Roughly 40 people were arrested and charged at Tivoli Quad on the Auraria Campus over the weekend, with multiple offenses like trespassing and interference.
Police in riot gear arrived on the scene around 12:30 p.m. on Friday, April 26, warning protestors they’d be ticketed or arrested if their self-made encampments stayed. Needless to say, the protestors continued their peaceful demonstration.
The Auraria Campus is shared by CU Denver, Metropolitan State University, and Community College of Denver. The community college has canceled all in-person classes for the rest of this semester.
Student leaders of pro-Palestinian demonstrations at the Auraria Campus in Denver have told campus officials they have no intention of taking down the encampment they set up last week, until their demands are met. In a meeting with campus officials yesterday (Tuesday, April 30), Students for a Democratic Society – or SDS – leaders said they’re engaged in civil disobedience, according to a statement from the Auraria Higher Education Center. Since 2016, CU Denver has received almost $3 million from contracts connected to Israel. That’s according to reporting from Henry Larson with the CU Independent. The CU Board of Regents went into executive session on Monday to discuss the protests from a legal perspective.
Stories like these, of peaceful protests on college campuses being disrupted by armed officers who then arrest them, are popping up across the country – most led by pro-Palestine protestors, organizing to call for a ceasefire in Gaza and for their respective universities to divest from funding Israel’s murder of Palestinians. Over 1,500 individuals have been arrested across the U.S. – many of them students.
Friday’s arrests did not entirely disrupt actions on Auraria’s Campus. Walkouts happened at Denver University on Monday and Tuesday, and the encampment is still there – bigger than ever.
Henry Larson joined KGNU’s Jackie Sedley in-studio to talk about the status of demonstrations on the Auraria Campus, and give some insight into the current protestor experience.
“I’d say there were probably, more than at least 50 students police officers there,” Larson said. “And during that initial period of demonstration, anywhere north of 150 to 250 protestors, I didn’t get an exact count, and throughout the day those numbers varied. The protest encampment was rebuilt minutes after police made their arrests and left the Auraria Campus, and then the numbers of protestors fluctuated throughout the rest of the day.”
“I think [protestors] feel very galvanized after Friday, after the police arrived a second time and subsequently left, they feel like they’ve won a major victory against the campus, against the police. they’re also definitely anticipating another police action sometime in the near future, they were asking student government representatives for things like lab goggles to protect against, uh, pepper spray yesterday,” Larson went on to explain. “As far as achieving their goals, I think that’s a significantly harder question. A lot of what they’re hoping the University of Colorado will do, they’ve only issued demands to the University of Colorado system, rely on a vote from the Board of Regents who have not made any public comment. I couldn’t reach any spokesperson for the CU system during my reporting. But again, it’s worth noting that they went into executive session, the CU Board of Regents, on Monday to discuss legal advice surrounding the protests.”
Listen:
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Untitled Jackie Sedley
Transcript:
Jackie Sedley: Those are the chants of protesters on the Auraria Campus in Denver this past Friday. If you listen closely, you can also hear police officers shouting at those protesters to stay back.
Roughly 40 people were arrested and charged at Tivoli Quad on the Auraria Campus over the weekend with multiple offenses like trespassing and interference. Police in riot gear arrived on the scene around 12:30 PM on Friday, warning protestors they’d be ticketed or arrested if their self-made encampments stayed. Needless to say, the protestors continued their peaceful demonstration. The Auraria Campus is shared by CU Denver, Metropolitan State University and Community College of Denver. The community college has canceled all in-person classes for the rest of this semester. Stories like these of, of peaceful protests on college Campuses being disrupted by armed officers who then arrest them, are popping up across the country- most led by pro-Palestine protesters organizing to call for a ceasefire in Gaza and for their respective universities to divest from funding Israel’s murder of Palestinians. Friday’s arrests did not entirely disrupt action on Auraria’s Campus. Walkouts happened at Denver University on Monday and Tuesday, and the encampment is still there, bigger than ever.
Here to talk about the status of demonstrations on the Auraria Campus and give us some insight into the current protester experience is CU Independent’s Henry Larson. Hi, Henry.
Henry Larson: Hi Jackie.
Sedley: So, you were at the campus on Friday. Let’s start there. What did you see?
Larson: Well, by that point the encampment had been going for about a day. Um, I showed up just as police were arresting some 44 protestors who had been camped out since about noon the previous day and when I got there, I saw at least four different law enforcement agencies in riot gear. They were carrying stun batons, brandishing pepper ball guns, clashing with, uh, at least one to 200 protestors. It was a very loud, tense atmosphere. People were receiving injuries from batons, from stampeding, trampling. I spoke with one particular organizer, Khalid Hamu, who is a CU Denver computer science senior. We spoke as he was watching those arrests happen.
Khalid Hamu: We’re currently seeing students get violently attacked by the police department for peacefully protesting to see an end to the genocide.
Larson: And so you hear there in his voice the emotion of this clash. It really was incredibly tense, incredibly painful for a lot of people. I followed up with Khalid later that evening as it had begun to rain, and if you listen, you can hear in his voice he’s been shouting all day, so he sounds much more hoarse.
Hamu: I really just see like a unity of opposites, you know? Like, we have to be so resolute in our demands, and that they are met to see an end to the genocide. But, to also have to like, to have to look at people, my friends, people I, I, uh, I value very highly in my life, like, um, to see them get arrested, um, but understand that I have to keep going, it’s, it, it hurts a little bit, but, um, you know, we have to keep going.
Sedley: Yeah, that, that pain in his voice is, is palpable, both in his voice being lost and just the, the emotion behind it. What, Henry, were the sizes like of the force of the police versus the amount of students that were, that were out?
Larson: I’d say there were probably, more than at least 50 students police officers there, um, and during that initial period of demonstration, anywhere north of 150 to 250 protestors, I didn’t get an exact count, and throughout the day those numbers varied. The protest encampment was rebuilt minutes after police made their arrests and left the Auraria Campus, and then the numbers of protestors fluctuated throughout the rest of the day.
Sedley: And the mayor showed up as well, right? Mayor Mike Johnston, briefly?
Larson: Mayor Johnston showed up, uh, towards the evening after a subsequent interaction with police. Um, it’s worth noting that during that second moment, the police didn’t advance on the camp. They just showed up and, uh, lined up and rank and file. And, uh, warned the protesters to disperse. Once it had begun to rain, the weather turned ugly, Mayor Johnston showed up, he approached the protesters, was surrounded by them, he spoke for only a minute before he was, uh, he left, um. In many ways, it looks like he was chased off by the protesters. He told them they had 30 minutes to get rid of their tents, um, that the city would store them safely and that they could continue protesting. But, um, because the tents were in violation of Auraria Campus policy, they couldn’t remain up.
Sedley: That was going to be my next question. You know, across the country, we’re hearing about over 1, 500 people, many of them students, being arrested for these demonstrations. Is it mainly because of the violation that the encampments posed to those areas? Or, what was the main justification for those arrests on Friday?
Larson: Yeah, so, Auraria Campus policy, like many places in Denver and across the state, bans camping in public areas, and so this particular protest encampment is right on Tivoli Quad, which is right next to the Student Union, Student Housing, and, uh, the university has had this policy since about 2004. They say that, uh, people who violate it are endangering the health and safety of campus and are obstructing a public area so that’s their justification for the protest for removing the protests organizers take a lot of issues with that. They say that the policy can be changed So that’s that’s the main debate.
Sedley: Okay, and bring us up to speed at this point. You were there all day yesterday, correct? You said that the encampment is, is what, two to three times the size as it was Friday? Is that right?
Larson: Yeah, in some ways, the arrests on Friday, I think, had the exact opposite effect that law enforcement and the campus hoped it would have. Uh, it has ballooned in size, the encampment. It’s now two to three times larger. There’s some 50 to 60 tents that we’ve been able to count. There, um, as far as the exact number of demonstrators, that’s a little harder to know because, again, it’s so variable throughout the day. People have classes, they’re coming in from other universities. Um, and so we saw, yesterday I saw people from, uh, University of Denver who were arriving, they had a walkout, which meant that they, uh, had to show up, uh, later on in, in the, uh, afternoon, and so they’re, they’re hearing from speakers like Angela Davis, Representative Elizabeth Epps, and Tim Hernandez, and they’re garnering traction based off of, um, how dramatic and hard to watch this clash was with police on Friday, I think.
Sedley: Right, we played Angela Davis speaking there over the weekend as well. So a big turnout. Did you talk to any demonstrators yesterday that had any thoughts or feelings about moving forward their interactions with police on campus? Obviously, if arrests happened Friday, even though In your words, that had the opposite effect on protesters, more coming out. Are they, are they afraid? Are they, are they hopeful?
Larson: You know, protesters, uh, have done every couple hours, uh, a safety drill where they go over, um, not talking to law enforcement. They rehearse a drill where they lock arms around the center of the encampment. Uh, that’s something that they did on Friday, two separate times while police were there. They’re also actively in negotiations with senior university officials. Yesterday they met with, uh, CU Denver Chancellor and the MSU president, as well as leadership from the Auraria Campus. Overall, those conversations went nowhere. Both parties say, as we heard in the headlines this morning, um, one protester called those talks a quote, “waste of time.”
Sedley: And so with those talks, with the general kind of campus energy or support from other students, are organizers feeling like they’re going to make meaningful change? I know that can be a hard question to answer. Obviously you’re reporting on it, you are not in their shoes, but how do they feel right now from your perspective?
Larson: I think, again, they feel very galvanized after Friday, after the police arrived a second time and subsequently left, they feel like they’ve won a major victory against the campus, against the police. they’re also definitely anticipating another police action sometime in the near future, they were asking student government representatives for things like lab goggles to protect against, uh, pepper spray yesterday. As far as achieving their goals, I think that’s a significantly harder question. A lot of what they’re hoping the University of Colorado will do, they’ve only issued demands to the University of Colorado system, rely on a vote from the Board of Regents who have not made any public comment. I couldn’t reach any spokesperson for the CU system during my reporting. But again, it’s worth noting that they went into executive session, the CU Board of Regents, on Monday to discuss legal advice surrounding the protests.
Sedley: And there’s obviously, like I mentioned earlier, a lot of protests happening on a national scale right now, all with varying outcomes, varying numbers of arrests and varying hope. Can you speak very briefly in the last 45 seconds or so we have here to what’s happening on a national scale and how it replicates or looks different from what’s happening here in Colorado?
Larson: Yeah, this protest in Denver very closely mirrors, um, many of the protests you’re seeing across the country. Mayor of New York City just said that some 300 protesters were arrested at two separate encampments, uh, in the city just last night alone. Uh, there were also demonstrations in Los Angeles at UCLA. Um, and so I think one of the tensions, uh, one of the issues that administrators, law enforcement are considering right now is they want to stay out of those kinds of headlines with how ugly things were on Friday and how ugly things are getting across the country. Just from a PR perspective, it’s something that they wanna stay away from.
Sedley: Hmm. Henry Larson, local journalist with the CU Independent among other publications. Thank you so much for joining us this morning, and we’ll be sure to have you back in if you continue this coverage.
Larson: Thank you, Jackie.
