In spite of arrests, no rest until divestment 🇵🇸

After a hundred peacefully students are brutally arrested, the students and the community have streamed into campus to support our demands.

32 hours after the Gaza Solidarity Encampment shook the Trustees of Columbia University to their core, the New York Police Department at the invitation of Minouche Shafik violently arrested over 100 students peacefully protesting for divestment from genocide.

These arrests follow a week of complete militarization of our campus, harrowing disciplinary actions against students, and an enforced press blackout on campus. Students poured out of classrooms in support of the peaceful protestors, and organized a spontaneous solidarity sit-in in the opposite lawn. The Butler Lawns are “designated zones for free speech,” by Columbia’s own policies, and we insist on exercising our right to political expression.

Columbia may arrest our organizers; it may tear down our encampments; but it cannot dampen our commitment to divestment of all finances, including the endowment, from corporations that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide, and occupation in Palestine; and fully discloses all of Columbia's investments from divest from the genocide.

WE CALL ON ALL COLUMBIA STUDENTS AND ALL HARLEM AND NYC CITY COMMUNITY TO GATHER AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY TO SUPPORT THE DEMANDS OF THE 100+ STUDENTS WHO HAVE BEEN DETAINED.

In addition, we call on you to sign and circulate as widely as possible our petition calling on Columbia to quit repressing and start divesting.