Pro-Palestine student walkout ends in three arrests
Walkout sees intense police intervention and altercation between pro-Israel and pro-Palestine students
Content warning: This article contains themes and visuals of police brutality.
With support from Independent Jewish Voices Concordia and Direct Action Concordia, autonomous students led a class walkout at 1 p.m. on Sept. 25, demanding Concordia University divest their financial ties to the Israel Defense Forces and the Israeli government.
The walkout ended in a robust police presence, aggressive handling of protesters by authorities, as well as three arrests.
The walkout began in the Henry F. Hall Building lobby and made its way through the J.W. McConnell Library Building, the Guy-Concordia metro station tunnel, the John Molson Building, the Learning Square and down De Maisonneuve Blvd. It ended at Peel metro station at around 2:15 p.m.
The SPVM arrested three protesters at Guy-Concordia metro station, who were charged with mischief, assault and obstruction of duty of a police officer, according to SPVM spokesperson Jean-Pierre Brabant.
Fifteen minutes into the demonstration, StartUp Nation, a pro-Israel group on campus, alongside non-Concordia pro-Israel activists, interrupted the walkout and started filming the protesters. Campus Safety and Prevention Services (CSPS) flooded in to intervene, and the growing wave of protesters moved down into the tunnel between the Hall and library buildings.
Preventatively, the Concordia Student Union (CSU) had cancelled all tablings on the day of the walkout to ensure the safety of all students. The student union told The Link that, the day prior, they had sent out emails informing students who had reserved tables that their reservations were cancelled. StartUp Nation was tabling at the time of the walkout. The CSU told the pro-Israel group to cease tabling but the group refused to do so a number of times.
During the walkout, protesters’ demands were made clear through chants like, “Defund, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest,” as well as through informational leaflets shared and glued to university walls.
“Universities are spending millions of dollars on campus security. That, in reality, is to subject pro-Palestine students and activists to scrutiny, surveillance and harassment in order to silence the whole movement,” said Palestinian activist Summer Alkdour to the crowd beside the Starbucks located in the library building. The Starbucks later was subject to vandalism, with protesters writing “Free Gaza” on the coffee shop’s windows in red spray paint.
“[The universities’] complicity is genocide,” Alkdour said.
As students moved through Concordia’s tunnel connecting the library building and the Guy-Concordia metro, students spray-painted and glued posters on the tunnel walls. The messages included phrases like “Cops off campus,” “Gaza” and “Land Back.” The walk towards the metro exit resulted in protesters being chased by CSPS, and the crowd flocked together to prevent the CSPS from detaining individuals.
As the crowd moved to evacuate the metro, four CSPS agents grabbed and detained a 20-year-old Concordia student as he was moving toward street level. The student was forcibly pushed against an STM ticketing machine as agents twisted his arm to prevent his escape.
Nearby protesters demanded the student’s release, questioning the reason for the detention. Police officers then arrived and the situation escalated, with the crowd of activists returning to the metro, after several other protesters left to continue the walkout at the John Molson Building.
According to Concordia spokesperson Vannina Maestracci, the student was stopped by CSPS for committing vandalism. Maestracci alleged that the student had assaulted the CSPS agent who had stopped him, which is why other agents were also present.
A woman who was later detained by the SPVM yelled, “What fucking world are we in, that somebody is being detained for standing up for life?”
Police pulled to the ground one 20-year-old and one 22-year-old female members of the crowd at the Guy-Concordia metro station. The police then proceeded to kneel on the two women's backs, while one woman yelled that she couldn’t breathe, and that they weren’t resisting arrest.
“The repression is just gonna fuel the fire,” said Sylvia Mondestin, a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP). “We as students know our rights, we know that we are paying our tuition, we are allowed to be here on campus.”
SPVM officers were shoving the crowd gathered in the station and holding up pepper spray in front of protesters. They eventually retreated into a security room. To avoid further police intervention, protesters moved out of the Guy-Concordia metro station to the intersection of Guy St. and De Maisonneuve Blvd. to continue marching.
A fire alarm was sounded as protesters made their way into the Learning Square. CSPS rushed to evacuate all occupants of the building, with Concordia sending out two security alerts to students via email.
Chants such as “Israel doesn’t act alone, fight the ruling class at home” continued down De Maisonneuve Blvd. Some SPVM officers were allegedly spotted wearing thin blue line patches, a symbol that has often been seen at white supremacist gatherings in the U.S.
Protesters began grabbing garbage bins from the side of the street to dump in the middle of the road to block the SPVM, most of which trailing police tossed back to the sidewalks haphazardly.
Riot police followed the march down De Maisonneuve Blvd. from Guy St. all the way down to the Peel metro station. According to the SPVM, the initial callout for police intervention was made at 1:45 p.m.
At 2:15 p.m., the crowd went down the Peel metro station entrance and dispersed, ending the walkout. The remaining participants continued to hand out informational flyers to passersby.
“The next step should be getting police off campus, getting Zionists off campus and making sure our institution divests,” said a participating student who asked to remain anonymous.
According to Dania Zeitoun, CSU’s internal affairs coordinator, the student union is working closely with Concordia’s dean of students to prevent further incidents.
“There is power in organizing collectively,” said Nadia Cepeda, an organizer for RCP. “This is an escalation—to build momentum for a much larger movement, a movement that the government and the universities cannot ignore.”
