Pro-Palestinian protesters march again. It was a different scene on Franklin Street.
A peaceful crowd of over 200 gathered Friday morning on Franklin Street before marching through UNC-Chapel Hill’s campus and back, in sharp contrast to violent protests and arrests this week.
Only one uniformed Chapel Hill police officer attended the event, strolling by occasionally with a cup of coffee in hand. Others drove by at intervals in sport-utility vehicles.
A lone counterprotester — a graying, older man wearing a baseball cap — approached several small groups waiting for the event to start, asking them why they were wearing masks. COVID, one woman told him. A man yelled at him to go away, using an expletive to make his point.
The event lasted less than two hours after a week in which UNC police removed a four-day pro-Palestinian encampment from Polk Place, clashing with protesters and arresting 36 people on trespassing and other charges.
More violence broke out Tuesday afternoon, when protesters, other students, and UNC police and administrators wrestled for hours over whether the U.S. flag or the Palestinian flag would fly over campus.
The protests and encampment left many Jewish students conflicted and feeling unsafe, some told The News & Observer on Thursday.
What do the UNC protesters want?
No matter what UNC does or says, the students and community members rallying in support of the Palestinian people are still going to be here, a male organizer told the crowd Friday from the steps of the courthouse at Peace & Justice Plaza.
People must find a way “to disrupt the world around us as much as possible” in order to push back against “genocide, especially in Palestine, but also the world that gives rise to it,” the unidentified speaker said.
“The world around us is made of incredibly, incredibly violent systems,” he said, adding don’t just look back “after the genocide has been completed and (say) we were on the right side.”
Another speaker, Silent Sam protester Julia Pulawski, shared her experience of being found guilty of resisting a public officer and assault on a campus police officer after a trial in Orange County in which a female police officer was accused of lying under oath.
“I just want to tell y’all, stick together. Don’t back down. UNC is your campus,” Pulawski said. “And free Palestine!”
The crowd then marched, chanting, toward campus: “Free, free Palestine!”
“Expose. Divest. We will not stop, they will not rest!” they added, in reference to the pro-Palestinian movement’s demands that colleges and universities nationwide stop investing in Israel and its companies.
What happened in march to campus?
UNC professors and employees stood on the steps of buildings and watched from a distance as they passed, along with graduating seniors taking photos in their Carolina blue robes and white spring dresses under the Bell Tower on South Road.
No UNC Police officers seemed to be in the area.
The group rounded the corner at the South Columbia Street stoplight, and a Chapel Hill police escort joined them at the Carolina Inn, where the town and campus limits meet. With a police SUV in front and two more vehicles behind, the march continued to Franklin Street, where traffic was stopped, allowing them to return to the plaza.
The male organizer exhorted the crowd, saying “it has to go so much further.”
“Every time they (expletive) put their hands on somebody in the name of defending (expletive) genocide, they need to know that that has some kind of loss, whether it’s material or monetary or just the fact that we will (expletive) show up,” he said.
“There’s only one way that a world of genocide is unmade, and that is when we decide to unmake it.”
