As the Liberated Zone enters its second week, and as the ongoing negotiations between the United Front for Palestine (UF) and the University continue, people involved and the wider community are becoming nervous that the UF’s informal leadership are not acting in the best interest of the community and the encampment as a whole.

Many people are beginning to draw parallels between the UF’s recent attitudes and the recent events at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, where a non-binding ‘memorandum of understanding’ allowed administration to walk all over students and end their encampment. Gone with it are any hope of achieving their demands. 

Our situation differs from Evergreen and all hope is not lost for every demand. There is cause for celebration and there is cause for concern. We will outline this in this article and talk about the systemic problems that created this situation.

Some Demands, Not All

As it stands, negotiators have been able to secure cutting ties with israeli institutions and implementing a Palestinian studies program and Palestinian scholarships. This is a huge win for and largely thanks to the work of several Palestinian negotiators. However, other demands (like those listed publicly on the UF’s Instagram) have seen less progress if not back-sliding. As it stands the UF states that it demands UW to:

• “Materially and academically divest from ‘israel’

• Cut all ties with Boeing

• End the repression of pro-Palestinian students, workers, and faculty.”

While some progress has been made on the first demand, people worry that cutting ties with Boeing, as well as more impactful wide-reaching divestment from the false-state of israel are going by the wayside.

Stopping UW’s collaboration with weapon’s manufacturers like Boeing, who have used our campus’ resources, students, and faculty to research, develop, and build weapons of genocide and war is critical in the worldwide fight against western-imperialism. Any concession where Boeing has a future at the UW is a departure from the original spirit of demands.

The movement (and the World) cannot afford to drop demands and capitulate to neoliberal administrations. Yet we have been given very little to suggest that this is not already happening in closed meetings. 

While there have been some meaningful and small wins, many are frustrated that larger demands have not been fought for with more intent. This is partially attributed to poor decision-making early on as well as the ‘organizing industrial complex.’

Set up to Disappoint: Organizing Industrial Complex

Though many critique individuals within the UF and within the negotiating team, we do not believe that is a fair critique. Rather than going after individuals, we see how fundamental errors and missteps are baked into hierarchical and authoritarian organizing are the root cause of the problem. The issue is that they have negotiators in the first place. Rather than anything being directly the negotiators’ fault, we see that some form of selling out or giving large concessions to administration is the logical conclusion of negotiating with neoliberal institutions in this context.

The UF, and a lot of campus organizations, are entrenched in an organizing industrial complex. For these organizations, a culture of overworking yourself and runaway social ‘in-groups’ preempt genuine community building. People are treated as disposable pawns, not as humans. A symptom of this is the racism, transmisogyny, and other recreations of the very societal-mals that groups were organized to defeat. As in-group biases manifest, such issues become and remain prevalent in many of the leftist organizations on campus and end up creating spaces that feel more like workplaces than anything else.

This is further exemplified every time someone’s opinion differs from that of the in-group. This leads to gaslighting and conspiracy and is one of the reasons that the ACSRI, a stupid but sadly required bureaucratic process that the University has to begin the divestment process, wasn't started until recently. Gaslighting and conspiracy are also the reason that several groups have left the UF in the past weeks.

Another product of this organizing industrial complex is the overall lack of transparency from the UF. Basic information is kept on a ‘need-to-know’ basis, impairing peoples’ autonomy of decision making. There have been several incidents that have happened at the Liberated Zone that have been kept secret and have not been shared with everyone. The people camping and spending time there have the right to know about information like this for the sake of their safety and autonomy.

Reflection

Many students fear that negotiations with UW have sidelined the community and are giving up on the very demands that people are continually showing up for. As an anonymous student camper told The Nightly in an interview on Thursday: “If the UF gives up on their demands, they are no better than the UW administration that they claim to fight. They would be selling us out for a purely symbolic victory.”

As we just discussed, some demands have been partially met, however, many of the largest demands remain unmet. It is not a total loss, and there is much to be proud of, yet there is also a lot to be concerned about.

The UF’s tactics are stale and its decision-making ability has always been impaired from cliques and informal hierarchy. Entrenched in it all, the UF’s in-group might just be on a path toward becoming neoliberal figureheads themselves. Negotiations with bad-faith actors and ‘peaceful protests’ will lead us to become the next Evergreen. The UF needs to correct course before it’s too late.

For the rest of us, we need to question all authority, including that of the UF. We need to be more meaningful about the spaces we are a part of and how we are using our time. We need to take care of ourselves and the people around us and love each other. The best way to fight back against this organizing industrial complex is to love each other and build real community. This is something that everyone needs to get better at, including UF members, anarchists, and even us here at The Nightly.

With the future of the Liberated Zone becoming more and more unclear, reflecting on the mistakes that we have all made in the past is needed.