‘We won’t stop’: how Colombian students left a new legacy of protest in Gaza | Israel War in Gaza News

New York, United States — Around 10pm on Monday, April 29th, I thought I would call it a night.

My fellow student journalists and I had been staying up late at night on the Columbia University campus for the past few days, reporting on a story that caught the world’s attention: the pro-Palestine protests and encampments that have inspired similar campaigns in schools across the UK. . States and globally.

As I slung my camera bag over my back and started to walk off campus, past the camp, I got a tip from a passing protester: “I was going to stick around until about midnight,” they said. “But maybe go home first.”

I understood. I went home to charge the backup camera batteries and grab extra memory cards before heading back to campus.

Back at Columbia, it seemed like more than one of us had gotten the tip. Crowds of student journalists, all of us with matching paper badges and blue ribbons on our clothes, waited near the camp for what was to come. Our journalism faculty was by our side, as it always has.

The protesters were grouped into “platoons” and, although we didn’t know what to expect, we kept an eye on different corners.

We split up to make sure different points were covered; some of us stayed at Pulitzer Hall, home of the Columbia Journalism School, where a small number of protesters had gathered, while others stood at the ready with cameras and recorders near the camp.

That’s when it all started. Campers began removing their tents from the lawn. A group started to sing. Another, at the opposite end of the lawn, sang protest hymns. I was with a small group of journalists who followed the tents to another small lawn, a clever decoy – intentional or not – that caused many of us to miss the moment, on the opposite end of campus, when the protesters entered Hamilton Hall.

When we ran over, dozens of student protesters had gathered to link arms outside the building, which their predecessors had taken over in 1968 to protest the Vietnam War, and in 1985 to demand that Columbia divest itself of companies. linked to apartheid. Africa.

Two of my colleagues were in the middle of the chaos, leaning against the doors, watching as two counter-protesters tried to stop the occupation before they were chased away. Protesters carried metal picnic tables, wooden chairs, trash cans and vases to doorways, where they were zip-tied, effectively forming a barricade.

Two masked individuals appeared from a second-story balcony to cheers and applause. They unfurled a hand-painted sign, “Hind’s Hall,” a reference to the six-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed with her family in their car in January as they tried to escape Israel’s military assault on Gaza.

That night, I fell asleep on the floor of a sixth-floor classroom in Pulitzer Hall to the sound of music, a lone voice amplified by a megaphone, coming from Hamilton Hall: “This joy I have, the world didn’t give it to me.” … the world cannot take that away.”

The final offer

The morning before felt very different. Columbia University’s South Lawn was packed, and the small protest village at the heart of the campus — dozens of tents and tarps that make up the “Gaza solidarity camp” — was buzzing with life, two weeks after its construction.

The protest is rooted in a decades-long movement for the rights of Palestinians in their homeland and to hold Israel accountable for its illegal occupation of Palestinian territories. The current campaign against Israel’s war in Gaza – in which more than 34,000 people were killed – also aims to pressure Colombia to divest from companies linked to Israel, as the university did in the case of apartheid South Africa following similar protests four decades ago. .

During my coverage of the protest, the sounds at the camp varied. Some days, you could hear the (Islamic) adhan, or the chants of the (Jewish) Passover prayer. Or the sounds of the dumbek (drum) and high-pitched violins echoing microtonal hymns of Palestinian folk music and classic Andalusian muwashshah. The speakers amplified the melodies of iconic musicians such as Abdel Halim Hafez and Fairuz.

Protesters shared hot, donated meals — pizzas and samosas, bagels and eggs, bags of tangerines and jars of cookies, muffins and cookies spread out on a tarp aptly called a “cornucopia.”

One camper set up a makeshift nail salon, painting manicures in red, white, black and green to match the Palestinian flag. Cardboard “street signs” named the tight spaces between the rows of tents “Walid Daqqa Road,” in honor of the Palestinian novelist and activist who died of cancer in April while in Israeli custody.

In the center of the lawn, organizers routinely updated a whiteboard to reflect the day’s scheduled activities: Dhuhr prayer and Shabbat dinner, with jazz thrown in as well.

In a corner of the lawn near the main campus promenade, an “art association” was buzzing with protesters painting signs, drawing keffiyeh patterns, decorating and customizing tent spaces.

But that Monday, the campers received a final offer from the university administration under President Nemat “Minouche” Shafik: evacuate now and avoid suspension. The campers defied the order.

And by Monday night, the morning bustle had died down to a hum, then a whisper, before the eruption that culminated in the storming of Hamilton Hall. At the campsite, the zippered doors of empty tents swayed in the breeze. Blankets lay crumpled next to pillows still creased from a nap; a single LED flashlight lit on the floor, a paintbrush covered in dry red and green acrylic was stuck on a paper plate.

It’s a community that student journalists like me at Columbia Journalism School have observed closely for days at a time, unlike the “outside media” who have only been allowed on campus in daily two-hour intervals since the camp was set up. . We were joined by graduate colleagues from student publications including WKCR and Columbia Daily Spectator.

A community that, through increasing attention to its members, tried to emphasize that they were not the story. Signs planted on the lawn read: “All eyes on Gaza.”

But in the 24 hours that followed, the world’s gaze on Colombia would only sharpen.

The attack

Tuesday morning started out strangely calm. The camp was empty except for a few protesters, and Hamilton Hall was drowsy, the only movement coming from a banner reading “INTIFADA” hanging on the side of the building.

Just days earlier, long before the occupation of Hamilton Hall, the Columbia administration had sent out a warning arguing that “bringing back the NYPD at this time would be counterproductive, further inflaming what is happening on campus and drawing thousands of people to our doorsteps.” ”. that would threaten our community.”

The note was received with suspicion by protesters: after all, the university had already called the police to campus for the first time in more than 50 years in April to try to clear the camp. More than 100 students were arrested.

Instead, I heard organizers advise campers to put their belongings in trash bags and write phone numbers on their arms in case of arrest.

On Tuesday night, their apprehension would turn into reality. The NYPD entered the Columbia campus shortly after 9pm on Tuesday (01am GMT on Wednesday).

The students linked arms and sang together in anticipation before the harmonies of “We Will Not Be Moved” merged with the march of hundreds of police officers heading, in formation, toward Hamilton Hall.

Calls over long-range acoustic devices (LRAD) to disperse or face arrest echoed across the campus plaza, all the while weaving in and out of the floating melodies of protest anthems, earworms that anyone on campus has probably already heard. had found. to memorize.

Protesters outside Hamilton braced for arrest. But the officers turned away from them upon arrival and instead turned towards us – spectators and press.

The police officers instructed us to vacate the area. We walked backwards to record everything on video. “It’s easier if you look ahead,” said one police officer. “Turn around so you don’t fall,” another shouted repeatedly in a collective command. “Time to go in,” said another. “Back to your dorms.”

As we stood with our backs against the door of a building at the end of the courtyard where Hamilton was, the doors opened and the police raised their batons, giving one last push until we were all inside. There was a moment of disorientation before we realized where we were: inside a college student dormitory called John Jay Hall.

It is home to the student health center, a dining hall and a late-night restaurant on campus. But we didn’t get to see any of that. While police guarded the lobby doors of the building in front of us, campus security guarded the rest of the building behind us, restricting access to dorm residents.

With about 30 or 40 of us crammed into the small entrance vestibule, ventilation was poor. We wouldn’t make it to the bathroom. Red arrows pointed to the emergency exit, but the doors were blocked by police officers. The phone batteries were running out. And most urgently, for the journalists among us: we couldn’t see Hamilton beyond the bodies of police officers standing in the glass doors of John Jay.

For about three hours, the students kicked in the front doors, leaned on the floor against the wall, and slept with their backpacks as pillows. One student sat cross-legged on the floor, sobbing softly as her friend comforted her.

Three hours passed in that hallway before we were let out, the officers directing us to dorms and buildings whose names or locations they didn’t know. “We know you want to get out of here. We are doing you a favor,” said one.

As I left campus around 1:30 a.m., I passed a crew moving tents from the South Lawn and entered a garbage truck that crushed them on the spot.

The remains

On Wednesday, the tension wasn’t palpable, just disappointment. The campus was quiet, but not calm. It was completely empty. No one other than residents and essential staff – who the journalism faculty made sure we were seen as student journalists – were allowed through the campus gates.

Where the camp once stood, there were only patches of discolored grass shaped like rectangular tent bases.

But the movement seems anything but a ghost; on Wednesday, protesters staged a “light show” on the side of campus, projecting titles on the public side of Hamilton Hall that read “Hind’s Hall Forever.”

Every year, on the eve of exams, students gather to let out what is known as a “primal scream” on campus. On Thursday, they took this tradition to Shafik’s house, shouting outside the door.

On Friday, protesters again lined the street in front of the Columbia gate. And the words still echoed through the neighborhood: “Disclose, disinvest, we will not stop, we will not rest”.