Eight Days for Gaza: A Report on the Occupation and Defense of the Portland State University Library

A day-by-day reflection and account of a recent campus occupation in solidarity with Palestine at Portland State University (PSU), in Portland, Oregon. Social media posts and photo from Alissa Azar on Mastodon.

Day 1 – April 25 2024

The call went out around 3pm, Thursday the 25th, on a couple local Instagram pages. A couple hours later, a dozen or so people were mobilized at the park blocks, setting up tarps and tents. For those unfamiliar with the park blocks, they are Portland State’s university’s version of the “quad,” where people go to chill and smoke weed. A strip of nature bisects the campus, and its a nice spot to hang out. I thought it was also under the jurisdiction of the park rangers, as it is a public park.

The park rangers came by and were heckled. The campus police came by and they received a heavy dose of heckling as well. This strategy of being assertive with the police from the get-go served the encampment well.

As the sun set, more folks arrived and built up some barricades on SW Harrison Ave. Both the east and west sides of the park were rendered inaccessible to vehicles, fairly quickly. More and more people arrived as the night went on, probably culminating around 10pm or so with maybe 50 people. Some folks left, convinced that the next night was already assured. Some of protesters stayed.

At 1:20am, the Portland police arrived en masse from the northern direction along the park blocks, silently with a brigade of about 25 cop cars and 40 cops. The camp was not strong at this point. Only about 15 demonstrators were there at the time. The Portland Police Bureau (PPB) came in with a strong personnel and equipment ratio and people were not prepared. The camp dispersed.

Day 2 – April 26 2024

On Friday, a call went out on social media again, for people to come back and re-establish the camp. By 1pm, half-dozen people were there, with a tent and a couple tarps. People quickly arrived, perhaps invigorated by the heavy-handed sweep the night before. The president also “paused” ties with Boeing, which turned out to be bullshit. So people got to protesting.

More people came than on Thursday. The cops made their move early, around 3pm bringing roughly 12 riot cops to tear down the tarps for being “unauthorized structures” or something.

People did not like the cops. The crowd linked arms at the north edge of the encampment on Harrison Ave. There was chanting and yelling. People yelled at the cops, “Why are you here?” Also cries of ACAB, FTP, and Free Palestine rang out. Finally the protesters moved all their shit onto the library steps, which appeased the cops because it was PSU university property and technically the campus police were supposed to deal with that, not PPB.

A police retreat invigorated the crowd again, which began building up the barricades in their new space. Despite being a smaller area, the library portico provided some tactical advantages. Now the protesters had the high ground. After a couple hours of barricade building, the library portico was sealed-off to the outside, giving demonstrators some privacy. There was some redecorating that night.

Day 3 – April 27 2024

Early Saturday morning, maybe 5am, the first truck arrived for the Portland Saturday market. The other vendors soon arrived and began setting up for the massive weekly gathering, which was welcomed by those at the encampment. Protesters also set up a booth and participated, as well as shopped for wares along the park blocks.

The library was renamed “Refaat Alareer Library.” Saturday night, the vibes were immaculate. People redecorated multiple floors of the library windows, and the barricades received some serious reinforcements. There was some banjo or something, which I didn’t care for but people were having a lot of fun so whatevs. More people, maybe 30, stayed the night.

Day 4 – April 28 2024

On Sunday people organized a party with lots of supporters coming by and having fun. Protesters even got a letter from Mumia-Abu-Jamal.

Day 5 – April 29 2024

The big day. Even more nighttime redecorating and Ann Cudd [President of Portland State University (PSU)] decides to screw everyone. She tells protesters to leave the portico. The campus police came by and dissed the barricade. People did not respond to this threat. A rally had been planned for Monday at 4pm, and folks had been anticipating this for days. It was even bigger than anyone expected. Multiple groups showed out, mobilizing about maybe 400 people around the library at 5pm. The campus police could only watch from a distance as waves of protestors moved, some in formation, some not, around the library.

The school had actually closed the library early at noon. So people broke in. One door got smashed, and the demonstrators flooded in, bringing their supplies, and methodically moving up the floors to secure the building. The campus police brought a final show of force, two cop cars. They were chased off within 15 seconds.

One by one the entrances, stairwells, and elevators are barricaded. Food and drink were liberated from their machines and people had an intifada feast. At 11:30pm, the mayor, DA, school president, and chief of police gathered for a live press conference. They threatened the protesters. People did not leave. Instead, they had a movie night.

Day 6 – April 30 2024

It is Tuesday now, and school is canceled. Look at folks now. Protesters are having teach-ins at the library. Cafe Intifada (the repurposed library coffee shop) is operating full service. Some of our houseless neighbors from the PSU community are finally getting shelter and care in the library for the first time in years.

Word spread about the occupation and soon 100 people are here. People are getting thank yous from kids in Gaza. Students came into the library and studied just like any other day.

The campus police came by and gave someone a piece of paper full of misspellings to serve as a dispersal order or trespass or something – IDK, never saw the fucking paper.

Apparently some students decided they were the “leaders” of the occupation. They made an Instagram page and spread rumors that other protestors were undercover cops. The two people running the “Refaat Alareer Library” (formerly occupypsu4palestine) Instagram page are not representative of the protest and they are not to be trusted. They made multiple false statements that led to people getting hurt. Fuck them.

These “leaders” apparently negotiated with the president unbeknownst to most. I don’t know why these kids thought they could speak for anyone, especially while spreading rumors that protesters (the people actually holding it down, putting themselves on the line every night) were police. What the hell, guys?

An email went out to the PSU community that the PPB would be coming in to deal with the “incident.” This immediately garnered push back from multiple student and faculty organizations because everyone hates cops.

Day 7 – May 1 2024

Wednesday, May Day, was wild. Things started off well enough with the May Day actions downtown. Starbucks got smashed, woo-hoo. A few hundred people were at the library. Some folks came back from a May Day march and apparently had a scuffle with the self-appointed “security.” Fuck the self-appointed door people. They thought they could keep folks (again, the people who were actually there night after night defending the camp) out of the library at their discretion. I don’t even know who these door people fuckers were, but that was not okay behavior.

What do you think the point of black bloc is? You don’t get to personally identify everyone coming into the library. This is a protest, not a jail. Anyways. The randos who thought they were in charge of the library entrance kept refusing access to the library and so only 30 people were there that night, and many knew that the police were coming in. Too bad there weren’t more protesters at the library. Thanks a lot, door people.

Day 8 – May 2 2024

The police arrived at 6am and began their operation. They brought maybe, 120 PPB officers, and 50 state troopers. There were a lot of cops. At 6:30am the pigs began arresting homeless people outside the library.

At about 7:20am, a six man SWAT crew used some chainsaws to get into the north side fire escape. They climbed up to the fifth floor. They either busted down that weak-ass barricade into the book stacks area or went up to the roof and then took the south side fire escape down. Once they cleared the fifth floor, they got into the elevators and worked their way down, sweeping floor by floor.

When the cops got to the second floor about 8am, people decided to run. A triple line diagonal cross formation worked to maximum effectiveness. The element of surprise, along with excellent route-running, resulted in an almost-clean escape. One protestor got laid out by a cop, and it was fucked. We all saw it on the news.

Now the crowd was arriving. PSU made many tactical errors throughout the occupation, mainly refusing to negotiate with the group. The school didn’t cancel class until right before school started. PSU is a commuter school, and half the students were already on the way to campus. In addition, the school’s alert system had made an otherwise minor typo, that “Thursday, May 1st,” school was canceled. Of course, Thursday was not May 1st. And May 1st had already happened. Many students brushed the email alert off, thinking it was a glitch or repeat from the day before. So, hundreds of people were there in the park at 9am.

PPB tried to get a few arrestees back to the precinct but were met with a crowd of protestors blocking the paddy wagon. A struggle for control of Broadway Ave ensued. About 20 state troopers escorted the paddy wagons onto the 405 on-ramp in an epic battle. They had to circle around on the highway, and go 3 extra miles, just to get back to their precinct a mere 8 blocks from the PSU campus.

Later in the day, people overwhelmed the police and drove them out. Occupation defenders threw shit at them and yelled at them and backed them into the basketball arena at 5:09pm. Then, within seconds, people retook the library. Within ten minutes the intersection of Park and Harrison was again blocked off, and protesters were back in the library.

At this point, a self-appointed “leader” made an extremely curious tactical decision. “We are going to leave and lock the door,” they told me. This didn’t make any sense, as people had just stormed the library, the home of the occupation. So….yeah, weird move. The “leader” corralled people out of the building, but not everyone, and so more people got arrested as the cops came back to the library a second time, unimpeded.

Don’t listen to self-appointed leaders that tell you to stop protesting. Tell them to shut up. Another couple of self-appointed leaders led people on a march to nowhere and that was the end of the protest.

Notes

Whoever made the Instagram page for the protest and then spread rumors about people, fuck you.

The occupation was started by students. Folks tried their best to keep each other safe. Demonstrators didn’t have any leaders. The peace police came to the occupation and tried to physically fight protesters. They hated the library takeover, and said it was, “Not for Palestine.” Kids in Gaza said otherwise, thanking folks personally for taking action. Don’t listen to the peace police. Do the right thing. Of course the peace police, all Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) members, also exploited the protest to push their own clout-chasing agenda.

Here’s to people doing it again sometime soon, maybe at the ICE building? Land Back from Turtle Island to Palestine.