Sac State students, community members pitch tents on campus to protest Israel, war in Gaza

Students and community members at Sacramento State initiated a demonstration on campus Monday in support of the Palestinian people amid the ongoing war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas.

By Monday afternoon, about 15 tents had sprouted up in the library quad as students donning keffiyeh scarves and face masks hung Palestinian flags and made signs calling for an end to the war and for peace for Palestinians.

Volunteers stood at tables with water bottles, face masks and snacks as music played on loudspeakers, as well as a recording of names of Palestinians who had been killed since Oct. 7 and the sounds of bombs dropping.

“We’re here to protest the genocide that’s happening in Gaza that’s been happening over the last six months,” said one protest organizer, who was afraid to give his name because he was fearful of retaliation by school officials.

Israel has reportedly killed more than 34,000 Palestinians since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, which killed more than 1,200 people.

“And we’re here to protest the fact that the CSU system is invested in financial funds that have holdings in military contractors that are supplying Israel with weapons.” The protest cited Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and Elbit Systems, an Israel-based military technology company.

“That’s the type of stuff that our tuition money is going toward, so we’re here to protest that and we’re here to divest.”

The Sacramento State branch of Students for Justice in Palestine sent a statement to the university Monday with a list of demands, but the students and community members protesting in the quad are from myriad different groups and aren’t all affiliated with SJP or any one club.

SJP is demanding that the university do the following: disclose all “institutional expenditures, including direct and indirect investments, stocks, bonds, hedge funds, and more,” divest from any institution or organization “that actively participate in the occupation, colonization, and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people,” defend student activism and declare “the occupation, colonization, and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, as well as the U.S.-Israeli genocide in Gaza, illegal and indefensible.”

SJP also called on students at the other 22 Cal State University campuses to do the same. Protests in the last week have also occurred at Cal Poly Humboldt, where officials closed the campus for the remainder of the year, as well as at Sonoma State and San Francisco State. Protests have also taken place at UC Berkeley, USC and Stanford.

“Do not turn your backs on us and the Palestinians,” SJP wrote. “It is easy to stay comfortable and complicit. It is of greater worth to rise up.”

Jewish Voices for Peace support campus demonstration

Individual members of various groups have shown up at the demonstration, including members of the Green Party of Sacramento, the Answer Coalition (an anti-war group), and Jewish Voices for Peace.

JVP activists have been a vocal presence at protests in support of Palestinians, such as at the California Democratic Party organization convention in November, and when they shut down the state Assembly when legislators returned to the Capitol in January after winter recess.

At Sacramento State on Monday, JVP provided a “care and access table” including water, face masks, materials for art projects and snacks.

“It literally is my duty as a Jewish person in the U.S. to let people know I’m an anti-Zionist Jewish person,” said Jessica Lawless, with JVP. “I’m working in alignment with many anti-Zionist Jews to support Palestinian activists and Muslim activists working to do their best to intervene, from far away, in the genocide in Gaza.”

Lawless, a descendant of people who died in the Holocaust, called the loss of life “heartbreaking,” especially for Palestinians in Sacramento who have lost loved ones in Gaza.

Lawless also wished to discredit the notion that being an anti-Zionist is the same as antisemitism.

“For me, my family’s history cannot be weaponized for another genocide,” Lawless said.

There were no law enforcement officers — from campus police or the Sacramento Police Department — at the demonstration, which remained peaceful.

“We are currently focused on ensuring that campus remains safe, and that instruction and other critical operations can continue,” the university said in a statement Monday afternoon. University officials also told the State Hornet, the campus newspaper, that the university has given the protesters permission to camp until Wednesday night.

But the students and community members in the quad said they were not afraid of disrupting the status quo as students prepared for their last weeks of instruction before finals week starts May 13.

“Protests need to be disruptive,” said the organizer, who refused to share their name or major. “It’s just the inherent nature of protest, that they are disruptive actions.

“If we just marched out on the grass for an hour and said that we want divestment, and we didn’t disrupt anything, nobody would pay any attention. And even if we are being disruptive, even if we are distracting people,” he said, “what’s happening in Gaza outweighs that.”