LA city controller warns UCLA and city leader to protect students
UCLA was urged to do more to protect students, as protesters defied repeated warnings to leave the campus in the early hours today.
LA City Controller Kenneth Mejia, who is currently on the scene at UCLA, said on X: “There is a large police presence from multiple law enforcement agencies after outside mobs attacked peaceful student protesters last night with no one protecting them.
“Students now face police. We urge ULCA & City leaders to protect students, not do more harm.”
Graffiti and placards line the walls of UCLA
Protesters wearing traditional keffiyeh scarves around their faces stand beside graffiti daubed walls inside the encampment set up by pro-Palestinian students on the UCLA campus last night.Two protesters sleep beneath a wall covered with placards on the campus, protesting Israel’s ongoing offensive in Gaza.
A veteran activist joined Columbia protesters. Police call her a ‘professional agitator’
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As pro-Palestinian student protesters took over a Columbia University building early Tuesday, one person in the crowd outside stood out — a gray-haired woman who delivered orders to young people helping to barricade a door.
“Tie it right to the lock,” she told two masked protesters holding zipties, according to footage posted on social media. The protesters did as they were told, using the ties on a metal table pressed against the door of Hamilton Hall.
“Let’s give them a little cover,” the older woman said to the crowd. “Cameras back. Cameras back.”
The woman was not a Columbia University student or faculty member. She in fact has no known affiliation to the school at all.
She is a 63-year-old veteran activist named Lisa Fithian, or what the New York Police Department described as a “professional agitator.”
Large crowd still seen at UCLA
A large crowd of people could still be seen at the UCLA campus in Los Angeles tonight, hours after news crews heard police orders to disperse, helicopter video showed.
There have no reports of arrests on the campus, where there also was some distance away a pro-Palestinian protest encampment.
Police were seen on campus. The Daily Bruin student newspaper reports some police were in riot gear.
Last night, there was violence at the protest after what the UCLA chancellor described as an attack on pro-Palestinian protest by a band of instigators.
Counter-protesters threw fireworks, tear gas at encampment, UCLA student says
Student journalist at UCLA, Dylan Winward, detailed the moment counter-protesters threw fireworks and tear gas at the pro-Palestinian encampment on campus. Winward said counter-protesters did “not appear to be student led.”
Officers close in on UCLA encampment
Police stage on the UCLA campus near an encampment set up by pro-Palestinian demonstrators in Los Angeles late last night.
