On the fourth day of the protest encampment at George Washington University, at least a dozen D.C.-area families with young kids joined the Sunday afternoon crowd. They came to show support for students demonstrating against Israel’s war on Gaza, which has led to the deaths of over 34,000 Palestinians — including more than 14,000 children.
Student organizers lead a safety training on April 29, one night after students toppled police barricades preventing protesters from entering the GWU’s University Yard. The metal barriers now sit in a pile in the encampment’s center, topped with Palestinian flags. (Ja’Mon Jackson/The Washington Informer)
“I want our child to know about how the struggle for civil rights in the United States is connected to global struggles for justice and human rights across the board,” said Alicia Sanchez Gill, who attended on April 28 with her wife and their 3-year-old.
“What’s happening to children and families in Gaza is connected to what’s happening to children, particularly Black children, in the United States,” Sanchez Gill continued.
Her toddler painted swirls in the red, green, black and white colors of the Palestinian flag and chatted with other demonstrators. They sat on the ground amidst the calm, music-filled gathering on H Street, next to the police-enforced barricade that prohibited entry to the tent camp in University Yard.
A toddler paints with other protesters, while the child’s mom watches, on April 28. (Kayla Benjamin/The Washington Informer)
Less than eight hours later, near midnight on April 29, GW Police Department officers confronted a student who had jumped the barrier into the encampment, per a statement from the university. Student protesters, thinking the officers might have been making an arrest, responded by knocking down the barricades. More demonstrators, who had set up over a dozen tents outside the barricade, rushed into “U-Yard,” according to live coverage from the GW Hatchet.
Protesters later planted Palestinian flags atop the metal barricades, which they piled in the center of a camp that has now grown to include more than 100 tents.
Students’ Demands: Divest, Disclose, Drop Charges
The demonstration at George Washington University (GWU) reached the seven-day mark May 1. Students from the University of Maryland and Howard, Georgetown, American, George Mason and Gallaudet universities have joined their GWU peers at the encampment.
Similar campus protests have sprung up at colleges nationwide in the midst of the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. The latest conflict began on October 7, 2023 when Hamas carried out a terror attack, killing more than 1,100 people in Israel and kidnapping over 250 hostages. In response, the Israeli military has killed tens of thousands of Gazans, displaced nearly two million people and caused a famine that experts say will likely worsen.
With an encampment that began April 25, students from around the DMV joined the national movement of campus protests opposing continued U.S. financial and military support for Israel.
GWU junior Lauren Harris on April 28, three days into her participation in the encampment protest (Kayla Benjamin/The Washington Informer)
“I think this is the way to bring about change from our government,” said Lauren Harris, a GWU junior. “We’re in such close proximity to the White House, to Capitol Hill — to everywhere that our Congress people and the executive branch sit. That’s where you’re going to exercise change.”
The student coalition also has specific demands focused on their schools’ administrations. Protesters want the universities to divest from Israel and companies that support its government and military, disclose all endowments and investments, protect pro-Palestinian speech on campus and end academic program partnerships with Israel.
Additionally, the group demands that universities’ charges against participating students be dropped. GWU issued temporary suspensions to seven student organizers April 26, charging each with nine disciplinary violations, the GW Hatchet reported. At that point, the demonstration only included about a dozen students camping out overnight.
GWU administration declined to provide an update or answers to specific questions about any additional disciplinary action. An April 28 statement from the school emphasized that protesters had the option to occupy a different park until 7 p.m. daily instead, “to ensure the continuation of university business.”
Until their demands are met, organizers say, the U-Yard encampment isn’t going anywhere. Now that the barricades are down, life has improved for the demonstrators somewhat — during the first days, students inside the encampment had to use buckets in a tent for a bathroom. If they left the enclosed lawn, they would be denied re-entry; if they used a restroom in a campus building, they would need to swipe an ID card, potentially identifying themselves to the university.
“We’re willing to go through it because it’s about the people in Gaza,” one GWU junior, who asked to remain anonymous, said from inside the encampment the day before the barricades went down. “Whatever conditions we’re facing is really nothing compared to just who we’re trying to bring attention to.”
Solidarity — Beyond the Buzzword
Hundreds of other people from across the region have shown up to support the demonstration. Some have put up tents to camp out, but many others have just joined for a few hours, to show their support and participate in the many teach-ins, rallies, film screenings, lectures and cultural showcases going on each day around the encampment.
Haifaa Younis, an OB/GYN who visited the encampment April 28 to share the harrowing story of eight days she spent working in a hospital in Gaza earlier this month, speaks with students inside the encampment. (Kayla Benjamin/The Washington Informer)
Donations of money, food and supplies have also come pouring in.
“The community’s actually been really, really supportive, and it’s been to the point where we have a lot more [food]than we actually do need,” said Azza, a GWU junior working to coordinate the encampment’s supplies. “We end up giving it to a lot of homeless communities we have here.”
Azza, who declined to give her last name, has been at the encampment for more than three days. An Afro-Arab student with Saudi and Sudanese roots, Azza said she has family living in Palestine.
“For me, it’s a more personal cause, as well as just the idea of right and wrong,” she said. “As a POC (person of color) you don’t really have the luxury of deciding whether or not this issue is about me or this issue is not about me.”
On Sunday afternoon and Monday night, The Informer spoke with nine Black protesters — a mixture of parents, young professionals and students. All cited connections between Israel’s occupation and war in Gaza and other struggles for liberation and peace worldwide as key reasons to join the protest.
GWU students do one last check of the encampment’s supply tables late on April 29. (Kayla Benjamin/The Washington Informer)
Demonstrators pointed out links between the devastation in Gaza and the exploitation, violence and legacies of colonization in Congo, Sudan, Ethiopia, Haiti and Hawai’i. Several protesters mentioned Palestinians’ vocal support for the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020.
“Being a Black person in the United States — we’re kind of a colony within a colony, right? And so we understand what it means to be occupied, and we understand what it means to be stripped from our home, to have our land taken from us,” said Delaney Leonard, a Howard student. “It’s really an interconnected struggle.”
Those linkages have drawn in organizers from many different justice fights — along with their varied expertise and resources.
For example, Demetria Bright, who leads the Ward 8-based nonprofit Play & Thrive DC, brought chalk, bubbles and snacks on April 28. She had partnered with the group DC/DMV Families for Ceasefire to provide age-appropriate ways for children to engage with the protest. Her organization advocates for children’s safety in Wards 7 and 8, Bright said, and she wanted to show solidarity with the movement to protect Gazan children and parents, too.
“We promote play in marginalized communities, so we’re always fighting for the right of children to exist safely within their community,” Bright said. “We came out here to support DC Families for Ceasefire by offering opportunities for children in this community to play, to express joy — which is an act of resistance.”
Demetria Bright, founder of Ward 8-based nonprofit Play & Thrive DC, brought supplies to provide opportunities for kids to play at the demonstration on April 28. (Kayla Benjamin/The Washington Informer)
Student activists have also brought a wide range of useful backgrounds to the encampment, including cultural knowledge, resource networks and organizing experience.
Howard junior Nikkya, who declined to give her last name, joined the encampment the night of April 30. Following a long history of organizing work going back to her high school years, Nikkya participated in the Blackburn Takeover in 2021. That student protest ended with Howard’s administration meeting protesters’ demands around better housing conditions and student involvement in decision-making — after 33 days of camping out and at least one clash with campus police.
“It’s important as Howard students to know who [else]from Howard is here — I think we have a unique experience with police and unique experiences with protesting and escalation,” Nikkya said. “That’s why it’s so important for us to personally coordinate on our side as Howard students, especially because there’s a sense of safety knowing that Howard is here.”
DMV Student Organizers Seek to Avoid Police Escalation
Despite continued police presence and some verbal clashes with counter-protesters, the demonstration has remained peaceful. The Washington Post reported Friday that the university had asked D.C. law enforcement to step in, but that the police force had refused over concerns about the optics.
“The Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) regularly supports peaceful first amendment activities through the District of Columbia,” the police department said in a statement. “MPD will continue to monitor this first amendment activity, both on and off GWU property.”
A student protester gets a free henna tattoo from another demonstrator on April 28. (Kayla Benjamin/The Washington Informer)
Across the country, similar encampments have not been met with the same attitude from local police forces. On the night of April 30, Columbia University called in hundreds of New York City police officers, who arrested dozens of protesters occupying a school building. At least 900 people have been arrested on campuses nationwide in connection with pro-Palestinian demonstrations this month, according to a tally by the Washington Post.
Two Republicans in the House and one in the Senate wrote letters to Mayor Muriel Bowser on April 30, urging her to clear the encampment and threatening legislative action if the city continues allowing the peaceful protest. The letters cited antisemitism and threats to Jewish students’ safety as concerns.
“The discourse that’s going on right now about antisemitism is really a diversion tactic meant to take the focus away from what’s going on on the ground in Gaza and the genocide that has been unfolding for over 200 days,” said Miriam, a Jewish organizer in the encampment and a Georgetown sophomore.
Inside the GWU encampment, protesters acknowledge the fragility of MPD’s decision to hold off on arrests. Organizers added safety talks to daily programming following the barricades’ removal; they’ve also urged demonstrators not to speak to law enforcement officers, with the exception of designated police liaisons within the coalition. (Ironically, while hanging out on H Street the previous afternoon, Sanchez Gill’s abolitionist toddler had begun, seemingly unprompted, to remind strangers: “Nobody goes to the police! Nobody goes to the police!”)
Nikkya said she still feels uneasy about the seeming calm. Her role, upon arriving at the camp late on April 29, was to stay up through the early hours of morning so that others who had been in the camp longer could feel safe enough to sleep.
“I couldn’t speak for every Black protester here, but for me personally, I think that there still is a general wariness,” she said. “There’s always, in the back of our heads, a worry that police will get aggressive and that police will escalate and, specifically, that members of the Black community will be targeted.”
Using a megaphone but speaking softly, two organizers led a safety talk around 11:30 PM on April 29. They explained that the group needed to continue refraining from vandalism; property damage could provide a reason for MPD to disperse the crowd or make arrests. The student leaders also reminded protesters to try to avoid sharing unverified information and to walk instead of run, even during chaotic moments.
“We keep each other safe by being calm and not giving in to panic,” one organizer told a crowd of about 50 other students. “Panic is actually a tool that the police will use against us, to divide us.”
The safety talk emphasized the idea that one of the protest’s biggest advantages was “safety in numbers.” Now that the encampment is no longer enclosed, organizers urged students to call in friends to take their place whenever they needed to leave the area, so that the crowd would stay large enough to make physical intervention difficult and visible.
“I think [Black students’] wariness in general kind of fuels our uneasiness [about police escalation]here,” Nikkya said. “But I think that it goes the same way for Palestinian students, Arab students, our students that are brown. And I think… that’s why so many Howard students came out, because we know colonization, we know racism, we know these struggles. And it feels very close to home for a lot of us.”
