Get off my lawn!
Dozens arrested at University of Virginia as police break up protest camp
Police in riot gear have arrested 25 people and used pepper spray as they broke up a student encampment at the University of Virginia (UVA) in the US city of Charlottesville, according to media reports.
Jim Ryan, the president of the university, said state police were called in after protesters – including individuals unaffiliated with UVA – set up tents on the campus and refused to disperse.
He said attempts to resolve the situation “were met with physical confrontation and attempted assault”, resulting in the police declaring an unlawful assembly and arresting those who “continued to refuse dispersal”.
Seems the tweet has been taken down "Hmm...this page doesn’t exist. Try searching for something else." It was working 10 minutes ago.
Pathetic, leave those kids alone.
‘We won’t stop’: How Columbia’s students etched a new Gaza protest legacy
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/4/we-wont-stop-how-columbias-students-etched-a-new-gaza-protest-legacy
At about 10pm on Monday, April 29, I thought I would call it a night.
My student journalist colleagues and I had stayed late into the night on Columbia University’s campus the previous couple of days, reporting on a story that had grabbed the world’s attention: the pro-Palestine protests and encampment that had inspired similar campaigns in schools across the United States and globally.
As I slung my camera bag on my back and began to leave campus, walking by the camp, I got a tip from a passing protester: “I would stick around till about midnight,” they said. “Maybe go home first, though.” Got it. I went home to charge the backup camera batteries and grab spare memory cards before leaving for campus again.
Back at Columbia, it appeared that more than one of us had gotten the tip. Crowds of student journalists, all of us with matching paper badges and blue tape on our clothes, waited next to the encampment for whatever was to come. Our journalism faculty stood by our side, as they had been doing throughout.
Protesters grouped into “platoons”, and while we didn’t know what to expect, we kept eyes on different corners.
We split up to make sure different spots were covered; a few of us stuck by Pulitzer Hall, the home of Columbia Journalism School, where a small number of protesters had convened, while some others stood ready with cameras and recorders by the encampment.
That is when it all began. Campers began walking their tents off the lawn. One group began chanting. Another at the opposite end of the lawn sang protest hymns. I was with a small cohort of journalists who followed the tents to another small lawn, a clever decoy – whether intended or not – that meant many of us missed the moment, at the opposite end of campus, when protesters entered Hamilton Hall.
Student protesters playing music at the Columbia University encampment in New York City
In my time covering the protest, the sounds at the encampment varied. Some days, you could hear the (Islamic) adhan, or the chants of (Jewish) Passover prayer. Or the sounds of the dumbek (drum) and sharp violins echoing microtonal hymns of Palestinian folk music and classical Andalusian muwashshah. Speakers amplified the melodies of iconic musicians like Abdel Halim Hafez and Fairuz.
Protesters shared donated hot meals – pizzas and samosas, bagels and eggs, sacks of mandarins and tubs of crackers, muffins and cookies spread on a tarp aptly called the “cornucopia”.
One camper had set up a makeshift nail parlour, painting red, white, black and green manicures matching the Palestinian flag. Cardboard “street signs” named the tight spaces between rows of tents “Walid Daqqa Road”, after the Palestinian novelist and activist who died of cancer in April, while in Israeli custody.
In the lawn’s centre, organisers routinely updated a whiteboard to reflect the day’s programmed activities: Dhuhr prayer and Shabbat dinner, with jazz in the mix, too.
Continued here https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/4/we-wont-stop-how-columbias-students-etched-a-new-gaza-protest-legacy including the police raid on Hamilton Hall and aftermath.
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