Disclaimer: The following views represented are solely my own and are not to be ascribed to any group of individuals.

My voice is hoarse and my throat is raw from the hours of yelling chants and taunts at the militarized force standing in front of us. My hand is numb from punching my plywood-turned-shield to keep the beat. The shields feel like they’ve become a part of us. They are not simply a physical barrier between us and the cops but a metaphorical divide between life and death. Inside our circle of bodies, banners and barricades lays the encampment in the middle of the aptly renamed Palestinian Freedom Lawn.

A small patch of tents is surrounded by walls, hastily crafted that afternoon from repurposed pallets, plywood sheets, and fencing. It’s a space where we gathered with our community to share food and resources. We sang, danced and laughed together. We knew this small space would never be large enough to contain the sheer amount of life that emanated from within and we knew that was okay.

This encampment was simply a sliver of the better world we have collectively spent lifetimes attempting to build. For a short time, we got to exist collectively. We had the opportunity to live and mourn together underneath the banners of martyrs strung in the trees above our heads.

This encampment was a threat, not to the safety of our community, but to the existence of the institution that surrounded us. We gathered in hundreds and found sustenance within each other. For a brief time, we weren’t reliant on the fascistic systems that plague our lives. For a brief time, we were ungovernable. These displays of solidarity will always terrify those in power, which is why Chancellor Reyes made the decision to send hundreds of police in riot gear to our demonstration of love and loss.

I stood in the circle and held up that shield. All I could think about was protecting the people behind me. My comrades inside the barricades needed more time. The bystanders in the crowd weren’t prepared. I had to hold this shield and protect my community from the police, who were hellbent on brutalizing us.

Looking back on it, I now know that protection was only a part of my motivation for holding that line. I realized that those shields also provided a level of separation. Something had to distinguish us from them, more than just the uniforms they put on. We needed a firm line that could separate our focus on life from their focus on death. They needed to know that they were not welcome here and would never understand the community that we had created. I needed them to know that they were not (and could never be) us.

A history of mobilization

The relationship between queers and cops has always been one of direct opposition. Our lifestyles have always been criminalized, and there have always been cops to enforce that criminalization.

One of the first mass queer mobilizations against the police was the Compton Cafeteria Riot in 1966, in which a transgender woman threw coffee on a cop as she was being arrested. Transgender women and drag queens fled to the streets to fight back against the state-sanctioned attack on their community. Change is made by marginalized groups taking to the streets to demand said change, not by sitting around and waiting for those in power to make it happen.

The history of this campus alone is rich with marginalized individuals taking extreme risks to stand up for the better world they’re attempting to build. In 1970, a litany of racist attacks on campus led Black students to occupy a dorm building. Their demands were almost immediately met, and New Africa House was created.

In the late 1970s, women journalists took over the Massachusetts Daily Collegian for several days and ran the paper as “Collegian Occupied,” demanding better coverage of women’s issues and better treatment of women in the workplace. The CIA would likely still be recruiting at our school if it weren’t for Abi Hoffman and Amy Carter leading the charge against the institution in the late 1980s. This resulted in two buildings being taken over and the start of UMass’ “CIA on Trial” project.

As I looked around at those who surrounded the encampment, I saw the same thing I always see at these events: Those who have the most to lose taking the most risk. In movement spaces, queer and trans people are often vastly overrepresented. I thought about my trans comrades in the trees behind me. I look around at the sea of gender-diverse people surrounding me, standing on the front lines, holding shields and yelling taunts. I see Black and Brown students running on the front lines, yelling at police and keeping our community safe. At one point, a group of demonstrators, led by two Arab students, formed a group in front of the shields where they sang, danced and waved flags directly in front of the lines of riot police.

Many of these demonstrators have active cases, both criminal and disciplinary, from the last time the school decided to send in police to quell a protest. In October, a sit-in occurred at the Whitmore Administrative Building to protest the school’s ties to war profiteers. We sat for hours, waiting for the police to load each of us into the van and take us to jail. After being booked by the police, we received word that we were also receiving disciplinary sanctions from the University.

All of us were put on probation, and some lost their opportunities to study abroad. These programs had already been paid for, and no refund was ever received. To many, it was a wake-up call. For the first time, we realized that the school had complete power over us. Getting arrested and going through the state processes was only a small part of our punishment; there was so much more to come from the hands of the school.

Though those of us who had previously been arrested faced a significantly higher risk from being present at this action, we continued to stand strong together. After we were arrested in October, the UMass faculty dubbed us “The UMass 57.” It was true, in a sense, that those of us present in the sit-in formed a sort of homogenous group. We stayed close through the legal proceedings and formed our own small community after that long night.

Many of us had talked beforehand and came to an agreement that we would not be risking arrest again. If arrested, we could face expulsion from the university from which many of us were mere weeks from graduating. We thought that maybe it could be somebody else’s turn. When the fight for Palestinian lives started gaining traction on this campus, it was only a small number of us willing to put our bodies on the line. For this action, we were more than willing to pass the torch to another group of people.

When the encampment was erected, however, many of us did not hold true to that sentiment. Collectively, we looked around and saw the outpouring of support. Our relatively small mobilization in October sprouted into something huge. We never anticipated the level of support we were receiving. For once, the fight for Palestinian lives was mainstream. For once, we had the masses ready to mobilize.

Though we had previously agreed to not risk arrest, many of us were not ready to leave when the cops told us to. We couldn’t let this happen without us. We couldn’t be watching from safety as our comrades were brutalized. We just couldn’t let go. So, we held our shields and held our ground until the police either arrested us or physically forced each of us off the site.

I can confidently say that at that moment, we were all ready to accept the consequences. We no longer cared about expulsion or anything else the school would throw at us. We only cared about the lives in Gaza and the safety of our comrades.

As with any movement space, it would be a mistake to assume that all is perfect regarding the internal politics of the group. With this coalition, in particular, there was a highly apparent gendered division of labor. To start, virtually all reproductive labor of both this encampment and the short-lived one from the week before was done by trans people.

There was a materials tent that inventoried and kept track of all the camping gear that was lent to us. All the labor surrounding these materials was done by two trans people. Food coordination was handled by a lone trans person. A transfemme individual was solely responsible for a significant amount of the emotional labor that took place within this space.

This was extremely discouraging to see. We had put in so much labor and effort to see this space come to life, only for people there to fall into a 1950s-frat-boy style of labor division. Self-appointed leaders spent this time walking around yelling chants through megaphones, while groups of gender-diverse individuals walked around silently and picked up trash to maintain our space.

It’s easy enough (relatively speaking) to fight against the state. Sure, we will get demolished, but we can all collectively agree that we hate the institution and those who take up arms to protect it. It’s significantly more difficult, however, to critically analyze our own internal politics.

There’s not a person in those spaces who would disagree with theories regarding the gendered division of labor and the harm it causes to countless individuals. Problems begin to arise, however, when you bring up that some people may not be practicing their own politics.

Too often, people talk big talk: they’ll spend all day convincing people they’re going to “throw down,” while a silent group works thanklessly to make these actions possible. More often than not, these are also the people who will take off running at the first sign of real risk, while the silent laborers stick around to protect the community they’ve spent an immeasurable amount of time creating.

Our demonstration also fell victim to the one thing that affects the entirety of the greater American Left: focusing on single issues. A year before this protest, a similar encampment took place in the exact same location. This encampment, however, was centered around the housing crisis.

Those of us who organized these events discussed how these issues were interconnected. We knew that it was essentially the same fight. At the end of the day, students want to have a say on where our money goes and how it affects our communities. We fail, however, to adequately explain how these issues are connected. It is the responsibility of revolutionaries to disseminate information to those who may not pay as much attention to the political landscape. It is our job to explain why “housing for all,” “cops off campus,” “divest from death” and countless other slogans and movements are all the same fight.

This is not to say, however, that those of us who dedicate our lives to organizing are smarter than the general population. In fact, the opposite frequently rings true. When we spend weeks locked in rooms together meticulously planning details, we tend to underestimate the intelligence and the revolutionary potential of everyone else.

The George Floyd uprising, for example, was an organic, spontaneous, multi-racial movement led by the Black avant-garde that left NGOs and career activists scratching their heads and stumbling over themselves in the wake. What, then, is the role of a revolutionary? The only difference between a revolutionary and everyone else is that the movement never truly ends for the former.

In 2020, when the ashes stopped simmering and the masses left the streets, most people went right back to their lives. They put away their masks and torches and holstered their revolutionary potential, many simply lying in wait for the next explosion of radical activity.

For some of us, however, we never really left 2020. We have spent the following four years going over every detail. We write endless critiques and try to plan for the next time we can experience a “long, hot summer.” A revolutionary without a revolution is undeniably useless. We are reliant on the masses to take charge. The best we can do is prepare ourselves so that when the moment comes, we can share our preparedness with everyone else.

At the end of the day, we have to put our actions into perspective. It is undeniable that this event never could have occurred without the countless hours of labor put in by an extremely devoted group. It is important to keep in mind, though, that our labor and preparedness were nowhere near as essential as the motivation of the hundreds of people around us. The masses didn’t mobilize because we asked them to; they mobilized because they were ready to fight and needed an avenue to do so.

We must remember that we cannot create a mass movement out of thin air. We can work tirelessly and thanklessly, but we will always be waiting on everyone else. In the meantime, we have an obligation to read, write, critique and prepare. We still have a responsibility to our communities, and we must constantly be caring for those around us.

Like all movement spaces, this encampment had its problems. However, that should not take away from the fact that this was one of the largest mobilizations the school has ever seen. I spent weeks planning with some of the most driven and intelligent people I’ll ever have the pleasure of meeting, and if I could go back, I would do so in a heartbeat.

It is undeniable that the brutality that ensued was not our fault. The chancellor may claim that we are a “threat to public safety,” but this will never be true. It was his decision to bring in those police. The administration may think that we will go away quietly, but this could not be further from the truth.

Until UMass cuts ties, we will be here, and we will be the loudest voices on campus. Until this genocide is over, it will be all eyes on Gaza. We will not stop until Palestine is finally free. It is the students who create the future, and this generation is in the process of building the world we want to see.

Zach Leach can be reached at [email protected] and followed on X at @ZachLeach12.