Demonstrations and pro-Palestinian university tent camps began in new cities in the United States on Thursday, including Atlanta and the capital, Washington.
In Atlanta, Georgia, the institution requested the intervention of the police to stop the demonstration that started at Emory University. And according to Mike Johnson, the Republican president of the lower house of Congress, the time is near when the National Guard will be needed at Columbia University and other riotous universities to quell pro-Palestinian and Hamas demonstrations, writes Euronews.
According to the protesters, they occupied part of the university’s territory because the institution is “considered to be complicit in genocide and the militarization of the police.” The pro-Palestinian cause of the Atlanta rally was linked to a protest against a local police and fire training center. They also claimed that the “genocide against the Palestinians” and the construction of the so-called Cop City were both the result of “American imperialism”.
As we reported, in recent weeks several similar protests have been organized at higher education institutions in the United States, including the University of Michigan, Harvard, Yale and the University of California. More than half of the 50 largest universities in the United States have had pro-Palestinian protests in the past week, according to Wednesday’s tallies. As a result of the protests, hundreds of people were detained by the authorities for illegal activities and violations of private land. The country’s leadership and the authorities are trying in vain to calm down the anti-Israel activists, but so far they are not succeeding. Most recently charged at the University of Texas an unauthorized pro-Palestinian demonstration, during which several demonstrators were detained.
Republicans say the National Guard should be deployed
In an official statement on behalf of the American government, Education Minister Miguel Cardona condemned what happened at the anti-Israel demonstrations on Tuesday, but Donald Trump also called the anti-Israel demonstrations shameful.
Republican Sen. Johnson’s comments about the possible deployment of the National Guard came after Republican Sens. Josh Hawley (Montana) and Tom Cotton (Arkansas) called on President Joe Biden on Monday to mobilize the National Guard nationwide to end “professional terrorist criminals to sit-down strikes, blockades and other demonstrations organized from behind.
An official from the University of Texas Chancellor’s Office called the organizers of the demonstration activists who aim to disrupt students’ academic work, adding that vandalism and other crimes will not be tolerated.
On Thursday in New York, a demonstration against Israel started at the fourth institution in less than a week, this time students marched at the buildings of the City College of New York – CUNY.
They won’t let what happened during the BLM protests happen
New York City police leaders have made it clear after police actions and mass arrests over the past week that they will not allow the kind of occupation of public space that happened in the summer of 2020 during the so-called BLM riots in the city of Seattle, where protesters turned part of the city into an “autonomous zone” was declared. City Police Patrol Chief John Chell said he can guarantee that such an attempt will end quickly.
In the capital, Washington, on Thursday, several neighborhood universities started a joint demonstration by setting up tents on the grounds of George Washington University downtown. According to their statement, they want to show their strength together, as well as demand distancing from the Zionist state, and their goal is to end the racist oppression of pro-Palestinian students.
On the west coast of the United States, in Los Angeles, the management of the University of Southern California (University of Southern California) announced on Thursday that the area of the institution will remain closed “until further notice”. During Wednesday’s demonstrations at the university, the police had to detain almost 100 activists.
(Cover photo: Students demonstrate in University Yard in support of Palestinians in Gaza during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas at George Washington University in Washington on April 25, 2024. Photo: Leah Millis/Reuters)
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