By Eli Rosenberg, Daniel Lempres, Jessica FloresUpdated May 16, 2024 (SFChronicle.com)
Regional police and California Highway Patrol officers move in Thursday to remove students protesting in a vacant building they had moved into Wednesday.Carlos Avila Gonzalez/The Chronicle
At least 12 pro-Palestinian protesters who participated in a takeover of an abandoned UC Berkeley building near the campus were arrested Thursday after police cleared the encampment, which was set up a day earlier.
More than 50 officers with the university, Oakland, California Highway Patrol and Alameda County Sheriff’s Office tore down barricades protesters had placed around the abandoned building, Channing Hall, on Bowditch Street and Channing Way, just before 7 p.m. Officers pushed away protesters who were outside the building, entered the building and began removing protesters who were inside.
The 12 people who were arrested were previously been given the chance to leave the building voluntarily, university officials said. There were no reports of injuries
Police filled dump trucks they brought to the site with plywood, tents and debris from the encampment. In all, around 20 law enforcement agencies were involved in the the police response to the building occupation.
Spokesman Dan Mogulof said earlier Thursday that the people who took over the building committed trespassing, breaking and entering, and property destruction.
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UC Police and CHP Move In On Pro Gaza Protesters At Anna Head HalDemonstrators in support of Gaza try to move police barricades as other protesters who had occupied Anna Head Alumnae Hall are removed by regional police and CHP officers Thursday.Jungho Kim/Special to the Chronicle
The protest began Wednesday, when a group of activists took over Channing Hall, just before 2 p.m. A day earlier the student-lead encampment on campus had been peacefully disbanded after an agreement with the administration.
Protesters were calling the new action, which included some tents set up on a publicly accessible lawn in front of the building, an occupation, saying that the encampment had failed.
Overnight and into Thursday, the protest had continued to grow, with the number of tents inching up to about a dozen, and protesters expanding the makeshift barricades of plywood and wooden pallets they had set up around the camp. On Thursday afternoon, campus police had an officer stationed near the encampment, and the contingent of private security guards had grown from about five Wednesday to 15.
By Thursday morning, the barricade wrapped around the protest, with phrases like “Resistance is justified,” “glory to the martyrs” and “avenge Al Shifa,” spray painted in red toward the street. Around midday, a group unloaded another two carloads of wooden pallets and tarps to add to the barrier.
Occasionally, a masked face appeared in an upper window of the occupied building. Videos shared on social media from inside the building showed graffiti that equated Zionism with nazism, and others that showed Jewish stars equaling Nazi swastikas. More than twenty Palestinian flags had been mounted on the fence behind the camp.
Mogulof said the school was not talking to the protesters at the hall, and that the action is not being coordinated by the coalition of protesters with whom they negotiated with on campus.
Some of the people involved in the on-campus protest were seen at the protest in front of the building however, including a group of people wearing red United Auto Workers shirts, the union which represents thousands of UC graduate students and other academic workers.
The UAW authorized a strike for some 48,000 students and workers across the entire University of California system on Wednesday, accusing the university of retaliating against workers for exercising their rights to free speech and protest, around the Pro-Palestinian protest movement.
Around the encampment, the rhythms of the university continued largely unabated. New graduates strolled towards campus in their caps and gowns, parents in tow, cameras out.
A 2024 graduate named Mateo, who declined to give his last name because he did not want to be harassed for expressing his opinions publicly about the controversial subject, said he understood why some protesters wanted even more concessions from the university. Mateo said he had been involved with the protests on campus. The Chronicle agreed to withhold his identity based on its policy on anonymous sources.
Mateo said he thought it was a step in the right direction for the university to pledge to work with the UC regents to analyze investments to make sure they’re ethically sound and to make sure its exchange programs are free from anti-Palestinian discrimination, though it fell well short of the encampment’s initial demands.
“If they want more from the university I get it,” he said. “But for me, I think we got things going the right way and I want to see what happens.”
Engineering student Derek Park walked by the occupation on Thursday, saying he supported the activists’ ability to protest and didn’t think the university should take drastic action to remove them.
“If they show up and round up everybody it gets worse,” he said.
Jordan Parker contributed to this report.
Reach Jessica Flores: Jessica.Flores@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @jesssmflores
May 16, 2024|Updated May 16, 2024 8:09 p.m.
REPORTER
Eli Rosenberg comes to the San Francisco Chronicle most recently from NBC News, where he covered tech and economic issues. Before that, he was a reporter at the Washington Post for four and a half years, covering labor on the business desk. He has written about misinformation campaigns, politics, immigration issues, and fires and other disasters across the country. He spent years in New York as a metro reporter, at the Brooklyn Paper, Daily News, and the New York Times, and is looking forward to getting back to his roots as a local reporter. He lives in the East Bay with his family, and enjoys cold plunges, beach camping and exploring the Bay Area food scene when he’s not on deadline.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE REPORTER
Daniel Lempres is a criminal justice reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle. Before joining the Chronicle in 2023, he worked as a reporter for the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley, where he focused on long term investigations in collaboration with outlets like the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and S.F. Chronicle.
He can be reached at Daniel.Lempres@sfchronicle.com.
ENGAGEMENT REPORTER
Jessica Flores is a reporter for The San Francisco Chronicle. Before joining The Chronicle in 2021, she worked for USA Today, NPR affiliate KPCC and Curbed LA. Originally from L.A., she received her master’s degree in journalism from the University of Southern California and a bachelor’s degree from Mount Saint Mary’s University in Los Angeles.
