Julie Yoon

Protest at Portland State University continues

Reuters

National

The Washington Post

ISRAEL-INVESTMENTS

House Oversight Committee members visit Pro-Palestinian encampment at GW University, Washington, USA - 01 May 2024

Israel Palestinians Campus Protests

PROTESTSKENTSTATE

Photographer

for The Washington Post

protests-wkcr

US-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICT-EDUCATION-DEMONSTRATION

Contributor

Columbia Protests

FTWP

Protests continue at a protest encampment in support of Palestinians at Stanford university

Hill Coverage of April 17, 2024

US President Joe Biden Arrival

Campus Protests Then and Now

Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

The Capitals, a team in transition, know what they want this offseason

Is Pastis as good as our food critic thought? He sent spies to find out.

Nationals can’t solve Nate Eovaldi, drop series finale to Rangers

What’s the best bus to New York? We tested 5 for comfort and value.

You asked: Do I need a passport for my cruise?

Adaptive equipment is making national parks more inclusive

The New York Times, alone in its outrage over access to Biden

Wait, what is Stephen A. Smith talking about? Find out with our quiz.

Stephen A. Smith would like even more of your attention

An I bond is now at 4.28 percent. Are they still a good deal?

Use these 6 points to say no to a college you and your kid can’t afford

How this new rule protects retirement savers from costly advice

Teen grabs wheel when driver passes out and school bus veers into traffic

Cat climbed into Amazon return box, found alive 630 miles away

Brave Little Hunter is free: Baby orca escapes lagoon for open seas

Ask Amy: Should I be the best man if I think the bride is abusive?

Carolyn Hax: Husband keeps pushing modest spouse to wear sexier clothes

Miss Manners: Host eats luxurious breakfast, leaves cereal for guest

Biden honors distinguished Americans; Trump back in N.Y. court

Hope Hicks witnessed nearly every Trump scandal. Now she must testify.

State laws measure if a woman is close enough to death for an abortion

Journalism in India is under assault

The dangerous new call for regime change in Beijing

Ukrainian men abroad voice anger over pressure to return home to fight 

Trump Media auditor charged by SEC with ‘massive fraud’

Google’s empire is massive. A judge will soon rule if it’s a monopoly.

On Press Freedom Day, little to celebrate for Hong Kong’s journalists

Young Georgians want to be part of Europe. Their government is in the way.

Taxes are inevitable. Paying to prepare them doesn’t have to be.

Israel’s offensive is destroying Gaza’s ability to grow its own food

Riot police and over 2,000 arrests: A look at 2 weeks of campus protests

‘It’s been abused’ Rep. McCaul on motion to vacate threat

Jordan Tovin

With signs on protesters’ tents and kaffiyehs around their necks, the pro-Palestinian encampment movement <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/04/23/map-student-protests-arrests-universities-us/" target=_blank>sweeping</a> college campuses nationwide arrived Thursday in the nation’s capital.

The demonstration, organized by the DMV coalition of Students for Justice in Palestine, brought together students, faculty and advocates from across the region to a lawn at George Washington University. It started with tents in the wee hours, and by the afternoon it had swelled to include drums, bullhorns and hundreds of people. Some called for schools to cut ties with Israel and protect the free speech of pro-Palestinian student organizers. Some chanted for the end of the state of Israel.

Robb Hill

The demonstration on GWU’s law campus remained mostly peaceful through the afternoon; students near the 30 or so tents read and typed on their laptops. But anticipation was building. University officials asked demonstrators to relocate to a different park and said the protest could last only until 7 p.m., according to an email and a note posted online from the school. As of 5:30 p.m., the demonstrators showed no sign of leaving.

Waves of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/05/03/university-protests-ucla-columbia-college-news/">antiwar protests</a> are spreading across colleges campuses, with <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/interactive/2024/university-antiwar-campus-protests-arrests-data/" target=_blank>growing police arrests</a> as <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/04/24/commencement-graduation-protests/" target=_blank>graduation season</a> approaches. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/04/25/university-protests-arrests-locations/" target=_blank>See the universities where protests are intensifying</a>.

Are you a college student? <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/04/25/submissions-college-protests/" target=_blank>Tell us about protests on your campus</a>.

“We’re here to stay,” said Mahmoud Beydoun, 20, a junior at GWU who is Palestinian. “We have certain demands, and we want them to be heard and met.”

GWU President Ellen M. Granberg, in emails to the school Thursday, said she had requested the assistance of D.C. police officers after “multiple instructions made by GWPD to relocate to an alternative demonstration site on campus went unheeded by encampment participants.”

“We will not allow students from other local colleges or unaffiliated individuals to trespass on our campus,” she said in the statement. “We can and will enforce the time, place, and manner restrictions that continue to govern activities on our campus.”

By<b> </b>4:45 p.m., dozens of police officers were stationed near campus. They were located blocks away from the protest, where demonstrators were relaxing on the grass, chatting and eating pizza.

Meanwhile on Thursday, police confronted protesters at college campuses across the country — deploying a stun gun at Emory University in Atlanta and arresting more than 100 people at Emerson College in Boston. The student movement has taken off in the week since<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/04/18/columbia-student-gaza-protests-nypd/" target=_blank> Columbia University deployed New York police officers</a> to arrest protesters occupying its lawn. Students and faculty protesting in D.C. on Thursday cited the activists at Columbia as inspiration.

At GWU, a campus located in the heart of downtown Washington, student outrage over the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/israel-hamas-war/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">war in Gaza</a> had been building since the Oct. 7 attack. In October, Students for Justice in Palestine projected images on a library saying “End the siege on Gaza” and “GW the blood of Palestine is on your hands.” The university suspended the student group in November, <a href="https://gwhatchet.com/2023/11/14/gw-suspends-sjp-for-three-months-after-anti-israel-library-demonstration/" target=_blank>the school newspaper, the GW Hatchet, reported</a>, a move many students saw as unfair treatment of those who criticize Israel.

Beydoun, who is studying international relations, said student organizers at GWU had been following videos of death and destruction in Gaza for months, wrestling with feelings of despair and a desire to make change. Many of them were Palestinian, he said, and had family or friends in Gaza.

Since the war began, at least 34,305 people have been killed and 77,293 injured in Gaza, according to the <a href="https://t.me/MOHMediaGaza/5353" target=_blank>Gaza Health Ministry</a>, which says the majority of the dead are women and children. Israel estimates that about 1,200 people were killed in the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas.

The GWU students ultimately formed a coalition with regional Students for Justice in Palestine chapters, and together they organized marches and sit-ins. Then, they watched as Columbia University students launched an encampment and brought even more attention to Gaza. Beydoun said they knew they needed to do the same. And they knew that if they could pull it off in the nation’s capital, they’d show just how united they were in their demands.

“We’ve been very mentally strained and we found a way to do it,” he said. “It was the networking power. It was the student power.”

Grace Chinowsky, 20, the incoming editor in chief of the Hatchet, woke up at 6:30 Thursday morning to a call from one of her reporters.

“It’s happening,” the reporter told her.

She ripped off a piece of blue tape, wrote “PRESS,” fastened it to her jacket, and arrived to find tents erected on University Lawn, a field in the middle of her school’s law school campus.

By 9:30 a.m., she was parked with her laptop on a nearby bench, chronicling the demonstration with a team of student journalists. They watched as a group of about a dozen people banged drums and led chants from the H Street sidewalk. Through bullhorns, the demonstrators called for a cease-fire, an end to all aid to Israel, and the restoration of Palestinian borders to what they were in 1948, before the state of Israel was established.

“We don’t want two states,” a demonstrator said. “We’re taking back ’48.”

About a dozen people echoed the chant, holding signs that said “End the occupation now.”

A few feet away, two George Washington University police officers watched the demonstration. One had an AirPod in and sipped his coffee.

“Among many, many students on campus, especially those here today, there is a strong feeling of injustice,” Chinowsky said. “Both about the violence happening abroad in Gaza, and also how university officials have chosen to respond to it.”

She stressed that there is a long tradition on campus of students advocating in support of Palestine, even before the Oct. 7 attack. She said that she recognized classmates and professors in attendance Thursday but speculated that at least some people demonstrating on the sidewalk — which is located just outside of GWU’s property — may not be enrolled at the school.

About 10 a.m., a man who said he was a university student walked into the crowd holding an Israeli flag above his head. A school police officer stepped into the crowd, apparently trying to separate the pro-Israel demonstrator from the swarm of people around him, who chanted “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

Police then seemed to want the man to leave the area — to which he responded by holding up his flag, shaking his head and saying to police, “This is my campus.” Police momentarily stepped back, before the man appeared to push or make contact with a pro-Palestinian demonstrator in front of him.

At that point, the officers forced the man away from the demonstration and into a university building, with his hands behind his back.

Around the same time about two miles away, a group of protesters gathered on the steps of Healy Hall at Georgetown University. They chanted “Free, free Palestine” and cautioned those gathered not to speak with police or the media.

Around 11:30, the protesters wound their way through the neighborhood’s cobblestone streets, headed to meet up with fellow protesters at GW. Briefly blocking traffic on M Street, they chanted “Israel is a terror state” and “Down, down, Genocide Joe” as passing cars honked in support.

Just before 12:15 p.m., the group arrived on the GWU campus to cheers from people around the tents. The two groups chanted in unison, “There is only one solution, intifada revolution.”

At the encampment a few hours later, Fida Adely, an associate professor of anthropology at Georgetown, linked hands with other faculty and staff from area universities. They formed a human chain around the tents.

“We may not be the ones holding encampments, but we need to be here to support our students who are really willing to kind of suspend their studies, suspend their academic lives, and be out here to fight against the genocide,” Adely said, dressed in a light blue regalia gown from her alma mater, Columbia. “This is a turning point in our history.”

As the university’s deadline for clearing the yard approached, three counterprotesters holding Israeli flags stood about 20 yards from the encampment.

Dylan Lyman, a GWU senior from Long Island who was holding one of the flags, said he showed up to demonstrate against some of the chants he heard.

“We’re Zionists,” he said. “We think Israel should exist.”

Lyman said he recognized classmates on the other side of the yard and hoped the division over the war would not end friendships.

<i>Clarence Williams contributed to this report.</i>

University of Maryland, College Park

Ellie Silverman covers protest movements, activism and local news. At The Post, she has also covered local crime and courts. She previously reported on retail, breaking news and general assignment stories for the Philadelphia Inquirer, her hometown paper. She graduated from the University of Maryland, where she reported for the Diamondback.

Ellie Silverman

Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting, finalist (part of a team), 2020

Brown University, B.A.

Emily Davies is a reporter covering crime and criminal justice in Washington, D.C. She started at The Washington Post as an intern in June 2019.

Emily Davies

Wesleyan University, BA in social science/music, 1998

Goucher College, MFA in creative nonfiction, 2014

Georgetown  University Law School, JD expected 2024

Justin Wm. Moyer is a reporter for The Washington Post. His work with a Post team covering the Capitol insurrection was honored with a Pulitzer Prize in 2022, and his coverage of Saudi lobbying with a Post team was honored as a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2019.

Justin Wm. Moyer

Protesters launch encampment at George Washington University campus

the-washington-post

Pro-Palestine Encampment at George Washington University

For The Washington Post

name

washpost

prism://prism.query/local-states,/local/dc,/local/dc/dc-politics,DC&limit=20

The District

The Washington Post is your source for Washington, DC news. Find breaking news, political reports, school information and check DC area traffic and crime reports.

Fast, informative and written just for locals. Get The 7 DMV newsletter in your inbox every weekday morning.

D.C., Md. & Va.

The Washington Post offers breaking local news, weather and traffic information for the DC, Maryland and Virginia metro areas, plus information about school districts, crime, government, religion, the lottery,restaurant reviews and obituaries.