POLICE TAZE, SHOOT STUDENTS WITH PEPPERBALL GUNS AT EMORY, BOSTON POLICE ARREST 100 AT EMERSON
PROTESTS BREAK OUT AT CUNY, CORNELL, GEORGE WASHINGTON, NORTHWESTERN
Student protesters at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Photo credit: screengrab from X.
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This is a developing report. Check back for additional news.
Police in Georgia opened fire on student protesters with pepperball guns at Emory University and more than a 100 Emerson College students were arrested early Thursday morning in Boston as authorities nationwide unleashed a "wack-a-mole"-like wave of violent police repression on pro-Palestinian protests springing up on college campuses everywhere.
Pro-Palestinian student protesters established camps at the City of New York's flagship Harlem campus, at Cornell University in upstate New York, George Washington University in Washington, DC, at Northwestern University's Evaston, Illinois campus Thursday morning
Within hours of student protesters setting up a pro-Palestinian protest camp on Emory’s quad, Georgia's Governor Brian Kemp (R) sent State Police to clear it. Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens (D) dispatched an Atlanta Police Department SWAT team to help: armed with semi-automatic pepperball guns but lacking identification.
Video posted to X (since removed) capturing an Georgia State Police and an Atlanta Police Department SWAT team opening fire on peaceful pro-Palestinian protesters with pepperball guns.
At least 17 students were arrested, the Associated Press reports, and one was shocked with a Taser.
"As protesters collectively retreated from streams of pepper bullets, hundreds of students have taken their place," organizers of the Emory protest said in a statement late Thursday afternoon. We "call for an end to the police's brutality, and the immediate release of all activists arrested."
"They also continue to call for Emory University to divest from all programs enabling Israeli Apartheid," the students' statement said.
Hours before and hundreds of miles north in Boston, Mayor Michelle Wu (D) sent the Boston Police Department on a midnight raid to break up a protest camp on property jointly-controlled by Emory and the city.
Protesters there were inspired to establish the camp after Columbia University's president, Nemat Shafik, summoned the NYPD onto its private campus to arrest 108 pro-Palestinian student protesters last Thursday. Boston Police surrounded the Emerson camp shortly before 2:00 am.
"Here they come! Lines! Lines!," student sentinels called to their comrades to rush to the makeshift barricades.
As police charged, student protesters formed a skirmish line and met them in a narrow alley. A feudal-like battle broke out between helmeted, truncheon-wielding riot police and protesters armed only with umbrellas—to protect them from police pepper spray.
"You protect us! You protect us!" protesters yelled in futility at police as beat and arrested protesters, video shows.
Emerson president Jay Bernhardt laid the blame on the City of Boston in a news release on Wednesday.
"Earlier today, the Commissioners of the BPD and BFD directly informed Emerson’s leadership that some actions of the protestors are in direct violation of city ordinances, which could result in imminent law enforcement action," Pres. Bernhardt's statement said.
Before the raid, protesters appealed to Mayor Wu to protect them from “imminent danger and risk of intense harm at the hands of the police that she can choose not to deploy.” Wu ignored their pleas.
Hours later in New York City, pro-Palestinian student protesters seized control of a part of the City of New York's flagship campus in Harlem.
The CUNY protest puts both New York City Mayor Eric Adams and New York State Gov. Kathy Houchul, both Democrats, on the hot-seat because New York State co-controls CUNY with the City.
Last Thursday, Mayor Adams, a former police officer and outspoken supporter of Israel, granted Columbia Pres. Shafik’s to deploy the NYPD to arrest 108 students peacefully protesting on the elite college's private lawn.
Like the NYPD's mass-arrest of 732 peaceful Occupy Wall Street protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge in 2011, the arrest of 108 Columbia University students back-fired and ignited what is now a raging worldwide protest movement.
In the week since, pro-Palestinian student protests have broken out at Yale, at Brown, at Harvard, at Berkeley, at MIT, Boston University and Harvard University, at Princeton, Northwestern University, Miami University in Ohio, at Temple University, the New School for Social Research, Tufts, New York University, the University of Michigan, the University of North Carolina.
They've also erupted at the University of Alberta, in Canada, and on college campuses in France, Egypt and Australia.
The Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La) visited Columbia on Wednesday and held a news conference on the steps of the school's iconic Low Library, feet from the protest encampment.
Johnson called on Pres. Shafik "to take immediate action and stamp this out."
Protesters responded by heckling him: "Mike you suck! Mike you suck!"
"Enjoy your free speech," was the House Speakers' tart reply.
The spreading protests worry Israel's leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyau, so much he is interfering in American domestic affairs by explicitly calling on leaders and elected officials in the United States to squelch pro-Palestinian protests.
"More has to be done," Netanyahu said on Wednesday.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott unleashed his State Police to arrest more than 50 protesters holding a peaceful rally at the State's flagship university campus in Austin, also on Wednesday.
"These protesters belong in jail," he declared.
Students protesters chanted their reply when they confronted Troopers on horseback:
“We are not afraid! We are not afraid!”
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