‘We won’t stop’: How Columbia’s students etched a new Gaza protest legacy

News|Israel War on Gaza‘We won’t stop’: How Columbia’s students etched a new Gaza protest legacy

Inside a movement that took over a university building and lost its encampment within 24 hours – yet refuses to die.

Columbia protesters at the university’s campus in Morningside Heights, New York City [Yasmeen Altaji/Al Jazeera]

By Yasmeen AltajiPublished On 4 May 20244 May 2024

New York, United States — At about 10pm on Monday, April 29, I thought I would call it a night.

My student journalist colleagues and I had stayed late into the night on Columbia University’s campus the previous couple of days, reporting on a story that had grabbed the world’s attention: the pro-Palestine protests and encampment that had inspired similar campaigns in schools across the United States and globally.

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As I slung my camera bag on my back and began to leave campus, walking by the camp, I got a tip from a passing protester: “I would stick around till about midnight,” they said. “Maybe go home first, though.”

Got it. I went home to charge the backup camera batteries and grab spare memory cards before leaving for campus again.

Back at Columbia, it appeared that more than one of us had gotten the tip. Crowds of student journalists, all of us with matching paper badges and blue tape on our clothes, waited next to the encampment for whatever was to come. Our journalism faculty stood by our side, as they had been doing throughout.

Protesters grouped into “platoons”, and while we didn’t know what to expect, we kept eyes on different corners.

We split up to make sure different spots were covered; a few of us stuck by Pulitzer Hall, the home of Columbia Journalism School, where a small number of protesters had convened, while some others stood ready with cameras and recorders by the encampment.

That is when it all began. Campers began walking their tents off the lawn. One group began chanting. Another at the opposite end of the lawn sang protest hymns. I was with a small cohort of journalists who followed the tents to another small lawn, a clever decoy – whether intended or not – that meant many of us missed the moment, at the opposite end of campus, when protesters entered Hamilton Hall.

By the time we had run over, tens of student protesters had gathered to link arms outside the building, which their predecessors had taken over in 1968 to protest against the Vietnam War, and in 1985 to demand that Columbia divest from firms tied to apartheid South Africa.

Two of my colleagues were in the middle of the scrum, up against the doors watching two counter-protesters attempt to stop the occupation before being pushed out. Protesters rushed metal picnic tables, wooden chairs, trash cans, and planters to the doors where they were zip-tied together, effectively forming a barricade.