Seven were arrested when police dismantled UNM’s Palestine solidarity camp

On Wednesday morning, May 15, University of New Mexico police arrested seven people – two of them students – while dismantling the building UNM Palestine Solidarity Camp at the duck pond. New Mexico State Police dressed in riot gear attended.

The arrests followed a university-wide email from President Garnett Stokes on Tuesday, May 14, in which he called for the encampment to be cleared by 5 p.m. that day. At 5 a.m. on May 15, UNM Stokes staff delivered signed notices to protesters remaining on the site, asking them to vacate the site within an hour.

Around 6 a.m. on May 15, police and UNM facilities management arrived at Duck Pond, dismantled the camp and loaded wooden pallets, folding chairs and other items into a dump truck. Protesters, including Diego Guerrerortiz, a UNM School of Law graduate, watched from behind crime scene tape. By 8:30 a.m. the camp was gone.

“(UNM) thinks that the camp – the material camp – is a representation of this movement, and that is simply not true. The movement is the people. “The camp made UNM uncomfortable because they prioritized property too much,” Guerrerortiz said.

The seven people arrested were charged with criminal trespass and misuse of public property, according to court documents and Cinnamon Blair, UNM’s chief marketing and communications officer. One person was accused of concealing his or her identity.

According to the UNM Palestine Solidarity Camp, one protester was injured and taken to UNM Hospital for treatment Instagram.

The arrests also came following a May 14 meeting between Stokes and members of the UNM Divestment Coalition. The coalition consists of UNM University Democrats, Law Students Against Imperialism and 37 other student organizations and non-UNM advocacy groups advocating for UNM to disclose and divest itself of its financial ties to Israel.

In the same email directing the camp to be dismantled, Stokes announced the university’s commitment to publicly disclose research results on its investment portfolio by August 2024.

Jennifer Tucker, associate professor in the School of Architecture & Planning, attended the meeting.

“The camp is one of the longest-running camps in the United States. It’s part of a national movement of students demanding that their universities and the institutions they belong to free themselves from these atrocities. “So the investment disclosure requirement is a result of that pressure,” Tucker said.

At the meeting, Andre Montoya-Barthelemy, a lecturer at the UNM School of Medicine, suggested Stokes negotiate with the protesters to dismantle the camp, he said.

“My concern, of course, is that the president actually has no interest in negotiating with students. Her actions seem to prove this. Their goals appear to have been – in hindsight, looking at this meeting – to make a consciously symbolic and intangible concession to us, while at the same time presenting the threat of physical expulsion,” Montoya-Barthelemy said.