DAILY LOBO new mexico
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February 27, 2012
monday The Independent Voice of UNM since 1895
Protest turns violent
A still taken from a video posted on YouTube which depicts audience members of Nonie Darwish’s on-campus speech forcibly removing (un)Occupy members from the anthropolgy lecture hall Thursday evening. No charges are being pressed as of yet.
Attendees forcibly expel (un)Occupy Albuquerque protesters from Nonie Darwish talk by Elizabeth Cleary
managingeditor@dailylobo.com A talk hosted by the UNM Israel Alliance on Thursday turned violent, and footage from the incident has gone viral on YouTube. In the video, a group of protesters stand up and start chanting in the back of the anthropology lecture hall, where pro-Israel activist Nonie Darwish was in the middle of giving a talk. “Nonie Darwish speaks for Israeli apartheid and genocide at the hands of the (Israeli Defense Forces),” the protesters chanted. Some of the event’s other attendees rushed toward the protesters and started pushing and shoving them toward the exit. Protesters stumbled toward the door, at times pushing back at the audience members who continued to come at them. One audience member continuously pushed and swung at one protester until another attendee restrained him. As of Sunday afternoon, the video had more than 132,000 hits on YouTube. Darwish is an author, columnist and activist originally from Egypt. She moved to the U.S. in the ‘70s and converted from Islam to Christianity. She gives talks around the country detailing her experiences living under Shariah law, and is often criticized for propagating hate speech about Muslims, as was the case at UC
Berkeley and Brown University. In 2009, an the event, but just to cause a momentary scene editorial in the New York Daily News reported where they had to listen to us.” that Princeton University and Columbia The protesters shown chanting in the video University both canceled talks scheduled to be were members of the (un)Occupy Albuquerque given by Nonie Darwish on their campuses. group. In an interview with the Daily Lobo, Darwish Members of the UNM chapter of Students for said that, as far as she could tell, the physical alJustice in Palestine attended the event in solidartercation at the event was ity with the other protestminor. She said event ers, but did not participate attendees took necesin the “mic check” chant, sary measures to ensure SJP member Elisabeth a safe environment at Perkal said. the talk. SJP member Danya “They didn’t want Mustafa filmed the into give me my right as a cident, and Perkal said woman who lived under SJP also handed out flioppression, who lived ers opposing Darwish’s under Shariah law, to message outside the give me my chance to venue Thursday. ~Henry Edwards talk,” she said. “It was a Donald Gluck, minor altercation, not a president of the UNM protester big deal.” Israel Alliance, said Protester Henry no one stopped the Edwards, who participated in the chant, said protesters from handing out fliers, but that one of the protesters suffered a concussion as when the protesters began chanting they a result of the incident, and that protesters filed became a safety threat. police reports and may press charges against the “We had people there who were infirm, we aggressors. had people there who were on oxygen,” he said. “She (the protester) does not remember “We needed the noise to stop.” much of the incident because she actually Perkal said Darwish’s views on Islam and blacked out,” he said. “Our goal was not to derail the conflict between Israel and Palestine are
“Our goal was not to derail the event, but just to cause a momentary scene where they had to listen to us.”
misinformed, and that speakers should not be invited to UNM who promote hatred toward an entire religion. “We don’t support someone coming to our University who speaks for the annihilation of any group of people,” she said. “She (Darwish) denied Israel’s occupation of Palestine and that’s something we really fight for — to get people to acknowledge and recognize that what Israel is doing is illegal occupation of Palestine.” Darwish said she does not advocate hatred toward anyone. “My speech specifically states over and over again, ‘I’m not speaking about people, I’m speaking about the ideology of Shariah law,’” she said. The UNM video has been a hot topic on blogs and both pro-Israel and pro-Palestine activism websites. Darwish said the American “leftists” who oppose her are being fed lies. “Our young people are being poisoned, told to silence me,” she said. “Our good, American kids are being misinformed.” For video of the attack follow this QR code.
Renewed Yale Park occupation leads to arrests by Luke Holmen holmen@unm.edu
Four members of (un)Occupy Albuquerque were arrested shortly before 3 p.m. on Sunday after they refused to leave Yale Park. In a video posted by (un)Occupy members, protesters can be seen being arrested. “One lady sat down in the grass (in Yale Park) and began reading
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and they arrested her, and another gentleman who was standing near the car they were putting her in put his hand on the car and the officers jumped out, threw him to the ground and arrested him,” (un)Occupy member Brad Michael said. (un)Occupy members attempted to reoccupy UNM’s Yale Park on Friday, but about a dozen UNM police officers forced the group to move to the sidewalk of Central Avenue.
Protesters left the park peaceably and set up signs on the street until Sunday. Some protesters returned to the park on Sunday. The group, which advocates for human rights and protests against corporate greed, has battled for the ability to remain on UNM’s campus since September of last year with mixed success. At least 20 UNM and state police officers removed 3040 protesters at midnight on Oct.
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9 using plastic zip handcuffs and canine units. Protesters later applied for a permit and stayed in Yale Park during the day, but have not applied for a permit this semester. UNMPD Operations Lieutenant Trace Peck said police notified the protesters they would have to vacate the park as they did not have a proper permit from the University. Following the arrests on Sunday, the group marched to the UNMPD
headquarters to protest the arrests before marching downtown. The group finally ended up at the West Side Metropolitan Detention Center where the arrestees had been transferred. “We’re going to the jail on the outside of town on the West Side and we are trying to support them,” UNM student Benjamin Abbot said. “We did go to the UNM Police Station to
see Arrests PAGE 3
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