Auraria Campus, Denver
Report by James Radek
A protest encampment in solidarity with Palestine was established on Thursday, April 25 on Denver’s Auraria Campus, which is home to the University of Colorado Denver, Metropolitan State University, and Community College of Denver. The camp was set up during a 100-person rally organized by the Students for a Democratic Society and the Colorado Palestine Coalition. Students chanted, “Disclose, divest, stop hiding behind your desk!” and issued demands to divest from corporations that operate in the Zionist state and end study abroad there, among other things.
Our comrade Z from Bread and Roses Legal Center has been heavily involved with organizing the encampment, and has represented it in negotiations with the administration of the three schools. Not knowing who they were dealing with, the administrators initially tried to get Z to tell the students to pack it up. Z told them the campus’s anti-camping rules were a response to a 2003 protest encampment Z organized against the Iraq War. What a reveal!
Since the beginning, student negotiators have been courageous and implacable in the face of all the pressure the schools and state can muster. Jared Polis, Colorado’s Zionist, near-billionaire governor, got involved in the negotiations between administrators and protesters. At one point, administrators offered to donate $15,000 to the Red Cross if they’d end the protest and the students laughed them off.
At one point early on, someone led the famous Assata Shukur chant. It was the first time we’ve heard “It is our duty to fight for our freedom…” at a Palestine solidarity action. It was a good way to connect this mass movement to the previous one that rocked the nation, the Black Lives Matter movement.
On Friday, April 26, police attacked the encampment, arresting 44 protesters and brutalizing many more. Two hundred and fifty students and other protesters put up a fierce defense against over a hundred cops from the Auraria Police, Denver Sheriff Department, and Denver Police. Protesters encircled those seated to obstruct the attack, but the pigs repeatedly charged through the line to drag arrestees to the sheriffs’ bus.
This resulted in rugby-like scrums, with protesters and cops pushing each other and fighting over the arrestees. There were no successful de-arrests that we know of — despite valiant resistance, the cops had their way with us.
Cops manhandled protesters in plain view of legal observers from the National Lawyers Guild. The crowd chanted, “Get these fascists off our campus!” and “Get your hands off our kids!” As they were carted off to jail, many arrestees had big smiles on their faces, knowing they were on the right side of history.
Students and other protesters put up a fierce defense against the police. Protesters encircled those seated to obstruct the attack, but the pigs repeatedly charged through the line to drag arrestees to the sheriffs’ bus. This resulted in rugby-like scrums, with protesters and cops pushing each other and fighting over the arrestees.
Two members of Denver Communists got thrown to the ground by cops. One got grabbed and thrown to the pavement by a Denver Police officer. Another — a 5’2”, 100-pound woman — got plowed into by a Denver Police corporal charging like an offensive lineman.
Protesters threw water and water bottles at the cops as they dragged off our comrades. “Stay hydrated, pigs!” Cops got pushed, tripped, and pelted by flying tamales too! Of course, there were “peace police” among us who scolded the more militant protesters, but they only got shouted down for their dumb moralizing against “violence.”
As soon as the police left, the crowd ignored the misguided instruction of organizers with the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), who argued we should march to the jail. Instead the crowd immediately rebuilt the camp. The police came back in force hours later, but ended up backing down, probably due to the rain making another attack more dangerous for them.
On sundown that day, Jewish activists celebrated Passover with matzah and wine under threat of imminent arrest.
At another point that same day, organizers invited a couple of Democrat state representatives to speak (and campaign for reelection). Later, Denver’s mayor, Mike Johnston, also a Democrat, walked into the camp with an entourage of his police thugs. He promised no more arrests if the camp was dismantled in the next 30 minutes. Nobody fell for it of course. Our crew shouted him down before he could get much further: “Democrats are over!,” “Free our prisoners!,” “Shame on you!,” and “This guy is the boss of the cops, why are we letting him speak?!” Then half the camp chased him off campus.
Props to Housekeys Action Network Denver in particular for calling Johnston out on his fake-ass, non-existent migrant-assistance program.
On the day of the arrests, the dormitory facing the camp was locked down by campus administrators under the pretense of protecting students from what they called “civil unrest.” In reality, administrators clearly did this to prevent more students from joining the protest. Under threat of expulsion if they left the building, students watched from their dorm rooms and common areas for hours. They displayed signs in their windows that said, “Stay strong,” “Free Palestine,” “We support,” “Ceasefire,” “Divest now,” and “GAZA” spelled out in sticky notes.
All 44 arrestees are now out of jail. All were charged with trespassing, some with slightly more serious charges like resisting arrest and interference, and two with assault of a police officer.
A few days later, 50 Zionists rallied a few hundred yards from the encampment, at the Golda Meir House Museum. The rally was called by the Jewish National Fund, Israeli American Council, StandWithUs, and Chabad of Auraria Campus, and was protected by the cops.
The encampment made no effort to assemble in opposition to the Zionists. While it is well-known among anti-fascists that we should demonstrate our ferocity, fearlessness, and superior numbers to our enemies, the crowd at camp has not been politically prepared for that.
In fact, quite the opposite — the local movement has been constrained by seven months of aggressive marshaling against even just impolite words toward Zionists and the police.
By contrast, we in Denver Communists have for years operated on the premise that not confronting fascists is more dangerous than confronting them. If we allow them to operate unopposed, they won’t be weak for long. The best defense is a good offense!
When their rally wrapped, 15 Zionists marched on the encampment. Organizers instructed the crowd not to engage with them, but to link arms and encircle the inner tent complex, effectively neutralizing our side in the confrontation.
The Zionists were allowed to celebrate the genocide of Gaza almost entirely unopposed, mocking us, waving Israeli and US flags, and singing and dancing around the camp’s perimeter. Only a handful of pro-Palestine protesters followed them around and heckled them.
The Zionists’ flyer used a photo of last week’s Zionist rally at UCLA that later precipitated an hours-long, violent attack against UCLA’s Gaza solidarity encampment. They were clearly inspired and emboldened by that fascist mob, though they haven’t been able to field the forces to perpetrate similar violence against the Denver camp.
Binding our own mouths and hands with respectability politics and the “peaceful protester” aesthetic only makes our side more vulnerable.
We have been proud to participate in and defend the camp (and enjoy political conversations over hummus and gyros) alongside our comrades in the Colorado Palestine Coalition, Jewish Voice for Peace, About Face: Veterans Against the War, Climatique, and Coffee Revolution, plus a bunch of our unaffiliated anarchist homies.
In recent days, the camp has gotten more organized and structured, and the camp has expanded in size greatly. Students have set up canopy tents and multi-tent complexes for study, medics, food, prayer, and childcare. There is talk of the camp being the largest in the country, when measured by footprint and number of tents (60+), and that seems plausible.
It has a shot at being the longest-lasting too, since in recent days Denver Police have made it clear they won’t try to disperse it again. If police repression is indeed off the menu for the time being, vigilante violence may become the more pressing concern.
Much love and solidarity to all who are standing up against the genocide of Gaza, against the police, and against the school administrators and government officials deploying them against protests that should be protected by the first amendment. When this whole sick system is against you, you know you’re on the right track.
May the student intifada spread and continue — until Palestine is liberated!
Columbia University, New York
Report by Koya Nakata
I was able to enter Columbia University and visit the Gaza solidarity encampment in my capacity as a media worker for a Japanese television news network.
My first visit was on April 26, when the encampment was almost at the two-week mark, and long after many other encampments had been galvanized due to the brutalities inflicted upon the Columbia site by the New York Police Department. I was afforded a brief two-hour visitation period to film and document the goings-on; I had previously asked for more time, but the university media liaison emphasized that there was “no debate” on the matter. As such my observations are necessarily a condensed version of what I may otherwise have been able to see.
One of my initial remarks to myself was about how organized the entire encampment was. At the gates to the encampment — set up by the students and guarded by Columbia faculty in bright orange hi-vis vests — there was a set of guidelines for those who wished to participate in the movement. The rules were set up to ensure the longevity and stability of the encampment itself, with a particular focus on the privacy and protection of the participating students. They threaded the needle of discipline and good faith (never an easy task at protests, especially when the concentrated force of professional malice is pointed towards them), and impressed upon me the speed and thoroughness with which these students had congealed towards organized struggle.
At a time when the enemy does not hesitate to manufacture obvious falsehoods about the movement, the students at Columbia had understood with an impressive quickness not to indulge those seeking to bridge the massive gap between lies and the truth with an out-of-context soundbite.
This discipline and focus were, of course, not limited to the written guidelines posted at the camp entrance. In accordance with my position, I asked a number of students and graduates to speak on-camera about the encampment and the goals embedded within. While off-the-cuff rambling and random interjections from a wide variety of people present is the norm at spontaneous protests, what I encountered at Columbia was a tightly-knit and disciplined core of students keenly aware of the abilities and drive of the mainstream press to present them as unreasonable, sloppy, and violent. Most whom I called out to responded with a brisk “no comment” before turning away, while one of their contemporaries reminded them not to speak to the press.
At a time when the enemy does not hesitate to manufacture obvious falsehoods about the movement, the students had understood with an impressive quickness not to indulge those seeking to bridge the massive gap between lies and the truth with an out-of-context soundbite.
I saw perhaps the most useful implementation of such policy when I realized that another member of the press allowed inside (there were quite a few of us) was a right-wing provocateur who had made appearances at all sorts of leftist protests to rile up however many participants they could into serving their reactionary propaganda interests. The students immediately identified the man and his lackey as the shit-stirrers they were, and spread between themselves the warning not to engage with them as if the word were lightning itself. The keen eye and level of coordination involved was more than enough to convince me of the strength with which the students had inoculated themselves against the right-wing agitation seeking to undermine the cause.
That the students had a designated media-liaison group, too, should be recognized as an extension of their messaging discipline. In addition to holding press conferences in which they laid out their own demands while directing attention towards the intractability of Columbia’s administration, they also made sure that the voices being heard by the news media were those that had specifically undergone media training so as to prevent deviation from the core messaging of the group itself. They put their demands — disclosure, divestment, and amnesty — front and center of every interview to hammer home the concrete and material nature of their involvement and objectives.
I’ve seen many protest marches and rallies — for example, during the 2020 George Floyd rebellion — in which a portion of participants were clearly more interested in fame than their professed goals; this was not one of them. Many at Columbia emphasized that they were simply putting into practice what they had learned in class, to stand against injustice and atrocity like their peers had done against the Vietnam War and South African apartheid. They were not chasing clout, but pursuing justice.
I also observed that the overall atmosphere of the encampment — at least at this juncture — was overwhelmingly peaceful. I heard calls for Muslim prayer while at the encampment, and a number of students interviewed were themselves Jewish. Those interviewed who were asked about accusations of antisemitism emphasized that they were against bigotry of all kinds, and the Jewish students placed particular emphasis on their opposition to the new Nakba being conducted in their names as Jews. Never once did I or anyone around me feel in danger.
The second visit was from a bit of a distance away as compared to the first. By the time we returned on April 30, the university had shut down all campus entrances to everyone, aside from essential staff and students who had specific business on campus. My observations are thus limited to what I witnessed from outside.
As with the first visit, the messaging discipline of students remained clear. Our crew managed to interview a student whom I’d seen previously at the encampment but had not had a chance to ask about his thoughts. His answers remained much the same as earlier, however. He clearly articulated the demands of Columbia students against Zionist apartheid and, more narrowly, those who had occupied Hinds Hall (formally known as Hamilton Hall but renamed in honor of Hind Rajab, the Palestinian child who was cruelly murdered by the IDF in February).
The interview took place while protesters from outside campus chanted “One, two, three, four, open up the prison doors! Five, six, seven, eight, open up the campus gates!” and a great many other chants calling for Palestinian liberation. That the students were not cowed by the bureaucratic machine of the corporation known as Columbia University was heartening. At one point during the chanting, I witnessed a student emerge onto the roof of Hinds Hall to proudly wave the Palestinian flag even as an NYPD drone buzzed ominously overhead.
At one point, we did regrettably have to interview an Israeli Zionist student to ensure our footage made it to broadcast. He spewed the same old litany of excuses and half-truths to justify his position — “I agree that Palestinians should be able to live in peace, but these students are calling for the mass murder of all Jews,” and so on — and attempted to frame himself as somehow reasonable and above the chaos he sneered at below.
Egregiously enough, he even attempted to claim that most Israelis did not support the ongoing massacre the IDF was undertaking within Gaza. What gall!
It was not long before another Israeli interrupted the interview and corrected the student. The latter called out the brazen Zionist lie of reluctance when committing war crimes, pointing out that the vast majority of Israelis supported the horrors of Gaza at this very moment, before disappearing further into Upper Manhattan. While I am sure the latter was not a highly representative show of Israeli sentiment, it does seem as if the vision is less unified than what the ruling class wish to portray.
The University of Washington and Seattle University, Seattle
Report by Steve Leigh
Since the start of the wave of student encampments across the US and around the world, the Palestinian liberation movement has received a new jolt of energy. In Seattle, after some disagreement on timing, an encampment at the University of Washington was launched on Monday, April 29.
So far, there has been no serious repression from campus police, the Seattle police force, or Zionists. Students are set up on the Quad, an open area between some of the main classroom buildings. Campers engage with and chant to other students passing by. Passers-by often express support, and sometimes join in. The encampment has received widespread community support.
The students are demanding that the university 1) divest from Israel and all genocide profiteers; 2) cut ties with Boeing; and 3) end the repression of pro-Palestinian faculty and staff.
The Seattle University administration should study history: it was repressive regulations like these that caused the massive Free Speech movement at the University of California at Berkeley in 1964, which in turn sparked a widespread national student movement.
The actions at UW have in turn inspired students at other institutions. On May 2, students at Seattle University, a Jesuit-run school, held a rally at a public park across the street from the campus. Three hundred enthusiastic students turned up.
The decision was made to rally in the park because of the repressive regulation of demonstrations on campus. The administration requires a 48-hour notice for any rally, and often delays granting approval. The administration also requires pre-approval of any outside speaker at a rally. These regulations make a legal rally on campus in response to current events nearly impossible.
The SU administration should study history: it was repressive regulations like these that caused the massive Free Speech movement at the University of California at Berkeley in 1964, which in turn sparked a widespread national student movement.
The rally was raucous, determined, and inspiring. Students at SU have organized in support of Palestine since October 7 and before. They have put three demands on the university: 1) cut all ties to the Boeing corporation and other war profiteers; 2) issue a clear statement against the genocide; and 3) repeal the repressive regulations against student organizing.
The students have regularly raised these demands with the administration with little response. The President of SU, Eduardo M. Penalver, has said that despite being a Catholic university, as an educational institution SU is not bound by the Catholic Church’s political positions — even the Pope’s call for a ceasefire. Tellingly, the administration does follow Catholic policy on other issues — it tries to prevent abortion-rights advocacy on campus for example.
The demonstration had widespread student support. Speakers came from the Black Student Union, the Muslim Student Association, the Palestinian Youth Movement, and the student government. Since SU is a Catholic university, the speakers stressed the immorality of the administration’s position. They focused on the hypocrisy of a Catholic school not following Catholic morality. They also highlighted President Panalver’s general statements in support of academic morality while in practice supporting genocide. The students noted that support for immoral positions often hides behind “academic neutrality.”
In spite of the administration’s intransigence, the students are not discouraged! They promised to keep up the struggle and said they will keep coming back until the university changes its policy. At the end of the rally, many of the students went to the UW encampment to show their solidarity and support.
University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
Report by Jim Poe
Last week I paid a visit to the Gaza solidarity encampment at the University of Sydney — the first encampment outside North America, and the second outside the US, after the University of Toronto. The encampment, an initiative of Students for Palestine, a coalition that includes our comrades in Socialist Alternative Australia, had been going for eight days at that point; it’s now been over two weeks. I was told that there were a few dozen students camping at that time.
In the wake of Sydney Uni, encampments have also sprung up at Melbourne University, Monash University (also in Melbourne), the University of Queensland (UQ) in Brisbane, the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, and the University of Wollongong. Student protesters at other universities in this region, including Macquarie University in Sydney’s north, are using the Sydney Uni encampment as a hub instead of spreading out their numbers.
The Sydney Uni camp was in good spirits when I visited on a balmy autumn evening, though the students were scrambling to find wet-weather gear as days of rain were about to set in. Along with the Palestinian flags and the calls to “Free Gaza” spraypainted on the tents, many signs and slogans connected Palestine to the struggles of Indigenous Australians. The Muslim Students Association had just joined the encampment; several of them were praying on the green as I arrived at sunset.
In contrast to most universities in the US, the administration of Sydney Uni is taking a relatively hands-off approach to the encampment. Led by vice-chancellor Mark Scott, their official messaging has affirmed the right to protest and assemble, and they’ve resisted calls from Zionist groups and the right-wing Liberal Party to dismantle the camp.
This is strategic as it allows the university to seem tolerant and avoid the optics of cops arresting and brutalizing young unarmed people like we’ve seen in the US. It would seem university leadership are hoping the students will lose steam, get tired of sleeping outside in the chilly, rainy autumn weather and go home.
Despite these positives, Scott is no friend of the protesters; he’s paternalistically taken them to task for infractions such as incidental graffiti and blocking traffic, suggesting they are unruly and irresponsible.
The Sydney Uni leadership has been magnanimous about the right to protest and assemble, and have resisted calls from Zionist groups and the right-wing Liberal Party to dismantle the camp. This is strategic as it allows them to seem tolerant and to avoid the optics of cops arresting and brutalizing young unarmed people like we’ve seen in the US.
More important than Scott’s attitude towards the encampment is his institution’s involvement in Israeli apartheid. Like many major universities around the world, Sydney Uni has ties to arms manufacturers, including Thales and Raytheon, that supply Israel. As is the case with the movement everywhere, a key demand of the students is that Sydney Uni disclose and divest from all their ties to Israel and the arms industry. Scott has steadfastly refused to address these demands or to meet with the protesters.
Despite the lack of a police presence or active repression from the uni, the encampment has faced some stiff external pressure. There have been increasing attacks in the right-wing and centrist media — the usual smears about antisemitism and supporting terrorism.
The Labor prime minister Anthony Albanese reportedly told a group of rabbis that the protesters are “Trots” who are “ignorant of Middle East history.” Just as Joe Biden has done in the US, Albanese has suggested the protesters are antisemitic and that “students must feel safe in class.” These are irresponsible and dangerous statements from Australia’s supposedly progressive leader, especially considering Jewish protesters are part of the Sydney Uni encampment, just as they are nearly everywhere.
Most disgustingly, Randa Al-Fatah, an academic from Macquarie University in Sydney’s north, has been vilified and targeted in the media for leading some schoolchildren in a chant of “Intifada, intifada!” at the encampment.
To their credit, the Greens party — a much stronger opposition party than their counterparts in the US, with numerous seats in state and federal parliaments — has been vocal in their support of the encampment. The Greens’ politics are an eclectic mishmash, but they’ve been surprisingly good on Palestine since October; they’ve supported and spoken at the weekly mass rallies and have called for a ceasefire and a free Palestine in the federal parliament.
Last Friday, a group of Zionists organized a counter-demonstration against the encampment, and Students for Palestine broadcast a callout for support. Significantly, two nights before, a handful of Zionists had raided the camp at Monash in the middle of the night, harassing and yelling at protesters and shaking their tents. The terrifying scenes of Zionist thugs rampaging at UCLA were on everyone’s minds too, of course.
At Sydney Uni things were much more under control. In a truly inspiring mobilization, hundreds of comrades and other supporters showed up in the rain to defend the camp, forming a bloc in front of the tents, led by Jewish anti-Zionists. But the counter-demo was kept at a distance of hundreds of meters from the camp by campus security, and no trouble occurred. The Zionists were quite outnumbered by the pro-Palestine bloc, as they are virtually everywhere they rally in support of genocide.
I returned to the encampment a week after my first visit, and was delighted to see it had grown greatly in size and footprint, with many more tents spreading out around the grounds. The tents were better-protected from the weather, and stocks of food and supplies were well-organized.
The protesters were busy hosting a teach-in and drying out their gear in the autumn sunshine after a week of rain, which some admitted was tough going. One comrade from Socialist Alternative told me they felt that the Zionist rally on Friday had in fact galvanized many more students to join the camp. Another said that despite the sometimes sharp differences in politics among the coalition, there’s a lot of comradely agreement and cooperation in organizing the camp and the protests.
With the encampment movement entrenching itself here, and at least five new encampments being established in the UK this week, it’s clear the student intifada has just begun despite the vicious repression and the closing of many camps in the US. The stakes are very high indeed: Gazans have affirmed again and again that the encampments are what is giving them hope as Israel prepares to invade Rafah. Fortunately we are seeing a generation of student activists who understand those stakes and are willing to take action and put themselves on the line.
Photo by Chelsea Duncker
