The order said universities should allow students to stage protests, but city police would come if requested

Law enforcement faces a clash between groups on two sides of a political divide at MIT Friday. (Photo: Yaakov Aldrich)

The Cambridge City Council on Monday heard expressions of support for peaceful protesters on campus and for the administration that has avoided violent action against them, but a political order to bar city police from attending protests bowed to reality: The city must respond when a call for help comes from the MIT or Harvard police forces.

City guidelines “call for specific commitments to mutual aid,” City Manager Yi-An Huang said when the order was first presented on April 30. “Whenever Harvard or MIT University Police request assistance from Cambridge Police, officers are dispatched.”

That’s a good thing, Huang said, because Cambridge officials will show restraint that outside forces might not. “Our officers are the people who know Cambridge and our community best,” he said. “In the event that supportive measures are required, I firmly believe that we want to involve the Cambridge Police Department, who are part of our community, and not police officers from other communities or the state.”

In a test held at the same time as the council meeting, Huang may have been confirmed.

Shortly before councilors’ deliberations, MIT students tore down a fence at Kresge Oval to regain access to the tent camp from which they had been evicted as of 2:30 p.m. Campus, city and state police were on scene, which led to de-escalation without any arrests. Harvard students also marched through the city streets to the home of their interim president without incident. So far, students only have to expect administrative discipline.

Meanwhile, the council’s order ended by simply asking the administration to respect the students’ right to protest.

Changes in language

After Councilman Paul Toner stopped a vote last week using his “charter rights,” the original order’s author, Ayesha Wilson, and her co-sponsors introduced a replacement that included Huang’s notes, the words of U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley and New reflected guidance from the ACLU that “schools must recognize that armed police officers on campus can endanger students and are only a last resort.”

Pressley noted that peaceful protest is a tenet of U.S. democracy and “students who advocate for justice often serve as a catalyst for much-needed change,” Wilson said. “Many of the rights we are taught today are won through the sweat equity of students demonstrating on college campuses,” whose free speech should not be criminalized.

The ACLU guide also appeared in an alternate order, introduced by Toner and co-sponsors Patty Nolan and Mayor E. Denise Simmons, which was never discussed. Instead, the replacement was tweaked by Wilson and co-sponsors Sumbul Siddiqui and Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler. References to “peaceful” protests across the country became “largely peaceful,” although a reference to “atrocities” in Gaza remained and a 5-4 bloc resisted calls to turn them into “terrible injustices” or “enormous suffering.” .

The biggest change came from Nolan. She proposed including the police duty of mutual aid in language about the city’s obligation to “uphold in accordance with law and conscience the freedom of speech and peaceful assembly” protected by state and U.S. constitutions.

The mutual aid amendment passed unanimously, and the final order with the changes was approved with the agreement of all but two council members: Toner was a no; Simmons voted “present.”

Public comment

The meeting began with Simmons announcing that more than 40 people had signed up to provide public comment, and about 35 of them wanted to talk about the protests. At least a dozen – most identified as Jewish, some with children who attended MIT or Harvard – were angered by the protests, which made them or their children feel unsafe because of what they felt in chants or on TV channels. Hear anti-Semitic language poster.

There were also people who identified as Jews who sided with the protesters, including many self-identified Jewish students and educators.

Although much of the commentary was reasoned, emotions ran high at times. Political organizer Willow Carretero Chavez, a Somerville resident and student at MIT, said he was arrested at Emerson College last month in a “brutal and unnecessary” police raid in which officers were seen with bloody knuckles and arrested in a van Protesters “so tight they almost vomited and passed out.”

“If you don’t keep the police away from this protest, this is exactly what will happen at MIT. This is what’s happening at MIT right now. Do you understand that?” said Carretero Chavez. The prediction did not come true.

Only in Cambridge?

MIT student Zack Duitz, however, said he had video evidence of protesters re-entering the camp that proved they were not, as officials and commentators repeatedly said, peaceful: “While I was walking back to my dorm to camp “At the Zoom meeting, I watched as protesters violently tore down a fence on the MIT campus,” he said. “According to the US government, there should be no freedom of expression that leads to violence.”

Some speakers said they wanted changes to Wilson’s order to be strengthened, not weakened – for schools to disclose and divest their foundations’ financial holdings in companies that support Israel’s economy and for them to drop any changes aimed at protesting students. That group included Dan Totten, a former legislative aide to a retired city councilman, who bristled at the possibility of the unheard replacement order.

“I predicted today that Paul Toner and Patty Nolan would put in a last-minute replacement order. I was right. They’re both white supremacists,” Totten said.

The comment was later mentioned by Toner. “Being called a white supremacist when I offer ACLU language can only happen in Cambridge,” Toner said. “This can only happen in Cambridge.”