Students Speak Out From Free Gaza Encampment
An uprising led by college students around the United States is demanding an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the ongoing occupation of Palestine, and U.S. arms shipments to Israel. Also central to the demands are calls for universities to divest from Israel.
In an approach reminiscent of Occupy Wall Street and other movements for social justice, students have set up encampments on their campuses and have been met by violent police repression and mass arrests. They also face accusations of antisemitism, in spite of the fact that there are significant numbers of Jewish students participating in the protests.
The movement’s epicenters include Columbia University, New York University, and the University of Texas at Austin. But the list of campus encampments is growing and expanding into smaller campuses as well.
On April 29, students at San Francisco State University set up a Free Gaza encampment—and two student organizers named Jacob and Rithik (who used their first names only to protect against official reprisal) spoke with YES! Senior Editor Sonali Kolhatkar on YES! Presents: Rising Up With Sonali from their tent. They explained why they were protesting and gave a visual tour of the encampment.
Sonali Kolhatkar
joined YES! in summer 2021, building on a long and decorated career in broadcast and print journalism. She is an award-winning multimedia journalist, and host and creator of YES! Presents: Rising Up with Sonali, a nationally syndicated television and radio program airing on Free Speech TV and dozens of independent and community radio stations. She is also Senior Correspondent with the Independent Media Institute’s Economy for All project where she writes a weekly column. She is the author of Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (2023) and Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence (2005). Her forthcoming book is called Talking About Abolition (Seven Stories Press, 2025). Sonali is co-director of the nonprofit group, Afghan Women’s Mission which she helped to co-found in 2000. She has a Master’s in Astronomy from the University of Hawai’i, and two undergraduate degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin. Sonali reflects on “My Journey From Astrophysicist to Radio Host” in her 2014 TEDx talk of the same name.
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