Even after UC Berkeley officials reached a deal with student leaders of the university’s long-standing pro-Palestinian encampment, a group of protesters took over an abandoned building on campus Wednesday, and some were subsequently arrested.
Protesters occupied Anna Head Alumnae Hall, a boarded-up building on campus that they unofficially renamed in honor of a Palestinian child killed this year during Israeli military operations in Gaza. The takeover of the building began Wednesday, a day after protesters removed their tents from one of the nation’s longest and largest encampments following an agreement with university officials.
About 24 hours after the group occupied the building – dropping Palestinian banners and flags from windows and pitching tents outside – police in riot gear from nearly 20 agencies intervened Thursday evening and forced the demonstrators to leave.
Twelve people were arrested, including one enrolled student, UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof said in a statement.
He explained that the confrontation between the police and protesters turned violent when protesters blocked the entrance to the hall with plywood and shields while some used crowbars to beat the police and resist their arrest. No officers were injured because they were wearing helmets, he said. The Times was unable to independently confirm whether crowbars were used to hit the officers.
It was not immediately clear whether any of those arrested had been injured.
Local police and California Highway Patrol officers keep protesters away by setting up barricades in Berkeley.
(Carlos Avila Gonzalez / San Francisco Chronicle)
All 12 were booked into custody on suspicion of burglary, vandalism and conspiracy, Mogulof said. He said additional charges could be added as the University of California Police Department investigates and reviews the video.
Wednesday’s protest action coincided with the 76th anniversary of the Nakba, the Arabic term for “catastrophe,” which refers to the 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were forced from their homes during the 1948 war surrounding the creation of Israel.
Many UC Irvine students also commemorated the history of the day by taking over a building.
A large group surrounded and barricaded a physical sciences classroom on Wednesday, but police intervened much earlier and arrested 47 people after forcing the group off campus and destroying their encampment. UCI administrators did not reach an agreement with student protesters like Berkeley officials.
There, university officials almost immediately called the building takeover, as it unfolded, an “active crime scene.”
“This is not nonviolent civil disobedience,” Mogulof said, adding that protesters were “vandalizing a dangerous, boarded-up, fire-damaged building.”
University officials tried to draw a distinction between the protesters with whom administrators reached a deal Tuesday and the group that took over the abandoned building Wednesday.
As part of Tuesday’s Berkeley deal, Chancellor Carol Christ said she would launch a discussion on the university’s investments in and possible divestment from arms companies, and that she would publish a letter calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. The move brought the university in line with at least four other universities in the state and several others across the country that have reached agreements with activists to end on-campus encampments that some Jewish students said featured signs and anti-Semitic chants.
But at least one group of pro-Palestinian students this week rejected the university’s distinction between protest groups.
In a “statement of solidarity” with the group occupying the abandoned room, which they renamed “Hind’s House” in honor of Hind Rajab, a 6-year-old Palestinian girl killed during Israeli attacks in Gaza in January, the UC Berkeley Graduate Students for Palestine Justice shared a statement at the protest saying they “reject and condemn attempts to…fragment and divide our movement for Palestine.”
Law enforcement officials meet with protesters as officers move in to remove demonstrators inside UC Berkeley’s Anna Head Alumnae Hall.
(Carlos Avila Gonzalez / San Francisco Chronicle)
“We reject the dichotomy of ‘good protester’ versus ‘bad protester’ and ‘inside’ versus ‘outside,'” the message said, calling on the university administration to avoid responding to the police occupation.
Hours later, dozens of helmeted police officers confronted the protesters, according to photos and videos from the scene.
The arrests in Berkeley were not the only police investigations in the Bay Area this week.
In Oakland, at the University of California president’s office, authorities are investigating recent vandalism and property damage for which a pro-Palestinian group appears to have taken credit.
On Sunday, Oakland police officers responded to the building just after midnight, where they found broken windows and paint on the walls, Oakland police spokesman Paul Chambers said. He said it was being investigated as a hate incident.
Ryan King, a spokesman for the UC President’s Office, confirmed the building was covered in graffiti and had other damage. He declined to comment on the motives for the attack.
An anonymous post Tuesday on a Bay Area blog took credit for the vandalism, saying it was committed “in solidarity with the Palestinian Resistance.”
California Daily Newspapers
