About 20 students wearing black laid on the grass in front of the Bovard Auditorium today in a silent “die in” protest honoring those killed in Gaza during the Israel-Palestine conflict. The protestors were scattered on the lawn with black marker across their arms, written with the names of Palestinians who have died.
The demonstration was mostly silent, with two members of the USC Graduate Students for Palestine standing at the foot of the lawn reading the names of identified victims. Two students standing behind the grass held a large black, white, red flag saying “End the Genocide in Gaza.”
Lauren Taurean is a graduate student at the USC Gould School of Law who protested with the group.
Taurean: Well, this is a die-in protest. We’re protesting to end the genocide that’s happening in the Gaza Strip right now. There are innocent men, women and children who are being bombed right now.
In a statement released by the USC graduate students for Palestine, the organization condemns the Israel-Hamas conflict, saying it has “emerged from the longstanding conditions of settler colonialism, Zionism, and white supremacy.”
The statement also said, “for the past 17 years, over 2 million Palestinians in Gaza have lived in an open-air prison, separated from the world by an apartheid wall, cut off from medical care, education, and basic resources like water and electricity.”
Taurean: To call it a war would be inaccurate. With a war, you have two armies. And in this case, Israel is the only one with an army. It’s cutting off access to, you know, food, water, electricity to millions of innocent people. This is not a two sided debate.
The USC Graduate Students for Palestine are demanding President Carol Folt to condemn Israel, saying, “if these demands are not met, the University of Southern California will be complicit in an ongoing genocide while stripping its students and faculty of their first amendment rights.”
Taurean: This is this is a demonstration for visitors, for administrators to let people know that we do not stand with the United States support of Israel, with California, support of Israel. And even though I don’t believe our administration has come out in support, their silence is a bystander.
The demonstration concluded with the protesters hand-delivering their demands to Carol Folt’s office located inside Bovard.
For Annenberg Media, I’m Evan Rodrigues