More than 100 protesters gathered on the Savio Steps in a rally to demand that the UC Board of Regents “divest from war and genocide” as the regents evaded divestment discussions Wednesday morning.
Alongside calls and responses of “money for jobs and education” and “not for wars and occupation,” the event featured about 10 speakers, including students, local business owners and professors from UC Berkeley and other universities.
The rally was organized by student activist groups such as Bears for Palestine, Berkeley Law for Palestine, UC Berkeley Young Democratic Socialists of America, Students Organizing for Liberation, Students for Justice in Palestine and STEM for Palestine.
This coincided with the Board of Regents meeting that took place Wednesday, which addressed concerns regarding UC investments in companies involved in war. UC Office of the President Chief Investment Officer Jagdeep Singh Bachher expressed that the issue is “complicated.”
“We think it’s completely horrific that the University of California continues to have these investments of our tuition money and the endowment funds into weapons manufacturing,” said demonstrator Layla, who did not provide a last name. “We’ve been out here day in and day out for the past many years protesting against the use of these investments … in the genocide in Palestine.”
A 26-page zine distributed at the rally lists several demands from the rally’s organizers, including “immediate divestment of the UC’s holdings in corporations that enable and profit from Israeli occupation and genocide and U.S. attack on Iran and increased deployment of ICE.”
Demonstrators chanted while holding signs with phrases such as “stand with Iran against genocidal U.S./Israel warmongers.”
“As an ethnic studies professor, our very department was formed through protest, and so we know that protest works,” said Juana María Rodríguez, an ethnic studies professor who also spoke at the rally. “It’s a message that as individuals, we have power, we have our voice and we should use it.”
The demonstrators then hung a banner reading “Regents Divest from War” on Sather Gate. The banner listed the names of the Board of Regents alongside red handprints.
“We are singlehandedly financing multiple societal crises with our retirement funds and tuition money at this institution that claims to be this beacon of free speech and progressivism,” said a rally organizer who was granted anonymity for fear of retribution. “It’s completely hypocritical.”
The rally marched through campus. The demonstration ended in the area between California Hall and Doe Library.
In her speech to the demonstrators, Rodríguez emphasized the UC Move Your Money campaign, which asks that UC faculty divest their own retirement funds from “weapons manufacturing,” according to Rodriguez.
The demands of the demonstrators follow a longstanding history of protests and rallies that have pushed the regents toward divestment from various entities, including ones that supported South Africa’s apartheid government in 1986 and the Sudanese government in 2006.
“We will not wait until Palestinians become a land acknowledgement in some sort of administrator’s emails,” said one rally speaker.