While a small group of University of Michigan student protesters sat on the Hatcher Graduate Library steps facing the Gaza solidarity encampment Friday evening, one student said they watched University Regent Paul Brown (D) exit Mason Hall and enter the University of Michigan Museum of Art, where he attended a dinner recognizing individuals receiving honorary degrees. Within minutes, the group of protesters moved from the encampment to the UMMA. Within the hour, protesters had picketed every entrance to the building, police officers lined each door and multiple sirens and chants demanding divestment were heard by students and faculty from buildings away.
The protest, which began as impromptu student-led action, quickly grew to include more than 200 U-M students and community members, as well as more than 30 police officers from the Ann Arbor Police Department, Division of Public Safety and Security and Michigan State Police. For the first time since the encampment was set up on the Diag, a pro-Palestine protest at the University was met with police force, an arrest and multiple detainments. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, LSA junior Drin Shapiro, co-chair of the education committee for the U-M chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, said the group of protesters followed the regents to demand divestment from companies profiting off Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
“I was just actually sitting right over there on the steps, and all of a sudden, I heard a bunch of people start shouting, ‘Oh my God, that’s Regent Brown. One of the regents is here,’” Shapiro said. “So I ran over, and a lot of other people ran over. We were trying to demand that he come to a collective bargaining agreement so that we can petition for divestment.”
During the protest, one attendee was arrested and several were detained. Police officers also used pepper spray and physically pushed students with metal fences as well as a bicycle. Officers also took Palestinian flags, megaphones and a laptop from students. LSA junior Alex Sepulveda, co-chair of activism for U-M student organization JVP, said his megaphone was snatched from him by police officers.
“We held megaphones and drums to amplify our voices, which we are fully allowed to do as we protest, and the police simply snatched them from us, essentially just stealing our belongings and have refused to give them back,” Sepulveda said.
At the beginning of the protest, multiple groups of students picketed each entrance while chanting for the University to divest. Officers and metal barricades surrounded each entrance as students were shut off from the back entrance and the side of the building that faces South University Avenue. Sajdak told The Daily she watched police presence increase as the protest grew.
“I didn’t see any police when I first approached,” Sajdak said. “And then, as our numbers started to grow and we established ourselves at various entrance points to (the) UMMA, more and more police began to trickle in. There were probably close to between half a dozen and a dozen police officers at each entrance and exit.”
Students locked arms in solidarity with one another and faced the officers while continuing their chants. Officers continued to place metal barricades along the sides of the museum and tied caution tape to prevent people from crowding the back of the building.
As the event inside the museum ended, attendees began to exit the building as protesters continued to await the regents’ exit. At this time, The Daily was informed that all regents had left the building. Students then crowded along the side of the museum closest to Tisch Hall, where several police cars stationed on the driveway had turned on their sirens. Shapiro said he felt the police presence at this point further roused protesters.
“The intention of the police was sort of to intimidate us into leaving, but that had the exact opposite effect,” Shapiro said. “I think people feel very emboldened … Of course, we’re always extremely worried about the legal repercussions of police violence against us. We also feel more committed than ever to staying here until divestment.”
At about 9:30 p.m., an officer picked up his bicycle and threw it at nearby protesters. Several students were pushed onto the ground. An Ann Arbor community member, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution, described their account of this as well as seeing other protesters come into contact with pepper spray.
“Honestly, it’s a miracle that there weren’t any serious injuries because there were sharp parts of the bike,” they said. “A lot of people have said they had exposed faces and necks, I’m surprised nobody was cut during all that. But after the pepper spray was sprayed, I saw about six or eight people go running, screaming to the water wagon we had set up ready for stuff like this. ”
The community member said they felt the police response to the protest was unnecessarily aggressive, and recounted their own experience being pushed to the ground.
“My brain blacked out briefly and I blinked and I was on the ground,” they said. “I was like, ‘Oh, I’m being crushed’ is what I was thinking … It’s always one thing to know the police are violent. It’s one thing to see with your own eyes, the police escalate a situation like that so dramatically because there was no violence at that point. I can’t emphasize enough to you how by the books we did this.”
Another officer pulled out pepper spray and sprayed about a dozen protesters. Sepulveda said the pepper spray only increased tension at the protest between protesters and police officers.
“The pepper spray was used as a tool to deter protesters, but it’s essentially ineffective,” Sepulveda said. “If anything, it only emboldened us further. The harder they try to silence us, the louder we get. The more they try to repress us, the stronger we become.”
In two separate emails to The Daily, University spokesperson Colleen Mastony and Melissa Overton, Deputy Chief of DPSS, confirmed the arrest.
“The dinner had ended, the attendees had departed and police officers were removing barriers when the crowd pushed forward and converged,” Mastony wrote. “The officers pushed the crowd back; one person, who is not affiliated with the University, was arrested. The campus has otherwise remained peaceful.”
LSA junior Rachel Sajdak, a protest attendee who is staying at the encampment, said she felt safer at the protest because of the community she has built at the encampment.
“I think without the community that we’ve built at the encampment, the collective response wouldn’t have been nearly as quick,” Sajdak said. “I think I got a very strong sense of solidarity and collective action from people as we were trying to fight off the police, particularly from continuing to arrest our community members … I think we were able to keep each other relatively safe because we had a lot of people from the encampment community who were able to go over at the same time.”
This protest took place less than 12 hours before the Spring Commencement ceremony where pro-Palestine protests also took place. Shapiro said that while the number of students at the encampment has decreased, the protests will continue.
“This is the end of the semester,” Shapiro said. “There’s no question that we have people leaving for home. People are more focused on graduation but we still have (about) 200 people at this again and after that protest, we have even more … Definitely morale isn’t affected, but if anything I think… we’re running out of time, we’re more likely to continue to step up with the protests.”
Summer Digital Managing Editor Sneha Dhandapani can be reached at sdhanda@umich.edu.