Instagram posts documenting Wednesday's protests and arrests.
Yale police arrested another four protesters — including by tackling some to the ground — during the latest pro-Palestinian demonstration on the university’s downtown campus.
Those arrests took place at around 11:45 p.m. Wednesday night, according to a university spokesperson. Among the arrestees were two Yale students and two non-students.
In an email statement provided to the Independent, the Yale spokesperson said that around 200 protesters gathered at Beinecke Plaza at around 9 p.m. Wednesday.
A flyer posted to Instagram by the OccupyYale account described the rally as “All Out For Rafah, All Out Against Repression.”
Videos posted to that same account show hundreds of protesters gathered around the Beinecke Plaza flagpole, chanting, “The more you try to silence us, the louder we will be” and “Get up, get down, we’re anti-war in this town.”
Those protesters then marched to Hillhouse Avenue and chanted outside of Yale President Peter Salovey’s home. “Peter pays the bills, apartheid kills!” they sang, along with, “Peter Salovey, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide,” and “Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest.”
The university spokesperson said that the protesters, who also marched to the Yale Police Department’s headquarters on Ashmun Street before returning to Beinecke Plaza, “refused to disperse after repeated warnings from the Yale Police Department that they were violating university policies by occupying parts of campus without permission.”
At around 11:45, according to the spokesperson, Yale police arrested four protesters and charged them with first-degree criminal trespass and disorderly conduct; one of the four was also charged with interfering with a police officer.
Videos and photos posted to the Instagram accounts OccupyYale and Yalies4Palestine then show officers tackling to the ground at least two protesters as fellow protesters shouted, “Let him go!” and “Why are you arresting them?! For what?!”
On Thursday morning at around 9:40 a.m., protester representative Nika Zarazvand sent out an email press release decrying Yale police’s “violent assault” of “peaceful” marchers.
Zarazvand’s statement describes a chaotic scene: “These protestors were simply asking what was going on, and were not given any dispersal or arrest warnings onsite. After two students were immediately arrested, community members stood alongside students to demand why they were arrested before they were assaulted; officers led by YPD Chief [Anthony] Campbell, tackled individual protestors to the ground, forcing their full body weight on top of the protestors though they were not armed or resisting arrest. Multiple officers continually slammed those individuals’ faces into the ground while they were handcuffed, causing bleeding from cuts on one protestor’s nose.” Click here to read the statement in full.
Wednesday night’s arrests mark the third time that Yale police have taken pro-Palestinian protesters into custody in recent weeks. On April 22, as university and city police cleared a tent encampment in Beinecke Plaza, Yale police arrested 48 people — including 44 Yale students — and charged them with criminal trespassing. And on Monday, Yale police arrested a Yale grad student for vandalism for allegedly damaging the flagpole in Beinecke Plaza as they worked to lower the American flag during the first night of the Beinecke tent encampment. City and Yale police also cleared a second tent encampment, on Cross Campus, on Tuesday, but did not make any arrests in the process.
One of the arrested protesters, who gave his name only as M, stood outside of police headquarters at 1 Union Ave. after having been released from lockup at around 7 a.m. Thursday.
Smoking a cigarette and drinking a coffee, the man showed a fresh red bruise up and down the bridge of his nose as an injury he sustained while being arrested Wednesday night.
He said he was feeling “very frazzled” after the arrest and spending the night in lockup, and was grateful for the crowd of roughly two dozen fellow protesters who were outside of 1 Union Ave. early Thursday morning too, awaiting the arrestees’ release.
He said that, on Wednesday night, after protesters had returned from Salovey’s house on Hilhouse Avenue to Beinecke Plaza, “we were trying to find a path to go” when police tackled one of the protesters and arrested them.
He said that some of the protesters tried to “break it up,” but that he was just walking away when multiple Yale police officers “slammed me to the ground,” put his wrists in zip ties, and then put him in the back of a police car.
Wednesday night was the first night he’s spent in police lockup — at least, “in New Haven,” he said. “It’s not a great place.” Looking at the group of fellow protesters who had showed up to greet him upon his release, he said, “I feel very supported.”
The Yale university spokesperson told the Independent that the university “fully supports peaceful protests and freedom of speech, but it does not tolerate the breaking of its policies, which are designed to keep the university functioning and protect the safety and welfare of the entire Yale community.”
That statement concluded: “Members of the Yale community must follow the university’s policies and guidelines regarding free expression and peaceable assembly, the policy on the use of outdoor spaces, the policy on postering and chalking, and the policy on structures. Additionally, to support students during the reading period and the final exam period, the use by groups of outdoor spaces on campus must end by 11 p.m.”
Thomas Breen photo
Protester awaiting the release of arrestees outside city police headquarters Thursday morning.
Why do these people think they are above the law?
They are threatening and intimidating to the Jewish population. What happened to “safe spaces” and “micro aggressions”?
Jews are the only ethnic minority in which harrassment equals free speech.
Go figure.