A View From Outside: The Last Night of the CUNY Gaza Solidarity Encampment
A breakdown of the events outside City College, where the police harassed and arrested protestors who had come in solidarity with the CUNY encampment
This is a timeline of events based on my account of what I saw the night of April 30 when police were brought in to shut down the CUNY Gaza Solidarity Encampment at the City College of New York (CCNY) in Harlem. The maps are tagged with photos and videos that I took outside the campus. These photos and videos can be found on my twitter, where I live-tweeted/reported the night of the arrests.
This website is part of a larger independent reporting project on the CUNY Gaza Solidarity Encampment, which is emblematic of a classic CUNY tale: students, faculty, and staff making do with what they have, usually without admin support. As a CUNY kid through and through (CCNY ’22 and Newmark J School ’23), I have witnessed this tale play out in various forms. In this case, I watched the CUNY community come together to demand that CUNY take accountability and divest from the genocide happening in Palestine.
The map above shows the overall timeline of how protestors outside the encampment at CCNY were pushed by from the corner of West 140th Street and Convent Avenue onto Amsterdam Avenue by cops. These protestors had come to show support and stand in solidarity with the CUNY encampment, which at the time was closed off by the police. It also shows time stamps and key points of the night as protestors were kettled and pushed onto sidewalks by the police.
8:08 PM: The police use a Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) to tell protestors they are "unlawfully" walking on the roadway. After, they begin pushing protestors along West 140th Street. This is when they start to make some of the first outside arrests.
8:01 PM: NYPD Strategic Response Group (SRG) police are stationed outside West 141st Street and Convent Avenue to block protestors from entering the encampment. The sea of cops makes it hard to see beyond them and into the encampment.
9:40 PM: Cops line the right sidewalk on Amsterdam Avenue with barricades. This is the sidewalk adjacent to CCNY.
10:40 PM: Protestors, who were first pushed onto Amsterdam Avenue from Convent Avenue, are pushed further onto the left sidewalk on Amsterdam Avenue.
11:02 PM: Buses, both police and MTA, line up across four blocks and start to get filled with arrested protestors.
10:58 PM: Police in riot gear stand on Amsterdam Avenue between the CCNY entrance and protestors.
While I Have You Here: As mentioned at the start of this page, this website is part of a larger independent reporting series looking into the CUNY Gaza Solidarity Encampment and how it's part of the classic CUNY tale of the CUNY community making do with what they have. For another part of this website, I am currently looking to talk to people who were up at the encampment, both people who visited and people who stayed the nights. Please feel free to email me here.
Thank Yous: This project would not have been possible without Lam Thuy Vo, Joshua Rollins, Ita Flores, and Emma Schneider. Lam, thank you for helping me flesh out my reporting and story ideas. Joshua, thank you for listening and guiding me as I panicked over my coding and layout of this website. Ita, thank you for being my second pair of eyes, design-wise. Emma, thank you for making my copy cohesively sparkle.