After tensions escalated last week, dozens of officers from multiple agencies armed with riot gear descended on a pro-Palestinian camp at the California State Capitol on Monday afternoon and dismantled the camp and forced protesters to leave.
University spokesman Eric Frost Hollins said that at about 1:20 p.m. police issued orders in English and Spanish to disperse the protesters, and the seven protesters remaining at the camp left voluntarily.
Hollins said officers, who included people from the LAPD, California Highway Patrol and several Cal State campus police departments, did not use any weapons to disperse the protesters and made no arrests. Campus security and police blocked all roads entering the campus, although exits were open and the campus was accessible on foot.
Using forklifts and large dumpsters, workers removed and removed painted and graffitied wooden signs that had been placed around the camp. Many of the signs were painted in the red, green, white and black colors of the Palestinian flag and bore phrases such as “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” and “Google LASD Gang.”
According to a statement from Students for Justice in Palestine at Cal State LA, students began the camp on May 1 demanding that Cal State LA and the California State University system disclose their investments, “divest from companies that financially and materially support genocide, protect the Palestinian people’s rights of resistance and return, and declare that the genocide in Gaza and the occupation of Palestine are illegal under international law.”
Hollins said that, since the encampment began, Cal State LA President Berenecia Johnson Innes has visited it twice and has had several conversations with protesters.
While other universities, including USC and UCLA, moved relatively quickly to shut down pro-Palestinian camps in the spring, an encampment at Cal State L.A. has been tolerated for several weeks. For the most part, it has not been the site of any heated disputes or clashes involving students, campus officials or police.
But Hollins said the nature of the relationship between the university and protesters changed on Wednesday, when several dozen demonstrators barricaded themselves inside the Student Services Building for more than nine hours, including some administrators. The Students for Justice in Palestine group said administrators are free to leave with escorts whenever they wish. The group said it communicated that message directly and through Instagram. About 60 staffers remained in the building for about two hours before getting out. About a dozen people, including Enes and Hollins, voluntarily stayed behind.
Hollins said there was no specific incident Monday that prompted the university to call police, but officers had been talking about removing the encampment since the building was occupied.
Innes said in a campus-wide email Monday afternoon that “individuals associated with the camp engaged in unlawful acts that endangered staff and students while occupying the building,” including “assault, vandalism, destruction of property, and looting.”
“The only acceptable option for the safety of the entire campus community was that the encampment be disbanded and dispersed. We will not negotiate with those who would use destruction and intimidation to accomplish their goals,” he wrote. “It is not beyond me to believe that public employees serving a public mission at a public university in one of the region’s most under-resourced communities should be victimized by those claiming to oppose injustice.”
The campus, where classes have been virtual since the middle of last week, will continue to be virtual on Tuesday, Innes said. The university is currently in a summer session that ends Aug. 10.
On Monday, the Cal State LA chapter of the Faculty of Justice in Palestine said they had been concerned for weeks that the peaceful camp could be threatened as talks stalled and frustration grew.
“While the June 12 protest marked a turning point for the camp, we propose that timely, good-faith negotiations with students on their divestment demands are the best path to resolution,” the group said. In a letter posted on Instagram“We also recommend that you communicate more clearly with students residing in the camp about the timelines and process for exiting the camp, rather than resorting to an unannounced prospecting campaign that is likely to produce trauma, harm, and violence, as has happened at other universities.”
In a video posted on Instagram by Students for Justice in Palestine Cal State LA, activists appeared to be talking to police in riot gear who had gathered outside the camp’s barricades. “We have to do what they say,” a voice from the camp says in the background. “Can we leave?” one activist says to police while the activist looks toward law enforcement. “Yes!” several officers say in unison. “I want you to leave,” one officer says. “I want you to be there less.”
By 5:30 p.m., the camp had been nearly demolished. Removing it revealed that the wall beneath the “Olympic Fantasy” tile mural in the center of the compound had been smeared with graffiti, with slogans such as “Gaza is Alive” and “Stop Funding Genocide.”
The Student Services Building, where the break-in occurred last week, remained blocked off with police tape. Tables and chairs were overturned on its patio, and graffiti remained on its ground-level windows.
A campus security guard not authorized to speak to the media said officers would clear the building area once the camp’s material was completely removed. He said he was not sure if that would happen on Monday.
Onlookers, including students and neighborhood residents, expressed surprise at the removal of the camp and the police presence Monday.
“I don’t agree with what the purpose of the camp is, but I’ve walked by it many times,” said James Wheeler, who walked into the camp area — which was cordoned off with yellow police tape — while a helicopter flew overhead.
“These were mostly peaceful students, and their protests were nothing like the conflicts or altercations we’ve seen at other colleges, except for that one time when they went to take over the building,” Walker said.
A student who said she knew members of the camp said the police response was “overdone,” noting that about 10 activists had voluntarily left the scene. “They sent all these police cars, these riot police, closed off the streets, all for nothing. It’s out of control,” said the student, who declined to share her name.
In her letter Monday, Innes said the university must “face the consequences of having to shelter in place inside (the Student Services Building), the anger at the destruction of student spaces they worked so hard to build, and the grief of feeling less safe on a campus we all cherish.”
Hollins said one employee “had something thrown” at his head during the sit-in, while another was pushed out a door as protesters forced their way into the building.
Hollins said protesters caused extensive vandalism in the building and the university is still investigating to determine whether arrests should be made. He said protesters covered their faces and took other steps to conceal their identities, complicating the investigation.
The activists defended their actions.
“Despite overwhelming police pressure from the University Police Department, the Los Angeles Police Department, and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, the sit-in and defense of the Solidarity Camp will continue until CSULA ceases its financial and material support of Genocide,” the group said in a statement last week.
Times staff writer Angie Orellana Hernandez contributed to this report.
