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By the Editorial Board
At 1:45am on April 25, 2024, Boston Police and MA State Troopers stormed the peaceful pro-Palestine Emerson College student encampment and arrested students en masse.
Emerson student activists set up one of the nation’s first college campus Palestine encampments in the public alleyway to call attention to Israel’s genocide and devastation in Gaza and Emerson’s complicity.
Scandal-ensnared Emerson College President Jay Bernhardt’s decision to forcibly clear the alley in the dark overnight provoked fear and panic in students seeking to protect the encampment.
At 1:45am, dozens of riot police enclosed the alleyway and began ripping at students’ linked arms, slamming the youth to the ground, bloodying the brick and cuffing en masse.
The majority of students could not hear BPD’s 1:39am dispersal notice on the far Boylston Street end of the alleyway before droves of riot police swarmed the back of the alley and sealed all exit points for mass arrests.
Emerson President Jay Bernhardt and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu carried out the sweep in the middle of the night to minimize public scrutiny.
Were it not for volunteer reporters with Working Mass and student journalists, they may have succeeded. Instead, Working Mass and student videos exposed the brutal police raid, amassing hundreds of thousands of views online and appearing in major news publications.
Students were not the only ones subject to arrest. In violation of the freedom of the press, Boston Police indiscriminately arrested Working Mass journalist (and Emerson alum ‘16) Dan Abright who was filming on assignment. Albright was held overnight and charged with disorderly conduct, a criminal offense.
As of now, Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden is still pressing this unjust charge, although multiple video angles of the night’s events show Dan was filming when police kettled the alley and cuffed him without reason.
Boston Police’s brute force razing of the Emerson encampment is an alarming attack on the rights to free assembly, speech and press, and a dark blight on Mayor Wu’s supposedly progressive administration.
Since April 25, Emerson College has doubled down its suppression of political speech, canceling its long-running and popular Bright Lights film screening series, firing its programmer for political activity and revoking students’ rights to freely protest and assemble on campus.
Tell Mayor Wu and DA Hayden: Drop all charges remaining related to the police raid on the peaceful Emerson College Palestine encampment.
Court support is needed tomorrow 10/30 starting at 9am at Boston Municipal Court, 24 New Chardon St, 5th floor! Join us to support the rights to free speech, assembly and free press!
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