When I think of the protestors captured in Kei Pritsker and Michael T. Workman’s film The Encampments, the word that comes to mind is “courage.” It takes a lot of heart and guts to stand up against everyone telling you you’re wrong, you’re crazy, you’re evil. All in the name of peace. Strange, isn’t it? It brings to mind a poem by Bukowski in which he wrote, “There is enough treachery, hatred, violence, absurdity in the average human being to supply any given war on any given day.”
Those words treachery, hatred, violence, and absurdity all ran through this reviewer’s mind as the blind eye being turned upon genocide is revealed. Indeed, the setting of The Encampments, Columbia University, has in its history known other such bold cries against oppression. In 1968, students took over one building on campus, protesting the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War.
This time, the year is 2024, and another group of students has set up camp to convince the institution’s alumni to see that their university is not financially connected to the slaughter occurring in the aftermath of the October 7th, 2023 attacks in the Gaza Strip.
“Transforming the protest into an act of hope and inspiration.”
With a tidal wave of hate and cries of antisemitism directed at the pro-Palestinian protesters, they remain steadfast, organized, and coordinated. Their message and their prayers are only for peace. Still, those who oppose move to first shut them up, then intimidate them into quitting, until after multiple universities around the States follow along, soon the eyes of the world become focused on the new generation that is inheriting the Earth, calling out and singing along into the dark, cold curtain of night, that this madness and murder must end, transforming the protest into an act of hope and inspiration.
No matter which side of the divide you find yourself, there is one thing I think can be universally agreed upon. In our history, there have been many mass murders of human beings who either wouldn’t break or wouldn’t bend under the yoke of who they have known to be oppressors. So, too, it is easy for those who have suffered the indignity of being on the losing side to harbor resentment and cling to a burning desire once again to get redemption for one’s people and the greater good.
Pritsker and Workman, along with the voices of those who endured the struggle, Maya Abdallah, Mahmoud Khalil, Grant Miner, and Sueda Polat, make The Encampments an important portrait of where the world is. I remember watching old footage of protestors in times gone by and wondering if they lived and whether they felt their sacrifice and stance against whatever injustice they fought then was worthy and whether it made a difference.
There are too many profitable businesses that rely on the world’s conflicts to extend and escalate. That’s just the nature of the beast. Where there is profit to be made, there will always be what is callously referred to as collateral damage. The cost, some politicians might say, is for freedom and the preservation of peace and justice. I wonder, when all is said and done, how many lives it’s going to take before peace becomes a reality in this world instead of just a good word to gloss over all the dead bodies that paved the road there?
"…Their message and their prayers are only for peace."
