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US pro-Gaza campus protests double down despite summer break, crackdown

Friday, 07 June 2024 3:32 PM [ Last Update: Friday, 07 June 2024 4:31 PM ]

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators face off against police at the University of California, Santa Cruz, on May 31, 2024. (Via AP)

American student protests against Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza and America’s complicity show no sign of diminishing even as the academic year draws to a close.

Activists across campuses stretching from California to New York are continuing to demand that their schools divest from Israeli companies with ties to the onslaught on Gaza, NBC News reported.

Some protesters, like alumni at Columbia University, have erected new encampments after administrators ordered previous ones torn down.

On Wednesday, more than a dozen protesters at Stanford University in the Bay Area were arrested -- and some immediately suspended from school -- after they briefly took over the president’s office.

Rallies and marches were also held this week at Wayne State University in Detroit and at several University of California locations, including Los Angeles, San Diego and Irvine.

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At Columbia in New York City, alumni pitched tents last Friday in solidarity with students who erected the first protest encampment on a US campus in mid-April. The new tents were taken down on Sunday.

Students at Canada's York University in Toronto established their first protest encampment. Police were called in hours later to dismantle it, organizers said.

This weekend, organizers with the Palestinian Youth Movement expect tens of thousands of young people to descend on Washington to demand a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to US military aid to Israel.

Buses carrying protesters will leave from dozens of cities, and solidarity rallies are planned in several locations across the country for people unable to travel to the nation's capital.

Canadian police use tear gas on pro-Palestinian protesters at McGill University

Police use tear gas to disperse pro-Palestinian protesters gathered at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec.

At Princeton University in New Jersey, where a 10-day hunger strike ended last month, activists continue to organize, recruit and train over the summer break, according to a recent graduate.

These events cap off a tumultuous spring semester marked by widespread student activism, resulting in numerous arrests and threats of academic suspension.

In May, a surge of encampments and building takeovers swept across the US and subsequently globally, as students organized large-scale demonstrations demanding that their educational institutions sever ties with companies associated with the Israeli regime.

The University of California, Los Angeles, experienced a particularly violent police response to a student protest encampment in early May, during which dozens of people were arrested, tear gassed or hit by rubber bullets.

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