Creation of the Liberated Zone
NYPD police officers arrest Pro-Palestinian protesters and students who called for Columbia University to divest from institutions that have ties to Israel at Columbia President Minouche Shafik's request, on Thursday, April 18, 2024. (Photo by Marco Postigo Storel)
Writers: Jude Taha, Indy Scholtens
Editors: Brendan Rose, Elza Goffaux, Anna Oakes, Claire Davenport
Photos: Edward Lopez, Jude Taha, Marco Postigo Storel, Nandhini Srinivasan
Videos: Jude Taha, Marco Postigo Storel, Samaa Khullar, Sara Selva Ortiz
Audio: Claire Davenport, Sara Selva Ortiz
According to organizers, the action had been planned for months. Students had been protesting on campus and outside the Columbia’s gates since October, demanding the university stop silencing and heavily policing pro-Palestinian voices, divest from Israel, and cancel the opening of a Columbia Global Center in Tel Aviv.
The encampment was a studied escalation from previous pro-Palestine actions, and it was a nod to Columbia’s legacy of student protest, from anti-South African apartheid protests in the 1980s to campus protests in the ‘60s, when students opposed the Vietnam War, gentrification in Harlem, and the opening of a segregated gym in Morningside Park.
“Columbia students have taken back our campus in the spirit of the ’68 occupation of Hamilton Hall, establishing the Gaza Solidarity Encampment on East Butler Lawn,” the Columbia chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) wrote on their Instagram page.
At 10 a.m., anthropology professor Mahmood Mamdani led a teach-in drawing parallels between the current moment and student protests during South Africa’s apartheid era.
Wednesday, April 17, 2024
At 4 a.m. on April 17, the same day Columbia University President Minouche Shafik was scheduled to testify in front of Congress at a hearing on antisemitism led by the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce, student members of the Columbia University Apartheid Divest Coalition (CUAD) entered the east side of the university’s South Lawn, in front of Butler Library, pitched tents, and established the Gaza Solidarity Encampment.
Their goal was to protest Columbia’s continued role in Israel's genocidal campaign in Gaza.
Students occupy the lawn at Columbia University in Manhattan, New York City, on Wednesday, April 17, 2024. (Photo by Marco Postigo Storel)
(Video by Jude Taha)
The encampment was peaceful. Students shared blankets and tents, gathered supplies, and checked in on each other. But outside the lawn, the university had been locked down. Only people holding Columbia IDs were allowed to enter campus. Campus public safety, New York City Police Department officers, and private security staff were seen at nearly every gate.
Counter-protesters were also present around the encampment, waving massive Israeli flags. But in the encampment, student protesters seemed generally unbothered, and their programming of teach-ins, prayers, and singing continued.
Legal observers from the National Lawyers Guild, in bright green hats, had been present since late morning to act as witnesses during possible arrests and defend the students’ right to protest. Around noon, organizers called for a meeting in the camp’s central tent. They anticipated that the NYPD would arrive soon to sweep the encampment and arrest students. One of the speakers urged students to stay calm.
Protesters and students in support of Palestine dance at Columbia University in Manhattan, New York City, on Wednesday, April 17, 2024. (Photo by Marco Postigo Storel)
By the afternoon, organizers sent out a call to protect the encampment. Hundreds of Columbia affiliates surrounded the quad in support, forming a picket around the lawn. Many brought supplies: blankets to brave the weather, coffee, and food.
The rally continued with sporadic support into the night. Around 8 p.m., encampment organizers renewed calls for affiliates to show up. Once again, many came. A rally around 9:30 p.m. brought renewed vigor and chants: “Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest.”
By 10 p.m., the NYPD had not entered Columbia grounds – but the rally continued towards the stone sundial at the center of campus. Up until midnight, protesters chanted, played Palestinian songs, and danced Dabke, a traditional Palestinian line dance, around the encampment. Around 1 a.m., the encampment screened the documentary “Frontiers of Dreams and Fears,” which follows two Palestinian girls in a refugee camp, and invited affiliates and supporters to watch.
Despite anticipation of arrests, the Gaza Solidarity Encampment remained on the lawn for over 24 hours. And the protestors got their first win — the administration announced that it would now provide financial transparency for investments with the University Senate executive committee.
NYPD officers stand watch in front of the tents of the first encampment, at Columbia University, in Manhattan, New York City, on Thursday, April 18, 2024. (Photo by Edward Lopez)
Thursday, April 18
In the early afternoon of Thursday, April 18, hundreds of students surrounded the South East Lawn at the heart of Columbia’s campus. “Shame on you! NYPD, KKK, IOF, they’re all the same!” they yelled. In the middle of the grass quad, more than 100 student protesters sat in a circle, their arms linked, waiting for arrests to begin. They sang “We Shall Not Be Moved,” an African-American spiritual made famous during the Civil Rights protests of the 1960s. Dozens of NYPD officers encircled the protesters, outfitted in riot gear with zip-tie handcuffs clipped to their belts.
Earlier that day, three protesting students from Columbia’s sister college, Barnard, had received interim suspensions. Columbia President Shafik authorized the NYPD to sweep the Gaza Solidarity Encampment. “All University students participating in the encampment have been informed they are suspended,” Shafik wrote in a letter to the NYPD. In a campus-wide email, Shafik said, “I took this extraordinary step because these are extraordinary circumstances.
Protesters link arms and sit on the lawn as NYPD officers enter the first camp, at Columbia University, New York City. April 18, 2024. (Photo by Nandhini Srinivasan)
(Videos by Marco Postigo Storel, Samaa Khullar, and Sara Selva Ortiz)
Columbia University students react as police officers from the NYPD arrests protesters, after Columbia President Minouche Shafik's request, in New York City, on Thursday, April 18, 2024. (Photo by Marco Postigo Storel)
“You will now be placed under arrest for trespassing,” a police officer announced over a loudspeaker. Above the campus, a helicopter circled the scene, and drones hovered closely over onlookers. Despite the cries of the students surrounding the east South Lawn, officers started making their arrests. One by one, protesters were picked up from the ground, pulling apart the circle of interlocked arms. With their hands zip-tied behind their backs, protesters were then marched out of the “Liberated Zone.” Some were carried out by officers. More students came to see what was happening. A handful of students, in support of the arrests, waved Israeli and American flags nearby.
NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban was supervising the arrests on campus. After an hour and a half of arrests, the more than 100 protesters were completely cleared out from the South Lawn and loaded onto two police buses headed for One Police Plaza, the headquarters of the NYPD.
Around fifty empty green tents, deserted personal belongings, and stashes of food and necessities left behind by protesters were quickly packed away into containers by campus safety officers. But as university officials focused on cleanup, students mobilized again. Dozens jumped over the fence onto the quad directly adjacent to the now empty encampment. Soon, hundreds of new protesters filled the lawn area.
Maryam Iqbal, a Barnard student protester, is arrested and carried backwards out of the east South Lawn by NYPD officers, at Columbia University, in New York City. April 18, 2024. (Photo by Nandhini Srinivasan)
(Video by Samaa Khullar)
According to Columbia Daily Spectator, the main student newspaper on campus, NYPD Chief of Patrol, John Chell, said that it was President Shafik, and not the NYPD, who had identified the demonstration as a “clear and present danger.”
“To put this in perspective, the students that were arrested were peaceful, offered no resistance whatsoever, just saying what they wanted to say in a peaceful manner,” said Chell during a press conference that day.
A protester at the second Gaza Solidarity Encampment holds a plate from the supply tarp, dubbed “the cornucopia,” on April 18, 2024. Supplies, which included food, toiletries, medicine, blankets, chargers, and clothes, were donated by students and supporters of the encampment. (Photo by Jude Taha)
Soon, guest speakers like independent presidential candidate Dr. Cornel West and Palestinian writer and poet Mohammed El-Kurd arrived to address demonstrators. "They can read Sophocles, they can read Karl Marx, they can read Martin Luther King, but when it's time to take a stand against genocide, they won't do it," West said.
Student protesters tried to bring in tents to build a new encampment, but campus officials prevented them. That night, students slept on the field without cover from the elements, huddled together and wrapped in sleeping bags and blankets.
(Photo by Marco Postigo Storel)