Op-ed: So you willfully misunderstood the protestors

Editor's note: The following is a response to a March 8 op-ed by first-year Rachel Wolff titled "So you protested Governor Baker."

You claim the Tufts administration is embarrassed by our actions. Well, I am embarrassed to attend a university that claims to unconditionally support undocumented students, yet welcomes a man who stated he would veto all legislation protecting immigrants that came across his desk. I am not just embarrassed. I am devastated. It is even more upsetting when students like you dismiss the rightful frustrations of other students. No one believes that “the issues of today are gone” or that we solved them. Student organizers are constantly putting in work for the improvement of this campus and the communities we are a part of, and know better than anyone just how much needs to be done for any change to occur.

You claim to be upset by the lack of protestors attending the CIVIC meeting to explain themselves. Yet I know for a fact that people reached out to you personally to explain our actions, not to mention the significant number of posts made to discuss our motives. I am sorry that we were not all able to attend the forum that is most convenient for you. Meetings for every student organization involved in the protests are open to the Tufts community, so if you want to have further discussion, you are free to attend any of them. Fighting for basic human rights is not a matter of convenience. Not to mention, your first impulse after the protests was to make a post on Facebook expressing your “disappointment.” This is not a way to foster discussion.

You claim that we are privileged to be in the United States where we can protest. You say we would be jailed or lashed in other countries for doing the same. This is an unacceptable statement dangerously close to taking an apologist stance to all the atrocities committed by this country’s government not only to other countries but to its own people. What do you call what is happening to the indigenous people protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline, desperately fighting to maintain clean water and to have their sacred grounds respected? What about Black Lives Matter protesters who have been brutalized over and over, arrested unjustly for protesting the unending slaughter of black people by the police? Do not tell me that protesters in the United States are privileged. Do not dare imply that this country is better than any other. Unrestrained patriotism is not a way to foster discussion.

The core of your objections lie at the fact that the protestors should have had a discussion with Charlie Baker. Please, tell me which politician has ever given a truly straight answer during any discussion. Since you are so appreciative of the American tradition of civilized discussion, why don’t we go back to the beginning of this country? Need I remind you that the founding of the United States was based on protest, not sitting around and having friendly conversation? Would you call those who threw tea in Boston Harbor anything but protesters? Would you say they too should have persisted with fruitless discussion to express their frustrations with unjust government?

Your outright disdain for the protesters is clear. There is no need to put fascism in quotations -- we know Charlie Baker is not a fascist, but what you obviously do not see is that moderate politicians like him play into the fascism that is unfolding under the current administration. I have said it before, and I’ll say it again -- Baker’s policies lead to the literal destruction of lives. Your ability to poke fun at the protesters is inherently a privileged action.

If you were truly concerned about the issues we care so strongly for, you would not waste your time writing a piece that aims to belittle our legitimate expression of frustration and call for action. I do not worry about alienating people that want to help, because if that desire was genuine, they would be listening to the “chants and insults” you demonize and would join the fight.

To you it may seem like silly progressive college students overreacting because they don’t support a Republican governor’s agenda. You are not disenfranchised in this society. You are not a part of the most vulnerable populations in this country that are directly affected by Charlie Baker’s policies and complacency. I do not know you personally, so do not see this as an attack aimed at you directly. I do know that you do not live every day fearing violence and deportation, and that is privilege enough. This applies to everyone who continues to belittle the actions of those who protested Charlie Baker.

This is not about being Republican, Democrat or anywhere else on the political spectrum. Expecting more from a university that has promised safety to its students and continuously claims to be progressive is not something that should be looked down upon. More importantly, demanding that politicians uphold basic human rights should not be something that needs to be explained. When you fail to evaluate your own privilege, and criticize protesters who are giving a voice to those who are unable to speak out, you are succumbing to the system that allowed the current president and his administration to come into power.