BERKELEY — A gaggle of pro-Palestinian protesters took over UC Berkeley's Anna Head Alumnae Hall on Wednesday, only a day after a big encampment in Sproul Plaza was demolished following an agreement between administrators and protesters.
“This is an active crime scene,” said UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof. “You are destroying an unsafe, fire-damaged building.”
The news that protesters occupied the abandoned, gated constructing on Haste Street near Telegraph Avenue was first shared on the People's Park Berkeley Instagram account.
The constructing sits directly across from the park, which was founded 55 years ago to the day and has been the topic of controversy. While the university has attempted to develop the positioning into student residences, demonstrators argued for the property to be preserved as open space.
The protest on Wednesday also comes on the 76th anniversary of the primary Nakbaan Arabic word meaning “catastrophe” and used to consult with the forced displacement of roughly 700,000 Palestinians through the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, which was triggered by the creation of Israel.
For months, UC Berkeley students and school have protested against Israel and its military response to a Hamas-led attack on October 7. A camp arrange on April 22 was evacuated on Tuesday and Wednesday after negotiations between a pro-Palestinian coalition and administrators. In the Instagram post, a protester occupying the vacant constructing might be heard calling the university's guarantees “empty.”
“Since the first Nakba, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been forcibly displaced from their ancestral homes,” one protester might be heard saying within the video. “Palestine continues to face ongoing settler colonial violence from Israeli occupation to this day.”
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
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