On Sunday, May 12, Pomona Divest from Apartheid (PDfA) and the Los Angeles, Orange County and Inland Empire chapter of the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM LA-OC-IE) organized a protest to disrupt Pomona College’s commencement ceremony which was relocated due to PDfA’s Gaza solidarity encampment at Pomona.
The event was called “So-Cal Shut it Down for Palestine” and was scheduled for 3:30 p.m. at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, where graduating students were in attendance for a mandatory rehearsal before their 6:00 p.m. graduation.
On May 12, the day of graduation, PDfA announced in an Instagram post that they had “decamped,” but added that “decampment isn’t the end,” and called for people to show up to the scheduled protest.
“Palestinians on the ground have been calling on us to halt business as usual,” they wrote. “We did, and we won’t stop until Palestine is free … We are not just one school, or one action. We are an international movement that has wreaked havoc on the powers that be. They have gone to war against us, and they are losing.”
The ceremony’s relocation, announced in an email by Pomona President G. Gabrielle Starr on May 10, followed an encampment set up by PDfA on May 6 at Marston Quad, the original location of commencement.
“Our goal was to maintain safety for our community and honor the Class of 2024 with their loved ones in attendance,” Pomona’s Chief Communications Officer Mark Kendall said in an email to TSL. “The encampment left significant vandalism and damage to equipment on the quad, and we would not have been able to hold Commencement in that location even if the individuals involved had left sooner.”
He wrote that the college’s facilities team began to clean up the “large amount of material” left by those at the encampment, noting the “extensive vandalism” and “damage to equipment.”
That same day, Claremont Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) posted a “Statement on Pomona’s Commencement” condemning the “absurd lengths {the administration went] to avoid engaging with student and faculty demands for disclosure, divestment, and boycott from Israeli apartheid.”
“Pomona College is willing to spend what is estimated to be more than a million dollars to move Commencement plans more than an hour away from campus — a choice that shows the hollowness of the fiduciary responsibility arguments that the Board of Pomona College makes against divestment,” the post reads. “Pomona College would rather deprive the Class of 2024 of the opportunity to graduate in their home campus and impose a significant financial burden on families who must now change their travel and accommodation plans than divest from apartheid and genocide.”
Kendall told TSL that the FJP’s claimed approximate price was higher than what the college will pay.
“The estimate … is inaccurate and the cost to provide this ceremony honoring the Class of 2024 will be far lower,” Kendall wrote.
The FJP statement follows a May 2 Pomona faculty vote in which a resolution to “divest from corporations complicit with war crimes and other human rights violations committed by the Israeli government in Israel/Palestine” passed with 64 percent approval.
At the Shrine Auditorium, approximately 50 protestors from both the 5Cs and USC and UCLA gathered outside, holding signs and shouting chants such as “Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest.”
They did not enter the building and the commencement ceremony happened as scheduled. However, protestors were met by both guards from APEX Security Group, a private security company hired for the event, and dozens of Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers, many in riot gear.
A joint post between PDfA and PYM LA-OC-IE accused the guards of “assaulting” protestors on the public sidewalk outside of the Auditorium. The videos show guards attempting to break a chain of protestors who were holding large signs with their arms interlocked.
APEX did not respond for comment as of publication.
At around 5:30 p.m, the LAPD arrived on site in response to protestors blocking the entrance for graduates and their families to enter. By 7:30 p.m., dozens of these officers created a barricade between the building and the protestors, preventing protestors from occupying the block. Videos show confrontations between the two parties.
In a later post, PDfA accused the LAPD of brutalizing protestors, showing video of police throwing a protester to the ground. Another video showed officers using their batons to shove protesters.
Additionally, a protestor was arrested at the rally according to a joint post between PDfA and the USC Student Coalition Against Labor Exploitation. In the post they called for “court support” and asked for community members to gather at Grand Park Dog Park to call for the charges to be dropped.
On May 14, the Media Relations Division of the LAPD told TSL that they had no record of the arrest.
However, on May 15, PDfA posted on their Instagram story that the protester had been released. Neither post by PDfA specified whether the person arrested was a member of the 5C community.
Kendall told TSL that Pomona did not call the police and that the LAPD was on site prior to the start of the event, referencing the “comprehensive safety plans in place for the event,” that he wrote were made before the protesters arrived.
Despite legal and administrative response to protests, along with the end of the academic year sending most students away from campus for the summer, organizers are continuing to call for action.
“We drained PO of next steps,” a May 12 PDfA post reads. ”They can’t keep calling the cops, they can’t keep flushing our money down the drain. We will win.”
This is a breaking story and will be updated as more information becomes available.
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