About 80 Protesters Arrested at UC Santa Cruz Pro-Palestinian Encampment

Updated 2:35 p.m. Friday

Police in riot gear arrested about 80 protesters at a pro-Palestinian encampment at UC Santa Cruz early Friday after the demonstrators had blocked campus entrances, according to the university.

At about 11 p.m. Thursday, officers gathered near the encampment. Video shot by NBC Bay Area shows the protesters standing in line, linking arms across the campus and facing a line of police.

Jamie Hindery, a student negotiator for the UC Santa Cruz Palestine Solidarity Encampment, estimated there were hundreds of protesters outnumbering the police. Within the first few hours, officers started arresting protesters, Hindery included.

“We felt unheard by our administration; our demands are still unmet,” Hindery said. “We see all of the attacks in Rafah over the last week, and we felt a need to make our voices a little louder in calling for divestment, boycott and disclosure.”

The arrests capped a chaotic few weeks for UC Santa Cruz, which was the first University of California campus to see its unionized academic workers go on strike May 20. That pushed the university to pause in-person instruction, which it had just resumed Tuesday when protesters blocked the campus’ entrances, forcing another switch to online classes.

The protests also come as Israel faces mounting international condemnation over its offensive in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah, with airstrikes Sunday killing as many as 45 people sheltering in tents for displaced Palestinians, according to the Associated Press.

At UC Santa Cruz, encampment participants had been warned repeatedly to stop blocking access to the campus and its resources using chained barricades made of pallets and other materials, Chancellor Cynthia Larive said in a statement to the community.

After those warnings continued Friday morning, police cleared the barricades and the encampment, but some demonstrators remained at the campus’ main entrance, Larive said.

Larive said the protesters were “well-intentioned” but ultimately disrupted campus operations.

“Unfortunately, the disruptions we experienced these weeks were harmful to others in our community,” Larive wrote. “This decision was not made because individuals demonstrated; it was because they have chosen to do so through unlawful actions.”

Community members were unable to leave campus to pick up their children, access medical care off campus, show up to off-campus jobs, leave campus after an early morning shift or come onto campus for an afternoon or evening shift, Larive said in an earlier statement Tuesday evening.

Hindery pushed back on those claims.

“We understand that blocking the road might be seen as not peaceful, but we had a plan to allow emergency access,” he said. “We were allowing families that lived on campus to get their kids. We were dealing with these issues.”

Larive also wrote that the university could not meet protesters’ demands to end its ties to organizations that “support our Jewish students” and to funders that support “important student success work and happen to be Jewish organizations,” nor to condemn the use of funding from certain federal agencies.

“Functionally, the encampment wanted to prevent our researchers from pursuing research related to topics with which they disagree,” Larive said, calling it a “dangerous precedent and to give in to it would undermine academic freedom.”

Meanwhile, the executive board of the United Auto Workers Local 4811, representing 48,000 academic workers across the UC system, called on UC Santa Barbara, UC San Diego and UC Irvine to join in solidarity strikes next week. Graduate teaching assistants, researchers and others will walk out at Santa Barbara and San Diego on Monday and Irvine on Wednesday, joining those at UC Santa Cruz, UCLA and UC Davis.

UAW 4811 has staged rolling strikes across the UC system since mid-May, protesting the use of police against what the union said were largely peaceful pro-Palestinian protests at UCLA, UC Irvine, and UC San Diego while also threatening the free speech rights and academic freedom of UC employees.

“For the last month, UC has used and condoned violence against workers and students peacefully protesting on campus for peace and freedom in Palestine,” UAW 4811 President Rafael Jaime said in a statement. “Rather than put their energies into resolution, UC is attempting to halt the strike through legal procedures. They have not been successful, and this strike will roll on.”

The state labor board is now reviewing a complaint by the UC system alleging that UAW 4811’s strikes violate a no-strike clause in its contract. The California Public Employment Relations Board is expected to make a decision next week, according to a spokesperson.