Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), the USC Student Coalition Against Labor Exploitation (SCALE) and other student organizations in support of Palestine will be hosting a “Blockade + Boycott” protest at the USC Village today at 6 p.m. in hopes of “[shutting] it down.”
The groups said the USC Village is “a $700 million project of displacement of the South Central community.”
“The gates are locked at night. The businesses that now occupy this land are Zionist and anti-worker,” SJP and other pro-Palestine groups said in a joint Instagram post. “They profit and USC profits off the suffering and exploitation of the working class of the oppressed.”
According to the Daily Trojan, students will not be able to enter the USC Village without showing their USC or government-issued IDs starting at 2 p.m. today.
DPS Assistant Chief David Carlisle said DPS is prepared to handle today’s protest, but LAPD has been briefed and is ready to assist if necessary.
Carlisle added that “ID checks were set up hours in advance of today’s protest because there are many logistics involved.”
Carlisle said he does not anticipate the extra security at the Village to continue past today.
Ultimately, the goal of the protest, the groups said in the post, is to not just shut down the village but to obtain what they call “a People’s University.” They said they will continue to boycott companies and brands associated with Israel until the university meets their list of demands. This includes disclosing and divesting from “the settler colonial occupation and genocide of Palestine,” and using those funds to instead invest in the South Central community.
The businesses targeted by the protest are Trader Joe’s, Amazon, Cava, Sephora, Starbucks and Target.
The groups organizing the boycott want the university to get rid of all security checkpoints surrounding the campus and to declare the university a “sanctuary” campus. This would mean that even if a student has their visa revoked or exterminated, the university would still allow the student to continue their academic studies.
Sydney Sneeringer, a freshman double majoring in public policy and political science, said she thinks the disruption the blockade will make is necessary. Although she said she understands the university’s motives, especially when it comes to obtaining funds from the government, she believes the university should keep students safe from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.
“I think disruptive action is probably the most likely to get noticed and get any attention from the university,” Sneeringer said.
When it comes to the gates, freshman Samuel Redfearn said he feels having the campus closed off makes the institution feel less like a real college.
“The history of the gates is very much anti-protester. It feels disconnected from the community which I’m not a big fan of,” he said.
For Mate Daus, a student studying animation and digital arts, security guarding USC’s campus makes him feel even more unsafe. This feeling is heightened, Daus said, through the immediate police response to protests on campus.
The protest comes almost one year to the day when LAPD officers appeared on campus in riot gear to clear a protest encampment — resulting in 93 arrests.
Freshman Siena Rosborough is another supporter of the boycott, being an avid attendee of the organizations’ previous protests. Rosborough said she is especially supportive of their demands for the university to become a sanctuary for undocumented students.
“I’m the daughter of an immigrant who was not always legal, Rosborough said. “It hits really close to home when I hear about people being sent away.”