Above photo: UCLA Gaz solidarity encampment before it was cleared out by LAPD on May 1. Social Media/X.
According to a new report, a total of $12.3 million was spent on “managing” UCLA’s protests around the school’s Gaza solidarity encampment last year.
Additionally, there were over 200 arrests, and more than 10 degrees were withheld from students.
Last October, the ACLU launched a lawsuit against the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), challenging the school’s administrators’ suppression of student and faculty speech.
That suppression ultimately resulted in the police’s violent destruction of the school’s Gaza Solidarity Encampment amid clashes with Zionist provocateurs.
“I can still hear the relentless sound of the stun grenades,” described one student protester at the time. “Trepidation still courses through my body when I think about police in riot gear shooting rubber bullets at and beating students and friends. The university betrayed us and could have listened to the students and workers by taking meaningful steps to withdraw its support from Israeli human rights violations, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.”
“Instead, the university chose to brutalize members of our community, who had already withstood attacks from mobs spewing racist epithets,” they continued. “I am sickened to think of how the university would rather give in to an authoritarian political culture that violently punishes dissent than move toward ethical investment practices.”
A new report uncovers the extent of that repression.
Mondoweiss U.S. correspondent Michael Arria spoke with an organizer from Students For Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the UC Divest Coalition at UCLA about the report, the recent suspension of the school’s SJP chapter, and the mood on campus.
Mondoweiss: There’s a new report that documents police repression and violence toward Palestine protesters during the encampments last spring. Can you talk about who compiled that report and what it says?
The document was compiled by some of our grad students on campus. It references medical reports that were just released. The group Med Students for Justice in Palestine had been collecting data from the encampment. Information like the amount of injuries, who was hospitalized, what type of injuries they faced, and how many students ended up in the hospital.
While reflecting on that data, Grad Students for Justice in Palestine decided to compile a more extensive report on police repression.
The report also goes into how much the school has spent on suppressing the student movement. UCLA accounted for approximately 41% of the total $29.1 million spent across the University of California system on security, law enforcement, and clean-up throughout the spring quarter protests. A total of $12.3 million (or about 8% of the revenue generated by UCLA’s investments in 2023) was spent on managing UCLA’s protests around the encampment.
There were over 200 arrests. More than 10 degrees were withheld from students over protesting and a lot of students face significant financial difficulties due to work complications.
However, all the students I have spoken with have said they would do it again and again, regardless of the suppression. They would face the backlash again in a heartbeat if it meant they could try to speak out for Palestine and the people there facing worse conditions than any of us could fathom here in the United States.
Last fall the ACLU announced that it was suing UCLA over the repression you are describing. Do you have any updates on that lawsuit?
I can’t disclose too much, but information about that will be released soon. There is a second lawsuit that’s also being worked on and information will be released on that at the same time.
Can you talk about the SJP suspensions, the protests in reaction to that move, and the university crackdown on those protests?
In all honesty, a lot of this has just been the university waiting for an opportunity to crack down on the students. I don’t think it’s anything necessarily related to something we did recently.
The administration spent the entirety of the summer trying to prepare for how to repress us in different ways, whether that was training with the university police or constant administration meetings about SJP. They were preparing and it was just a matter of time before they decided to come up with a reason to initiate an interim suspension or disciplinary hearings.
Has last spring’s crackdown on the encampment impacted the current state of Palestine activism on campus? Has it been scaled back to any extent?
I personally don’t think the repression has been working as well as the administration had intended. Obviously, we haven’t seen massive waves of students coming out like we did during the encampments last spring, but I wouldn’t say that the discussion on Palestine or discussion about the ongoing genocide has taken a step back in any way.
I think a lot of students just have this history in their mind and they’re waiting for something again. I don’t necessarily think that the repression has worked on the student body. I think a lot of students are very agitated, particularly on our campus with our chancellor as a result of the LA fires. In that situation, students were forced to stay on campus during unsafe health conditions.
So there’s a lot of agitation about that and a lot of agitation around the SJP suspensions. Maybe there’s less of a direction than there was last year, but the anger is still there.
There are definitely fears about repression. I’ll be honest about that, but by no means are students willing to step down or willing to ignore the ongoing genocide in Palestine and just go about their day with the comforts that have been bought through U.S. imperialism.
Can you talk about the current climate of organizing on campus? Are there pro-Israel student groups targeting your activism at all?
There are a lot of Zionist agitators on our campus. That’s something that we did see during the encampment. A lot of counter-protesters showed up.
I will say that the student body that supports Palestine on UCLA’s campus is pretty robust. Those aligned with the movement for Palestinian liberation are extremely dedicated and willing to risk a lot compared to other campuses. In personal experience, I think a lot of these students understand the implications of our investments here on the university scale and understand the connection that we have from the local to the global.
There are a lot of students who are, for lack of better a phrase, ready to throw down when things happen on campus. They’re very willing to show up. They’re very much willing to be very vocal about Palestine. They are committed to ending the genocide.