The pro-terrorist “pro-Palestinian” protesters on college campuses think they are above the law, and Washington, D.C., agrees with them.
George Washington University is a private university. When a pro-terrorist encampment popped up, university officials sent a request to district police to have the protesters removed. The mayor’s office and the police chief’s office ordered them to stand down, though, reportedly because they didn’t like the “optics” of protecting private property from unwanted trespassing by pro-terrorist protesters.
Meanwhile, the protesters at George Washington have broken down the barriers set up around their protests, which the university said was an effort to limit access peacefully rather than having the police forcibly move the protesters. The protesters plan on never leaving, with organizers saying that “we need to be able to live sustainably here for as long as possible until divestment, until disclosing, until liberation.”
It turns out that when you let pro-terrorist protesters have their “peaceful” protest, they become emboldened to try to take more than what they were given. They couldn’t better represent the terrorists they are supporting if they tried.
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The decision by Washington leaders to allow this to continue on private property after being asked to intervene perfectly encapsulates why the district is facing the problems it has. Local leaders have refused to prosecute crime seriously because they don’t like the optics of the demographics of the prison population and because they don’t like the optics of arresting and prosecuting juvenile car thieves. The lack of a spine emboldens worse behavior from more people, making the problem worse.
The same is true here, as protests at George Washington continue to grow out of hand from the supposed “peaceful” ones the city was reluctant to stop. By allowing it to continue, the district’s leaders are saying that they will let people unlawfully occupy private property if they think their cause is just and if they don’t like the optics of stepping in. It is precisely the kind of weakness that lets entitled protesters think that they are above the law.