#8: When You Seize the Campus
On the 29th April 2024, students organised a pro-Palestine encampment at Virginia Commonwealth University. This followed months of demonstrations that had been organised across campus since the previous October. The self-declared Liberated Zone was situated in front of the library, in the centre of campus; it was diverse, well-organised, and calm, with a library, food supplies, and free medical care. As the sun was setting, three kinds of police—campus, city, and state—arrived in vans, carrying guns and wearing riot gear with no reasonable warning or communication from the administration. They tore down tents and violently attacked the students with force and pepper spray, escalating a peaceful non-violent situation into fear and chaos. Thirteen people were arrested, supplies were destroyed, personal property was confiscated and in some cases never returned. Just before returning to campus after the summer, the University implemented a policy update that banned many forms of political expression under the guise of ‘Promoting a welcoming, safe VCU campus’.
Photo: Lili Watkins
Anonymous: Could we begin with introductions and explaining how you became involved in the encampment and student organising across campus?
Selma: My name is Selma. I am a Moroccan American, both my parents are Moroccan, and we’re Amazigh, so Indigenous to North Africa. Growing up Amazigh and part of the Arab world, we understood what occupation was, what apartheid was, by default. We understood the violence of what was going on in Palestine. So, at the start of last year, I was immediately trying to figure out ways to get involved, because there weren't any active political organisations with regard to Palestine on our campus directly at the time. I started attending protests, and then by December, I became involved with another organisation called American Muslims for Palestine (AMP). From there, I was working closely with folks at SJP (Students for Justice in Palestine) on the VCU campus. Since then I've been focused on SJP. Through the time that has passed there's been an increased amount of resentment towards the institution, a lot of anger and frustration about the world, and an understanding of Indigeneity, even in the context of being in the US. I don't know—there’s a lot of dissonance to work through. So it felt almost like an obligation; it wasn't something that was up for debate if I was going to be involved, it was just a matter of how.
Sereen: My name is Sereen, and I'm Palestinian. So my entire life, obviously, that's all I've ever known. My parents did a really good job of raising us—and when I say us, I mean me and my siblings—in a way where we understood from a very young age that Palestinians were under occupation, that Palestine was not free, and that we were under the control of the Zionist entity of Israel. We have been very personally affected by everything going on in Palestine for the past 76 years, rooting all the way back from when my great grandmother was involved in the Nakba and had to help house people who were displaced from other cities in Palestine—because we are originally from Gaza—all the way up until 2014, where I've had fourteen family members killed in an airstrike. Over the past year, we've had over 170 family members murdered by Israel in this ongoing genocide. It's the kind of struggle that's built into your blood; it's not a choice whether to be involved in fighting for liberation or not, it’s your duty and responsibility for your people, and for your family, and for your country. My whole life I've been attending protests, and organising in any way that I can. Whether it was at five years old protesting, whether it was at eight years old running in the Gaza 5k fundraisers that our family did every single year, whether it was organising in high school. I helped organise the first protest that was here in Richmond on October 15th [2023]. I was also in AMP and ended up transitioning into working with SJP since we both cared about the same subject and liberation. So, it's a very personal issue to me. I would still be involved regardless of whether it was personal or not, but it does draw on a bigger connection. It's something that I plan to continue doing because it's built into our DNA and our blood, to continue fighting for our people and to continue in the struggle, until Palestinians get what they deserve.
Link: Okay, I'll go. So my name is Link. I am very White. My family is Appalachian and Greek. I feel that it's kind of the duty of anybody who's White or anybody whose background is related to historical colonialism, to colonising, to take over the duty, like what Sereen was saying, to fight. It's our ancestors' fault, and so it's our duty to heal the wound that we’ve created. I was the cofounder of the [SJP] chapter here, which sounds like a big deal, it really wasn't. It was just me and a friend, Kenza. We got together because we were disheartened that there was no SJP chapter here. There’s a Palestinian student organisation, but it was very culturally focused and we wanted to allow them that space without constantly having to think about the ongoing genocide of their people. We wanted a student-focused way to get involved. This was, as Selma and Sereen were saying, around the time that AMP was starting to organise protests, and we wanted to contribute to that while also believing that AMP wasn't our space (I'm Christian). So we started SJP, which was really scary at the start—we had no idea what we were doing—but we got infinite amounts of help from the community. Richmond is such a wonderful area, and the leftist communities online also helped a lot. I don't have any personal ties to Palestine, I don't have any background reason why I'm involved, but I feel like that shouldn't factor at all into it. I feel like anybody who has any sort of compassion should see this genocide and say I need to be doing something. So that's why I'm here.
Lana: I’m kind of in the same boat as Link, I also don't have any connections to Palestine, and I was very late to the game even learning about it, but I met Noura Erakat, who's a Palestinian activist, and she introduced me to everything. That was in the summer on Nakba Day. Then I read her book and started learning through her and from friends, and then when October [7th, 2023] happened, that's when I started attending protests and going to SJP events. I’ve only just now joined SJP, but I've been going to events over the past year.
Anonymous: Thank you for the introductions. Could you talk a bit about SJP, what it is and what you do?
Selma: SJP is Students For Justice in Palestine. It's a national organisation, and there are around 300 chapters now across the US and internationally. The core goal is dismantling Zionism through the campus space. There are four key principles: anti-Zionism, anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, and anti-normalisation with any Zionist ties. So we try to uphold these principles as best as we can. A big part of this is building community around Palestinian liberation, to educate and spread awareness. At the same time, we aim to create disruption and to shake the university, because we see the university as a key site of knowledge production. We are a part of the university as patrons, and at the same time trying to disrupt it, because we want better—that's the kind of contradiction that we work within.
Sereen: I would agree, you explained that pretty perfectly. Dismantling Zionism needs to happen in our universities, especially because they are built on a myth that they can do no harm. But in reality, a lot of our academic institutions actually fund and support key perpetrators of many global injustices, one of them being the genocide of the Palestinian people. Our University, VCU, has many ties with many companies and a lot of partnerships with people that profit from genocide of the Palestinian people and have ties to Israel. So a lot of what SJP at VCU have been doing is trying to spread awareness through different forms of protest, whether that's a walkout, marches, educating students, tabling, chalking. Our task has been to educate students, and people in general, about the fact that their University is funding something that affects many people in the University itself. It's very clear that University values profit over people. So SJP is trying to bring awareness to that and continuing to fight for justice for everybody, because SJP is not only for the liberation of Palestine, but for collective liberation. There's that very famous saying that says that none of us are free until all of us are free, and I think that is at the root of it.
Link: One of my favourite things is that we centre our events not just at the global scale, not just on the liberation of Palestine, but on how that factors into our community in Richmond. So a lot of our focus is on how we can have events that bring all of that together, through education, through getting a sense of how everybody's there for each other. Even during the most goofy-sounding events where all we're doing is arts and crafts, it's really nice to see that all of these people are here for each other's liberation. Really there's no downside to that, it boosts the movement. So we have a nice balance between events that are more conventional protests, that are also incredibly important, and then the more community-based events, showing the support that is in everybody.
Anonymous: Can I ask—maybe as a segue into what happened at the encampment—about the ways in which you're experiencing the University's suppression of the work that you're doing? I have my experience of that as a member of staff, but how are you experiencing the repression from the University as students? What kind of relationship are you having with the institution?
Link: So I'll talk first about policy, and then Seeren has a lot to say. While we were gone over the summer, the VCU administration decided to create an interim policy that stifled a lot of the ‘expression of students', as they worded it. So one of our main actions to show support and to bring awareness to everybody that was passing was to chalk in the Compass, which is the centre of VCU activity on campus. We had sidewalk chalk and anybody could draw or write anything that encourages the liberation of Palestine. It was a great event. We did it weekly, and so it was very consistent. It was very compelling; every time I walked by I would get emotional, even if I wasn't helping that day. This interim policy directly targeted that; I think the word ‘chalk’ is even specifically mentioned many times. They were not very subtle about who they were targeting, and it stifled a lot of action. It restricted us to a side area called Park Plaza, which is literally beside a dumpster. There was also a policy that restricted the use of masks and hoods, which are everyday things that people wear, for COVID safety, for general sickness safety, and also to be comfortable, to be warm. You know, a hood, that's not anything bad. They were releasing this right after the mobilisation of three police forces against a protesting group, and so it wasn't a coincidence. It wasn't hard to figure out who it was targeting, especially when one of the rules specified no flyers up in these areas; other flyers could stay up without having that selective reinforcement applied, while our flyers were almost immediately taken down.
Sereen: The University has used many different tactics to try to repress voices, whether it is implementing policy changes, banning the most peaceful forms of expression—one of them being chalking, that is in no way permanent and washes away with rain—or whether it's repressing student voices who are just trying to stand up for those who are part of all these injustices. We had an encampment on 29 April, 2024, and had set up a liberation zone. This was a national movement that ended up becoming international; all of these different universities one by one setting up all these different encampments in solidarity with the Palestinian people. We were there with four demands, which were to disclose, divest, defend, and to declare. Disclosing meant that we wanted the VCU to disclose all financial expenditure, which included but wasn't limited to stocks, hedge funds, and investments. Divesting meant to divest from any Israeli partnerships, with companies that profited from genocide of the Palestinian people and partnered with Israel. The third demand was to defend pro-Palestinian voices, because since last October, many many Palestinians and pro-Palestinian voices have been continuously stifled and repressed. President Rao had even put out a statement after last October, basically insinuating the Palestinians were, what was the word that he used?
Selma: Did he say savage or barbaric?
Sereen: Savage and barbaric. He called Palestinians savage and barbaric, and in no way addressed the 76 years of occupation, or anything that Palestinians were going through, which came off as quite insensitive considering the Arab and Palestinian community at VCU. And the fourth demand was to declare; we want them to declare their support for a permanent and immediate ceasefire in Gaza and Palestine, which I don't really think is a huge demand or ask. The idea of the encampment was to do what people were doing nationwide and internationally: to stay there until the University met our demands, or at least met with us in good faith.
We had set up a liberation zone consisting of the community and students gathering out on the lawn, in front of the library. It was quite beautiful. There was a lot of art, a lot of dancing, a lot of chanting. It was a place where everyone was in solidarity with each other and with the Palestinian people. By around 5pm we had set up tents and the actual encampment itself. With no warning, and no previous interactions of any sort telling us to take the tents down or something will happen or whatever it may be, the next thing you know, the next interaction we had with any sort of admin, any sort of other force, was when three different police forces had come out in trucks, around 8:30pm. It was the VCU Police Department, Richmond PD, Virginia State PD. I mean head on, full on, with riot gear, they came out of the buses. We were all in agreement that clearly the University had no intention of protecting us. Clearly, the police and the state had no intention of protecting us. So we understood that we protected each other and we had each other's backs. If students can be there peacefully organising and wanting to demand justice for oppressed people and the University's response and the state's response and the nation's response is to brutalise them with police forces, clearly there's some sort of misalignment. So, next thing you know, all these students, all these community members, get absolutely brutalised by the police. People are pepper sprayed, including me, within the first five seconds of police approaching. I cannot stress this enough: this was a very, very peaceful place that was met with the most violent brutality. I was personally sent to the hospital that night because of the head trauma I suffered and the amount of times the police had thrown me onto the ground, onto the concrete. We had students, including every single person on this call, get pepper sprayed, tear-gassed, and beaten. And so, drawing back to the question of how the University really continues to stifle our voices, there’s just no clearer form of repression. Having a really peaceful protest, with students wanting to dismantle injustice, and instead of talking to anybody, instead of meeting with anybody in good faith, without any sort of warning, we get met with brutality and force. Especially as a Palestinian, it speaks volumes that the University would rather repress us than hear us out, and hear our cries out for our own people and our own community and country.
But I do think that all in all, ironically, the encampment ended up binding the community together more, reinforcing our understanding that the University is not with us, and the state's not with us, the nation's not with us. That we have each other, we protect each other. I know that night specifically I had personally been de-arrested at least six times, all by community members, when the police had held me on the ground and had their knee on my neck. Whether the University's tactics are banning chalking or brutalising students calling for justice, truly these tactics end up strengthening our resolve. They try to claim that these intimidation tactics promote safety, when in reality they can't hide behind this mask that serves to stifle voices that dare to dissent. It's nothing new, facing this kind of injustice as a Palestinian, but also as a student. I do think that it brings to light, especially with everybody now learning about the Palestinian cause and learning about all these injustices around the world, that our University really just does not serve to help protect us in any sort of way.
Anonymous: It was shocking and upsetting enough as a teacher, standing on the edge of that encampment, to watch students be tear-gassed. I found that to be a profound experience. The institution wants me to be an employee who upholds their principles, but this experience had the absolute opposite effect: to do the job responsibility means to stand against the University and its violence and repression of the students. But I’m curious about how that feels as students. I was one of only a few faculty who were there, which surprised and angered me. What is it like to continue studying at the school having experienced that, as well as the ongoing repression of your organising?
Selma: We talk about this a lot in small ways. We talk about being a student and wanting to feel pride for this University. We're seniors and we want to graduate, and be excited about the institution that we attend, in the way that every other student is. We want to, like, rep the merch of the University. But there’s something really sinister about being a literal patron, paying money to this institution, and being on the receiving end of its violence, and the violence that it creates … I guess there's a constant feeling of disempowerment under this University. You even mentioned your role, having to uphold the principles of the institution. Even then, we can see how we're internalising that power imbalance, because are we supposed to uphold their principles? Aren't they supposed to represent who we are? They use our identities and actions when they're palatable to market the University, as a point of investment. They create an entire image about how this University is ‘uncommon’ and different, and have been able to capitalise on this image. Then in the same breath they’re able to sweep what isn't palatable and what isn't respectable away.
In this instance of police brutality, I think the focus of the response got shifted onto the brutality itself, and not necessarily what caused it, which was that we were speaking out against Zionism. Some folks were bringing it back, very domestically, saying, ‘Oh, well, how does this have to do with the Zionist entity if we're dealing with police brutality in the US?’ Besides the fact that these police are cross-training with the IOF, there’s the status quo that is being upheld by the institution that is in cahoots with Zionism. Because we spoke out, it created a little bit of an imbalance, a shift that had to be levelled, and it had to be swept under the rug. That's where that brutality came in. There's a feeling of power in that, in the student movement, the student intifada, knowing that you're a part of a mass movement and that you're building power that is threatening to the University. You've created crisis in the University. At the same time, there's the feeling of disempowerment when the University is constantly reframing the ideological threat that's happening as an actual safety threat. That mix-up is the most frustrating thing in the entire world because this idea of a threat, of students being threatening for protesting, is used to justify literal violence against that very student body. It’s like this pendulum back and forth, of feeling empowered and strong and knowing that you've built power that scares the status quo, and that the administration feels that power, and in that same instance, knowing that, just by virtue of existing, you will be seen as a threat—by being Arab, by being pro-Palestinian, by being Palestinian. The University weaponises the concept of safety, because when you call something a threat, they can use whatever form of violence they want against it to remove it and disappear it, and that was what they did on 29th April. Yeah, it sucks sometimes, being a student and wanting to be like, yeah Go Rams! but, like, what?
Link: On that note, it also creates a duality, for example the field I'm going into, museums, is very strictly academic—there's not much else you can do to learn about it besides attending a university. And when you're at a university, it is such a privilege to be here, knowing that every university in Palestine has been bombed, that so many people have had their degrees robbed from them, or were never in the situation where they could even apply to or attend school. I am so frustrated at my school—I'm terrified to even walk around, there are cops patrolling everywhere and it's not safe for us, it’s never been us that they protect—but knowing all of that while also thinking that I'm still privileged to be here … So as much as I hate the administration, I'm thankful for the community, and I'm thankful for the professors who are great, and the opportunity to learn. I find it really important to frame it like that, because otherwise I would drop out, out of fear.
Lana: I kind of expected that we wouldn't have a lot of power as students, I would think that the faculty would have more. But they were so threatened by us, and we were not even that many in the beginning too. I do want to feel empowered by community and I do, a lot, but it was really terrifying. There’s no dancing around that. And they made all those policies without requesting any student input, then tried to pass it off like they had because they maybe emailed a couple students and asked them to be there. But they weren’t, no one showed up. I feel like it’s deceitful to suggest that they had student input. I have no respect for the administration here anymore.
Anonymous: I can also tell you that we were not consulted as staff. At the end of 2023, lots of work was taken down, and anything that had anything to do with Palestine was removed and destroyed without notice. But the same happened also to just random Arabic; there was the toilet sign that had ‘all gender restroom’ in lots of different languages and they also took that down. It was completely farcical and also of course intimidating, especially to precarious members of staff.
What are you working on now as part of SJP, or other kinds of organisations that you mentioned or elsewhere? What kind of work are you doing now, and what kind of solidarity networks are you creating?
Link: We are definitely working on recruitment right now. We are focusing on longevity, and we really want the movement to persevere. There are so many wonderful people that are very consistent at showing up to our events, so many people with different skills to provide. That's a big focus of ours right now, the dissemination of knowledge to make it easier for everybody to be part of this, and also making sure that nobody has ill intent, no undercover cops or something, as unlikely as that would be, hopefully. We're also doing a lot of, as Lana said, collaboration events with cultural organisations. That's a big bulk of what we do here. VCU has such a strong cultural organisation foundation, they're kind of our version of fraternities and sororities. So we’re doing a lot of collaboration events with them as outreach to other groups to focus on longevity, on bringing in more people, trying to raise awareness for everybody, focusing on the long run.
Selma: I think that definitely sums it up. Front-facing, that's a lot of where SJP is at. There was this huge question after the encampments: are we resetting? What are we doing next? What's happening? We had journalists coming and trying to ask us what our next moves were going to be. Beyond our chapter of SJP, the student movement on a broader scale is trying to re-strategise, because the encampments were a tactic, and through a lot of analysis it’s become very clear that while they built a tonne of power and created a lot of crisis, which became the jumping point for negotiations for so many institutions and so many student groups, at the same time, the strategy was unclear in many instances. That's what organising is, it is reflecting on those strategies and the tactics that were brought about. Part of the Palestinian struggle is steadfastness—and we say this all across the board—it is about remaining steadfast, it is about that longevity that Link mentioned. So, while we are recruiting and trying to build community, we're also trying to power map the University and reassess targets. Because the University is organised, and we have to match that level of organisation, and that takes time. We’re a year old as a chapter and so there's a lot of political education that has to happen, and we're working on that. But it’s ongoing, and we have to constantly go back to what we did and reassess. I know sometimes there’s this pressure to assess whether it was a success or not, but there was a level of power that was yielded by students, and that in itself revitalised the movement, what we are calling the student intifada, and our goal is to try to maintain that momentum.
Sereen: Whether it is SJP, our chapter, at different schools, or globally, regardless of whatever tactics or force used to try to stifle our voices, at the university or in our governments, the people in the Palestinian movement have made it very clear that we're not going anywhere. This is a struggle that isn't new, it's been a long struggle, but it's one that is going to continue until the end, until Palestinians get what they deserve, until we achieve collective liberation. You see all these kinds of tactics to try to repress us and if anything it's just been proven that we just come out stronger in the end. It’s showing the true colours of the forces that try to oppress us when we try to speak out for the oppressed. We're not going anywhere. Nobody in the Palestinian movement is going anywhere. We're going to continue to make that clear. The administration, specifically at our University, has this idea that they can just brush us aside; they think that people are going to forget about what happened, whether it's with the encampment or how the University is contributing to the genocide of the Palestinian people. We're going to continue to make their complicity known and continue to work to get that dismantled, and beyond, until we achieve a free Palestine, until collective liberation.
