Andrew Grossman
About 100 student protesters occupied Columbia University’s Butler Library today (April 7) in protest against the school’s ongoing support of the US-Zionist genocide against the Palestinian people and the crackdown on student protesters. As of 7:15pm Eastern time, NYPD carried out mass arrests, leading groups in handcuffs out of the building and into police vans. The majority of those in the building were arrested according to volunteers with The Worker, making this the largest mass arrest of pro-Palestinian protesters at Columbia since the Hind’s Hall occupation raid almost exactly one year ago, the last time the NYPD was called in force to attack the student demonstrators.
Three protesters are in the ER following the arrests according to volunteers with The Worker. The volunteers witnessed the crowd of demonstrators outside the occupied library swell from fifty to over 200 during the mass arrests, surrounding the corrections buses and NYPD vans holding the arrested. NYPD assaulted people in the crowd, forcing their way through and clearing a path for the vans which departed to the crowd cheering for the detained.
The protesters had entered a single hall in the library in the afternoon, displaying Palestinian flags and a banner reading “Liberated Zone”. Columbia school police, newly-empowered to carry out arrests as part of the repression against the anti-imperialist Palestinian solidarity movement, were overpowered by this initial group of protesters who pushed past them, entered the hall.
These “public safety officers” then formed a blockade around the library, locking the doors with handcuffs and declaring that students would only be allowed to leave upon showing their IDs to the police or by surrendering to arrest. Only a few students occupying the building complied, according to volunteers with The Worker. Hundreds more protesters rallied outside the building during the police blockade, encircling the police and demanding they allow the students within to leave while battling to enter and relieve the demonstrators within.
According to University President Claire Shipman, two “public safety officers” were injured in scuffles with the protesters outside attempting to push through the police blockade. Shipman called in the NYPD after a few hours of the battle and standoff, authorizing them to raid the campus and make arrests. The Columbia Spectator reports that at least one protester was seen led out of the building in a stretcher with an arm injury while another was treated for undisclosed injuries within the occupied building.
The pro-Palestinian student coalition Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) shared a statement from the protesters in the occupation on X just before the mass arrests saying in part: “Despite over three hours of kettling and assault by Columbia Public Safety, we continue to hold the line. We are facing one of the largest militarized police forces in the world. Deputized Public safety officers have choked and beaten us, but we have not wavered.”
CUAD said in statements released on Substack that the student protesters had renamed the library the “Basel Al-Araj Popular University”, continuing that Al-Araj’s “writings on the Palestinian resistance and on the nature of war guide revolutionaries around the world today. Al-Araj teaches us that anti-imperialist struggles are protracted, and victory is facilitated by our patience and endurance.” Al-Araj was a Palestinian intellectual and revolutionary martyred in a gun battle with an IDF assassination force in 2017 in the West Bank.
The CUAD statement repeats the protesters’ demands:
“FULL FINANCIAL DIVESTMENT FROM ZIONIST OCCUPATION, APARTHEID, AND GENOCIDE; ACADEMIC BOYCOTT OF ALL COMPLICIT INSTITUTIONS, INCLUDING THE CANCELLATION OF THE TEL AVIV GLOBAL CENTER, COPS AND ICE OFF OUR CAMPUS; END COLUMBIA’S OCCUPATION OF HARLEM; RETURN LAND TO HARLEMITES AND OPEN THE GATES!” And “AMNESTY FOR ALL STUDENTS, STAFF, FACULTY, AND WORKERS TARGETED BY COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY’S DISCIPLINE”.
This is a breaking story.
Image: Demonstrators confront the police forming a line at the NYPD vans containing arrested demonstrators from within the occupied library
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