12: “To Peacefully Petition”
Protesting the slaughter of innocents as casualties of war is not antisemitic just as marching in the streets against the Vietnam War was not anti-American. When a student rally to support Palestinians was organized for the University of Texas campus, the state’s governor had troopers from the Department of Public Safety immediately dispatched to break up the gathering, although there had been no apparent violations of the law or violence by anyone present. The governor, however, had more than 100 DPS officers at the ready to move in with riot gear and disrupt the student assembly. These are the same officers, who, under Abbott’s control, were unable to raise a gun against a mass murderer at a public school in Uvalde. UT reportedly has about $50 million invested in arms manufacturers and pressuring the administration to divest was a central cause of the protest.