Columbia Students Sparked a Global Uprising for Gaza. Police Violence Will Not Stop Our Movement to Free Palestine.

PRESS RELEASE - MAY 1, 2024

HARLEM, NEW YORK, MAY 1, 2024 – On the 207th day of genocide in Gaza, pro-Palestinian student activists struck a decisive blow to Israel by exposing Columbia University’s use of violence to protect their investments in Israel’s vicious assault on Palestinians, after having ignited a global movement hereby dubbed the Student Intifada by Palestinians in Gaza.

The shocking police violence we all witnessed on Columbia’s campus followed the student decision to escalate after the University repeatedly attempted to use force to extract concessions in “negotiations.” On Monday, a group of autonomous protestors took over the university’s historic administrative building on campus without the use of any physical violence and re-named it “Hind’s Hall” in memory of Hind Rajab, a martyred six-year-old Palestinian girl who was violently murdered by the Israeli occupation forces in Gaza. We honor Hind to call attention to Israel’s systemic disregard for Palestinian lives after Israeli soldiers prevented an emergency medical crew from reaching Hind and rescuing her as she sheltered in a car surrounded by the dead bodies of her family, who were murdered by the IOF.

Columbia’s surreal response to the protestors’ nonviolent takeover of Hind’s Hall turned our campus into a war zone. The University called the NYPD to storm campus with militarized police, brutally attacking and arresting over 100 students with multiple hospitalizations. Following the attacks on protestors at Hind’s Hall, the NYPD then removed our peaceful encampment on the lawn, destroying our belongings, tents, artwork, and the community where we have spent the last 13 days sharing meals, praying, and protesting for liberation.

Columbia’s attempt to repress the movement only strengthens our resolve. We are not finished. There is a reason why this student-led movement has garnered unstoppable momentum on campuses worldwide: Because we stand on the right side of history, we stand for humanity, and we will not rest until Palestine is free. The protestors defending Hind’s Hall belong to a rich, beautiful legacy of civil disobedience at Columbia. Indeed, on April 30, 1968, nearly 700 anti-war student protesters at Columbia met the brutal force of state violence for taking over the same building now named Hind’s Hall. On the 56th anniversary of that day (to the very same day of the week), we met the same militarized adversaries with a resolve fiercer than before.

The brave protestors in Hind’s Hall put themselves in harm’s way to force Columbia to divest. In response, Columbia University broke every written and unwritten rule of university norms by inviting a SWAT team and hundreds of armed riot cops, including the vicious Strategic Response Group, to invade Columbia’s classrooms, barricade students and press alike inside their dorms, and brutalize hundreds of us with metal equipment, tasers, flash grenades, and batons. Over 100 students were arrested. At least one student was hospitalized due to injuries from the NYPD. Video footage shows police shoving students to the ground, tasers crackling in the background as our classmates screamed, and a student being thrown down concrete stairs, leaving her unconscious. She was then denied medical care by Columbia.

The world sees you clearly, Columbia. Your only goal, which you will defend at any cost, is to enrich your endowment at the expense of 40,000 Palestinian martyrs and every student in your care. 

We honor the memory of every university in Gaza destroyed by Israel, and we will continue to use our education to speak truth to power. We call on students and faculty worldwide to escalate their protests. To students and their supporters: academia is meant to advance our understanding of humanity... with Gaza as our metric we call on you to resist this militant, war making status quo. You must create your own campus agitations. University business cannot continue as usual amidst a genocide. Rest assured that history will absolve many of us, but certainly not all of us.

And to every professor who has expressed shock at the events of last night: if you do not take action to demand divestment and an end to police presence on campus by withholding your labor, you too are complicit. You must do more than make statements. You must strike. Do not grade exams. Do not teach classes. Our universities which put profit over life must grind to a halt until our demands are met: Divestment, disclosure, an end to campus militarization, and amnesty for all. The student revolution will help free Palestine within our lifetime.