The word started getting out Saturday evening that Zionists were mobilizing to counterprotest Sunday morning, aimed at “drowning out” the pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA that had been underway for several days. Immediately, the students started making plans to expand and further secure their encampment and off-campus pro-Palestinian organizers put out a call for people to come to the support and defense of the UCLA encampment early the next morning, before the Zionists arrived. A group of us revcoms knew we had to be there to stand with the students and everyone else who was coming out to fight against the intensifying genocide being inflicted on the people of Gaza by Israel with the full backing of the United States.

From 10 am until at least 4 pm the next day, we were out amidst hundreds of others who had shown up from across the city, including several campuses, to stand with the UCLA student encampment for Gaza and to face off with the Zionists who were counterprotesting. The scene was fierce, joyous and angry. We carried two extremely large signs. One read: “Anti-Zionism ≠ Anti-Semitism!” The other said: “I Stand With Israel = I Stand With Genocide!” All day, people snapped pictures. We stood with pro-Palestinian marchers as they pushed past the police line and flooded the area where the Zionists were planning to rally and attempt to confront the student encampment. Then, as hundreds of Zionists faced off against hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters for the next several hours, we joined in standing up for Palestine through chants and linking arms, and we went into the crowds to learn about why people had come out and bring the message of real revolution and the important plans for Revolutionary Internationalist May Day this year to them.

The longer the day went on, the more people came out on both sides. What was most striking on the pro-Palestine side was how many people had decided, six-plus months into this genocide in Gaza, to come out and protest for the first time. Almost across the board, the first-time protesters made clear that what drew them out was the courage of the students to set up their camp even after massive arrests and attacks across the country. It is one thing to know that a genocide is going on and even to know it is wrong. But when others stand up against it—and when they continue to do so even when it means risking arrest, their graduations, and even their future careers—they provide both inspiration and a moral challenge to join them in acting against what you know is wrong.

There was an inspiring mix of students, progressive Jewish voices from across the city, Palestinian families who came out with their children, and many others from different walks of life across the city. We talked to probably a hundred people through the course of the day and we got out a couple hundred each of a statement against the crackdown on pro-Palestinian protesters, the full text of Bob Avakian's social media dispatch #27 (The Fight For Free Speech, As a Crucial Part of Fighting To Put An End To Terrible Injustice and Atrocity—And To The System That is the Source Of These Outrages) and flyers for the May 5th rally and celebration for revolution we are holding next weekend. We also distributed more than a dozen copies of the new compilation of Bob Avakian's writings: Israel and Palestine, the Middle East and U.S. Imperialism, the Revolution Humanity Needs and a few dozen copies of the Open Letter taking on the lies and slanders that some opportunist haters within the “movement” are spreading against Bob Avakian and the revcoms.

There were definitely clusters of people who were resistant to taking a flyer and a few who were downright fanatical and nasty in their opposition to revcom, but most people were welcoming and eager to read an analysis of why the U.S. is backing the genocide and why there is such an intense and disproportionate crackdown on the nonviolent student protests. Quite a few students thought the repression against the students was mainly driven by Zionist donors to the schools, but they listened intently as we drew from Bob Avakian's analysis about how the repression is driven by a much more strategic fear by the top rulers of this country who remember the 1960s and don't want to lose the allegiance of the elite students to their system, and they took flyers to read more. Quite a few Palestinians we spoke to couldn't understand “why the United States is letting itself get manipulated by Israel into supporting its genocide.” We got into a number of really rich discussions over the fact that while Israel is a genocidal attack dog, the U.S. is the top dog of this criminal imperialist system. They were intrigued to learn that there is a force in this country fighting for a real revolution that overthrows and replaces the system of U.S. capitalism-imperialism with a radically different system of genuine socialism as envisioned by Bob Avakian. We invited people very broadly to come out to stand with and learn more about real revolution on May 5 at the rally and celebration the Revcom Corps for the Emancipation of Humanity is hosting.

It is a tremendous thing that these students are standing up in this way. We intend to continue to stand with them, to call others into this, and to bring in the message of real revolution and make leaps in organizing people into making this real.