Joining campus actions across the U.S. protesting the mass slaughter of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, Yale University students began a hunger strike and peaceful campus occupation in mid-April, with the demand that the Yale Corporation disclose its investments in companies providing weapons to Israel in its war on Gaza and then divest from them. Students occupied Beineke Plaza, site of many past campus political protests such as a 1986 shanty town erected to call for the university’s divestment from corporations invested in apartheid South Africa.

As hunger strikers rested under a canopy, students held teach-ins, and the faithful responded to the call to Muslim prayers.  The Yale Corporation met on April 20 but made no announcement that it had even considered the student’s demands. Two days later, early on the morning of April 22nd, campus police raided the plaza while most were still sleeping, and arrested 47 people, almost all students.

Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with a few of those protesting at Yale, including one of the 14 hunger strikers, some of whom were then on their seventh day of fasting.

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