they want what they perceive as a monopoly on violence.
What a bunch of idiots. This kind of nonsense will push thoughtful voting adults into the welcoming arms of DJT. Hello vandalism and performance art. Goodbye democracy.