Activity 5

Normally when doing these digital archives , there is usually a separation between me and my thoughts and the people involved. I am not someone who is an activist, and the closest I get to politics is voting. That would've been the case for this archive too, but after reading through almost the entire exhibit, something caught my eye that I had initially missed. The Irvine 11, which was a subsection of "Student Identities Today." It involved the Muslim community and the club that I'm involved in today, the Muslim Student Union. It just was surprising to me that I've never heard of this before even though it held relevance to my own identity. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of others in the MSU also didn't know about it. That being said, it has a very large footprint on the internet, with a size-able wikipedia article as well as articles written about it in the OC register (2) and LA times (3)

Having read a lot of the sources involved, including watching video evidence of the documentary (4) and the original protest (5), I did form my own opinion on it. Legally, I do think the students would've been guilty of disturbance of a public meeting, and they should've protested outside the building instead of interrupting Michael Oren, but it's really obvious that the law was selectively enforced against them. The documentary and Amicus Curae briefs from Center For Constitutional Rights and Jewish Voice for Peace mentioned numerous previous protests by other groups, Muslim and non-Muslim that didn't result in similar disciplinary action (6), so it's kind of disappointing to me that Orange County and UCI would've done something like this against the Muslim Student Union. A lot of the things that Osama Shabaik mentions the district attorney did bordered on harassment and more to send a m public display against Muslims who wanted to protest Israel rather than an actual pursuit of justice.  I feel like had this been any other protest it would not have gotten the same amount of traction or punishment.