Protest time
Indignity Vol. 5, No. 43
CROWD CONTROL DEP'T.
Sooner or Later It's Going to the Streets
INSTEAD OF SITTING down and composing a real newsletter item this afternoon, I got on the subway and rode downtown to a protest for Mahmoud Khalil. Khalil is the recently graduated Columbia student and activist who was grabbed out of his university-owned apartment building on Saturday by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, despite having permanent United States residency being married to a U.S. citizen, and then transported to a federal detention site in Louisiana. "This is the first arrest of many to come," President Donald Trump posted on his Truth Social account. He added that the administration would target other student protesters and would "find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country."
It's hard to even count how many different basic principles, premises, or assumptions of American life Khalil's abduction violated. No one in a position of authority has even gestured at accusing him of a crime. The White House posted a meme about his arrest, set up like a Wanted poster, which declared Khalil had "LED ACTIVITIES ALIGNED TO HAMAS," and then below that, in smaller letters, "A Designated Terrorist Organization."
A president who does a thing like this, giving the reasons Trump gave for doing it, is simply not acting as president of the United States. He is inhabiting some other role, a role that is the opposite of preserving, protecting, and defending the constitution, or of taking care that the laws be faithfully executed. Typing the fact out like that may have some value, but it feels like it's of limited use. Impeachment, done immediately, would be the most minor and restrained of appropriate responses to this kind of behavior from someone occupying the White House.
Instead, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries would put out a statement suggesting that Khalil could deserve university discipline, "[t]o the extent his actions were inconsistent with Columbia University policy and created an unacceptable hostile academic environment for Jewish students and others," before saying that "[a]bsent evidence of a crime, such as providing material support for a terrorist organization, the actions undertaken by the Trump administration are wildly inconsistent with the United States Constitution." Columbia University had ordered everyone to hold classes as usual, regardless of anyone's concerns about ICE operating on campus. I got on the train.
I found the rally by following a woman wearing a keffiyeh draped over a cupping bruise on her back. This had not yet tipped over into where the George Floyd protests had gone where the sound of marchers on the move could pull in passersby or draw novice protesters out of their homes to fall into step. The majority of the people on Foley Square were obviously long-running participants in the Gaza protest movement. These protesters knew the chants; they waved cardboard flagpoles with Palestinian flags with holes worn in their edges; their signs had Socialist organization contact info on them. They had long ago been telling everyone where capitalism and empire were going to take things if no one stood up and stopped it.
By temperament, socialization, and professional training, I've spent most of my life at a distance from collective public spectacle, or collective public action. But what if the society wasn't holding itself together? What if the profession had fixed on one piece of the First Amendment while the rest of it rotted away? One of the speakers led a call-and-response of "Mahmoud Khalil will be free," and then followed it up with "Palestine will be free." Someone in my own neighborhood went to bed Friday night in Ivy League housing, as a green card holder, and now his American fate was getting the same cadence as that of the people who had been living as refugees for seven decades.
Helicopters and a drone observed from overhead. Cops stood stretched out in a line, in cool-weather jackets, not riot gear. There were hundreds of people in the crowd, probably a thousand. Enough chanting lungs for me to put on a mask in the open air. I saw a well-known musician and author in the crowd who'd posted about the rally, saying he'd be there because he happened to be in town. I was always in town. What reason did I have not to be there? Later I saw multiple other people on my Bluesky feed posting their Foley Square pictures. There were more of us out there already than I'd thought.
WEATHER REVIEWS
New York City, March 9, 2025
★★★★ No one woke up early enough to miss the lost hour of morning. The younger boy went out to play basketball and stayed out. A loose tangle of cloud near the deep blue zenith was speeding by but the sun was instantly warm. A Band-Aid took on a metallic sheen. The bass coming from a minivan made its back window rattle as it drove up the block. A man walking up Broadway flicked his own basketball up and off the front sign of a shuttered discount store. The eye read the daytime gibbous moon as a full round ball part-submerged in the blue. Pigeons wheeled, their wings catching the light till they looked as broad and expansive as hawks' wings. Every detail stood in acute focus.
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.
HERE IS TODAY'S Indignity Morning Podcast.
Tom Scocca
Click on this box to find the Indignity Morning Podcast archive.
TOM SCOCCA
ADVICE DEP'T.
GOT SOMETHING YOU need to justify to yourself, or to the world at large? Other columnists are here to judge you, but The Sophist is here to tell you why you’re right. Direct your questions to The Sophist, at indignity@indignity.net, and get the answers you want.
SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.
WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS in aid of the assembly of a sandwich selected from Cook Book of Practical and Tested Baking and Cooking Recipes, Prepared by The Ladies Aid of the Lutheran Hospital, Fort Wayne, Ind., published in 1927, and available at archive.org for the delectation of all.
HOT CHEESE SANDWICH
Butter thin slices of bread very lightly, sprinkle generously with cheese, press two slices firmly together, cut in half and toast quickly. Serve at once with coffee. Or toast circular pieces of bread, sprinkle with a thick layer of grated cheese, seasoned with salt and cayenne. Place in shallow pan and set in oven to bake until cheese is melted. Serve at once.
If you decide to prepare and attempt to enjoy a sandwich inspired by this offering, be sure to send a picture to indignity@indignity.net.
