CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (TND) — Local police arrested multiple individuals Friday while disbursing an anti-Israel encampment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
MIT is one of several campuses across the country where students occupied a portion of campus in solidarity with Gaza. Police intervention at these sites is becoming more common as protesters push legal boundaries.
Students were barred from accessing the MIT encampment Monday after police erected fencing and other barriers around the area. Protesters later broke through to retake the encampment.
Video shared via social media shows police moving through the encampment early Friday morning. Officers moved through the encampment with flashlights and pulled down tents. The individual recording sounds as though they are crying.
Organizers with the school’s Coalition Against Apartheid (CAA) later called for an “emergency rally” to “unite against unjustified discipline.”
“We will keep forcing the MIT administration to suffer a disproportionate cost for every action they take against us,” protesters added. “The student intifada cannot be suspended or arrested.”
MIT President Sally Kornbluth said in a statement the school “did not take this action suddenly.”
“We offered warnings. We telegraphed clearly what was coming. At each point, the students made their own choices," Kornbluth said. "And finally, choosing among several bad options, we chose the path we followed this morning – where each student again had a choice. I do not expect everyone to agree with our reasoning or our decision, but I hope it helps to see how we got there.”
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