12 arrested outside new school in New York as first faculty-run Gaza solidarity camp continues

AMY GOOD MAN: The country’s first faculty-run Gaza camp opened Wednesday evening at the New School here in New York City. Nearly two dozen professors and lecturers pitched tents in the lobby of the New School’s main building on Fifth Avenue. They named their camp after the Palestinian writer and poet Refaat Alareer, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza in December.

The faculty camp opened several days after police raided a student camp at the New School and arrested more than 40 students following calls from university administrators NYPD to clear the camp. In a statement Thursday, the New School said it would not pursue criminal charges against the student protesters who were arrested. It also said it would reactivate a college committee to examine the issue of divestment.

However, on Thursday evening, 12 people were arrested outside the New School while teacher encampments continued inside. Last night I received a text message as the protest became more intense. I went for a walk with my dog ​​Zazu. We ran over to the New School and met me there Democracy now! colleague Hana Elias, and we began reporting and recording.

PROTESTERS: Let him go! Let him go! Let him go! Let him go! Let him go!

AMY GOOD MAN: I’m Amy Goodman from Democracy now! We are facing the New School. There are posters in the windows about a faculty camp, the first in the country. The posters say: “40,000 people are dead.” Instead they are arresting children.” “All eyes are on Rafah.” But the slogan of the New School here on the window is “Radical Democracy.” Two professors are here who are part of the camp.

HALA MALAK: My name is Hala Malak. I have a few demands. The first is that we want the New School to divest from the 13 companies that exist – to make investments in weapons and manufacturing that are part of and complicit in this war, essentially a demilitarization of divestment from the School . Our second demand is that we want all police officers to stay off campus indefinitely, and we also want the school to cut all ties with them NYPD.

PROTESTERS: On, on with the liberation! Down, down with the crew!

SUNEIL SANZGIRI: My name is Suneil Sanzgiri. I am a part-time lecturer in the culture and media department. I’m here because I teach a course on decolonization, and there’s no better way to put the knowledge students learn in our classrooms into practice. In the camp that is spreading across the country, we know that the state’s repressive police forces are in lockstep with the larger presence of US imperialism around the globe and particularly with what is happening in Palestine. And that’s why we understand that what we’re doing here, the calls for divestment, have a direct and significant impact on ending the genocide. And we as lecturers could no longer stand idly by in the face of the state violence to which our students were exposed and which traumatized them. We knew we had to improve. Many teachers across the country have risked so much. And what we’re doing here is calling on all faculty across the country to step up, take more risks and escalate because we need to drive all war profiteers out of our universities.

CLARA MATTE: Hello. My name is Clara Mattei. I am an associate professor of economics at the NSSR. I’m out here because this is the fight of the moment that everyone must be in. I have to say that these camps are places where culture actually explodes, emerges and connections are made. And ultimately, this is a fight against capitalism and the violence of capitalism as a whole.

AMY GOOD MAN: We are standing in front of the police car in which they have brought a young black man who they have arrested. Then dozens of people, professors and students came to demand his release. They sat in front of the police car. And now dozens of police officers have come to arrest the people sitting in front of the van.

CRESA PUGH: My name is Cresa Pugh and I am an assistant professor of sociology here at The New School. And I’m sitting here because when I walked to support our students at the camp, the faculty camp, they arrested one of my black students, refused to tell me why they were arresting him, and immediately incarcerated him threw this transporter. And I will not stand up and let go of this van until they let my black student out of this van. And he was arrested for supporting the Palestinian residents of Gaza. Forty thousand have died. And you arrest this child?

PROTESTERS: Let him go! Let him go! Let him go!

AMY GOOD MAN: Dozens of police officers are now on duty here. We are right next to Parsons and The New School. There is a plaque attached to Parsons stating that this is the site of WEB Du Bois crisis Magazine and headquarters of the NAACP, a place where Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen and others wrote. They arrest a young black man. The crowd, including many professors and students here at the New School, have asked, “Why is he being arrested?”

CRESA PUGH: Why don’t you talk to us about our students? What’s his name? I’m a professor here. I deserve to know who my student is that you have in that van.

NATASHA LENNARD: I’m Natasha Lennard and I’m a faculty member at the New School of Social Research. I am here to support my students. I am here to stand in solidarity with other faculty members and other staff who want to see an end to the genocide. We also strongly encourage police officers on and off campus. And that’s what you see when you leave armies of soldiers standing NYPD in and near a campus. A small incident – and I didn’t see exactly what happened – but an incident has now left many people at risk. A young man, a young black man, is in police custody. None of this would happen if we didn’t have police available, because our administration completely unnecessarily called the police on our students, like so many administrations across the country who called the police on a peaceful protest to end school genocide Gaza.

AMY GOOD MAN: Your name? And why are you being arrested?

NEW SCHOOL STAFF MEMBER: I am arrested for trying to protect a student at the university. I’m an employee here. This is shameful. It all started when a student from this university was arrested for no reason. The police refused to answer. And now they have arrested more students.

JULIETTA SALGADO: I’m Julieta!

AMY GOOD MAN: Are you a student? Are you a professor?

DENIS MOYNIHAN: Tell us your name!

AMY GOOD MAN: What’s your name?

AMY GOOD MAN: The person we called who was put in a police car was Julieta Salgado. Her hands were zipped together behind her back. But just before she was put in the car, a police officer unbuttoned her shirt and placed her hands up and down over her bra in full view of the public. A total of 12 people were arrested on the streets outside the New School last night. Special thanks to Democracy now! Video colleagues Hana Elias and Hany Massoud.

When we return, we go to Princeton University, where over a dozen students are on hunger strike demanding the divestment of companies with ties to Israel. We will speak with one of the hunger striking students and with Larry Hamm. He is running in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate from New Jersey. He is also a graduate of Princeton University, who led protests there in the 1970s calling for Princeton to withdraw from apartheid in South Africa. Stay with us.