Liam Beran
Police in riot gear face off against protesters who encircled the encampment on UW-Madison's Library Mall.
UW-Madison administrators warned that pro-Palestinian students who set up an encampment on Library Mall would face “consequences.” Those consequences became clear Wednesday morning as police officers started arresting students and tearing down tents.
Students started building the encampment Monday morning, joining protests across the country in response to the Israel-Hamas war. Protests at Columbia University escalated on April 18 with the arrest of students and a few days ago with the occupation of a university building. Tuesday night New York City Police Department officers began arresting student protesters occupying Hamilton Hall as the school remains in a near-total state of lockdown.
UW-Madison’s protest and encampment was peaceful prior to the police intervention Wednesday morning. State and local law enforcement took down more than two dozen tents in violation of Wisconsin Administrative Code Chapter 18. UW-Madison Police Department communications director Marc Lovicott said in a Wednesday morning statement that officers arrested 34 total people Monday morning and released a majority with no citations. Four protesters were booked into Dane County Jail, Lovicott said. He said officers warned protesters at 7 a.m. they’d face arrest if the tents were not removed.
Lovicott defended the officers’ actions at a press conference shortly after removal of the tents. “Our officers issued one final warning and we notified them that we would begin moving tents and camping equipment and arrests would happen if protesters turned violent, or if they tried to interfere with our efforts,” he said.
Police officers entered the encampment at 7:10 a.m and began dismantling a community kitchen protesters had erected on the Memorial Union side of the encampment. Protesters moved to physically encircle the 28 tents.
“We are here today because Chancellor Mnookin does not want to negotiate with students,” one protester said over a megaphone while police and protesters maintained their lines.
Police began pushing into the circle around 8 a.m. The protesters locked arms and pushed back, but police were successful in breaking through the human barrier and removing the tents.
Police removed a majority of tents by 9:10 a.m. but by late morning protesters were putting tents back. Lovicott told reporters he “doesn’t know what our plans are” in regards to the remaining tents. Beyond the tents, he added, the protesters are in compliance with university policy and state law and are “welcome to exercise their constitutional rights.”
Among those arrested was Samer Alatout, a UW-Madison professor of community and environmental sociology who is Palestinian. He tells Isthmus that officers said “we want him” and blamed them for the gash on his head. “They did that in their attack on me,” he said.
Lovicott tells Isthmus via email he is not sure how the injury occurred, but said there are several social media videos of the encounter and told Isthmus he would “allow you to judge for yourself what occurred.”
Alatout said he was detained and cited before returning to the protest. Sami Schalk, a UW-Madison gender and women’s studies professor, was also arrested.
Liam Beran
Samer Alatout, a UW-Madison professor of community and environmental sociology who is Palestinian, returned to the protest after being arrested and cited. He says he received the gash on his head at the hands of the police.
In a Wednesday morning statement after the tents came down, UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin said she authorized the police intervention and that though civil disobedience has been a time-honored tradition at UW-Madison, it requires that protesters “respect the laws we share and to accept that there are consequences for violating them.”
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers weighed in on the encampments at UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee Tuesday evening. He said the encampments would eventually “have to end” and that “we will eventually take action, if we have to.”
A student organizer, who identified themself by the pseudonym, “Jules,” said university administrators met with protest negotiators two times on Monday but the two parties did not make progress. In a statement Monday evening, UW-Madison said university leaders had said they would meet with the protesters if the tents came down.
“The chancellor had expressed and other campus leaders had expressed to protest organizers that by voluntarily removing tents there would be opportunity for further discussion,” Kelly Tyrrell, UW-Madison director of media relations and strategic communications, said at the Wednesday morning press briefing with Lovicott.
With police intervention uncertain as of Monday evening, two city alders and UW-Madison students — Ald. MGR Govindarajan and Ald. Juliana Bennett — alongside Dane County Board Supv. Heidi Wegleitner, went to the Fluno Center, where dozens of police officers were stationed, to “receive clear guidance about UWPD expectations and [a] de-escalation plan,” according to a press release from Bennett.
Liam Beran
UW Police Department Director of Communications Marc Lovicott
Marc Lovicott, director of communications for the UW Police Department, discusses the arrests of protesters at a Wednesday morning news conference.
The officers told the elected officials to leave and physically pushed them out of the building, according to Bennett.
Bennett said the “physical response” made it clear to her that “UW Admin and UWPD do not intend to de-escalate to maintain safety. They plan to escalate.”
When asked for comment on the incident, Lovicott said the individuals had entered a locked area and engaged with officers who told them “multiple times that they needed to leave.”
“The group declined to leave and continued to engage with officers,” he said. Lovicott added that UWPD has since connected with one member of the group, who “acknowledged they should not have been there.”
Alatout is critical of the officers’ response to the protest. He said police were engaging in “militarization and singling out of specific people of color.”
“My and other faculty and staff's position is that we are defending the students’ rights,” Alatout said. “To demonstrate and to protest, and that we are defending them.”
The university has a strong history of antiwar protests dating back to the Vietnam War and South African apartheid. Kacie Lucchini Butcher, a historian and director of UW-Madison’s Rebecca M. Blank Center for Campus History, tells Isthmus the students' protest and encampment “contributes to a long history of campus protests.”
“One of the things about the encampment for me is that it really mirrors a sit-in,” Butcher said. She added that in the case of protests against South African apartheid, student protesters were successful in convincing UW-Madison to become the first university to call for divestment.
And she said university administrators’ responses with police involvement was similar to responses of the past.
“What [police intervention] did is the counter effect of what the university wanted. It actually made the protests stronger, because students didn't like seeing their peers and classmates beat up on,” Butcher said.
For Alatout, the response to the protest signifies a lack of current understanding from UW-Madison.
“UW probably in the next 20 years will come back and revisit this moment and apologize for it, Alatout said. “But for now, they are acting in a fascist form. They are not understanding how the new world is emerging, and that this new world will be written for the most part by these students, who are amazing.”
