Gaza war protests spread to California campuses, escalating tensions

ARCATA, Calif. —

Pro-Palestinian protesters, demanding divestment from Israel and an end to the country’s military actions in Gaza, set up several new tent encampments at California colleges and universities as tensions escalated on a besieged campus for days.

Police were confronting Gaza war protesters Monday evening at Cal Poly Humboldt, which has been closed for nearly a week as some students occupy campus buildings.

Authorities asked more than 100 protesters to leave, but most stayed. The police threatened to make arrests.

Protesters, some wearing goggles, helmets and makeshift shields, spent the night singing and playing music. At 9 p.m., a police vehicle drove by and announced that he might be targeted with rubber bullets and chemical agents.

Some faculty members, who had been told by the university not to enter campus, crowded just outside to watch. Video released Tuesday morning showed some arrests, but details were unclear.

Cal Poly Humboldt

Protesters occupied Siemens Hall, an academic and administrative building, as well as another building on campus.

Last week, three students were arrested after protesters clashed with law enforcement officers wearing helmets and carrying riot shields who descended on campus.

Encampments have sprung up on the campuses of UC Irvine, UC Riverside, Occidental College, Sacramento State and San Francisco State. They are joining ongoing protests on campuses, including at UCLA and USC.

Protests have intensified at universities across the country. At Columbia University, dozens of protesters took over a building, barricading entrances and displaying a Palestinian flag through a window.

In a statement Monday, Sacramento State President J. Luke Wood said the campus “remains open and fully operational” while protesters camp out in the Library Quad.

“As a public university, we are committed to creating and fostering safer conditions to support student engagement in constitutionally protected activities,” he wrote. University officials, he said, are “currently working to ensure that the campus remains safe and that instruction and other critical operations can continue.”

UC Riverfront

A UC Riverside spokesperson said in a statement that “all campus operations are proceeding as usual.”

Students demanded that universities explicitly recognize the suffering in Gaza.

On Monday, UC Riverside Chancellor Kim Wilcox said in a letter to the campus community that “the suffering in Gaza since the start of this war is unimaginable – more than 30,000 dead, millions displaced and a hunger that borders on the poverty line.” famine.”

“The crisis has affected many people on our campus in personal and profound ways,” Wilcox wrote.

Although the university supports free speech, Wilcox wrote that “speech and activities that disrupt campus operations are not protected.” Large signs and banners will be removed and blocking access to campus sites will not be tolerated, the release said.

University of California, Irvine

At UC Irvine, campus police and local law enforcement were monitoring an encampment set up Monday morning.

A dozen tents stood on the sidewalk between John V. Croul Hall and Rowland Hall. Green barricades surrounded the encampment and signs on the walls read “Free Palestine” and “Disturbed by the encampment? Look away like you’re committing genocide.

Em Wang, a fourth-year student, said the camp was modeled on those used by refugees in Gaza.

“We want all eyes to be on Gaza, and we don’t want our camps to be a distraction from Gaza,” she said.

“We recognize that our educational institutions and universities are complicit in the genocide of Palestine. »

Although officers from the Campus Police Department, Irvine Police Department and the Orange County Sheriff’s Department were nearby Monday afternoon, they mostly did not intervene and were not dressed in protective gear. -riot.

Sarah Khalil, 21, a fourth-year student, said the protesters were willing to stay in the camp as long as necessary so the university could negotiate with them.

“It’s a humanitarian cause, and it’s a genocide that killed more than 30,000 people,” said Khalil, who stressed that she is Palestinian and that her family was forced to leave their country.

The group displayed a banner listing its demands: end funding for “violent extremism,” promise amnesty to student protesters, commit to an academic boycott of Israel and remove what the group calls “Zionist programming “.

Western College

At Occidental College, which has fewer than 2,000 students enrolled, about 60 students set up camp around 4 a.m. Monday, working in the dark to avoid possible campus security problems, the co -organizer Matthew Vickers, diplomacy and global affairs student. .

“We wanted to be as clandestine as possible so as not to be interrupted,” said Vickers, a member of the Western chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.

Dozens of tents occupied the quad in the center of campus. Students lounged on the grass, chatted with friends and worked on laptops under tents. Vickers said campus security officers stopped by Monday morning but were respectful and did not interfere.

In an email to faculty and staff Monday afternoon, Western President Harry J. Elam Jr. said the encampment had “thus far engaged in peaceful protest” and that the college would “remain firm in (its) commitment to ensuring that any dialogue or protest remains. safe and peaceful. »

Vickers said protesters would occupy the space until the college meets their demands, which include divestment from Israel and calling Israel’s military campaign against Gaza genocide.

Protesters at Pitzer College, another small school with about 1,200 undergraduate students enrolled, spent several days in a tent encampment called the “Palestine Solidarity Encampment.”

U.S.C.

At USC, where Los Angeles police arrested 93 people for trespassing last week while clearing an encampment in the center of campus, a reestablished campground was mostly quiet Monday.

Each day at camp begins with a daily briefing and includes classes, teacher-led poetry readings, yoga, and crafts. Volunteers provided enough food for campers to eat three meals a day.

Participants declined to give their names, citing security concerns.

“I think the narrative is that we’re a safety issue or we’re scaring other people, when in reality it’s a place of care and love,” said one participant involved in the USC Divest from Death Coalition. “We are all here because ultimately we believe in humanity.”

Columbia University and elsewhere

In Columbia, protesters locked arms outside Hamilton Hall early Tuesday and carried furniture and metal barricades to the building, one of several occupied during a demonstration for civil rights and against the Vietnam War in 1968 on campus, a video showed. Posts on Instagram shortly after midnight urged people to protect the encampment and join them at Hamilton Hall. A “Free Palestine” banner hung from a window, according to the Associated Press.

Dozens of people were arrested Monday during protests at universities in Texas, Utah, Virginia and New Jersey, while Columbia said hours before the Hamilton Hall takeover that it had begun to suspend students. Columbia canceled its main graduation event.

Times editors Garrison reported from Arcata, Fry from Irvine and Ahn, Peterson and Petrow-Cohen from Los Angeles. The Associated Press contributed to this report.