Police violence will not deter our stand for Palestine

from Mondoweiss

On Friday, February 2, Columbia University students and community members gathered outside the university gates for an action coordinated by Within Our Lifetime and the Columbia University Apartheid Divest coalition. Endorsed by over 50 community organizations, this protest was in response to the chemical weapon attack deployed against Columbia students two weeks prior.

At approximately 3:00 p.m., students and community members took the street and began chanting. Immediately, law enforcement officers began to shove protestors and yelled at us to get out of the street. By the end of the evening, 12 arrests were confirmed, with one of them being a Columbia student, Fadi Shuman. Shuman spoke to me about his arrest and the events that unfolded leading up to it. 

“I watched as two other organizers were arrested, including the police liaison. I started blowing a whistle to get the attention of other protest marshalls. While I’m using this whistle, a cop comes out of nowhere and punches me in the face, then threatens to arrest me.” Once the police liaison was arrested, Shuman began running towards the other marshalls at the front of the crowd, to let the leaders of the group know. Approximately ten minutes later, Shuman himself was arrested for trying to intervene as one of the organizers was being arrested...

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