Pro-Palestine organizations are staging a “Gaza Solidarity Occupation” at Alumni Park, the latest in a national wave.
An encampment for Gaza began Wednesday morning at Alumni Park, according to a press release from the USC Divest from Death Coalition. The group plans to continue its “Gaza Solidarity Occupation” until the University meets the demands outlined in the coalition’s release.
“We, the USC Divest from Death Coalition, establish our occupation most fundamentally in solidarity with the people of Palestine as they resist genocide and continue in their struggle for liberation,” the group wrote in a mission statement.
The announcement adds USC to a growing list of universities rocked by similar pro-Palestine encampment protests across the United States. Columbia University was the first to see tents pitched on its property April 17, a practice that soon spread to other East Coast campuses, the University of Michigan and, just recently, UC Berkeley.
“USC’s funding of the ongoing genocide perpetuated by the zionist entity is reflective of maintaining imperialist interests abroad, as well as solidifying the shared ideology of amerikan and zionist institutions in preserving racialized oppression,” said one unnamed organizer, according to the group’s press release. “To not stand in opposition to the expressly racist violence here and abroad is to ignore the calls for solidarity demanded by the majority of the world.”
