Prahlad Iyengar & the illegal occupation of Turtle island

MIT has suspended Prahlad Iyengar- effectively expelling him and terminating his scholarship- for writing the following essay for a College magazine which has itself since been banned. This magazine, called 'Written Revolution' aims to 'platform revolutionary thought on campus'. Since genuine revolutionaries want to smash all forms of legality, they don't whimper about their victimhood or the violation of their 'due process' rights. Clearly, what Prahlad represents is not 'revolutionary thought' but adolescent narcissism of a histrionic sort. 

It must be said, this was not his first infraction. He had interacted with recruiters from Lockheed who found his behavior threatening. Since he himself says he thinks the company is 'complicit in genocide' and obviously doesn't want to work there, his claim that he was just doing what other students were doing is made in bad faith. To be clear if a person comes to your home in the guise of a prospective buyer of that house, and if this person starts accusing you of complicity in grave crimes, that person is engaged in intimidatory and threatening behavior. The doctrine of 'fighting words' applies. In America, this means though the speech itself is protected, so is the decision to eject the person making it from premises you control. 

Prahlad says he feels morally obliged to oppose by all means available to him, MIT's supposed complicity with 'global elites'. That is a good enough reason to consider why he wants to remain part of that institution. If it is to damage it, get rid of him. True, if he is a genius doing path breaking work, you may have to make excuses for him. But if he is second rate, sack him pour encourager les autres. 

On the other hand, it must be said, Prahlad's narrative of victimhood is called into question and rendered morally nugatory by the continuing suffering of Palestinian cats which are being illegally denied access to mice by the American Imperial state and its Zionist slaves. It is obvious that no 'American citizen' (i.e. illegal occupier of Turtle island) can be granted 'due process' until every Palestinian cat is provided with plentiful mice by such Netan-Yahoos as have not yet been buggered to death by Emperor Joe Biden. More importantly, Prahlad's attempt to make Iyengars appear stupider than Iyers must be dismissed as part and parcel of a wider Neo-Liberal conspiracy.  

On Pacifism 

The past year of genocide waged against the Palestinian people has led to protest around the world. At first blush, these protests may remind one of the protests against the genocide waged against the Vietnamese in the mid to late 20th century,

Vietnam hadn't attacked France or the US. The War on Terror is the correct analogy. But it killed 1.3 million mainly Muslim people and displaced tens of millions more. What Israel is doing is small potatoes.  

or the protests against the South African apartheid state in the 1980s.

How many Whites were kidnapped or raped and decapitated? What led to the fall of apartheid was Cuba's withdrawing its troops from Angola. The US could then play a helpful role in transitioning to majority rule. The head of the South African secret service had already reached out to the ANC and other political groupings. 

It is true that the movement for Palestinian liberation today owes much to the liberation struggles of decades past,

Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. It owes nothing to Communism or Socialism.  

both in terms of tactics as well as overall strategy.

We still don't know what the strategy is. I think it has to do with recruiting young people in other Muslim countries while hoping that Egypt and Saudi Arabia have a change of heart towards its parent organization. True, this means losing Gaza. But the place wasn't that profitable.  

However, many of today’s protests emphasize a principle which seems to have shaken the imperial American regime and its Zionist colony to their core.

Prahlad is mad. Netanyahu isn't Biden's slave.  

This principle is enshrined in international law, and can be stated simply as follows: an occupied people have the right to resist their occupation by any means necessary.

Sadly, you can't exercise any rights after you have been killed. That is why the Neanderthals have not been able to retake Europe. 

This principle is not new - activists during Apartheid South Africa, the Vietnam genocide, and plenty of other historical atrocities against the indigenous have supported the indigenous right to resist.

But a right without a remedy under a bond of law is not a right. It is mere wishful thinking. Madoff's clients may have a right to reclaim money from him. But the right is ineffective.  

But in today’s protest landscape this sentiment feels more prevalent. It has led many to support the axis of resistance, a loose coalition of Arab, North African, and West Asian regimes and groups which have defended Palestine and supplied the Palestinian resistance with material assistance, as they continue to challenge American and Israeli military actions which have thus far claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, according to even conservative medical estimates.

The same could be said of Assad's regime. It was heroically resisting Islamists while lining its own pockets. Despite assistance from Iran and Russia, it has collapsed. Incidentally, the Assad dynasty were Secular Socialists dedicated to heroically resisting Israel while killing Syrians and looting that country. Hamas, it is true, came to power through the ballot box, but was careful not to hold any more elections. Sadly, Iran and Hezbollah may end up losing a great deal thanks to Hamas- which, after all, is an Arab Sunni outfit. The question is whether the new regime in Syria will afford its cadres a hearty welcome. Hamas had relations with Assad but have welcomed his departure. However, they will have to abandon Shia Iran if they are to get along with the new regime in Damascus.  

That this ideological support for true resistance to imperial

e.g. that of Emperor Biden 

and colonial regimes is so instilled within the Palestine movement is a testament to the political education that has been achieved both in the decades since the American invasion and genocide in Iraq

it seems to have turned into an Iranian colony. Prahlad is cool with that.  

as well as in the past year of heartbreaking struggle for Palestinians.

Which pale into insignificance compared to the Syrian death toll- estimated at over 600,000. Who knows? It may rise yet higher.  

The movement has grown in this regard, and it will continue to grow. But now, one year since the beginning of the accelerated phase of genocide, it is incumbent upon us all to remind ourselves of this commitment. That is to say, we must remind ourselves not just what that commitment means in the context of the resistance within the colonies,

Did you know the US started off as- 13 Colonies? Why is Biden not resisting King Charles?  

but also what it implies for our actions here in the imperial core. In our reflection, let us consider the methods that have defined the current movement for the liberation of Palestine.

Doing evil shit while enriching yourself. This is cool if you end up a billionaire living large in Qatar.  

Throughout cities across the world, we have been fortunate enough to observe a diversity of tactics, one of the signs of a healthy movement.

No. A diversity of tactics is what is displayed by a bunch of headless chickens.  

In many major cities across Turtle Island, coalitions have formed under vanguard parties in order to lead city-wide protest events, including marches, rallies, and pickets. More specialized groups such as BDS and PYM have adopted specific targets (Elbit Systems and now Maersk, respectively) and have even recently achieved success in driving the Zionist-supporting companies out of town here in Cambridge.

Americans want fewer jobs. They are delighted when successful companies shut up shop and go elsewhere. 

Still, the question is what Prahlad has achieved in terms of driving MIT out of the State? It is a tool of American imperialism, as is America itself. Americans should be driven out of the country so as to finally rid the world of American imperialism. The Zionist colony and the Indian colony and the French colony will all collapse.  

National SJP has helped coordinate the development of SJPs across thousands of campuses,

In which case anti-SJP people need to get organized to drive them out of thousands of campuses. Resisting resisters is also resistance.  

and during the spring of 2024, we witnessed an old tactic develop new wings at many universities: continuous reclamation of liberated zones. Some groups have taken things further during the “Summer of Rage” for Palestine, escalating to building occupations, property damage, destruction of surveillance and police equipment, and further tactics.

So, this is why Prahlad has been suspended. MIT doesn't want its property damaged. Sad.  

Many of these examples have been documented under the media of Unity of Fields, formerly Palestine Action, which is another reference to the axis of resistance calling for a unity of the fields on which they fight the Zionist and the American regimes.

Americans must fight the American regime. They must chase Americans out of America so that whatever regime obtains there is not American.  

Diversity of tactics, broad participation with targeted escalation, everything seems to be going swimmingly - except one major issue. To date, the movement on Turtle Island

which is what these nutters call America. The fucking 'First Nations' should fuck off back to Siberia while those of European or African or Asian descent should end their occupation of a place which rightly belongs to turtles.  

has seen virtually no success towards its main demands - ending the genocide, ending the apartheid, and dismantling the occupation.

Not to mention forcing Emperor Biden to undergo gender reassignment surgery prior to ordering the mass evacuation of all Americans from America so as to end American Imperialism once and for all.  

Fundamentally, a movement which is not nearer to achieving its goals one year later cannot be considered a success.

Fundamentally, the thing is hilarious.  

Here, I argue that the root of the problem is not merely the vastness of the enemy we have before us – American imperialism and Zionist occupation –

and ourselves. Prahlad is struggling to deport himself back to India from which he will have to deport himself to the the original homeland of his Aryan ancestors.  

but in fact in our own strategic decision to embrace nonviolence as our primary vehicle of change.

Prahlad is not punching himself in the face. He is non violently embracing himself. But is he watching Mia Khalifa as he does so or is he watching youtube videos of amorous turtles? Either way, he is guilty of sexually objectifying them.  

One year into a horrific genocide, it is time for the movement to begin wreaking havoc, or else, as we’ve seen, business will indeed go on as usual.

Sadly guys who think they can 'wreak havoc' can be very quickly beaten to death.

The analysis below is heavily influenced by Ward Churchill’s seminal essay “Pacifism as Pathology”.

The guy claimed to be a Red Indian so as to get a Professorship though he didn't have a PhD. He was lying. Still, he was very pleased that 'little Eichmanns' working in the Twin towers were killed on 9/11.  

... A source of inspiration for this strategically pacifist movement, and one which its leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., often cited, was the nonviolent arm of the Indian struggle for liberation from British colonialism, led by

Alan Octavian Hume who founded the INC? Annie Besant who headed the Indian Home Rule League? 

Mahatma Gandhi.

Who prevented India from getting what the Irish and the Egyptians and the Afghans got in 1922 by unilaterally surrendering and pleading guilty to sedition and going meekly off to jail. 

Gandhi famously created a broad coalition across South Asia, including the indigenous Pashtun people of Afghanistan, though he was not immune to the casteism that the British used to indoctrinate the Indian population during their occupation.

Hilarious! British turned up and convinced Iyengars that they were high caste! Gandhi's son married an Iyengar- probably because Viceroy told him to do so.  

This nonviolent movement used similar strategies, most famously hunger strikes and the world-renowned “salt march” tax resistance campaign.

Which failed. Liaquat Ali Khan abolished the salt tax but it was brought back quite soon.  

South Asian nonviolent protestors were massacred in the thousands and routinely subjugated to inhumane treatment.

By South Asians who were paid to do so.  

By no means am I suggesting that these pacifist movements were counter-revolutionary; in fact, their ideological commitments to pacifism can be seen as a fundamental rejection of the doctrines of violence against Black and Brown colonized peoples which followed from the status quo.

The Indians didn't want 'Pax Britannica'. The moment the Brits handed over power, one or two million people were killed and ten or twenty million were displaced. There was little White violence against Brown people in India. This is because there were few Whites and their interests were commercial.  

A shocking and historic example of tactical pacifism was the 1963 self-immolation of Thích Quang Đuc, a Vietnamese Bhikku (Mahayana Buddhist monk), in protest against the religious persecution faced by the Buddhist majority under the Catholic president Ngô Đình Diem, whose regime was propped up by the US government’s Indochina policy as a supposed bulwark against communism.

The US toppled the Catholic but his successors were worse. Still, the true calamity for the Hao (Chinese Vietnamese) people was the flare up between Vietnam and China in 1978. It is estimated that some 200,000 out of 1.4 million 'boat people' died at sea seeking to escape. I believe those who received asylum in the US have tended to do very well there. Clearly, they must be deported immediately from Turtle island. 

This striking image was shared around the world and brought significant attention to the horrors that the US was wreaking upon Indochina.

Which were nothing compared to the horrors perpetrated by Pol Pot.  

I call this tactical and not strategic pacifism because Thích Quang Đuc’s act was a response to the particular conditions of oppression his community faced, rather than an attempt to inspire a movement centered around ideological nonviolence.

He was Buddhist. That's a pacifist religion- like Christianity.  

His last words are translated as: “I call the venerables, reverends, members of the sangha and the lay Buddhists to organize in solidarity to make sacrifices to protect Buddhism” [emphasis my own]

He helped the Communist atheists to win.  Quite an own goal. 

In the wake of the heightened awareness around the occupation of and ongoing genocide against Palestine by the Israeli settler-colonial state, this pacifist tactic has been repeated by several individuals, including Aaron Bushnell, a former US Air Force member

 who joined an organization bombing the shit out of Muslims

who self-immolated in front of the Israeli embassy in the nation’s capital while on active duty. His last words were: “I will no longer be complicit in genocide.

Coz genocide is only okay if Christians are doing it.  

I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest but, compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all.

Israelis keep setting themselves on fire so as to gross out Palestinians. That's not extreme imbecility at all.  

This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”

Go thou, Prahlad, and do likewise.  

While it could be claimed that Thích Quang Đuc’s monastic lifestyle reflects a personal commitment to nonviolence that indicates a strategic pursuit, Aaron Bushnell’s very vocation was antithetical to such a commitment.

Not really. His contract was almost up. What he drew attention to was the stupidity of the Anarchists.  

Both acts were done to draw attention to a particular struggle in a particular context,

the Buddhist's self-immolation was bad for Buddhism in Vietnam. Bushnnel's act was simply silly.  

and both acts served the broader goal toward liberation

i.e. Americans ending their occupation of 'Turtle island'.  

without inherently excluding non-pacifist actions.

e.g. non-pacifists laughing their heads off.  

Moreover, both acts are fully compatible with the simultaneous existence of armed resistance against the oppressor,

Prahlad goes around shooting policemen and telling Americans to fuck off back where they came from.  

and may even have been a tacit indication of support for such resistance.

Very true. People who are burning to death may be tacitly supporting Arsenal football club.  

Having defined these terms and even while acknowledging that both forms of pacifism are compatible with truly revolutionary praxis, I now seek to show that pacifism as a strategic commitment is a grave mistake in the context of colonial oppression.

e.g. that suffered by Turtle island by reason of the large numbers of Americans who are occupying it.  

In fact, the theory of change I call for would see tactical pacifism take on a supplementary role within a cradle of widespread resistance.

This theory is already used by serial killers who claim that they can't hurt a fly. Lying may be a 'theory of change'. But if lies are seen through, the theory is of little use.  

I will extend this analysis to the student movement, arguing that we have a particular responsibility to seek this diversification of our tactics due to our positionality.

We are useless. Let us tactically immolate ourselves by telling everybody we have already done so. 'Mummy, I am now a ghost. Kindly fuck off back to India. Stop colonially occupying Turtle Island. Please don't hit me. Ghosts should not be hit by Imperialistic Americans like you.'  

Central to the concept of pacifist action is the intention of sacrifice.

No. It is the intention to virtue signal.  

It is clear in the tactical examples noted above, but also evident in both Dr. King’s and Gandhi’s pacifist movements.

Gandhi did manage to delay the transfer of power. But he wasn't able to stop it once Atlee had made up his mind to cut and run. It was LBJ who pushed through Civil Rights. Lynching niggers is what keeps the redneck poor. 

In the latter cases, the sacrifice is inherent to the status quo – Black and Brown nonviolent protestors faced extreme suppression, imprisonment, and often lethal violence at the hands of the state.

No. In India, non-violent protestors got light sentences and good prison conditions for 'sedition'. Waging war on the King Emperor meant terrible suffering in the Andaman Jail.  

The centrality of sacrifice is key, for while pacifism requires nonviolence on the part of the activist, it does not impose any such restriction on their oppressor.

Gandhi supported the Indian army operation in Kashmir. Pacifists can still have a doctrine of just war or legitimate self-defence. Bertrand Russell actually supported a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the Soviets.  

Instead, its main vehicle for generating mass outrage and therefore spurring on its movement is by inviting that violence upon its adherents to hold up as a manifestation of the contradictions which run rampant in their oppressor’s world.

Some guy shot at Trump. That was a boon to his election campaign. Ronald Reagan could not have shown more courage.  

Exposing these contradictions is crucial to dialectic change which drives revolution.

No 'dialectic change' has driven any revolution anywhere. Spontaneous uprisings can work.  

But not all pacifists are so committed. The most prominent proponents of pacifism tend to be

the one's who haven't already burnt themselves to a crisp. 

organizers whose risk aversion and unwillingness to receive the violence of the oppressor truly drives their action. As Churchill notes: “The question central to the emergence and maintenance of nonviolence as the oppositional foundation of American activism has not been the truly pacifist formulation, ‘How can we forge a revolutionary politics within which we can avoid inflicting violence on others?’ On the contrary, a more accurate guiding question has been, “What sort of politics might I engage in which will both allow me to posture as a progressive and allow me to avoid incurring harm to myself?” (Churchill, 73)

In other words, how can I pretend to be a revolutionary while still getting my PhD? The answer has been given by MIT. Don't write articles calling for violence on campus.  

This can be seen most evidently in the types of mass actions we have seen around the Palestine movement in greater Boston. A typical rally features “hundreds, sometimes thou sands, assembled in orderly fashion, listening to elected speakers calling for an end to this or that aspect of lethal state activity, carrying signs ‘demanding’ the same thing … as well as [highlighting] the plight of the various victims they are there to ‘defend’, and – typically – the whole thing is quietly disbanded with exhortations to the assembled to ‘keep working’ on the matter…’ (Churchill, 73-74). Churchill characterizes this aspect of protest as a “charade”, an example of political theater that does more to assuage the consciences of its attendees than it does to exact a cost from the entity which is enacting the very oppression they protest.

Political protests can be a 'costly signal' reflecting preference intensity. The problem is that if violence occurs, people may say 'those guys are hooligans. They don't know and don't care about politics. They just want to smash things up and maybe kill a police-man to get bragging rights.'  

He goes on to note an even more chilling fact: “it will be noticed that the state is represented by a uniformed police presence keeping a discreet distance and not interfering with the activities. And why should they?... Surrounding the larger mass of demonstrators can be seen others–an elite. Adorned with green [vests], their function is to ensure that the demonstrators remain ‘responsible,’ not deviating from the state-sanctioned plan of protest” (Churchill, 74). He observes that those “who attempt to spin off from the main body… [f]or some other unapproved activity are headed off by these [vested] ‘marshals’ who argue–pointing to the nearby police–that ‘troublemaking’ will only ‘exacerbate an already tense situation’ and ‘provoke violence’ thereby ‘alienating those we are attempting to reach’”(ibid).

Churchill correctly points out that not killing Americans of any and all descriptions will result in Americans continuing to occupy Turtle island.  

When I first read these words, I felt attacked and betrayed.

Prahlad hadn't even killed his Mummy. His protesting against the illegal occupation of America by Americans was just a piece of cheap political theatre. 

Over the past year, I have not only engaged in but even helped plan this very charade. In doing so, I had not intended to dilute my political message or undermine the very value of truly revolutionary pacifist protest.

e.g. protesting against Mummy occupying Turtle Island instead of fucking off back to India.  

And yet I found myself questioning the intention, direction, and purpose of my actions, reconsidering the types of actions I had encouraged, or tacitly discouraged, by engaging in protest in this way. But surely, I thought, our willingness to put our bodies on the line and even be arrested for our cause would stand apart? After all, as we know too well, MIT and the city of Cambridge have sicced their fascist militias, the police, on student protestors at plenty of our actions, especially in recent months.

Daddy sicced his Fascist militia- viz. Mummy- on Turtle Island to occupy it and overrun it with more and more illegal occupiers from India. 

 During my time in holding, I and others who were arrested with me met a man–a kid, really–who was brought in a bit disheveled and clearly sleep-deprived. When he awoke after hours in the cell, he told us that he had been on the streets since he was sixteen, after being kicked out by his abusive stepfather. He had spent the next three years living in shelters, sleeping on bus stop benches, and squatting in houses–he quickly learned which were the ones that were abandoned and would remain unchecked for a time. Before we spoke, one of the guards came by and it was clear they knew each other–the kid asked for a meal, and the guard said he would get it. He told us that these officers would play games with his life–they knew he was on the street, would let him stay out for days or weeks at a stretch, then find him in whichever abandoned property he had found for shelter and arrest him. They wouldn’t charge him with much, and he’d be out without bail, only to repeat the cycle over and over and over. Suffice to say, the guard never came back with his meal. As people of conscience in the world, we have a duty to

this kid you met in the holding cell. True, he may have been lying, but he was worse off than people like Prahlad. Surely, they could have done something for him? I'm kidding. Seeing an American kid causes this nutter to think he has a 'duty to 

Palestine and to all the globally oppressed.

Only by liberating Turtle Island from its American occupiers can the globally oppressed be freed from the shackles of American Imperialism.  

We have a mandate to exact a cost from the institutions that have contributed to the growth and proliferation of colonialism, racism, and all oppressive systems.

Prahlad has a mandate to damage MIT. Sadly, MIT has a stronger mandate to tell him to fuck the fuck off.  

We have a duty to escalate for Palestine, and as I hope I’ve argued, the traditional pacifist strategies aren’t working because they are “designed into” the system we fight against.

As is being a woke nutter who causes people to think Vivek Ramaswamy is on the right track.  

The state has had decades since the Civil Rights movement to perfect its carceral craft,

African Americans voted for 'three strikes'. The fact is incarceration rates took off from 1973 onward- i.e. after Civil Rights had been achieved.  

and it has created accountability pathways that ignore strategically pacifist movements–it is happy to let us back out into our worlds, patting ourselves on the back for our actions, because we have already committed to compliance.

Sadly, for Prahlad, doing time requires actually doing crime. He should at least stab his Mummy to protest American occupation of Turtle island.  

Strategic pacifism commits itself to pacifism as an end in itself, and the state has used that commitment to monopolize its control of violence.

No. The State has a monopoly on legitimate coercion (save for self-defence purposes) so as to create a peaceful society. Strategic pacifism just means saying you won't do anything violent in return for which you are better treated when arrested. The problem for Prahlad is that, in future, he won't be given the benefit of the doubt. Suppose stones were thrown during a political demonstration. Prahlad is identified as a stone thrower. He denies the charge pointing to his pacifist ideology. The prosecution Googles him and reads this essay of his. Suddenly he could be facing serious conspiracy charges. So could those who associate with him.

What should be worrying people is that this guy is a Computer nerd. He may want to sabotage the internet so as to harm the illegal occupiers of Turtle land. 

As students, even when committed to pacifist strategy, we still feel like we are sacrificing.

Had Prahlad handed over his savings to the young chap he met in the police holding cell, we would applaud him for his financial sacrifice. 

This is primarily due to the institution’s heavy reliance on discipline and sanctions.

MIT doesn't rely on either. Most of its students want to learn useful stuff there. They want to be disciplined because of the big incentive for learning useful stuff.  

Many of the US citizens in our community understood this subconsciously last year–if we put aside for the moment the existential question of police violence and brutality (which I recognize that many of us fundamentally cannot put aside owing to our overpoliced identities, but bear with me)

Prahlad was disappointed that he had not been beaten to death by the police. Was it because he was the wrong sort of black? Maybe they thought he was a visitor from the sub-continent rather than a bona fide illegal occupier of Turtle Island. 

and consider merely the on-paper consequences of arrest vs. suspension, we would certainly recognize that institutional discipline is a more worrying prospect than an arrest for the lesser charges we have come to expect.

Maybe Trump will provide heavier penalties so as to curb this nuisance. 

So when we face discipline, including possible suspension or expulsion, we are risking something important which is acknowledged by our supporters in the community, both local and global. But although this is a real sacrifice, it does not change the content and cost of our actions. Instead, I believe that this extra layer of sacrifice is dangerously illusory. The material and social value of a degree from MIT is derived from whatever legitimacy we, as a broad society, give to the institution.

The same could be said of American citizenship. Nobody should have it just as nobody should attend MIT.  

The potential delay or loss of the degree is only a sacrifice insofar as MIT, and academia as a whole, have created their own market of scarcity and elitism wherein the value of this degree is high.

The value of what you learn there may be high. But, equally, it may be woke nonsense.  

If we remove that degree and strip away the structural elitism, our actions may become exactly what Churchill suggests: a charade.

Not even that. It is just a bad fashion statement.  

That isn’t entirely fair, perhaps because I have yet to acknowledge that MIT is itself part of the state. MIT is a military contractor. MIT does research for genocide. MIT contributes to the fascist vision of American empire; we’ve developed radar technology for war, WiFi-based object detection for policing, and spun out Raytheon. We are the state, and to the extent that our Coalition can exact a cost at MIT, we can claim that we are exacting a cost to the state. But we also exist in a microcosm of the real community of Boston and Cambridge. We students will only remain here for four to eight years before leaving the community, having used its resources and land for our labor, without a thought for the thousands of Black folks who have been economically displaced by rent hikes driven by MIT’s expansion and gentrification nor for the indigenous communities from whom all of this land was stolen and who still need restitution via land ownership.

Deport all Americans from Turtle Island! Trump just isn't going far enough in that direction. 

As we continue to organize for Palestine, our actions draw the police and prime them for the beatings they so desire to mete out yet cannot on “innocent and peaceful” students. So they will turn to the real community and exert their authority over them.

If the police can't beat Prahlad they will find a George Floyd or, worse yet, a Vivek Iyer. That's a good reason to beat Iyengars.  

As we fight for food security on campus,

Prahlad does Kung Fu to various Fascist militias which try to snatch away his cheese sandwich.  

we ignore the deep food insecurity in Roxbury; as we create networks of inter-university solidarity, we leave out key members of the community whose efforts could use our support, and vice versa. As we get arrested and require bail or jail support or community help, we pull those resources from the community of activists in Boston and leave the community under-resourced and over-policed.

In other words, if non-crazy people do crazy shit, they pull resources from the genuinely crazy.  

And as we commit to strategic pacifism, we create a false contrast which endangers local community members whose actions do not conform to the “designed-in” models of protest or being, thus making them targets for repression and oppression. One year into the accelerated phase of genocide, many years into MIT’s activism failing to connect deeply with the community, we need to rethink our model for action. We need to start viewing pacifism as a tactical choice made in a contextual sphere. We need to connect with the community and build root-mycelial networks of mutual aid. And we must act now.

Prahlad could, even now, start doing voluntary work in soup kitchens. Instead of writing nonsense, he could be getting wealthy alumni, or affluent students, to contribute to local charities. But how would that help rid Turtle Island of its American occupiers? Surely, the first duty of a member of the 'root-mycelial' resistance network is to stab his own Mummy? Would Mahatma Gandhi have done anything less? Think about it.