College Students Rise Up.

It's been a year since the attack on the UCLA Palestinian solidarity encampment by a pro-Israeli mob. I was working with my reporter pal, Mel Beuer, that night. We had gotten word about a possible attempt by police to dismantle the encampment. When we arrived, the energy felt tense. It was something I felt in my gut—the high probability of things going sideways. It's a sense I picked up after regularly covering protests and street skirmishes over the past five years.

We debated leaving the campus, annoyed by the repeating loop of babies crying, blaring over a portable speaker, when the pro-Israel mob began tearing down the metal barricades and launching them at the encampment.

I wrote about what happened for LA Public Press, sharing a byline with other journalists there that night. I also wrote an essay for Welcome to Hellworld about what followed that night and reposted it below it to mark the attack's first anniversary.

This World Belongs To You 

The sound of babies crying blared across the quad from portable speakers. The crying was interspersed between air raid sirens and a song playing on repeat, celebrating the destruction of Palestine. Zionist counter-protesters taunted and shouted at the encampment from the other side of metal barricades. 

Suddenly, the counter-protesters attacked. Metal barricades were turned into projectiles as they launched them into the encampment. Those without a metal barricade or weapon in their hand ran in to rip down Palestinian flags and the plywood barricades that had been erected in front of the encampment. One of them screamed about doing “another Nakba.” The security teams paid by the university to keep the two groups separated fled into a neighboring building and locked themselves inside. 

Bear mace filled the air. My throat tightened as it wafted over to me. My eyes watered, and my group scattered, all of us coughing while trying to regain our breath. The pauses and dispersals between the masked attackers’ use of bear mace gave temporary reprieve from the violence. 

The UCLA encampment had begun six days before. It has held strong longer than other encampments across the country. USC, just 16 miles away from UCLA, barely made it a day before LAPD violently swept them up. 

The group’s demands from the university are clear: divest, disclose, abolish the police, a ceasefire, and a boycott of Israel. They are well articulated in their public statements. 

The UCLA administration put out signs on Tuesday stating the encampment was unlawful and that students should disperse. Ten hours later the encampment was besieged in a coordinated attacked by masked vigilantes. 

The encampment has faced harassment and threats by pro-Zionist counter-protesters since the first day it was erected. All week the people inside the encampment have experienced vile comments hurled at them through megaphones ranging from anti-Arab to homophobic to misogynistic. Days before the attack on the encampment, a pro-Zionist rally was held nearby. The $93,000 raised by sympathetic donors (like Jessica Seinfield and notably unhinged wife guy Bill Ackman) went to erecting a massive LED screen and stage. The ADL’s Johnathan Greenblatt made an appearance decrying campus antisemitism, which his organization has redefined to include any statements or rallies related to Palestine. 

Since then, the energy surrounding the protests has grown more adversarial. The past several nights counter-protesters have tried to climb into the encampment, yet students fought off the attacks by men with covered faces. Finally we found some of those outside agitators you hear so much about. Counter-protesters have continued to blare sounds and music as a form of psychological warfare all hours into the night and early mornings. Encampment participants adapted with ear plugs and music of their own. 

On Tuesday night, students inside the encampment held their own amidst waves of attacks by the masked protesters. Plywood nearly 8 feet tall shielded most of the students from attacks, and handmade shields and umbrellas filled the gaps. The college kids clearly read up on their siege defense tactics. 

Behind the plywood barriers, I watched as medics flushed blood and bear mace off each other. A student on some steps nearby cried between breaths. The pain of the pepper spray and the stress of the situation had sent him into a panic attack. 

Fireworks were lobbed at the encampment by the masked group, blowing up directly in front of people. In one instance, a limp body was carried out in a makeshift gurney from the encampment when a person in a mask threw a mortar firework round at them. The explosion’s radius covered the entire lawn, hitting fleeing protesters. 

For three hours, the violence went on unabated. Back and forth, the counter-protesters tried to break in. Some ran at full speed at the barricades only to bounce off and fall on their ass. Anything that could be thrown was thrown. All the while, the LED screen played a pro-Zionist slideshow.  

Eventually, counter-protesters broke apart pallets from the encampment’s barrier, and the debris was wielded like wooden batons and swung at anyone or thrown into the encampment. Metal poles were swung indiscriminately, too. There were moments of open hand-to-hand combat, stopped only by a blast of bear mace. Several people were knocked to the ground and beaten. Someone had a high-powered laser pointer that they were pointing at people’s eyes. 

In total, twenty-five people from the student encampment were hospitalized following that night’s attack. 

At 2 am, California Highway Patrol and LAPD showed up to stand around while the encampment still faced attacks. Nearly half an hour later, the police pushed the counter-protesters off the campus. They arrested no one. Instead, police allowed the counter-protesters to leave without incident. 

The police aren’t arbitrators of de-escalation, but their absence here felt intentional. The university instead outsourced sweeping the encampment to a group of vigilantes. The school must have thought that if these unofficially deputized disruptors weren’t successful, at least the violence they started would give enough reason to sweep the encampment. As of Wednesday afternoon, multiple police agencies were on campus, and classes had been canceled. 

The “both sides” framing has already plagued the news coverage of that night's incident. “Clashes” are being used to describe one-sided vigilante violence that is corroborated with video evidence. Last night, there was one group of instigators. There was only one group responsible for the violence. They were the ones able to go home without incident. They’re the ones who will come back. 

For the past several weeks, pundits and journalists have been sweating in agony trying to figure out why students are occupying campuses across the country. Images of protest violence are interspersed with news about mass graves outside of a bombed-out hospital in Gaza. Is it any wonder why the students are mad? 

The student activists’ closest allies, the liberals, continue to warn of the dark possible future should Trump be re-elected next year. A future of fascist street violence, police repression of social movements, and fewer rights. The student activists know that future is already here and it’s happening in front of our eyes.

“Who keeps us safe? We keep us safe!” students shouted all night from within the encampment. Their shouts a recognition, not a resignation, of their power. 

Tonight, the eviction begins. 

Josiah Royce’s quote, “The world is a progressively realized community of interpretation,” is engraved above a doorway outside Royce Hall. 

A realized community currently sits outside its doors, waiting to be removed by a police force. All for protesting against genocide.

A year later

This week, LA City Attorney Hydee Fieldstein-Soto dropped nearly all charges against the people arrested at the UCLA and USC encampments. The LA City Attorney faces accusations of bias against the protesters arrested at the campus encampments.

The dropped charges are a slight reprieve for college students who, over the past year, faced continued repression by college administrators and the Trump administration.

International students at the University of California colleges across the state had their Visas terminated without their knowledge. Other international students from Columbia and Tufts were abducted by ICE and detained for the crime of writing an op-ed or organizing student solidarity movements for Palestine.

Fortunately, Mohsen Mahdawi was released yesterday by a federal judge after Trump attempted to deport him for his involvement in the protests for Palestine.

The heavy boot of state repression will not let up for the foreseeable future.

Trump's recent executive order signals that it will only get worse.

Jessica Pishko, author of The Highest Law in the Land, wrote about what the executive order means to the public or anyone engaged in dissent, specifically the idea of police as a "baronial class." You can read it here.

The project is bipartisan because Democrats and centrists have funded the police and urged reforms that merely allow law enforcement to do more harm, more policing, and more jailing. This including funding civilian oversight, body cameras, equipment, training, consent decrees, and higher salaries. The GOP and Trumpists have actually not sought to fund the police – Trump actually defunded law enforcement during his first term and is focusing only on immigration enforcement 100 days into his second – but Trump has made it plain that he wants law enforcement to operate with impunity.

I filed records requests after the encampments were dismantled.

A year later, I am still waiting in anticipation for their full release. But, I will share two emails I found interesting.

Both reveal police plans for dismantling the encampments, one at UCLA and the other at UC-Irvine, that include Mass Casualty Incident protocols, tactical maps, and references to plastic water bottles as "liquid projectiles."