Today marks Day 12 of the ongoing protest and encampment at the Auraria Campus in Denver, organized by Students for a Democratic Society Denver – commonly referred to as SDS – in conjunction with other groups. Organizers plan to keep the demonstration up and running until their demands are met. They have many demands, including that the University of Colorado fully divest from corporations that operate in Israel, refuse to accept grants from corps that contract with U.S. armed forces, and terminate study abroad programs to Israel.
The Auraria encampments have received lots of media attention, in part due to the arrest of 44 students, faculty members, and community members two Fridays ago by the Auraria Police Department and Denver Police Department. They were charged with municipal offenses including trespassing and interference, according to an Auraria Campus statement.
There have been over 2,200 student arrests across the country related to these kinds of pro-Palestine on-campus demonstrations.
Student protestors have occupied the campus’s Tivoli Quad since April 25. Tents cover a large portion of the quad’s grassy knoll. KGNU’s Jackie Sedley went to the Quad over the weekend, on Sunday May 5. At that time, there were over 30 tents.
Sedley spoke with two SDS organizers who were arrested while protesting, as well as one organizer from Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP). Hear those conversations, as well as the latest updates from local police departments and campus administrators.
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Untitled Jackie Sedley
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Jackie Sedley: Today marks Day 12 of the ongoing protest and encampment at the Auraria campus in Denver, organized by Students for a Democratic Society – commonly referred to as SDS – in conjunction with other groups. Organizers plan to keep the demonstration up and running until their demands are met. They have many demands, including that the University of Colorado fully divest from corporations that operate in Israel, refuse to accept grants from corporations that contract with U. S. armed forces, and terminate study abroad programs in Israel.
The Auraria encampment has received lots of media attention, in part due to the arrest of 44 students, faculty members, and community members two Fridays ago by the Auraria Police Department and Denver Police Department. They were charged with multiple offenses, including trespassing and interference, according to an Auraria campus statement. There have been over 2, 200 student arrests across the country related to these kinds of pro Palestine on campus demonstrations. Student protesters have occupied Auraria campus’s Tivoli Quad since April 25th.
Tents cover a large portion of the Quad’s grassy knoll. I went to the Quad yesterday and at that time there were well over 30 tents. I saw tents tagged with phrases like, “Free Palestine” and “You Shall Not Pass.” There were a handful of billboard like murals around the encampment with similar messages: “End Apartheid, Divest from Genocide,” “We Keep Us Safe,” and “Free Gaza.”
While there, I spoke to Paul Nelson. He’s a member of SDS and one of the organizers of the Auraria encampment. Nelson was one of those arrested two Fridays ago on April 26th, just one day into the start of the encampment.
We sat down together in this makeshift living room positioned at one end of the encampment. The floral embroidered couch we sat on was donated. They’ve received tons of donations. One organizer said they receive donations of food, snacks, money, and other resources every hour at this point. Here’s Paul Nelson’s account of his arrest.
Paul Nelson: So on Friday, the camp’s actually in pretty high spirits, and there’s just these weird rumors going around of a sweep, you know, and our marshal team is at the same time trying to keep people safe, but also trying to keep people from, like, panicking is a part of that. And so we’re trying to quash unsubstantiated rumors. And a Palestinian member of the community comes up to me and says, “Paul, is it true that the police are coming? I hear the police are coming.” And I say, “No, no, I think that’s just an unsubstantiated rumor.” And just as I say that, right behind him comes this small army from the north end of the Tivoli, you know.
And so, we, uh, right there and then we knew sh*t was about to hit the fan and we had to prepare so we did what we’ve been practicing and the people formed a picket arm in arm around the encampment and, you know, as the police approached we actually sat down and students on either side of me, there was a faculty one over from CU and there were several faculty who got arrested. My buddy Flanders got ripped up by the DPD and they cut him. And he was shouting, “Police brutality! Police brutality,” and I’d seen it on so many videos, but to see it right there and then was something else. You know, next to him was fellow SDS-er Samira, who got ripped up by the cops as well. I held fast to her arm as they tried to tear her up. And you know, your emotions were running really high in that situation. So what I did was I started singing, “We Shall Not Be Moved.” It’s one of my favorite songs. And in that moment, I think it was just really fitting.
And I wanted those cops to know I wasn’t afraid of them, but you know, those cops, they seemed shook in so far as I saw them, I kept telling them, you know, “You have every right to,” and I’d look them in the eyes when I’d tell them this, I’d say, “You have every right to refuse an illegal order. This is wrong. You do not have to do this.” And of course they didn’t exercise that. But they zip us up in these horribly tight handcuffs and haul us off to the bus and we go smiling, you know, and as I’m walking away being, being hauled off by the cops, you know, I’m saying “This isn’t the end of the student movement, this is the start of the student movement” because I’ve never seen activity like this ever in my life, only in my study of like the 1960s and the student movement, which was alive back then fighting the Vietnam War. So we’re getting hauled off to the, to the bus. And, they’re taking everything out of your pockets, and they actually, I, we witness, while this is happening, it looked like a young student, it was either a young student, or a young community member, who was handicapped, and used a cane to walk, they took their cane from them, and forced them to walk to the bus, with the police leading them, just as they would lead anyone else, you could see their paint walking, but the bus began to fill with students, and faculty and community people who had come here to stand for peace. I would say that in the bus I was in, there was probably maybe 25 people. And in total, I, it was my understanding, like 40 people were arrested. I think there might be more.
Jail was horribly dehumanizing. You know, as you can imagine, they, you get in there, and they’re all barking orders at you, and none of it’s clear, they’re angry that you don’t understand. They force you to strip down, right in front of a cop that’s staring at you, and put on this, like, jail garb, this, uh, this comfortable jail garb. And so, like, we learned firsthand just how despicable the Denver Jail is, and shame on the administration here for allowing their faculty and their students and their community to get sent there for a peaceful assembly to exercise free speech. We organize students who clearly have a problem with the way their university is being ran in regards to its relation to the genocide, and they want to have a conversation with the administration. They want more than that. They want a change of course towards justice and away from genocide and apartheid. And for that, you know, the administration has tried to instead wield police, small armies, and their institutional power to stop that from happening. But we know that student power is far more lasting and has a far better track record when it comes to bringing about change, institutional change.
Sedley: And how long were you there for?
Nelson: 12 hours. And so they let me out at 2:00 a.m. I was lucky that I had the community out there and the jail support and so I was able to, I was able to get a ride back to the camp and I went straight back to the camp. 2:00 a.m. I come back down here and, and, and go right back to where my tent is. But in part, I think the, noth the trauma of the police brutality, the political repression that I experienced combined with the fact that this is just some historical times we’re living in, my brain hasn’t been able to process it all. So, I’ve been having trouble holding onto people’s names, memory of the event. I’ve relied really strongly on my legal support to document what happened and to make the necessary requests so that we have a full and clear account of what happened on Friday. So, like, what happened on Friday was horrible, it was brutal, it was an attack on our democratic rights, but it was also a gift to the student movement insofar as it lit a fire on this campus and in our community and across the whole country where students are standing up and, and, and fighting for justice, you know, and, and see these kind of charges as nothing compared to what the people of Palestine deal with, you know.
More than 2,200 students have been arrested, as I understand it, and that number’s probably gone up at this point. I’m proud to be counted in their number, you know. It’s going to be a good thing when this is all said and done. And it will be all said and done, because it’s already begun in a few universities, you know.
Sedley: Nelson calls the arrests an abuse of students and a deprivation of their freedom of speech. Still, he went on to tell me that he’s optimistic about the legal course forward. His court date is set for later this month.
Nelson: It seems like a, seems like a hell of a case, you know, and I think that students have a right to protest, and I’d be happy to be part of defending that, and so, we’re setting precedent here, and, and that precedent is in defense of academic freedom for our teachers who participate in this action, who have consequences coming down the chain. This is already an anti-protest tactic that the police have used against the people’s movements for a long time, so, we have to be wary of every inch they try and take against us, all these anti protesting laws.
Sedley: Nelson says the encampment has not moved an inch since they got there on April 25th, and that their demands have only expanded.
Nelson: We’ve gone from targeting CU to targeting CU and MSU, and increasing our demands to drop the charges on the 40 people who were arrested, and to drop any sort of academic consequences on those students and faculty academic conduct charges.
Sedley: Last Thursday, the Auraria Executives Council, which is made up of representatives from the Auraria Higher Education Center, the Community College of Denver, MSU Denver, and CU Denver, said a $15,000 donation would be made to the International Committee of the Red Cross if the encampment came down by 5 p.m. that day. Nelson delivered a speech on site on behalf of organizers, saying that the offer was deeply insulting. They vowed to stay out there for as long as it takes. Once again, you just heard the voice of Paul Nelson, a protester that was arrested two Fridays ago at the encampment on the Auraria campus. We’ll take a short break. When we come back, you’ll hear from a second member of Students for a Democratic Society who was arrested Friday.
This is the Morning Magazine on listener supported KGNU. It’s 8:20. I’m Jackie Sedley. If you’re just now joining us, we’re shining a light on the Auraria encampment in Denver, which has been stationed on the campus’s Tivoli Quad for 12 days now. The demonstration is a largely student-organized effort to stand with Palestine and demand the University of Colorado divest from corporations that operate in Israel, among other demands.
I went to the encampment yesterday and spoke with two organizers who were arrested two Fridays ago. You already heard from one of those individuals, Paul Nelson, before the break. The other organizer is Lucia Feast, a second year Metro State University gender studies student and member of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). She told me that leading up to her arrest, she was preparing herself for something like that to happen after seeing what was happening on other university campuses. She has bruises on her body from the police and says the whole arrest experience still feels unreal. that she hasn’t had time to process since she immediately returned back to the encampment, just like Paul Nelson did, after her arrest and kept organizing. I asked her about how one living in the encampment finds the balance between talking about the political issues they’re there for and also taking space to rest and care for themselves. Here’s what she had to say.
Lucia Feast: Yeah, it’s really hard to like keep the focus on Palestine. If we’re here for 10 days, not every second can be filled with that. That’s not sustainable. It’s just not possible. Just taking up the space, right, is the protest. And so even if we’re just in this space in community, that is doing so much already. It’s really exciting that I, as a student, can create that space for our entire community to be in conversation with each other, and sharing space together. This does not exist enough for us. And it’s really a shame that it takes something like genocide, something like our money going to genocide for us to be in community and so close with one another. And I wish I think that’s something I want to take away from this of like, we should be able to be in this kind of community before these things happen, right? So that these things don’t happen.
Sedley: She feels like Auraria campus and the affiliated groups are positioned pretty well for a demonstration like this and that that maybe explains why other campuses in the Denver Boulder area haven’t established similar encampments at this point.
Feast: Having people that know how to marshal and take care of each other having legal support those things are are so key to what we’re doing here, and it would not be possible without those things. And so, if people don’t have those kinds of resources, if they don’t have the funds, things like that, will easily hold you back from doing things like this. And so, we really have been in, like, a really good place, right place, right time, it feels like, to, to do this action
Sedley: SDS, that’s Students for a Democratic Society, is meeting with Metro State University’s Board of Trustees today. Feast told me it’ll likely happen around 3:30 p.m. in tandem with an emergency rally hosted by SDS. Last Friday, the university agreed to provide demonstrators with financial information related to the university’s investments and industry relationships. That’s according to both Feast and a statement by MSU President Janine Davidson. So, while there’s been steps forward between organizers and MSU, Feast says there’s been a lot less movement when it comes to the University of Colorado.
Feast: And I think that’s largely because they’re a bigger institution. It would be a bigger hit to them to make those changes, but that’s also why we, originally targeted them because their investments are much bigger and their support of these companies is much bigger. And so we’re hoping to see more movement from them. And hopefully if one university makes some changes, then the next, the others will follow.
Sedley: SDS has invited university officials to sit at their bargaining table at the encampment. They literally brought in a dining room table, put a tent over it, and added chandeliers. However, Feast told me that other than someone from Auraria Higher Education Center, none of the people that they’re formally negotiating with have accepted that invitation.
Feast: I think that’s obviously intentional, right? They know that this isn’t an unsafe space they say that to discredit us, to get us to go away and if they had to come here and see it, they, they could not deny that, right, that we are a community, this is a safe space, this is a, a, a growing and community and social space and that can’t be denied when you come here and see it.
Sedley: That was Lucia Feast speaking with us, an MSU student and a member of Students for a Democratic Society. Stay with us. In 30 seconds or so, you’ll hear from an organizer with Jewish Voice for Peace on their relationship with the Auraria protests and the movement for justice in Palestine.
Back in 15 seconds.
You are tuned in to listener-supported KGNU. This is the Morning Magazine. We’re highlighting voices from the Auraria encampment in Denver this morning, which is a pro Palestine demonstration that organizers say will continue to stand until their demands are met, which include the University of Colorado entirely divesting from corporations that operate in Israel. The third and final voice from the encampment I have for you this morning is Rae Jones. They’re a local leader of Denver/Boulder Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), and they were helping to organize a “Celebrate Liberation” event yesterday, a counter event to Jewish Colorado’s “Celebrate Israel” event. Here’s some of the reasons they said the group decided to host the event.
Rae Jones: Judaism and Zionism are not the same, and Jewish Colorado and Zionist Jewish institutions don’t speak for all Jews. And we think that it’s gross and shameful to celebrate Israel during a time of ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza carried out by the Israeli government. This moment is not complex in terms of whether there’s a genocide or not, but, but the history of, of Judaism, of antisemitism, of Jewish trauma is complex. And we wanted to give us space to really have those discussions and share some of those discussions that we’re having internally with a broader audience.
Sedley: Jones went on to tell me that there’s a lot of fear in the Jewish community when it comes to speaking out publicly, especially within Jewish institutional leadership.
Jones: I hear a lot of we support you privately, but can’t support you publicly, which is really frustrating, especially in this time of deep, deep violence and need for people to speak out and, and to speak out against genocide as, as Jews, we know the history and how dangerous it is to not do that. And so to see our Jewish leaders not speaking out in this moment is really disheartening and disgraceful.
Sedley: Jones says JVP has seen a huge influx in membership since the October 7th attacks. They went on to say there’s a lot of manipulation of the word anti-Semitic that they find particularly harmful and that they hope to educate folks through JVP efforts and education.
Jones: We’re hearing locally and nationally and internationally that these camps are anti-Semitic, and or even pro-Hamas which is one, incorrect and two, extremely dangerous for the real instances of anti-Semitic that are happening. Criticizing a government is not anti-Semitic. And we need to, like, especially with the House Billthat was passed recently that conflated criticizing Israel with anti-Semitic, we, that is extremely dangerous and that’s why many of the Jewish constituents in the House voted against it, despite their support for Israel. Because when we conflate criticism of a government with the real oppression of Jews that happens at times, and hate for Jews that can happen, that means that that hate is hidden by something that is not actually dangerous.
Sedley: That was Rae Jones, a local leader of Denver/Boulder Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP). Some more updates on the Auraria encampment outside of just the organizer’s statements.
Last Friday, Denver Police Chief Ron Thomas spoke at a regular meeting of Denver’s Citizen Oversight Board. There, he said he refused a second request from Auraria campus officials to clear the pro Palestine demonstrators from the encampment. In the wake of 44 arrests the week prior, Thomas said there is, QUOTE “no legal way” for officers to dismantle the demonstration, since currently it can’t be considered an unlawful assembly. Thomas went on to blame Auraria Campus leaders for mishandling the aftermath of the mass arrests, saying he’d expected campus officials to collect the tents. He said that their lack of QUOTE “cleanup” made it easy for protesters to quickly rebuild their encampment on the Tivoli Quad.
That’s all according to the Denver Post. I reached out to the Auraria Executives Council, Metro State University Denver, the Auraria Police Department, and the Denver Police Department for comment.
I’ve heard back from the Denver Police Department and the Auraria Higher Education Center so far. Auraria Higher Education Center’s Director of Marketing and Communications, Devra Ashby, directed me to Auraria campus website.
The most recent statement from May 3rd said QUOTE “Members of Auraria Higher Education Executives Council met again today (May 3rd) with student protesters to maintain an open dialogue and find a peaceful path forward for our campus community. The discussion provided an opportunity for all parties to be heard. MSU Denver and CU Denver are actively setting up campus dialogue sessions as a way to engage our community. We will continue to support and encourage peaceful debate and civil engagement on our campus, while ensuring the safety of our students, employees, and visitors.” He also said that QUOTE “the most recent post from Friday addresses the AEC’s meeting with the Students for a Democratic Society. The AEC will continue to meet with SDS to work toward a peaceful resolution for all parties.”
Denver Police Department’s Director of Communications, Doug Schepman, told me that their department only made six of the arrests out of the total 44 from two Fridays ago. He said that the Auraria Police Department are the main point of contact for the encampment. He also sent over a statement, QUOTE “As we continue to keep the students and faculty of Auraria campus safe, the Auraria Campus Police Department and DPD are in alignment on responding to the demonstrations moving forward. We believe we can both keep the campus safe and have peaceful protest.”
As organizers enter week three of the encampment, KGNU will keep you updated on negotiations between those groups and university administrators, any altercations between organizers and police, and any statements I receive from other parties involved.
And that brings us to the end of today’s Morning Magazine. Once again, I’m Jackie Sedley.
