Students take over Boeing-Funded Interdisciplinary Engineering Building.
Issue Demands.
Seattle, WA – WE DEMAND: UW will no longer be complicit in genocide. WE DEMAND: that our tuition money and our research not be used to fund and fuel genocide.
Students have occupied the Interdisciplinary Engineering Building and declared that this building, renamed the Shaban al-Dalou Building will not be used to fund genocide, but to meet the needs of students and community.
We will not voluntarily leave this building until the following demands are met in full by the University:
1. Boeing out of the IEB. Repurpose the building into a community-controlled space with pro-people education.
2. Boeing out of UW. Stop receiving any and all donations from Boeing. Return any existing donations, financial investments, and eliminate all other material ties to Boeing. Prohibit Boeing executives and employees from teaching classes or having any influence over curriculum.
3. End the expulsion, suspension, and all repression and targeted assault of pro-Palestine activism and activists, especially providing protections for our fellow students being targeted by the federal government for their immigration status.
We are taking this building amidst the current and renewed wave of the student Intifada, following the uprising of student action for Palestine after the heroic victory of Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7th, which shattered the illusion of zionist-imperialist domination and brought Palestine to the forefront for all justice-loving people of the world. We respond to the call made by the Palestinian student movement in Gaza to “raise the pace and ceiling of your struggle and your honorable stances, quantitatively and qualitatively, against the institutions, corporations, and governments that participate in the slaughter of our children, our students, and our people. […] We call on you to besiege the […] buildings and offices of the corporations that finance the Zionist entity and arm its criminal army with all kinds of bombs and means of death and destruction.”
Time and time again, UW administration prioritizes their ability to rake in blood money over the demands of their students and workers. This March, after months of delays, the Board of Regents completely rejected the formation of an Advisory Committee on Socially Responsible Investing (ACSRI), the first step in the official process to initiate divestment. This is a complete refusal to even investigate UW’s ties to companies complicit in zionist genocide and occupation.
We are entering a new global phase of repression and resistance, both in the international student movement and on the ground in Palestine. Our brothers and sisters in Gaza are living under a sky of constant US-funded rocket fire, while the zionist regime is continuing its land thefts and the torture and imprisonment of over 10,000 Palestinians who are facing lengthy sentences and unspeakable abuse. The assault on the refugee camps, cities and villages of the West Bank, especially in Jenin and Tulkarem, continues. Meanwhile, American and western institutions, like UW, continue to fund these atrocities and attempt to demonize the just struggle of the Palestinian people.
This occupation is not the end goal, but a calculated escalation that was born from long
months of analysis of past tactics used on campus. We know that we need everyone in this fight for the long haul – it is the classmates, coworkers, friends we are able to show the justness of our fight to and organize who will be alongside us in the long struggle for freedom of the Palestinian people and all oppressed peoples around the world.
Palestine teaches us that the struggle is generational – these martyrs fight and die, not for themselves, but for the hope that their children or grandchildren may grow up on liberated Palestinian soil. Palestine teaches us that true power comes not from the state but from the people themselves and that no amount of money, brutality, or technological advancement can destroy a true people’s movement. This occupation marks a definitive step in our long fight against zionism and US imperialism on our campus.
We call on our fellow UW students, teachers, workers and youth to take action with us alongside the people of Palestine and their brave resistance. Here in the center of the US war machine, our university education is geared to produce the next administrators of the empire. But people of conscience everywhere are standing up! We refuse to be engineers of genocide. Our role must be to hinder the US empire – to stop the flow of bombs and ease the struggle of those fighting for liberation in Palestine and around the world. We know that it is the fight of the Palestinian people and their resistance that will ultimately free Palestine. And if we, at UW, play our part in organizing for the collapse of this violent system which represses our fellow students and workers to expand its genocidal regime, we will sooner be able to see our brothers and sisters in a liberated Palestine, from the river to the sea.
Read the Manifesto here: Demands-SUPER-UW
UPDATE: After pushing back the protest line and creating a perimeter around the IEB, SPD riot police have stormed the building
Video credit: SUPER UW https://t.co/dyD7aAqIyA pic.twitter.com/YmPOsxHBmQ— Guy Oron (@GuyOron) May 6, 2025
