NU students set up a protest encampment Thursday morning demanding that the University divest from Israel and War related research. Motivated by the silence of their university Administration to call for a Cease Fire in Gaza and its complicity with other academic institutions in the on going genocide that makes them complicit as well. They set up their encampment in Deering Meadow in front of the NU library early Thursday morning. They were soon accosted with impromptu administration prohibitions and then Campus Police who were described as aggressive when confronting the students and their supporters who included faculty. The encampment was shortly reestablished by students, expanded and drew in more supporters from campus and the community. When I arrived a 3:30 pm the crowd in the meadow was several hundred students plus community members.
Given corporate and Zionist media are distorting student rejection of genocide and their forced complicity, due to the University's preoccupation with money over their student's moral integrity, students were not willing to be recorded. I ended up speaking with a community member, a family therapist, who was observing from the edge of the encampment and then recorded the Imam who addressed the crowd. He was the Muslim Students cultural Association’s Spring speaker scheduled to speak that evening at a different location but was invited by organizers to address the encampment. His talk was about struggle for justice and solidarity with the oppressed. Explaining the meaning of Jihad, he informed the students that in its full sense, "to struggle with a praiseworthy aim" they were engaged in jihad in their demands of the University Administration, calling for an end to its silence on genocide and divestment from Israel and weapons corporations and war research. "Help your brother, help your sister; be they the oppressor or the oppressed" he related to the crowd. The rally that followed was a Passover Seder organized by SJP, JVP, and Tzedek Chicago members.
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