Davis, CA: Campus Dining Hall Occupied in Solidarity with Palestine

On Monday, April 9th, Cops of Campus in Davis, California reported that a dining hall on the University of California Davis campus was occupied and opened to the public. Banners hung in front of the dining hall read: “Cops off Campus, IDF Out of Palestine” and “Free Food, Free Palestine.”

This is just the latest dining hall occupation that has taken place on campus, where according to a 2018 study, nearly half of the student body faces food insecurity, a number which has surely only risen in the aftermath of the pandemic, rising rents, and growing inflation.

According to The Aggie, “In 2015, Chancellor Gary May received $288,280 for serving on the [board of] Leidos,” a weapons firm that has been denounced for profiting off of war crimes in Palestine.

A statement in flyer form that was distributed on campus at the occupied dining hall read:

We are here today in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for liberation, under the simple banner FOOD NOT GENOCIDE. It is the six month anniversary of Al-Aqsa Flood. On that day something began, and nothing. Nothing in the sense that the Zionist entity has occupied Palestine — delivering apartheid, murder, and starvation by practice and policy — for three- quarters of a century. Something in the sense that, confronted with the genocidal campaign that has followed, a genocide broadly recognized in the international community and courts, global support for the Zionist entity has finally collapsed — even among the people of its staunchest allies. Now there is only brute force to preserve Zionist desires and dominion.

The program of genocide has among its most horrific features an intensification of the long-standing and well-documented state policy enforcing starvation on the people of Gaza. Millions are right now being driven into deadly famine. This program includes among other things the blocking of basic survival aid by both military and civilian genocidaires; the destruction of food; the targeted murder of aid workers; military and political attacks on aid organizations; and deadly military assaults on starving people trying to access aid. History will need to be long indeed to deliver anything more vile than the Flour Massacre. Every Zionist wears its shame from head to toe.

Today as every day we recognize the courageous struggle of Palestinians for survival and liberty. At this distance we are aware that our support can only be modest and incomplete. We do what we can, where we can, when we can. In assuring that a meal today is free and accessible to all who visit, we reiterate our solidarity with the Palestinian struggle specifically against the weapon of starvation wielded by the bloodthirsty and illegitimate Zionist entity. We remind everyone with us today that “the colonial world is a world divided into compartments” — that a world with checkpoints controlling who does and does not get food is “a world cut in two.” We stand on the side of food for all, on the side of the oppressed, and against a world cut in two: PALESTINE WILL BE FREE

Follow Cops off Campus in Davis here for more updates and photos.