Bowdoin Shaban Al-Dalou Campers: "We are not afraid. We are not in a hurry."

The first student encampment of the new year (and new administration in the White House) is at my alma mater here in Maine. Who doesn't love a polar bear in a keffiyeh? Go, you bears!

The seal of Bowdoin College makes visual reference to the fact that, when founded, it was the first campus in the U.S. to see the sun. Bowdoin's long stated commitment "the Common Good" is at odds with its investments in Israel's genocide in Gaza and violent occupation throughout Palestine. 

Source for all photos: Bowdoin SJP Instagram

Students have done a fine job of organizing -- including for community support -- and have gotten quite a bit of press coverage for their indoor encampment. (Why indoor? It's February and 7 degrees where I sit typing these words.) Here's their current press release, with links to coverage.

BOWDOIN STUDENTS DEFY LOCKDOWN, EXPAND ENCAMPMENT DESPITE THREATS FROM ADMINISTRATION

 

BRUNSWICK, MAINE, FEBRUARY 9TH, 2025: Amid intensifying repression from the Bowdoin College administration, students remained resolute in their commitment to the Shaban Al-Dalou Union Encampment, demanding the immediate implementation of the Bowdoin Solidarity Referendum that passed by a supermajority in May of 2024. Despite the administration imposing a lockdown on the building, issuing repeated threats of disciplinary action, and creating physical barriers with campus security, the encampment continues to grow as students and community members rally in support. Today, the encampment enters its fourth day. Read our original press release here.

WHAT’S HAPPENED SO FAR: 

DAY ONE (FEBRUARY 6TH, 2025): At 6:30PM, Bowdoin students set up an encampment in Smith Union, the student center on Bowdoin’s campus. They renamed the building ‘Shaban al-Dalou Union’, after a 19 year old software student in Gaza who was displaced repeatedly and burned alive by an Israeli airstrike on his hospital tent. Students were immediately warned by administrators to remove the encampment or risk disciplinary action. In response to this threat, more students rushed to join their peers, and over 50 students voluntarily identified themselves to members of College security in order to continue encamping the building. 

DAY TWO (FEBRUARY 7TH, 2025): In the early hours of the second day of the encampment, Bowdoin College escalated its response by locking down Shaban Al-Dalou Union, disabling key card access, and stationing officers to prevent entrance into the encampment. A campus-wide email from Vice President and Dean of Student Affairs Jim Hoppe at 8:16 AM announced the indefinite closure of the Union and threatened vague disciplinary consequences for participants. Hoppe, known for overseeing the mass arrests of 118 students during a similar encampment at Emerson College, has continued his pattern of repression at Bowdoin.

Despite these efforts to quash student activism, support from students, faculty, and community members has sustained and helped grow the encampment in Shaban al-Dalou Union. At 1:10 PM on February 7th, a group of students rallying outside the building broke through the security perimeter, allowing over 20 students to join those already within the building. 

DAY THREE (FEBRUARY 8TH, 2025): On February 8th, at 11:00AM, over 100 students, faculty, and supporters rallied outside the Union, amplifying calls for the college to uphold its responsibility to honoring the demands of the referendum and the Common Good. Watch this video for a closer look at the community rally. Throughout the day, Bowdoin students and members of the broader Maine community rallied outside Smith Union and provided supplies and support to those encamping the building. 

DAY FOUR (FEBRUARY 9TH, 2025): As of 2PM on February 9th, students continue to remain within the Shaban Al-Dalou Union despite continued threats of escalating disciplinary action against student protesters. They have remained resolute in their commitment to Palestinian liberation and have reiterated their commitment to the encampment until the College meets the demands of the Bowdoin Solidarity Referendum.   

This encampment, the first of its kind since the start Trump administration, is a direct response to the genocide in Gaza and the Bowdoin’s complicity in funding Israeli aggression. President Trump’s recent calls for the United States to “take over” Gaza stress the urgency of student action against systemic injustice. 

We are not afraid. We are not in a hurry. 

WHAT THEY ARE SAYING: 

The Bowdoin Orient:

• Students for Justice in Palestine form encampment in Smith Union
• Bowdoin Safety and Security lock down Smith Union, SJP encampment continues
• SJP encampment enters night two, College security presence remains
• On third day of SJP encampment, protests continue, College administers disciplinary process

Common Dreams:  

• Bowdoin College Students Launch First Gaza Solidarity Encampment of Trump Era | Common Dreams

Maine Public: 

• Bowdoin students stage encampment to call on school officials to divest from Israeli interests

WGME: 

• Bowdoin College students camp out to demand action against destruction of Gaza schools

Portland Press Herald: 

• Bowdoin College protesters barred from campus building push past to join encampment
• Bowdoin College students face discipline for pro-Palestine encampment

Bangor Daily News: 

• Bowdoin College closes building where Gaza protesters are camping

Drop Site News: 

• Drop Site on X: "Bowdoin Students Establish First Palestine Solidarity Encampment of the Trump Era”
• Drop Site on X: "It’s Day 3 of the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) encampment at Bowdoin College" 

###

How you can support student demands right now from wherever you may be:

Contact college administrators to say:

• Stop threatening students for peacefully protesting in their own student union building
• Honor the demands of the student body as laid out in the Bowdoin Solidarity Referendum
• In keeping with the Common Good, Bowdoin must act against genocide and should not punish students for peacefully saying so

Send pizza!

(If applicable, join me in signing a letter of support from alumni.)

If you're able, head to campus with signs of support. How to find the Shaban Al-Dalou Union?

Look for the big statue of a polar bear out front!

Police State Repression Adds Fuel To Flames Of Protest -- Who Could Have Guessed?

I'm traveling and not able to post as often as usual, so please bear with me. Just keeping up with current events is impossible as developments in the global resistance to Israel's genocide in Gaza are constant and rapid these days.

A few of the items that stood out in my news feeds:

https://twitter.com/probablyreadit/status/1785427534898737304

This comment nails why I felt that this event in particular was significant. Taxpayers employ police to block a major New York City train station in order to preemptively silence 1st amendment protected political speech?

Here's another one that has stayed with me:

It is a companion to the many posts on social media right now by parents of high school seniors saying some version of: I see you called the police to violently attack peaceful student protesters on campus. We are crossing (Columbia, NYU, Emory, UT Austin, etc.) off our list. 

What's that old saying, money talks and bullshit walks? Parents expressing these opinions are looking at shelling out a quarter to half a million dollars so their kids can earn degrees from these schools. Also, if they're white boomers like me they may remember when their own college protected students from police, not allowing cops on campus at will, and certainly not calling in stormtroopers to suppress dissent.

I don't know about President Roth of Wesleyan's conscience, but I do know a smart marketing move when I see one.

As I've noted before, commencements are going to be wild this year. I wish I was going to be back in time to post up at the University of Vermont in Burlington where students are planning to protest keynote speaker Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, for her complicity in no less than three vetoes of a ceasefire in Gaza.

You remember Burlington, right? That's where three Palestinian college students were gunned down last Thanksgiving weekend wearing keffiyehs and speaking Arabic while walking down a street (off campus).  

Cue the constant corporate media stories about "Jewish" (they really mean Zionist) students claiming they feel unsafe on campus. Then maybe check out the news from UCLA where Zionist mobs descend at night to attack the encampment there while police stand by and watch.

Meanwhile, the U.S. House of Representatives in its wisdom just passed this mess. From Associated Press:

Several House committees will be tasked with a wide probe that ultimately threatens to withhold federal research grants and other government support to the universities, placing another pressure point on campus administrators who are struggling to manage pro-Palestinian encampments, allegations of discrimination against Jewish students and questions of how they are integrating free speech and campus safety.

Also, have you been wondering why pitching tents on the quad of so many universities is against regulations? To keep unhoused people out of course.

All these items add up to a sea change for post secondary education as we've known it, and that is fitting as a consequence of the genocidal horrors that our elected officials and university administrators and boards are supporting. 

One last tweet with my prediction that Columbia can kiss being the "top journalism school" in the U.S. goodbye.

https://twitter.com/zdroberts/status/1785781719603273893

Why the Encampments ARE Important: Waiting for Spring

From my current favorite blog We are the 99% on tumblr:

I grew up in a single parent home in a basement apartment. The government has refused to give my family any type of financial help since ‘95. My playgrounds were surrounded by rapists. My schools were filled with drug dealers. My apartment building was taken over by gang-bangers. And many of my friends have been shot/murdered. I am an African-American female. I have been told that I am at ‘the bottom of the list’…as in the government’s list of concerns. My family has never been on vacation and we still can not afford a car. BUT THAT HAS NOT STOPPED US! My mother has been ill for almost 10 years, but that has not stopped her. My brother and I have made it to college because they can’t stop us. Even now, my mother is unemployed and can’t afford our education…but guess what? THAT WILL NOT STOP US! I am 19 and have been denied jobs because my name is Akuabba. I am the 99% looking for change. Until I am able to pay off my mother’s piling medical bills, take care of my tuition bills and take my mother on a two week vacation, I will not stop occupying Chicago.

Now is the winter of our discontent, and I  am often awake too late or too early watching the sometimes violent, sometimes sneaky, sometimes ridiculous attempts of the poorly paid minions of the 1% -- whose growing arsenal of sophisticated weaponry is worth far more than their pension -- to evict the 99% from their encampments.

There has been a lot of thoughtful talk about how the encampments aren't really a necessary part of the Occupy Everything movement, and the compelling case against them lines up like so:

1) Maintaining the encampments takes so much energy and time that the activism they were supposed to supports is harmed, not helped.

2) Many of the encampments are not safe for women.

3) Many of the encampments are not safe for anyone, because in some cases municipal police deliberately populate them with violent or drug addicted citizens. In other cases, people who were already living on the streets are drawn to a place with free food, shelter, warmth and companionship -- which is understandable, and mirrors the fundamental failure of capitalism to care for people that the 99% have been talking about -- until someone gets hit on the head with a hatchet for playing a snare drum at 7am and refusing to stop when asked. A not insignificant footnote to this point is that some of the encampments were and are located in a public space that homeless people were already using.

4) The encampments necessarily look messy, ruin the grass and, for a variety of similar reasons, create a bad impression on fence sitters among the 99%. It hardly needs mentioning that the mainstream media capitalizes on this at every turn. (Remember back in the day when mean cheerleaders grew up to be mad housewives instead of snarky t.v. "news" anchors?)

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Why Occupy Wall Street isn't about a list of demands CNNMoneyTech October 12, 2011

So a typical scenario, in a U.S. big city at least, goes something like this: an encampment springs up for political reasons, it attracts some apolitical people just looking to get their needs met, it becomes somewhat messy in the way of campsites everywhere, it is threatened by authorities on the basis of either crimes that occur there or perceived public health issues, it draws a large crowd of supporters in response to the threat, and it is raided under cover of darkness once the crowd has dwindled.

Repeat cycle, except maybe in the unseasonably warm but still growing chilly northern latitudes.

Sometimes an encampment wins in court, then loses, or vice versa. Sometimes, as in the case of Occupy Augusta, it loses in court and decides to decamp by choice and with dignity, rather than apply for a permit to exercise 1st amendment rights of speech, assembly, and petition for redress of grievances.

But here is why I don't agree with those who argue that encampments are not necessary to continue to grow the movement.

1) While monitoring the Twitter feed as Occupy Boston faced eviction after losing in court, I saw a tweet that said something like The last 20 calls on my phone are from people I didn't even know a month ago. #OccupyBoston.

2) For many teenagers, their closest Occupy site is like Woodstock: something inestimably attractive, shining like a beacon in the distance when one has turned 18 and one's parents can no longer forbid one to go to it.

3) Without continuous presence in public space, how much mainstream media coverage would the grievances of the 99% be getting? Compare with nearly non-existent MSM coverage of large marches, well-attended demonstrations, and small but colorful one-off events speaking truth to power.

I want to elaborate more on reason #1 because I think it is the most important. I am an organizer, and a communications specialist, so people in my area often contact me or read one of my email blasts to find out what's going on. Just yesterday one of the most dedicated long term activists in my state called to discuss something else, and was surprised -- and glad -- to learn of a large rally on Wed. 12/14 at 10am in the Hall of Flags in Augusta to protest the huge cuts to funding for health care and other services about to come down in Maine. I did not organize the rally, nor will I be able to attend, but I help by publicizing it. I do not fault my peaceful friend for not reading all the emails I send him. Who could? Even an information junkie like me often finds it challenging to know what's happening when and where, and to arrange my life so that I can show up and lend a hand. And I'm one of the lucky ones, because I have the resources and time and motivation to be involved, and the contacts to help me.

But as long as there was an encampment in Augusta, or in Bangor, or Portland, or SF, or NYC,  I didn't need any additional information. I didn't need to know anyone or coordinate with anyone if I wanted to support the effort. I just showed up. And so did students, and grandparents, and environmental advocates, and reporters, and infiltrators, and tourists, and....

This is why I think the encampments are important and will endure, sprouting again like mushrooms come spring.

One last bit of anecdotal evidence: In the summer of 2011 my sister and I visited an encampment of occupiers at Glen Cove on the northern edge of the vast waterway that is the San Francisco Bay. Indigenous people and supporters were encamped there for 97 days to block the proposed desecration of a sacred shell mound burial site -- one of the few remaining heritage sites that has not been disturbed for development. Cookie cutter McHouses in pale stucco marched down a hillside toward the bay, but stopped short of the water's edge, where a large field kitchen and many small tents dotted the undeveloped land.

We were greeted warmly at the Glen Cove encampment, and offered food; it was early in the morning, and we asked permission to sit by the side of the water to meditate, which was granted. Afterward we made an offering to the sacred fire that was kept continuously burning, after receiving some instruction about how to respect the space, and were again offered food. We talked with one of the long term campers for a while about their purpose for occupying, and when we departed we took some literature and bought a t-shirt for another family member.

Glen Cove activists. Source: Yes! Magazine

On the day after Thanksgiving (or as the Wampanoag tribe in New England prefers, the National Day of Mourning) we returned with two more people. The four of us were aghast to find bulldozers and chain link fencing, not an encampment. Of course I did some research when I got home. Turns out that the occupiers were successful in negotiating with those developing a park there not to disturb the shell mound portion of the site, or to pave it to put in a parking lot. Activists say they will continue to monitor the land use closely to see that the agreement is honored.

When Occupy Wall St. sprang up this fall I recognized where I had seen this organized, communal approach to outdoor living: at Glen Cove.

With indigenous wisdom on the proper use and care for Mother Earth, I believe the 99% can endure.

(Yes, of course there are a ton of useful, powerful actions to be taken while occupying/not occupying. More on that in my next post. A particularly lively example: the West Coast Port Shutdown plan for Monday 12/12/11. Onward!)