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Early Thursday morning, police in Rey arrived at UCL A and
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began forcing out pro Palestine protesters.
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Videos show police firing rubber bullets into the crowds,
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breaking down barricades and arresting more than 200 students for unlawful assembly
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I'm nowhere near UCL A or being a student there.
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And I know of people who are arrested in dealing with the
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repercussions of the actions that unfolded that night.
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That's great. 200 students.
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And this went down one day after the U A canceled classes
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when council demonstrators attacked the protesters with smoke bombs and sticks,
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forcing them to build barricades around the encounter for protection.
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And at least 15 protesters were injured.
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Four UCL. A student journalists were attacked by pro Israel counter
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protesters with pepper spray.
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They were also punched and kicked aggressively and over at Columbia University's
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protest, an NYPD officer fired a gun inside a campus buildings
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was an accident. We actually have a student,
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Mary who was at UCL A when the cops got involved.
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Hi, Mary. Thank you for joining us.
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Hi. Thank you for having me.
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Oh, yeah, of course.
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I know again a lot of stuff went down.
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So you were at the protest last night.
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How was the energy like,
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yeah, I've actually been at the encampment since it started,
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but yeah, last night was unreal the way that our school
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handled. I am definitely disappointed.
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It seemed like our school was tolerant with our peaceful encampment up
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until they were just tired of it being there and just wanted
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it out and over with there is basically little to no evidence
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that there ever was an encampment.
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They spent majority of yesterday trashing and throwing away everything from art
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to tens to some personal belonging from the people staying there.
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So, when did things get so violent?
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Honestly, the best way to describe it is that every day
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that the encampment was there,
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the level of aggression and agitation just turned up one more level
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after like 10 pm Monday into the early mornings of Tuesday when
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there was basically four hours of no intervention from police or U
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CPD or secure. And it was just like the purge for
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counter protesters to come and try to destroy and attack the
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peaceful encampment that was set up there.
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So yesterday Thursday morning A K Wednesday night,
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when PD the campus came to shut down our encampment and
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for them to treat us with force.
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When we were peaceful,
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we were chanting peaceful protests,
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We are students protect your students.
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They used rubber bullets,
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They used countless rounds of flash bangs but then the night before
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they were basically standing by and watching and that was security or
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was that police that used the rubber bullets and the smoke bombs
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that was the police department.
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II, I was on a live stream of a friend on
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it was reported there were snipers being pointed at,
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at, at the group of students which is yeah,
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horrible. From what I've seen.
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Two snipers. There could have been more,
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I only saw photos of two but to be on campus in
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a space where the police officers,
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there are meant to protect us yet that night that they were
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there against us. Just massively disappointing.
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There's rubber bullets being shot,
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there's snipers being pointed.
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What does that feel like in the moment?
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I do realize that this is a real risk and that I
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could get injured, I could get hurt.
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But the reason why we were there just took priority.
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I don't know how better way to explain it,
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but that's the best way I can put it for now.
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We can't thank you enough for coming on and sharing your own
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experience. And again,
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unpacking this, like you said,
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because this is there's so many layers here.
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Are there any platforms you'd like to uplift where we can stay
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in touch and keep up with what's going on?
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Yeah, so I first off would of course want to amplify
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They are our UCL A chapter of S JP.
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They were the people who organized the Peaceful Encampment.
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They're the ones who were running multiple seminars and faculty discussions
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as well as UCL A radio on Instagram.
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You can also go to UC A radio.com.
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I am part of that student run organization.
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And we've been doing live coverage of the events happening,
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happening on campus as well as live events happening in Gaza as
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I applaud you and the work of your peers.
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So thank you so much again for joining us today,
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Mary. We really do appreciate it.
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Thank you. Stay safe.
Series