Students across Philadelphia launch Gaza solidarity encampment at UPenn – Mondoweiss

We are a coalition of University of Pennsylvania students, staff, and faculty along with students from Drexel and Temple and other Philadelphia community members, who just established our Gaza Solidarity Encampment on College Green of Penn’s campus. This encampment is organized in solidarity with the people of Gaza and all of Palestine, who have endured over 200 days of genocide and over 75 years of occupation and apartheid, in which the University of Pennsylvania is shamefully complicit.

This encampment joins the movement of solidarity encampments and liberated zones taking place at universities nationwide, including Columbia University, Yale University, and New York University. We’ve watched our peers be brutalized, harassed, and arrested by police that their own universities authorized to be used against them. 

Demands to the University of Pennsylvania:

1. Disclose all of Penn’s individual and active financial holdings under the Associated Investments Fund in the spirit of transparency and shared governance.

   Endowment transparency is a necessary step to frame conversations around divestment and ethical reinvestment in Palestine and Philadelphia. This transparency is needed for divestment of Penn’s endowment from the genocide of Palestinians, but it is also crucial for campaigns advocating for other pressing causes, such as climate justice and paying PILOTs. Because Penn’s endowment is shrouded in secrecy, it is impossible to know where its $21 billion is being invested. However, it’s clear it is not being invested in the broader Philadelphia community. 

2. Divest financially from corporations that profit from Israel’s war on Gaza and occupation in Palestine and academically from Israeli institutions, condemning the scholasticide of Palestinian scholars and universities.

   This includes ending all ties with Ghost Robotics, a company that is housed in Pennovation and created by Penn graduates, that has developed drone-mounted robot dogs that the Israeli government purchased to be used to commit war crimes in Gaza. It also includes terminating all University programs and partnerships with Israel,  including but not limited to: Habibi Fellowship, Onward Israel, Penn Hillel Birthright, Perspectives Fellowship, and the study abroad program with Tel Aviv University. 

3. Defend Palestinian students and their allies, granting amnesty for those involved in Pro-Palestine protest. End university repression and biased disciplinary processes targeting these community members, beginning with the reinstatement of Penn Students Against the Occupation (PAO). 

   The Penn administration has attempted to silence and intimidate voices of dissent against the violent occupation of Palestine by Zionist forces into submission, weaponizing the Center for Community Standards and Accountability (CSA). Since the creation of the Freedom School for Palestine (FSP) last semester, members of the school have received incessant threats and disciplinary actions from University officials. Members were referred to CSA for their participation in FSP’s five-week-long peaceful occupation of Houston Hall. 

This semester, administrators cherry-picked members with previous affiliation with pro-Palestine organizing to discipline for joining a non-disruptive study-in to raise awareness about scholasticide in Gaza as well as their participation in the Board of Trustee’s disruption. Members who disrupted the Board of Trustees meeting on March 1 were referred to CSA even though Fossil Free Penn protestors who carried out a similar protest 6 years prior received no discipline. A few weeks ago, Penn Police unjustly detained four members of FSP for chalking “Free Palestine” and “Let Gaza Live” on Locust Walk.

The Penn administration also launched an investigation into PAO after they were wrongfully accused of doxxing and discrimination from Penn faculty members who went on a publicized trip to Israel. This investigation ultimately led to Penn revoking PAO’s status as a registered student group. 

It’s clear that these disciplinary measures are attempts by University officials to chill pro-Palestine organizing, but we’re not going anywhere. 

While Penn touts its Ivy League status and its role as Philadelphia’s largest private employer, its is built on a history of displacement, gentrification, and exploitation. The Trustees of 1969 boasted a “policy of accountability and responsibility,” and yet, in the same breath, the University and its stakeholders worked to displace residents of West Philadelphia’s historically-Black neighborhood, “Black Bottom.” In 2021, the owner of the University City Townhomes announced plans to sell the Townhomes and evict its residents. The Townhomes have now been razed to the ground. The campus, along with Drexel University, occupies a space called “University City” — not West Philadelphia — at once physically displacing residents and erasing them from memory. 

This encampment is following in the tradition of activism on Penn’s campus. It is our right as students and community members to peacefully demonstrate and hold Penn accountable, especially when it has negatively impacted our communities, from West Philadelphia to Gaza. We are following in the footsteps of the 1967 sit-in at a Dow Chemical recruitment event in Logan Hall during the Vietnam War, the 1969 sit-in in College Hall that resulted in the creation of the African American studies program, and the 1973 sit-in in College Hall that resulted in the creation of the Women’s Center. We are also inspired by the more recent Fossil Free Penn sit-ins in College Hall and on College Green demanding climate justice.  

Across the past several months, we have created a community that Penn has tried to divide, a structure that has resisted their attempts at repression and intimidation, and a family at Penn and schools across the country that is impermeable to any cowardly university president that sends riot cops to arrest and brutalize their own students. We have created possibilities that oppressive state structures around the world, from West Philly to Gaza, have worked tirelessly to crush. 

Political moments mark time, but they mark possibilities too. The possibilities we are creating at Penn’s Gaza Solidarity Encampment, along with comrades across Philadelphia and the country, is the possibility of a new future: a future where students and faculty are allowed to speak and learn freely within their Universities, a future where we are allowed to dissent, and most importantly, a decolonized future liberated from apartheid, genocide, and oppression. 

The words of Aaron Bushnell remain especially prescient: “Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’ The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.” We are in community with protesters like Aaron, with the people of Gaza and Palestine, with all oppressed peoples of the world, and with each other. These words are a stark reminder that there is no moment but the present. 

As Palestinians continue to be massacred by Israel’s genocidal regime, we cannot wait for another email, milquetoast platitude, or pointless concession. We cannot back down when our school administrations threaten us with discipline or if our city’s riot cops threaten us with arrest. 

Every university in Gaza has been razed in Israel’s deliberate educide. Homes have been reduced to rubble, leaving millions of refugees. Lack of clean water is spreading deadly but preventable diseases across the populace. Aid trucks have been blocked or bombed, leaving millions starving. 

As we see images across the country of riot police arresting students, members of the Israel Occupation Forces continue to indiscriminately arrest, torture, and kill Palestinians. That is why we must continue. Whether Penn likes it or not, we are students of this University, and we will proudly and tirelessly fight for a liberated Palestine and a liberated world. The occupations will be everywhere. We invite you to join us in this struggle.