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SvennoJ on 28 April 2024
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Student protests show ‘tide has shifted’ on Palestine

Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian-American activist from New York, told Al Jazeera that the protests at several US universities have demonstrated that the “tide has shifted” within the country and across the world on the issue of Palestine.

“These young people stand in the long tradition of student activism against the war in Vietnam, against South African apartheid, and now for the freedom and justice for the Palestinian people,” she said following an appearance at a pro-Palestine demonstration at Princeton University.

The Brooklyn-based co-founder of Women’s March, however, said that despite the peaceful protests, students are being “brutalised” by law enforcement officers.

“The fact that we are suppressing young people across this country only further emboldens them” to continue their protests, she said, adding that the arrests of students – carried out by police with the consent of university administrators – shows how the country’s university system is set up to be “beholden to their donors, instead of being loyal to their students”.

Festival-like atmosphere at Emory University in Atlanta

At the moment, it’s less like a protest and more like a festival. We’ve heard music from Bob Marley and Stevie Wonder played here. We are seeing people here with their dogs.

It’s a very much a positive gathering, and that’s very much by design. This is not something where they want the police to be involved. They don’t want any more arrests. They want people to be here in a positive way projecting their thoughts to the people of Gaza, and doing what they can in any way to help.

That would be a complete contrast to what we saw on Thursday in exactly the same location, where we saw officers from Emory University, Atlanta police and state troopers arrest some 28 people, including students and faculty members and professors. There’s a small police presence here now. In fact, it’s very hard to spot a police officer here at the moment. You really have to look hard because they are keeping their distance.

We are told by organisers that they have been given until midnight before any kind of police action takes place.

Police in ‘watching mode’ at protest at GW University in Washington DC

Over the past 24 hours, the fence around the encampment in the university square here at George Washington University in the US capital has been sealed. Nobody is being allowed into the area – this is… make sure it doesn’t get bigger than it is.

Now, outside the encampment, along a street running along the university square, more tents have been pitched. The police have blocked both sides of this road running past the university square, but they say they will not interfere, that they will just stay and monitor because the demonstration has been peaceful and there has been no vitriolic language.

This is despite the fact that university authorities asked them some 24 hours ago to move in. The police declined to do so. The university authorities have also been threatening to suspend students.

The demonstration remains peaceful and police remain in what is described as a watching mode.



Emory student lays out protesters’ demands

Maysam Elghazali, an organiser of protests at Emory University in Atlanta, said the demonstrating students have three demands.

“Number 1, that Emory disclose all of its financial investments. Number 2, that they divest from all Israeli companies and number 3, that they provide continued amnesty and protection to all the students who were unjustly arrested,” she told Al Jazeera.

Elghazali said a police crackdown on the protest on Thursday, during which dozens of people were arrested, was “very traumatic… completely violent and against completely peaceful demonstrators”.

Dozens arrested from protest at Washington University in St Louis

The St Louis Post Dispatch is reporting dozens of arrests at the Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, as students protesting Israel’s war on Gaza tried to set up an encampment.

The website said the exact number of people arrested was not immediately clear but included the Green Party’s presidential candidate, Jill Stein.

The Missouri chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Missouri) condemned the “heavy-handed response to a peaceful protest”, saying students “must be allowed to exercise their First Amendment rights and to oppose Israel’s genocide, ethnic cleansing and forced starvation in Gaza”.