Wayne State Palestine Encampment Raided by Police, Rally Held to Free Arrested Protesters

Detroit, Michigan – The encampment at Wayne State University, known as the Popular University for Gaza, Detroit campus, was raided by police in riot gear in the early hours of Thursday morning, May 30.

Around 5:30 in the morning, those staying overnight at the Popular University were woken by the Wayne State Police Department issuing a dispersal order through a megaphone. With only minutes left before the cops broke in, the students organized to decide how they would respond.

Students noted that despite the use of a megaphone, the police very quietly issued the order, such that some students would not have woken up, and been put in danger of the police raid. This became reality for one student, who was pulled from his tent by police and arrested. The students remained for as long as possible, until they were pushed out of the Popular University by cops brandishing riot shields and batons.

Two of the students, who chose to stay, were arrested. One of them was Ridaa Khan, a student of Wayne State and organizer with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Wayne State.

“I was one of the first students arrested,” said Khan. “There were fewer people at the encampment than usual, most of them being organizers, and the cowardly administration and police took that as an opportunity to dismantle our popular university. The reason I was arrested was because I promised to defend and keep up the camp until our school reached divestment and so I stood in the face of the cops coming to recklessly destroy what the students and community had built.”

Khan continued, “I was detained in a truck for trespassing at the school I pay tuition for and serve on the student senate of. To me it symbolized the hypocrisy of my institution in failing to meet the bare minimum standards of communicating with and understanding the perspective of students, faculty, and alumni who were pleading for a meeting about divestment. Their ‘meeting’ came in the form of absolute repression and largely radicalized, Islamophobic violence.”

Minutes after the raid, the students reorganized on the edge of Wayne State’s campus. Twice, the students bravely attempted to return to the popular university, as cops were busy dismantling it as quickly as they could. In both of these attempts to return, more students and community members were arrested by cops in riot gear. During the second attempt, Wayne State Police surrounded and beat the marching protesters. Three women had their hijabs torn off, an elderly man was pulled by the back of his shirt while trying to escape, and a mother had to run with her young child due to the danger posed by the police.

Another Wayne State University student and organizer with Wayne State SJP, Jackson Robak, was thrown to the ground and pinned down by multiple cops during the first attempt to return to the Popular University.

Robak stated, “Students were arrested and attacked as an intimidation tactic by police and they violently violated our First Amendment rights. I personally was arrested and attacked by police with threats of being tasered for simply not allowing them to maim another protester. I stayed in jail for several hours being moved from a felon pen to solitary confinement at different points before the tireless efforts of student protesters and the Michigan Council for American Islamic Relations saw me and other protesters released.”

After experiencing all of this brutality, and with most of the core organizers of SJP in handcuffs, leadership among the protesters was quickly reorganized. Despite the arrests, the crowd grew with each passing minute, as students and community members around Detroit woke up to the scenes of police violence on social media.

A large crowd of 100 to 200 rallied at the front entrance of Wayne State campus. A banner reading “Stop funding genocide” was draped over the Wayne state logo at this front entrance. Over a dozen Palestinian flags were brought to the rally, which flew strong in the wind as student organizers and faculty spoke to the crowd and the press. At this rally, it was announced that faculty would organize a vote of no confidence in Wayne State University President Kimberly Andrews Espy. If this vote of no confidence succeeds, Espy could be fired as university president.

With renewed numbers, the protesters got in their cars and drove to the Detroit Detention Center, where six of the 11 arrested students and community members were being held by the Detroit Police Department. The other five arrested had been temporarily held by Wayne State Police before being released with tickets for trespassing on their own university. Among those released was Ridaa Khan.

From shortly before noon until 5:30 p.m., the people rallied on the lawn in front of the detention center, which looks like a prison with high fences topped by barbed wire. The police watched the protesters from behind their cars for the full afternoon, as if keeping guard on their jail where the prisoners were held. The half of SJP’s leadership which was free, along with their Arab and Palestinian allies from Detroit, led chants to the crowd for hours under the hot sun. Between the chants were occasional fiery speeches, as well as taunts aimed the police, keeping up the energy and the morale of the crowd. A canopy was set up to provide some shade, as well as a kitchen to feed the people. During these hours, the Popular University that had lived on the campus of Wayne State was alive and well again on the lawn in front of the jailhouse.

The crowd was prepared to rally and chant for as long as it took, into the night if necessary, for their students and community members to be released. The remaining six were released, marching out in a line from the barbed wire fences with their arms locked at 4:50 p.m. The crowd cheered and took to the street which separates their lawn from the high fences of the jail. When they met the line of freed protesters, friends and allies embraced in hugs with them. Those released gave speeches before the crowd on the lawn.

The Students for Justice in Palestine, and the people of Detroit are not finished with their struggle to make Wayne State divest from the genocidal Zionist state, and to end the training of Wayne State Police by the Israelis.

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