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charges dropped against palestine solidarity activists
Student Protesters Win Victory Against University, Police Repression
In a major victory for the movement in solidarity with the Palestinian
people and the movement to defend free speech, criminal charges
against 79 participants in an April 9th protest in Berkeley, CA against Israel’s
war against the Palestine were dropped. On Friday June 7th, prosecutors,
under pressure from the movement to defend the wrongly accused protesters,
agreed to drop charges against all defendants and each and all of the
protestors will receive “factual findings of innocence”, according to the legal
team of National Lawyers Guild lawyers defending the protestors.
The April 9th action was part of a series of events at UC Berkeley
organized by the new national organization Students for Justice in
Palestine (SJP). SJP has been calling for Universities, including UC Berkeley
to divest from their endowment companies such as Boeing, Caterpillar,
Lockheed Martin, among others who supply weapons and equipment used to enforce
Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestinian land.
The April 9th demonstration included a peaceful sit-in at Wheeler
Hall where 79 protesters were charged for trespassing. Six of those were
additionally cited for resisting arrest. In addition, SJP was suspended as a
student organization and 41 UC Berkley students were slapped with student
conduct charges.
The attack on the protesters by the University and The Police set off
a Free Speech defense campaign that demanded all charges be dropped and SJP
be allowed to function as an official organization. Berkley SJP
continued to table and pass out flyers in defiance to the Universities repressive attack on their political rights. The Free Speech campaign was supported by the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC-SF) and the National Lawyer’s Guild, and SJP chapters across the country. Eventually the
University reestablished SJP’s organizational rights. While SJP won
its right to operate on campus and the criminal charges were dropped, the
student conduct charges against the 41 UC Berkley students remain.
Socialist Action calls on all people concerned with defending free
speech to demand that the Universities charges against these protesters be
dropped immediately.
The article above was written by Dave Bernt.
