Leaders of the organization mask their true, far-left ideology behind popular, unoffensive slogans.
Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University. (Credit: Buckley Institute)
Hannah Owens Pierre
Opinions Editor, The Buckley Beacon
Look at the Democratize Yale website, or their protests, or the custom-made shirts that the group passes out, and you will see a picture of the May Day protests of 1970 that took place on Yale’s campus. Given that the demands of the student coalition are ostensibly for a greater student voice in Yale decision making, you might assume that the May Day protests were based on a similar theme. Perhaps they were about censorship, or academic freedom, or democracy?
Sadly, you’d be wrong. These protests were instead carried out in defense of members of the Black Panthers who brutally tortured and murdered nineteen-year-old Alex Rackley in Connecticut. Rackley was, as it turns out, another member of the Black Panthers. He was suspected by the group of being a federal informant, though there is no evidence that he was.
Due to this suspicion, he was tortured over the course of two days. The Black Panthers tied him to a chair at gunpoint, beat him, and poured boiling hot water over his body until he finally confessed. The Panthers recorded tapes of Rackley pleading for his life as he was tortured. Rackley was nonetheless swiftly shot in the back of the head and his body was dumped in the Coginchaug River. His body was later found covered in burns and beaten badly with a hard object.
Surely the Black Panthers weren’t actually responsible, though, right? Wrong again. Warren Kimbro and George Sams Jr. both admitted to their roles in the killing and pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. Lonnie McLucas likewise confessed for his part in the murder, both before and during his trial. Erika Huggins was heard on Rackley’s torture tapes recounting the interrogation and describing herself kicking and grabbing him.
In response to this terrible crime, Yale students and New Haveners took to the streets to demand that the Black Panthers be released from jail. Signs reading “Free the Panthers” were hung across New Haven. During this “mostly peaceful protest,” a member of the Black Panthers called for people to start murdering cops and a man who suffered from a mental illness was beaten by the Black Panthers’ guards for daring to approach the stage.
This is one of the events that the Democratize Yale movement invokes to rally their cause. It’s hard to attribute this glaring oversight to ignorance when the movement’s own website features a photo of the 1970 protest with the caption “Students and community members gather in Woolsey Hall for a rally protesting the prosecution of the New Haven Black Panthers.” Notice that this statement acknowledges the actual cause of these protests; it says nothing about academic freedom or freedom of speech, or even about demanding a “fair trial.” Rather, these protests were carried out against the very prosecution of alleged murderers. They were against the rule of law itself. They were, ironically, protesting a key tenet of democracy which Democratize Yale claims to uphold.
Nor can one argue that using this image says nothing about the values of the movement itself, and is purely an example of the free speech policies that the group supports. Clearly the examples a group selects says something about their ideology. If a conservative group were to invoke an image of a neo-Nazi rally to demand for greater free speech and protest protections, everyone would rightly criticize that organization and their decision.
Why, then, does the student movement which claims to merely support “academic freedom” and “democracy” use this image as part of its rallying cry? It is because Democratize Yale isn’t really about these more milquetoast, popular proposals. Their stated platform is merely a trojan horse to mask a more controversial far-left agenda.
Consider the pillar of their movement which they invoke the May Day protests to justify, “Free Speech and Assembly at Yale.” The same type of students who are now suddenly free speech absolutists were once disrupting conservative speakers on campus. Is there doubt over whether the Democratize Yale leaders would support the right of a conservative speaker to be heard at Yale? I don’t think so. The “Free Speech and Assembly” section of the Democratize Yale website contains paragraphs of support for left-wing groups on campus, without a single mention of conservative free speech.
If you want further evidence that Democratize Yale doesn’t really care about democracy so much as they care about promoting a far-left agenda, don’t take my word for it, take theirs. At their most recent protest, Democratize Yale students presented an incoherent left-wing message which at times had nothing to do with their stated demands. Students afterwards wrote messages like “Fuck YPD,” referring to the Yale Police Department, in chalk, in what seems like a poignant homage to their inspirations, the Black Panthers.
It doesn’t take a radical conservative to point out that it is wrong to put on a pedestal a protest in favor of the alleged murderers of an innocent nineteen year old boy. Nor does it take a radical conservative to point out that it is wrong to repeat the same vile talking points as these murderers, all the while claiming to be the voice of Yale students. The sensible among us should be able to see that these things are condemnable, and that a movement which includes these doesn’t truly care for democracy as much as it does left-wing control.