THE CRACKDOWN
Commentary, for what it’s worth
There’s something happening here
But what it is ain’t exactly clear
There’s a man with a gun over there
A-telling me I got to beware– Stephen Stills, Buffalo Springfield, 1967
Q: What happens when you’re part of a group of self-described Marxist students at the University of Utah — the state’s flagship public institution, renowned nationally and internationally for life-changing research, but tethered legally and fiscally to one of the most reactionary Legislatures in the country and the ideological whims of billionaire donors who believe socialism is a four-letter word — and you step out of line and disrupt the school’s most important ceremonies?
A: The man come and take you away. (cover, Widespread Panic)
Scroll down to the bottom of this report and listen up
- To the Cranberries, Paolo Nutini, Beton (“Kyiv Calling”), Sinead O’Connor, The Clash, Nanci Griffith, The Doobie Brothers, Pink Floyd, Green Day, Gil Scott Heron, Stevie Wonder, Sex Pistols, Rage Against the Machine, Bob Marley, Marvin Gaye, Queen, Tom Robinson, Peter Gabriel, James Brown, Kendrick Lamar, N.W.A, Sam Cooke
(Updated to include estimates of deaths indirectly attributable to Israel’s war in Gaza, including destroyed health-care infrastructure; severe shortages of food, water, and shelter; the population’s inability to flee to safe places; and the loss of funding to United Nations Relief and Works Agency, one of the few humanitarian organizations still active in the Gaza Strip.)
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah — Perched on a hillside bench above the hustle and bustle of Utah’s capital city, overlooking the 11,000-foot-plus peaks of the Wasatch Mountains, presides the state’s Ivory Tower of sorts, Presidents Circle, the historical centerpiece of the University of Utah.
It’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a collection of eight architecturally significant buildings constructed between 1901 and 1931 in the Neoclassical, Egyptian Revival and Neoclassical Second Renaissance Revival styles that signified high civilization of the era. Each is named after a former university president.
In addition, at least 20 species of trees — ash, buckeye, sequoia, beech, spruce, fir, oak, maple and more — have been planted there over the years, in part, to commemorate home turf of its Anglo-European emigrants, mainly the faithful of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who abandoned their green fields in New York then Ohio then Illinois and headed west in 1847 to escape religious persecution.
Presidents Circle reflects the perseverance of educators who created a nationally respected teaching, research and medical institution that evolved in the most unlikely of places: the mountains, sage valleys and red-rock desert canyons and plateaus about 500 miles west of Denver and about 600 miles east of San Francisco.
Most Utahns are justly proud of what it represents: progress toward a better understanding of the natural world and humanity even in what they considered a wilderness.
Over the years, scholars working at or near Presidents Circle asserted their independence within the state’s remnants of theocracy and quirky politics relatively unhindered, grounding their students in a Weltanschauung wider than the parochial goings-on in the state and across the West, encouraging their students to engage non-violently in social and political issues.
But not always.
A few days ago the legacy of those pioneers was diminished.
On April, 29, students and their off-campus supporters rallied against the university’s possible complicity in crimes of war.
The student group LA UNIÓN HACE LA FUERZA MECHA DE U OF U tapped into tactics and rhetoric of Chicano Movement (El Movimiento) activists of the 1960s and staged a pro-Palestinian protest at Presidents Circle.
They set up an encampment, ignoring warnings from UofU administrators and their faculty advisers that it was illegal and that police would waste no time in tearing it all down.
They lobbed chants at UofU President Taylor Randall, who was MIA:
“Randall, Randall, you can’t hide. We charge you with genocide.”
Then, a disembodied Orwellian voice bellowed:
“We are declaring this an unlawful assembly. We are ordering you to disperse. If you remain, you will be in violation of the laws of the state of Utah and subject to arrest. If you peacefully leave, you will not be arrested. If you do not comply, you will be arrested. Reasonable force may be used as necessary to take you into custody. … You must comply with our orders immediately.”
The protest was ostensibly about the university’s strong ties to companies and research partnerships associated with Israel and what many protesters believe is currently a horrific escalation of the country’s longtime campaign against its Palestinian minority in Gaza.
Although UofU bluntly rejected MECHA’s calls to sever those ties, the protesters probably thought it was successful. About 300 people showed up, according to Randall. And everyone seemed to have had a cell-phone camera to capture the unfolding scrum and spread images of it all over creation.
In its official statements published late that night and into the early morning hours, UofU was not focused on safety precautions to guide students and their parents and relatives away from the kind of dangers that would’ve justified a huge police presence. The campus community had swelled that week because of graduation ceremonies.
Instead, it was concerned, in public statements at least, with disruptive scofflaws flouting camping rules.
“Several attempts were made by members of our administration and the university’s Academic Senate to connect with and listen to student protesters. Along with faculty members who were at the protest to support students, they discussed and explained that, while we fully support their constitutional rights, the establishment of an encampment was in violation of university policy and state law.”
In an op-ed solicited by the Deseret News and published on May 6, Randall implied that the protest infringed on the rights and safety of others. He gave no examples.
Randall was unequivocal: The encampment had to go, forthwith. And it did. About 150 law enforcers mustered and began “to disperse” the campers at 11 p.m., seven hours after they began to set up their tents.
By 11:45 p.m., 21 people had been arrested, including four students and one university employee. By the wee hours of the next day, everyone had been cleared out.
Part of the pristinely landscaped Presidents Circle was trashed. No injuries to protesters were reported. Two officers received minor injuries.
Other than a hatchet, nothing that could be considered a weapon was confiscated by police. A few police officers were armed with non-lethal weapons.
Here’s how Utah Dispatch reporters on the scene described the melee:
“From about 10:45 p.m. to midnight, a group of more than 150 police officers from a number of departments — including University of Utah, West Valley City, Salt Lake City, Unified, Utah Highway Patrol, West Jordan and more — pushed the group of protesters west, down the lawn of Presidents Circle toward University street. Most were wearing riot gear — body armor, knee pads, helmets with face shields. Some carried riot shields, while others had less lethal weapons designed for dispersing crowds.
“Protesters had formed a line, but as police sporadically charged the group, many of them dispersed — each time police advanced, the group became smaller. Some protesters threw water bottles and other objects at police, which often resulted in officers charging and trying to detain the person. The line of police trampled protesters’ tents, as organizers frantically tried to pack up their belongings.
“Officers say one man was reaching for a rock when he was shot by a 40mm round, a less lethal weapon that can shoot small pellets. The pellets hit several people, including at least one credentialed journalist.
“Protesters and police alike taunted each other — as protesters backed down the green, they yelled expletives at police. ‘We’re f****** students,’ one person shouted. ‘I pay to go to school here!’
“ ‘Come here and give me a hug,’ one officer yelled at protesters. ‘Go home! Go home to your mama,’ shouted another.
“By midnight, police had pushed the protesters onto University street. That’s when officers rushed the man who had previously been shot by the 40mm, tackling him and arresting him on the sidewalk. They arrested another protester nearby in a similar fashion.
“ ‘I’m on the sidewalk. I’m not even on campus!’ shouted the man as officers were handcuffing him.’ ”
If what has happened after protests in other parts of the country offers guidance, the overwhelming majority of those arrested at UofU won’t be prosecuted. For example, a total of 57 people were arrested during a demonstration at the University of Texas on April 24. As of the next morning, charges against 46 of them were declined.
Defense attorneys representing arrested protesters had begun to raise “legal concerns” with probable-cause affidavits that seemed to have been randomly filed to justify politically motivated arrests.
Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill’s office on May 3 told The Appeal: “We are monitoring the situation on the University of Utah campus. We have not yet had anything submitted to our office related to last night’s protest and arrests.”
No one had been charged as of May 16, according to The Salt Lake Tribune.
Consider for a moment the questions administrators might’ve asked themselves in justifying use of violence to clear out the protesters versus tangibly (instead of rhetorically) supporting the intent of the First Amendment to the Constitution and the students’ exercise of it. One could’ve been, “How do we preserve the integrity of our end-of-year celebrations with the least amount of disruption?”
Ironically, the answer as it turned out was to minimize disruption with disruption, and it didn’t take long to make that decision.
The protest of April 29 and April 30 was adjacent to Kingsbury Hall (pictured at left in the top photo), an architectural landmark that has been UofU’s primary site of performing arts since it was built during the first few years of the 20th century. It has been in continuous use ever since.
Convocations are held there every year at the end of April and the first few days of May. They’re virtually the same every year (the two years during the Covid-19 pandemic when they were held virtually in 2020 then the next year at Rice-Eccles Stadium and Red Butte Gardens being exceptions). So event planners had lots of experience ironing out logistical problems involved in quickly moving thousands of people in and out of the ceremonies at Kingsbury and across Presidents Circle; that is, all but one: possible chaos created by rowdy protesters.
Graduate-student convocations of the College of Social and Behavioral Science and College of Architecture and Planning had concluded at Kingsbury by the time pro-Palestinian protesters set up camp.
On the morning of May 2, two days after the protesters were cleared out, Kingsbury was again the site of convocations, this time for students who had completed advanced degrees from the College of Social and Behavioral Science and College of Architecture and Planning.
Then all day on May 3, Kingsbury was host to convocations for students who had completed advanced degrees from College of Health and College of Social and Behavioral Science and undergraduate degrees from the College of Humanities and David Eccles School of Business. More ceremonies were scheduled for the next week.
It’s no exaggeration to describe participants of the ceremonies at Kingsbury — graduates and their parents, friends and relatives, faculty and university staff — as overcome with unbridled joy.
There wasn’t much evidence of the preceding mayhem. By then, all was quiet.
Coincidentally, UofU held its Utah Department of Public Safety 2nd Annual Campus Safety Summit the week before: “Our goal is simple: to increase campus safety through education and collaboration.”
It’s not the first time Mecha has stepped out of line at the UofU, bucking its “culture of obedience.” The student group had been engaged in organizing non-violent on-campus rallies, protest marches and workshops for some time, particularly through the 2022–2024 school years.
In September, the organization co-sponsored an event at the A. Ray Olpin Student Union on campus along with Armed Queers Salt Lake City, a socialist organization founded by “radical Trans people who felt the need to do something about the rise in violence against Trans women of color, and the rise in right-wing vigilantism against Trans activists, Trans community centers, and hospitals who provide transition-related care to Trans youth,” said Ermiya Fanaeian, described as a political organizer and educator in a report published by the independent student newspaper, the Daily Utah Chronicle.
Advocacy of armed defense has been a part, albeit a small and controversial part, of queer activism for a long time.
“This is a form of empowerment for me,” said Fanaeian, quoted in a 2020 article published by the Deseret News about her role in rekindling Utah’s chapter of Pink Pistols, a national pro-gun, pro-LGBTQ group “dedicated to the legal, safe and responsible use of firearms for self-defense of the sexual-minority community.” Fanaeian was a speaker at the September Mecha/Armed Queers workshop.
The event consisted of speeches and break-out workshops, explaining and supporting the queer experience at UofU and in Utah.
The whole thing probably would’ve gone mostly unnoticed (or noticed in the way most UofU students pay attention to these kinds of things: with curious glances on the way to grab a burger downstairs at the Union Food Court) had Mecha not promoted it using a poster of a woman holding what looks like a Russian AK-47 assault rifle. The title on the poster was “QUEER RESISTANCE: AGITATE, EDUCATE, ORGANIZE,” the “Q” in queer morphing into the hammer and sickle symbol that is generally associated with self-described socialist states.
But the students’ UofU advisers noticed.
An Instagram post from Mecha said UofU’s Student Affairs and Equity, Diversity and Inclusion “pressured” MECHA to change the poster or add a statement regarding university policy because it promoted “gun violence on college campus (sic).”
The group claimed UofU was “outwardly hypocritical.”
“The U has invited organizations like the National Rifle Association (NRA) on campus — organizations that have direct ties to gun violence in the U.S. As far as we know, they were not met with the kind of pushback we are facing from the (UofU) administration.”
The event was held as planned using the original poster.
A couple of months later, Mecha was involved in a high-profile dust-up that resulted in UofU’s Center for Student Equity and Belonging withdrawing university sponsorship of the group.
The activists said they were booted because of their anti-transphobia and pro-Palestinian demonstrations. UofU said its decision was based on the fact that Mecha had disrupted an earlier event sponsored by Young Americans for Freedom, preventing members of that group from exercising their First Amendment rights. They were hosting a screening of a movie called “Damaged: The Transing of America’s Kids.”
Mecha members and their supporters were triggered. A ruckus ensued. Campus cops were called in and the event was shut down.
Mecha is now a “Registered Student Organization,” which, according to The Salt Lake Tribune, means it is no longer formally considered a part of the university.
The group had become a legal risk.
The letter UofU sent Mecha informing them of its decision cites university policy: Actions of university-sponsored student organizations “will be considered actions of the University. This has legal risk and other implications for the University. (Rule 6–401A(l)”
It said members of the group were “unwilling to operate under the direction and guidance” of the equity office and are “engaging in behavior that infringes upon the First Amendment rights of other University of Utah students to express their views.”
The timing couldn’t have been worse. The decision came just before Mecha’s annual high school conference: “We are absolutely heartbroken that they have chosen to cancel the Mecha High School Conference after the painstaking hours and work that our Outreach and Solidarity committee have spent this whole semester to provide this opportunity for students like us to get access to resources that are not readily accessible to them. We had HUNDREDS of students who were looking forward to this event.”
A couple of months later, the state of Utah enacted HB261 Equal Opportunity Initiatives, banning diversity programs in government and on campuses funded by the state. On May 10, UofU announced it was eliminating its DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) office to comply with the law.
HB261, which its supporters said would help all students overcome obstacles to success, echoes the conservative backlash that followed Black Lives Matter. Both a movement and slogan that for justice advocates was an appeal for protection and recognition, allies of Black Lives expanded the concept to include Indigenous and LGBTQ people, Palestinians and others.
The phrase “all lives matter” began to circulate shortly thereafter. It seemed to dismiss a world in which Black people are stigmatized, marginalized and discriminated against.
“All lives matter” became a dog whistle associated with white supremacy, far-fight nationalism and racism.
HB261 was not an innocent tweak celebrating the worth of all humanity; it was Utah’s way of playing a part in reactionary culture wars embraced as part of the Republican Party’s national political messaging.
Democrats in the Legislature were united in opposition but powerless facing a Republican super super-majority aligned against them.
It became law with virtually no push back from UofU.
Mecha’s activism finds inspiration in the Chicano Movement of the 1960s (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán, or M.E.Ch.A., and the Chicano Studies programs that have emerged since then at universities.) As of 2012, there were 500 student chapters in the U.S.
According to Mecha’s orientation packet, the organization’s “political philosophy and organizing are based in Marxism, intersectional and proletarian feminism, anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, anti-capitalism, decolonization, anti-racism, disability justice, queer liberation, and Palestinian liberation.”
An overview of its political philosophy, what it calls 12 “Political Lines,” includes:
- Liberation for all colonized and oppressed people; creating a movement that centers Black, Indigenous, Queer, Trans, Femme, and disabled people
- Termination of private land ownership; housing is a human right
- Abolishment of all police and prisons; armed militant protecting communities
- A socialist society; workers seizing the means of production
As mentioned above, members of UofU’s Academic Senate and others attempted to dissuade Presidents Circle protesters from setting up camp before the crackdown started late on April 29. But there’s been no indication that UofU attempted to seriously discuss reasons for the protest, which echo demands of protesters on other campuses.
Perhaps UofU shrugged off Mecha’s current demands because they could mean, at least partially, severing ties with the giant defense contractor and economic juggernaut of northern Utah, Lockheed Martin, which has locations in Layton, Clearfield and Hill Air Force Base and 47G, a collaboration of academic institutions, government and aerospace and defense contractors. UofU has a research partnership with 47G.
Lockheed’s involvement in the militarization of Israel is clear.
A bit of perspective:
- Last year, Israel announced a $3 billion deal to acquire 25 more F-35 stealth fighter jets built by Lockheed, eventually bringing the fleet’s total to 75. Funds to buy the planes come from U.S. aid to Israel, according to the Times of Israel. Each plane costs about $110 million.
- The Israeli Air Force’s first two F-35 jets arrived in December 2016. Approximately a year later, the planes were declared operational, and several months after that, the head of the air force revealed that the aircraft had conducted bombing raids, making Israel the first country to acknowledge using the planes operationally.
- Closer to home, the 388th Fighter Wing — with its full complement of 78 F-35 fighters and the maintenance and equipment support needed to fly out of Hill AFB to virtually anywhere in the world — has participated in several large combat exercises since 2016: It has deployed twice to Europe and once to the Pacific and supported two Middle East combat deployments.
Demands of Mecha to UofU were bluntly quashed after UofU administrators met with the group on November 18. UofU’s response indicated the university opposes genocide in any form, but (and this is The Mother of Caveats) cutting ties “with a country and companies is complex and not practical for a public institution of higher education.”
Take a moment or two to let the disingenuousness, callousness and amorality of that statement sink in. UofU opposes genocide but cutting financial ties to help prevent or slow it is “not practical.”
It’s reasonable to conclude that the subtext of Randall’s message might be that UofU is a bit hamstrung in its ability to confront certain ethical and moral issues because of requirements imposed by state law and its absolute need for fiscal support, even beyond what’s allocated by Utah lawmakers.
He elaborated in the Deseret News op-ed:
“Elected officials and state law govern public entities, like the University of Utah. In Utah, state law specifies two broad investment principles: institutional neutrality and prudent money management. Both principles limit the university’s ability to divest for geopolitical reasons. …
“Of particular relevance is a Utah law that explicitly prohibits government organizations from entering into a contract with businesses that boycott Israel (Utah Code § 63G-27–201).”
I’ll go out on a limb and suggest the intent of Utah lawmakers when they enacted Utah Code § 63G-27–201 — like HB261 Equal Opportunity Initiatives mentioned above – was not neutral but reflected the political agenda of its conservative lawmakers. A concrete example is the fact that Utah is a leader among “anti-ESG states”; that is, states attempting to prohibit their investment portfolios from including factors weighted toward ethical environmental, social and governing considerations.
Alumni at the University of Chicago called ideas similar to Randall’s a “shield” in a May 7 letter to administrators threatening to pull their support of the university:
“As alumni, we are familiar with the University of Chicago administration’s practice of using the 1967 Kalven Report as a shield to claim ‘neutrality’ in the face of ‘controversial issues.’ Such ‘neutrality’ often belies monetary investment and the University’s unwillingness to jeopardize them, …”
“Time and time again, the University of Chicago has demonstrated that what it really values is not neutrality but profit.”
A recent Forbes article goes further, exploring possible consequences that adopting neutrality on touchy issues could have on academic credibility. President Christopher I Eisgruber at Princeton suggested compromise of sorts, “institutional restraint”:
“Rather than a blanket rule against institutional statements on controversial topics, an alternative endorsed by Princeton University is institutional restraint, where, on certain topics the presumption against commenting on social, moral, or political topics can be outweighed by the need to reaffirm essential ethical or moral commitments.”
As political pressure mounts on universities worldwide, UofU might not be able to dismiss concerns of protesters as glibly as it has in recent months. In February the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP), a UK-based rights group, issued a legal notice to Trinity College Cambridge warning that its investments could make it potentially complicit in Israeli war crimes, according to a report published by Middle East Eye.
The ICJP indicated in its legal notice that “officers, directors and shareholders at the college may be individually criminally liable if they maintain their investments in arms companies that are potentially complicit in Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
Trinity cut its investments in Israel’s largest arms company, Elbit Systems, which produces 85 percent of the drones and land-based equipment used by the Israeli army.
Protesters affiliated with Mecha seem to understand clearly the horror and long-term geopolitical consequences of more than 37,396 Palestinians having been killed and more than 84,494 wounded in the Israeli military offensive since October 7, with women and children comprising the majority of deaths.
That death toll could be grossly underestimated. According to a letter published by the medical journal The Lancet:
“In recent conflicts, such indirect deaths range from three to 15 times the number of direct deaths. Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death to the 37,396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza.”
And even that could be an undercount.
“If the conflict were to end immediately with 37,396 direct deaths, and the upper bound of 15 indirect deaths per direct death is used, a total death toll of 598,336, or 26 percent of the population, would be expected.”
If nothing else, the quixotic protests in Utah may have heightened awareness somewhat of the scale of the catastrophe inflicted on Gazans from stealth war planes designed and built by Lockheed, paid for U.S. by taxpayers and approved for use with impunity by the Biden administration.
Perhaps a few more Utahns will associate the “sound of freedom” of an F-35 screeching overhead – spewing red, white and blue contrails — during a Ute home game at Rice-Eccles Stadium with the last one heard by thousands of Palestinians.
Police and campus officials, such as the ones at the University of Utah, are tasked with ensuring public safety and protecting public property.
But the law does not require use of brutal force to carry out those tasks. It’s a policy preference. The code cited in the link above implies a fair amount of discretion allowed law enforcers. Under sanctions in violation of overnight camping restrictions, Utah Admin. Code 805–3–3 uses the words “may” but not “shall.”
“1. University students, university staff and university faculty who violate this rule may be subject to disciplinary action pursuant to the applicable policies and procedures of the University of Utah Regulations Library.
“2. Members of the public who violate this rule may be subject to one or more of the following sanctions.”
UofU authorities also are authorized, theoretically at least, to facilitate demonstrators’ ability to communicate their messages. That’s especially true at an educational institution whose core mission, theoretically at least, includes protecting free speech, a free press, the right of assembly and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances.
About 70 UofU instructors — out of a faculty contingent of 4,069: 1,709 tenure-line, 1,982 career-line, 64 visiting and 312 adjunct faculty – seemed to acknowledge that and stuck their necks out a bit.
(Overnight camping, per se, is not illegal at Presidents Circle or other places on campus. And it’s not necessarily illegal to camp out while tailgating before a football game or sleep overnight while waiting in line for tickets to a UofU event. In October, ESPN and overnight campers took over Presidents Circle when it broadcast “College GameDay.” Presumably, ESPN had UofU’s blessing; pro-Palestinian protesters on April 29 did not.)
College life in Utah is not particularly known for its hotbed of takin’-it-to-the-street activism. Erin Alberty at Axios explores why.
Her report cites five possible reasons: Utah’s culture of obedience (mentioned above); relative dearth of student activity outside of class because many students don’t live on campus; police crackdowns, such as the one most recently targeting Mecha; locations of the schools, many of which have limited transit access; and, in the case of recent pro-Palestinian protests, religious and ancestral proximity:
“Of Utah’s 3.3 million people, only about 6,000 are Jewish. Another 9,000 reported Arab ancestry, with fewer than 400 Palestinian descendants, according to census data.”
“While most of the campus protests nationally have been pro-Palestine, Utah’s dominant Mormon heritage is traditionally Zionist, and adherents claim a strong kinship with Judaism.”
“ ‘I would proudly say that compared to all other campuses in America, we are one of the most Jewish-friendly and welcoming universities,’ Rabbi Moshe Nigri, who leads the Chabad on Campus program at UofU, told Jewish News Syndicate in February.”
Were there better, less violent and less expensive ways of resolving the dispute that flared up at the University of Utah? You bet.
Several university administrations are showing the way, including University of California Riverside, Brown University, Northwestern and Rutgers. By sitting down and negotiating peacefully and in good faith with protesters, administrators reached deals and encampments are being peacefully taken down.
Universities that chose a path without police involvement have seen much less tension than those that did.
Evergreen State College, for example, agreed to its student demands, promising to divest from businesses profiting off human rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territories. Students agreed to end their encampment in response.
At Michigan State University, President Kevin Guskiewicz visited the student encampment himself and talked to the protesters about their concerns. He allowed students to continue the protest, so long as they applied for a permit, which the students did and the university granted. As a result, the school has avoided the kind of disruptions seen at UofU and other universities.
Listen up
- The Cranberries, “Zombie”
- Muse, “Psycho”
- Paolo Nutini, “Iron Sky” (short film)
- Beton, “Kyiv Calling” (cover of “London Calling” by The Clash)
- Sinead O’Connor, “Trouble of the World”
- The Clash, “Rock the Casbah”
- Nanci Griffith, “It’s a Hard Life Wherever You Go”
- Pink Floyd, “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2”
- The Doobie Brothers, “Takin’ It to the Streets”
- Green Day, “American Idiot”
- Gil Scott Heron, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”
- Stevie Wonder, “Living for the City”
- Sex Pistols, “God Save the Queen,”
- Rage Against the Machine, “Killing in the Name”
- Bob Marley, “Get Up, Stand Up”
- Marvin Gaye, “What’s Going On”
- Queen, “I Want to Be Free”
- Tom Robinson, “Glad to be Gay (Secret Policeman’s Ball)”
- Peter Gabriel, “Biko”
- James Brown, “Say it Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud”
- Kendrick Lamar, “Alright”
- N.W.A, “F*** Tha Police”
- Sam Cooke, “A Change is Gonna Come”
