Pro-Palestinian Protests Begin at UWM
National protest movement and tent encampments reach UW system's Milwaukee and Madison campuses.
UW-Madison student Astrid Hooper Lofton holds a sign during a pro-Palestinian protest Monday, April 29, 2024, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Madison, Wis. Angela Major/WPR
Students at the Universities of Wisconsin in Madison and Milwaukee joined the nationwide campus movement demanding their schools to support Palestinian liberation and divest from pro-Israel companies and causes. Both universities held rallies and established encampments Monday.
After speeches and chants, several students pitched tents — two weeks after students at Columbia University in New York City launched an encampment that has since led to a nationwide campus movement and faced considerable crackdown.
“We are here to demand that our university divest from the ongoing war to end its complicity with the mass violence we have seen perpetuated against the people of Palestine over the past six months and over the past 75 years,” said Dahlia Saba, a first-year graduate student in electrical engineering and activist with Students for Justice in Palestine, or SJP.
At UW-Milwaukee, about 200 people rallied and gave speeches. Shortly before noon, students there set up tents outside the graduate school.
Pro-Palestinian protesters hold a banner in the Library Mall on Monday, April 29, 2024, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Madison, Wis. Angela Major/WPR
UW-Madison says camping on campus is forbidden
Over the weekend, UW-Madison Dean of Students Christina Olstad sent a campus-wide email reminding students about the school’s regulations on protest, which includes a ban on camping.
A spokesperson for the university did not immediately respond to WPR’s questions, including about whether and when they would remove the tents.
UW-Madison Dean of Students Christina Olstad speaks with organizers and campus police after pro-Palestinian protesters set up camp in the Library Mall on Monday, April 29, 2024, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Madison, Wis. Angela Major/WPR
About a half-dozen university police officers stood around the rally’s perimeter. One said the police had not been given express instructions about what to do with the tents.
“People have the right to express their constitutionally-protected beliefs,” the officer said. “The rest we’ll deal with when we have to.”
Protesters pitch tents during a pro-Palestinian protest Monday, April 29, 2024, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Madison, Wis. Angela Major/WPR
Asifa Quraishi-Landes, a professor at the UW-Madison School of Law, is part of a group of faculty that says it wants to liaise with the administration in support of their students. She said the rules about encampment “hit a little hard.”
“We’ve noticed that (the rules about tents) are not uniformly enforced with tailgating and other kinds of events where there’s arguably encampment and tenting and sleeping bags and things like that,” she said. “So it felt a little focused on the content, not the means, because it doesn’t seem to be all uniformly enforced.”
The ACLU of Wisconsin released a statement saying university administrators were left with a choice in Wisconsin that “will determine which side of history they will be on.”
“In Wisconsin, where we believe education is a public good and builds up our communities, our futures, and the next generation of leaders, we cannot betray our history as leaders and defenders of learning,” read a written statement from ACLU of Wisconsin Executive Director Melinda Brennan. “Freedom of speech and peaceful assembly must not be undermined in places of learning and discovery.”
Faculty and staff march down State Street at the beginning of a pro-Palestinian protest Monday, April 29, 2024, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Madison, Wis. Angela Major/WPR
Wisconsin campuses part of a nationwide movement
The campuses join dozens of other schools across the country that have established encampments in recent weeks, with some facing arrest, suspension and eviction from campus housing.
The movement started at Columbia, when students set up tents on a central quad on April 17. That protest has sparked similar movements at dozens of other campuses, including New York University, the University of Southern California, Harvard, Yale and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Consequences have been fierce. About 100 students at Columbia have been arrested, and on Monday, the university told students they had to clear out by the afternoon or be suspended. Students at more than a dozen schools have been arrested, including at NYU, Yale and Emory University in Georgia, according to data collected by Axios.
Pro-Palestinian protesters hold signs near the tents in the Library Mall on Monday, April 29, 2024, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Madison, Wis. Angela Major/WPR
A sign inside of a protest campsite in support of Palestinians on Monday, April 29, 2024, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Madison, Wis. Angela Major/WPR
Elsewhere, students have been suspended or evicted from campus housing. The protests themselves have been largely peaceful, but some counter protesters, Jewish groups and pro-Israel groups have described them as inherently intimidating.
Some chants, including the use of “From the river to the sea,” are polarizing. Pro-Palestinian activists say it’s a call for liberation, while supporters of Israel say it’s a call to wipe Israel off the map. Likewise, chants to “globalize the Intifada” are interpreted by some pro-Palestinian activists as a call to resist occupation and state violence, and by some pro-Israel and Jewish groups as a call for antisemitism and violence.
Both chants were part of the UW-Madison rally, alongside calls for the university to divest funding for weapons manufacturers and Israeli tech companies.
As of noon Monday, the protests in Wisconsin remained peaceful and undisturbed. At the Madison campus, protesters began their rallies in the rain. In Milwaukee, students marched along residential streets around campus before returning to set up their tents.
A pro-Palestinian protest takes place Monday, April 29, 2024, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Madison, Wis. Angela Major/WPR
UW-Madison police approach pro-Palestinian protesters who set up camp in the Library Mall on Monday, April 29, 2024, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Madison, Wis. Angela Major/WPR
Some lawmakers, including Rep. Francesca Hong, D-Madison, and Sen. Chris Larson, D-Milwaukee, were at the UW-Madison protest.
Others took to social media to call for an end to the protests.
“I pray you will get this handled NOW so our students can finish their finals and the term in peace and safety!,” Rep. Barbara Dittrich, R-Oconomowoc, tweeted at UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin.
Editor’s note: WPR’s Evan Casey contributed reporting. This story will be updated.
Pro-Palestinian encampment protests reach Universities of Wisconsin was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.
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Seems like a hate filled group of antisemitic people if its true that they are harassing, intidating and making jewish people fell threatened on campus. Just listening to the chants and watching some of the groups it seems like a fair description. I think many who are protesting seem well behaved but others seem threateningbto others in the community so its sad to see this.
Information around these protests around the country is being distorted, at times intentionally, by cloaking of who is behind some of the “triggering” chants, and the meaning attributed to the phrasing. (See the excellent description in this article of how words fall on the divided audiences in the context of decades of dispute and oppression, and the horrific current violence.)
I am following the lead of Jewish Voice for Peace, who, as in these encampments, are standing in love and solidarity with the movement defending Palestinian rights, and lives.
I was at the encampment at UWM yesterday and witnessed NO harassment or intimidation, and no hatred or anti-Semitism. Orthodox Jews engaged in friendly conversation with protesters.
Naomi Klein recently spoke of how she is led to stand with Palestinians by her Judaism. Worth a listen. https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/24/naomi_klein_seder
(Excellent comment by huk370)…
Predictable that the protests have received much more attention in the US media than the conflict itself. Hard to spin what is going on in Gaza as the US and Israel being the “good guys”, easier to spin that protesters are the real problem. US politicians and authority figures will be working diligently to criminalize the protesters.
What is happening in Gaza is wrong. It is difficult to understand why the US is spending billions supporting the killing and destruction.
What Hezbollah did was wrong. What the government of Israel is doing is wrong and a war crime. Killing and destroying will not improve the security of Israel, and perhaps Israel needs to learn how to become friends with their neighbors.
“Israel concerned over possible International Criminal Court arrest warrants related to Gaza War.”
November 8, 2023: “Since 7 October, Israeli forces have detained more than 2,200 Palestinian men and women, according to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club. According to the Israeli human rights organization HaMoked, between 1 October and 1 November, the total number of Palestinians held in administrative detention without charge or trial rose from 1,319 to 2,070.” “Amnesty International has for decades documented widespread torture by Israeli authorities in places of detention across the West Bank…”
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/11/israel-opt-horrifying-cases-of-torture-and-degrading-treatment-of-palestinian-detainees-amid-spike-in-arbitrary-arrests/#Inhuman%20and%20Degrading%20Treatment%20in%20Prisons
Read “State-backed deadly rampage by Israeli settlers underscores urgent need . . .”
Not Jewish people – but the government of Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu are violating and should be in jail. Their evil is compromising the security of Israel. What Netanyahu has led is evil.
The US, unfortunately, has been supporting Netanyahu and spending BILLIONS of dollars to support poorly thought-out evil. The people of Israel have to be accountable for the failure of Netanyahu, and the people of Israel should learn to pay the cost of their inability to hold their leadership in check. So, why is the US spending BILLIONS to support Israel? Israel should find a way to pay their way or someone to lend them money.
I also agree with huk370. . . need more people like huk370 writing. . .
If so many students on campuses are outraged, one wonders why their outrage is not focused on issues which do affect them and many other Americans: a lack of healthcare for a number of citizens, an assault on voting rights by Republicans, and proliferation of guns due to intentionally lax laws on gun ownership. These are issues that students would have a chance of making a real difference on. Their encampments and the accompanying chaos will not have an impact on the political situation and will just make Trump in some voter’s minds as one who can deal with this chaos.
I agree with Mingus to a point. Why aren’t college students (and all of us) doing more to engage our elected officials and demand that they (our elected officials) stand for? What are they voting for?
Too many people vote for a party without any idea what the “party” or their individual elected officials are doing.
Part of the problem is that the press fails to report what Representative Fitzgerald is voting for or against. People work and don’t have the time to follow everything. The newspaper used reporters who asked hard questions and wrote the facts.
Perhaps the students should create a website with actual photos of what is happening. Perhaps they should also provide factual reporting on what our Representatives and Senators are doing in Congress. Prehaps . . .