Police from across California descended on the UC Santa Cruz pro-Palestine encampment late last night, almost a month to the day since the protest began.
Video from encampment organizers posted on social media shows police — some carrying batons — dispersing protesters and taking down tents.
Santa Cruz Cop Watch, a grassroots coalition monitoring police action in the Santa Cruz community, posted an Instagram reel showing press being denied access beyond the cop line in the early hours of the police raid. KAZU confirmed the identity of at least one reporter present. In California, it’s explicitly against the law for police to prohibit journalists from entering areas officers have closed around a protest.
KAZU confirmed that later in the morning, a journalist from that same outlet was able to report beyond the officer line.
According to police scanner dispatches, the majority of arrests began happening after 5 a.m. The university said approximately 80 demonstrators have been arrested.
Pez, an undergraduate who only shared his first name due to concerns about enrollment status and safety, said the presence was the most police officers he’s ever seen.
“I think it’s really eerie, honestly,” Pez said. “Seeing them cover the campus, cover the hills, having people watching down on you. Even if their presence is not overtly hostile towards us right now, they’ve been holding up their nightsticks to us, pointing them at people, shifting their weight so they can point their weapons at us.”
At around 9:13 a.m., another police squad from UC San Francisco began making its way to campus. Earlier in the morning, an officer mentioned over the scanner that UC San Francisco PD would be helping with mass arrests. California Highway Patrol units were also present.
The latest SlugSafe update sent out to UC Santa Cruz students, faculty and staff at 6:22 a.m. said the intersection of Bay and High Street is currently blocked. The west entrance is open.
UC Santa Cruz sent out a preemptive communication on May 30 about moving classes remote for Friday .
Over a hundred protesters remain near the base of campus, where police left shortly before 3 p.m.
“Now, we’re okay, but I don’t know if I trust it to stay this way for a really long time,” Pez said.
In a message sent to the broader campus community at 9:30 a.m. on Friday morning, UC Santa Cruz chancellor Cynthia Larive called the use of police to disband the encampment “a necessary decision at a critical time.”
Since May 28, protesters have blockaded the campus’s main entrance to pressure the university to divest from weapons manufacturers and others involved in the war in Gaza.
Scott Hernandez-Jason, a spokesperson for UC Santa Cruz, said those “continued intentional and dangerous” blockades triggered the university taking action to remove the barricades and disband the encampment.
“It is imperative that we restore full access to our campus and end other unlawful, unsafe actions as demonstrators continued to disrupt campus operations and threatened safety,” he wrote in an emailed statement. “Those actions could have been avoided if the encampment participants heeded the many previous directives that were given by campus officials, fire marshals and law enforcement.”
The university’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, which helped organize the UC Santa Cruz encampment, say the blockades are “the fault of our admin” for refusing to meet encampment demands for divestment away from military contractors involved in Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.
Related UC investments total up to $32 billion of the system’s $175 billion portfolio, disclosed university officials earlier this month while reiterating the system has no plans to divest. The UC Office of the President has echoed that statement.
"This decision was not made because individuals demonstrated; it was because they have chosen to do so through unlawful actions,” Larive said in her Friday message.
UC Santa Cruz junior Qudsi, who isn’t an encampment organizer, spoke on the condition of sharing only his first name. He was present when police began advancing last night and said the protesters didn’t disperse — instead staying and linking their arms together — knowing “that may have been a violation of some kind of law.”
“We thought it’s our moral obligation to stay, to try to achieve our goals of divestment,” he said. “What other choice do we have? We are very powerless. Our tuition money goes to fund a genocide … This is our last resort.”
He referenced a student referendum passed in March by UC Santa Cruz student government 28-1-0, with 9 members absent, that implemented the student government’s boycott of products and services on the Boycott, Sanctions and Divestments List.
In January, the International Court of Justice found it “plausible” that Israel has committed acts violating the Genocide Convention, while Israel has strongly denied it is committing genocide.
Israel confirmed Friday that it is expanding its offensive in Rafah against orders from the United Nations’ highest court, displacing over 1 million Palestinians.
Per the Ministry of Health in Gaza, over 36,000 Palestinians have been killed since the Israeli military escalated bombardment on Gaza on Oct. 7, when a Hamas attack killed over 1,100 in Israel.
“We want to separate the school from the apartheid regime,” Qudsi said.
Sit-ins have been deployed as a protest tactic to urge UC divestment before, particularly from South Africa’s apartheid government. In 1985, UC Berkeley protesters staged a sit-in that led to 158 arrests but sparked a broader movement.
Negotiations between encampment organizers and the university went on through the first week of the encampment, but soon lapsed. The location of the camp moved from Quarry Plaza on May 20 in solidarity with the graduate student strikers.
In her Friday morning message, Larive said “we must be firm when the demands of one group undermine the rights of others,” stating that the encampment’s goals run counter to supporting Jewish students and alluding to the encampment’s demand that the university divest from Hillel International.
The location on campus serves Jewish students UC Santa Cruz, Cabrillo College and Cal State Monterey Bay. Student organization Jews Against White Supremacy is among those calling for divestment from Hillel.
Graduate student workers and academic researchers continue to strike in protest of police use of force and university’s alleged violations of their freedom of speech at Palestine solidarity protests. Also on Friday, UAW Local 4811 called on workers at UC Santa Barbara, UC San Diego and UC Irvine to walk off the job next week: The first two campuses will stage a picket on June 3, and the latter on June 5.
“We are striking because we were prohibited from expressing a critical perspective on Zionism,” said Matt Smith, a graduate student in UC Santa Cruz’s History of Consciousness Department.
On May 29, the university filed an updated Unfair Labor Practice charge to the California Public Employee Relations Board, less than a week after the board denied its request for an injunction that would’ve ordered striking workers to return to work.
UC Davis and UCLA joined the strike on May 28. It began on the UC Santa Cruz campus on May 20.
Police used force and made arrests at pro-Palestine encampments at UCLA, UC San Diego and UC Irvine earlier in May.
Jerimiah Oetting and Erin Malsbury contributed to this report.
