About 100 students gathered in a grove behind the University of Missouri - Kansas City’s Miller Nichols Library on Monday to set up a “Liberation Zone” in protest of ongoing Israeli military actions in Gaza. They joined campuses around the country that have seen similar demonstrations in recent weeks.
“We do this in solidarity with every single campus, especially the ones where we’re seeing voices be shut down,” said Mahmoud Kutmah, vice president of the campus group Students for Justice in Palestine.
The protesters brought both camping-style enclosed tents and open-sided sunshade tents, as well as hundreds of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. There was a tense moment when UMKC Police took down a tent and threw it in a truck while its owner tried unsuccessfully to wrestle it away.
UMKC director of strategic communications Stacy Downs said in an email that UMKC policy specifically prohibits “camping or the use of temporary shelters (e.g., tents).” UMKC’s facilities policy does not allow any university building or grounds to be occupied as living rooms or bedrooms unless they are explicitly for that purpose. Downs said that policy has also been applied to prohibit camping on campus.
“Our university policies encourage freedom of expression for all members of our campus, as long as they model safe, respectful interaction, don’t present any safety concerns and don’t disrupt normal operations of our campus,” the university said in a statement.
Ikemba Shabazz, a Kansas City resident who’s not a student, said he “just wanted to make sure the people were protected.”
He said UMKC police told him guns weren’t allowed on campus, so took the gun off campus and returned to the rally.
As of late afternoon, the group of protesters intended to wrap up after an evening prayer at 9:30 p.m. and return the next day.
Kutmah said the students have a list of demands for the university, including that it make a distinction between antisemitism and anti-Zionism so students are not labeled antisemitic for protesting actions by the Israeli government. The group also wants to know where UMKC’s endowment has investments, and whether it includes companies that “are complicit with, and enable, the genocide and apartheid that’s happening to the Palestinian people,” Kutmah said.
Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, who was held by police for seven hours after her Saturday arrest during a Gaza protest on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis, came to speak to the crowd a little before 5 p.m. She told KCUR she intends to visit the University of Kansas campus in Lawrence on Tuesday.
“Freedom for Gaza, Gaza will be free,” she told the assembled students. “As a health care provider, I have felt from the start here, as a mother I have felt as so many of us have felt, like we are watching a genocide, like we are watching two million people who could be on the verge of extinction right now.”
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