Pro-Palestinian activists at UC Berkeley erected a handful of tents Monday on the steps of UC Berkeley’s Sproul Hall. By Wednesday afternoon, the “Free Palestine Camp” had mushroomed to 70 tents.
“It’s been a rapid expansion,” an organizer from the UC Berkeley Divest Coalition, which is running the encampment, told J. The student did not disclose his name.
Inside Cal’s tent camp — organized in a response to the recent arrests at Columbia University of pro-Palestinian students living in tents there — students chatted, drank coffee and did homework on laptops. But the campground atmosphere was at odds with the words of a young woman giving a talk on what to do if confronted by police: keep your student ID on hand, make sure your phone has a passcode and don’t volunteer information. “They can lie to you,” she said.
Similar encampments have rapidly sprung up across the country, including at Yale, Harvard, New York University, Northwestern University, University of Michigan and University of Southern California.
The Cal organization running the round-the-clock encampment is calling not only for “boycott, divestment and sanctions” against Israel but also for an end to Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
They also have university-specific demands, such as an “academic boycott,” which would prohibit UC Berkeley from signing research or scholarship agreements with Israeli universities. And they want the establishment of a Palestinian studies program at Cal.
One of the tents at the camp had a Jewish Voice for Peace sign adhered to it. The anti-Zionist organization has helped organize multiple protests across the Bay Area since Oct. 7.
The Free Palestine Camp is running daily programming on topics ranging from “Poetry as Resistance” to “Judaism and Anti-Zionism.” Interspersed with that, a speaker system plays the sound of aircraft under other clips, such as a woman stating the camp’s demands.
The camp is taking donations and has posted a list of requests online, from hot coffee to batteries to money, warning potential donors to “make sure you are bringing BDS-friendly items!”
The student organizer with the UC Berkeley Divest Coalition said protesters had received “tons of food” so far, enabling community meals.
They are also asking for matzah donations. A Jewish student involved in the protest, who said he didn’t want to give his name because he worried about being doxxed, noted that Jewish protesters celebrated Passover together at a JVP-sponsored seder.
“We had our first-night seder at the encampment, which was amazing,” he said. “It was beautiful.”
He said that his Jewish identity has inspired his activism and his decision to join the tent encampment, mentioning the “righteous gentiles” during the Holocaust who risked themselves to save vulnerable Jews.
“Many JVP people are just trying to embody that spirit,” he said.
University spokesperson Dan Mogulof said Wednesday the school will continue to follow the UC policy for nonviolent protests during the current situation. UC policy recognizes “explicitly the historic role of civil disobedience as a protest tactic” but also states that “civil disobedience will generally have consequences for those engaging in it because of the impact it can have on the rest of the campus community.”
“With three weeks left in the semester, we are prioritizing students’ academic interests and have committed to taking the steps necessary to ensure the protest does not disrupt the university’s operations,” Mogulof said in an email to J. “The protest at Berkeley is not blocking doorways, thoroughfares, and there has, so far, been no disruption of teaching, learning, or research.”
On April 18, pro-Palestinian students also organized a rally outside Berkeley’s law school. It followed an April 9 altercation at UC Berkeley law school dean Erwin Chemerinsky’s home where law student Malak Afaneh began giving a speech about Palestine during a dinner party for students. Catherine Fisk, a law professor and Chemerinsky’s wife, pulled at Afaneh’s microphone, phone and shoulders while repeatedly asking her to leave. The April 18 rally was a call for the “removal” of Fisk and Chemerinsky, who Afaneh described as a “self-identifying Zionist.”