As Israel’s latest assault on Gaza entered its seventh month in April, students in the U.S. assembled Gaza solidarity encampments at countless universities from coast to coast. And now, after university officials gave police the green light to arrest more than 2,900 students at the encampments, faculty and academic workers across the country are stepping up to support them, and to continue pushing for their demands.

“They cannot suppress our voices, they cannot suppress our movement, they cannot suppress our anger and our pain, and our desire to be public-facing in showing that this administration has blood on its hands,” Suneil Sanzgiri, a part-time professor at The New School in New York City, told Truthout.

Sanzgiri helped establish the U.S.’s first faculty-led encampment on May 8 in The New School’s University Center. The Refaat Alareer Faculty Solidarity Encampment was named in honor of the Palestinian writer, poet, professor and activist assassinated by Israel last December. Composed of about eight tents beautified with solidaristic slogans, it began as a critical response to the administration’s decision to sweep the students’ encampment the week prior, and to ensure the struggle continues, according to Sanzgiri.

Last Monday the encampment hosted a teach-in on revolution and counterrevolution, and a talk examining colonization of Turtle Island (North America) and Palestine through the lens of Islam and anarchism.

“The atmosphere is full of excitement and joy, it’s full of pain, it’s full of anger and hurt,” Sanzgiri said. “But at the same time, it’s full of possibility. And I think that’s what people see in our encampment. …We hope that this encampment can serve, not necessarily as a model, but as an inspiration for other faculty to step up.”

On May 14, Sanzgiri joined other faculty, students and alumni in taking over all seven floors of a second building, The New School’s Welcome Center, which sits across the street from the Refaat Alareer encampment. The group barricaded two entrances and quickly established the “Lama Jamous Center,” named after a 9-year-old journalist in Gaza. According to a press release from the Refaat Alareer Faculty Solidarity Encampment and The New School Gaza Solidarity Encampment, security officers violently assaulted two community members attempting to bring tents into the space. But in the end, the encampment was successful, and are currently in control of all........

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