Police enter an encampment set up by pro-Palestinian demonstrators on the UCLA campus Thursday, May 2, 2024, in Los Angeles. Photo / AP
Police enter an encampment set up by pro-Palestinian demonstrators on the UCLA campus Thursday, May 2, 2024, in Los Angeles. Photo / AP
Police have arrested more than 2000 people during pro-Palestinian protests at college campuses across the US in recent weeks, according to a tally by Associated Press.
Demonstrations — and arrests — have occurred in almost every corner of the nation. But in the past 24 hours, they’ve drawn the most attention at the University of California, Los Angeles, where chaotic scenes played out when officers in riot gear surged against a crowd of demonstrators.
Hundreds of protesters at UCLA defied orders to leave, some forming human chains as police fired flash-bangs to break up the crowds.
At least 200 people were arrested, said Sgt. Alejandro Rubio of the California Highway Patrol, citing data from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Rubio said those arrested were being booked at the county jails complex near downtown Los Angeles. UCLA police will determine what charges to bring.
Later Thursday morning, workers removed the barricades and dismantled the protesters’ fortified encampment. Bulldozers scooped up bags of trash and tents. Some buildings were covered in graffiti.
Police advance on demonstrators on the UCLA campus on Thursday. Photo / AP
Tent encampments of protesters calling on universities to stop doing business with Israel or companies they say support the war in Gaza have spread across campuses nationwide in a student movement unlike any other this century.
The demonstrations began at Columbia University on April 17, with students calling for an end to the Israel-Hamas war, which has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the Health Ministry there. Israel launched its offensive in Gaza after Hamas militants killed about 1200 people, mostly civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages in an attack on southern Israel on October 7.
California Highway Patrol officers poured into the UCLA campus by the hundreds early on Thursday. Wearing face shields and protective vests, they held their batons out to separate them from demonstrators, who wore helmets and gas masks and chanted: “You want peace. We want justice.”
For hours, officers warned over loudspeakers that there would be arrests if the crowd of more than 1000 did not disperse. Protesters and police shoved and scuffled as officers encountered resistance. With police helicopters hovering, the sound of flash-bangs pierced the air. Police pulled off protesters’ helmets and goggles as they made arrests.
Police methodically ripped apart the encampment’s barricade of plywood, pallets, metal fences and dumpsters, then pulled down dozens of canopies and tents. The number of protesters diminished through the morning, some leaving voluntarily with their hands up and others detained by police.
The law enforcement presence and continued warnings contrasted with the scene on Tuesday night, when counter-demonstrators attacked the pro-Palestinian encampment, throwing traffic cones, releasing pepper spray and tearing down barriers. Fighting between the two sides continued for hours before police stepped in. No one was arrested, but at least 15 protesters were injured. Authorities’ tepid response drew criticism from political leaders, Muslim students and advocacy groups.
By Wednesday afternoon, a small city sprang up inside the reinforced encampment, with hundreds of people and tents on the quad. Demonstrators rebuilt the makeshift barriers around their tents while state and campus police watched.
Some protesters said Muslim prayers as the sun set, while others chanted “we’re not leaving” or passed out goggles and surgical masks. They wore helmets and headscarves, and discussed the best ways to handle pepper spray or tear gas as someone sang over a megaphone.
The crowd grew as the night wore on and as more officers poured on to campus.
Ray Wiliani, who lives nearby, said he went to UCLA on Wednesday evening to support the pro-Palestinian demonstrators.
“We need to take a stand for it,” he said. “Enough is enough.”
California Governor Gavin Newsom denounced the delayed law enforcement response on Tuesday and UCLA Chancellor Gene Block promised an investigation. The head of the University of California system, Michael Drake, ordered an “independent review of the university’s planning, its actions and the response by law enforcement.”
“The community needs to feel the police are protecting them, not enabling others to harm them,” Rebecca Husaini, chief of staff for the Muslim Public Affairs Council, said during a news conference Wednesday.
Police advance on pro-Palestinian demonstrators on the UCLA campus Thursday. Photo / AP
Iranian state television carried live images of the police action at UCLA, as did Qatar’s pan-Arab Al Jazeera satellite network. Live images of Los Angeles also played across Israeli television networks.
Israel has branded the protests anti-Semitic, while Israel’s critics say it uses those allegations to silence opposition. Although some protesters have been caught on camera making anti-Semitic remarks or violent threats, protest organisers — some of whom are Jewish — call it a peaceful movement to defend Palestinian rights and protest the war.
President Joe Biden on Thursday defended the students’ right to peaceful protest but decried the disorder of recent days.
On Thursday, California Republican leaders blasted university administrations for failing to protect Jewish students and allowing protests to escalate into “lawlessness and violence”.
They’re calling for the firing of leaders at universities such as UCLA and Cal Poly Humboldt and are pushing for a proposal that would cut pay for university administrators.
“We’ve got a whole lot of people in these universities drawing six-figure salaries and they stood by and did nothing,” Assembly Republican Leader James Gallagher told reporters. “There does need to be accountability.”
Meanwhile, protest encampments at schools across the US were cleared by police — resulting in more arrests — or closed up voluntarily. In New York, those included the City College of New York, Fordham University, Stony Brook University and the University of Buffalo. Others nationwide included the University of New Hampshire in Durham, Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, and Tulane University in New Orleans.
A college professor from Illinois said he suffered multiple broken ribs and a broken hand during a pro-Palestine protest on Saturday at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.
Bystander video shows the arrest of Steve Tamari, a history professor at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. He seems to be moving in to take video or photos of protesters being detained when multiple officers roughly take him down.
Tamari said in a statement Thursday that it was “a small price to pay for Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.” Campus police referred questions to the university’s communications department, which did not respond to a request for comment.
Trash is piled up at the site of a pro-Palestinian encampment which was cleared by police overnight on the UCLA campus. Photo / AP
Upcoming graduations have become a concern.
Florida’s state university chancellor ordered campus presidents to take whatever steps necessary to prevent disruption of ceremonies. At the same time, University of Minnesota officials reached agreement with protesters not to disrupt commencements. Similar agreements have been made at Northwestern University in suburban Chicago and Brown University in Rhode Island.
Meanwhile, a professors group at Columbia University condemned school leadership on Thursday for asking police to remove protesters in what the group called a “horrific police attack on our students”. Officers burst into a building Tuesday, breaking up a demonstration that had paralysed the school.
US college campuses have become a flashpoint, with school leaders facing intense scrutiny over their handling of allegations of anti-Semitism and the right to free speech. The presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania resigned following questions at a congressional hearing about whether calls on campus for the genocide of Jews would violate the school’s conduct policy.
