So much has changed in American politics since college students went home for the summer: Biden had the worst debate performance ever, Trump almost got assassinated, and Kamala Harris replaced Biden. What hasn’t changed is the Israeli military’s genocidal onslaught in Gaza and US funding for it. But will Kamala Harris approach Israel differently than Biden?

While Harris has tried to portray herself as more supportive of a ceasefire than Biden or Trump, her phony posturing is completely hypocritical. She, like all other capitalist politicians, serves US imperialism which is currently in competition with Chinese imperialism to be the dominant world power. This means the US ruling class has an interest in controlling territory and markets all over the world, and they need Israel in order to counter China’s influence in the Middle East. 

College campuses were the center of protests last semester, and they should play a key role going forward. The encampments were incredibly impactful; thousands of students occupied our campuses calling for divestment. The ruling class waged an all-out campaign both rhetorically and through the police: condemning the protests as anti-semitic, and violently beating up students. They were shaken to the core thinking about another 1968 moment. They know that students can play a crucial role in spurring forward movements to win serious victories, and we should too. Just look at the student-led movement in Bangladesh that, alongside the millions of working people who joined their struggle, recently toppled their long-time dictator! Unfortunately, our encampments were broadly unsuccessful at winning their most basic demand of divestment, let alone a ceasefire and an end to the occupation.

We should initiate anti-war, anti-occupation protests the moment we get back to campus. A weakness of the spring encampments was that the actual organizing was done exclusively by a small group of unelected activists, who faced tremendous pressure. Students, alongside groups like SJP, should call mass action assemblies where we can decide the direction and demands of the movement, as well as elect an accountable leadership. We should specifically launch sub-groups to reach out to unionized campus workers about joining us, like UAW4811 did on UC campuses. These actions should act as hubs to organize a national walkout of both students and campus workers at every single campus on October 7 to commemorate a year of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

At the mass action assemblies, students should decide what demands to fight for. Many encampments were launched on a narrow set of demands with the idea that that would be able to mobilize the most people. In practice, this actually limits the struggle to local campuses, when what we need is to broaden out the struggle as much as possible. A ceasefire, let alone an end to the occupation, cannot be won at individual campuses. Protests must set their scope not just on their administrations, but on the whole capitalist system that breeds war. We need to get organized to fight for revolutionary socialism – in the US and globally. Anyone who agrees should join Socialist Alternative!