UC Davis alumnus Amine Sabai attended a “May Day for Palestine” event on campus Wednesday because he has a personal connection with the conflict and likes seeing young people take an interest in the topic.
“I used to live in the Middle East… it’s nice to see people out here,” the 27-year-old stressed. “I can show people back home that there are people here that are with them who understand what’s going on and that not everybody just supports all the stuff that’s hurting people over there.”
Sabai’s parents immigrated to the United States from Lebanon because of the Lebanese Civil War. However, he lived in Lebanon for two years while he was in ninth and tenth grade and for a short while after graduating from high school.
“Lebanon has the highest refugees per capita in the entire world… and many of those refugees are from Palestine,” he explained. “This whole Israel and Palestine thing, growing up as an arab, has been in our household and in our circles our whole lives. It’s nice to see that people from outside of this circle are waking up to this issue.”
The event, also referred to as International Workers’ Day, invited UC Davis students, faculty and staff to “cancel, skip or bring their classes to the quad” to spend the day listening to speeches, participating in “art builds” and more.
Stanford McConnehey, one of the event’s organizers and a media liaison for the coalition of student-ran organizations that set up the gathering, explained that the six-hour event was part of a unified student movement going on across the country aimed at getting universities to disclose their investments and to divest in pro-Israel companies. He argued that what happened at UCLA Tuesday evening when protesters and counter-protestors clashed was “really terrifying.”
“We’ve been hearing from organizers on the ground there about the level of violence they’ve experienced and the way that their administration, police and private security companies just stood by and let Zionist infiltrators come and assault people,” the 28-year-old law student stressed before graduating next week.
According to AP News, the UCLA confrontation left 15 people injured including one person who was hospitalized. Additionally, encampments at several other universities including Columbia University in New York have been taken into custody after occupying university buildings and setting up tent encampments.
McConnehey said he and other organizers at UC Davis tried to avoid any outbreaks of violence or harassment by putting themselves in the way to help de-escalate situations.
“As graduate professional students, we try to put ourselves in the way of this… to try to keep people from getting into arguments and engaging with people who aren’t here to engage in good faith… and are here to harass and intimidate people away from speaking and assembling,” he noted.
The demonstration comes roughly two months after the UC Davis student government passed a bill divesting its funds from Israel mandating that student fee expenditures be compliant with the principles of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. The movement works to “end international support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and pressure Israel to comply with international law,” according to its website.
“That bill was really to keep the student fees that go into the [student government] funds from being used on companies that have been identified as targets for boycott, divestment and sanctions,” McConnehey added.
However, he and the coalition of pro-Palestine UC Davis student organizations are demanding that the UC Davis administration break its silence on the issue and release information about its investments.
“They’re studiously silent about this and avoiding this issue,” he stated. “They want to make this an issue about campus climate and people feeling safe or unsafe, or people having room to do free speech activities all the while consistently ignoring student demands around institutional divestment.
James Nash, director of news and media relations for UC Davis’ office of strategic communications, highlighted after the event that the university supports the right of its campus community to hold gatherings and events that “support the mission of the institution, further educational activities, celebrate the accomplishments of its community and important events like International Workers’ Day.”
When asked about calls for divestment, Nash referred to a University of California statement noting that investments are managed systemwide and not at the campus level.
“The University of California has consistently opposed calls for boycott against and divestment from Israel,” the statement emphasized. “While the university affirms the right of our community members to express diverse viewpoints, a boycott of this sort impinges on the academic freedom of our students and faculty and the unfettered exchange of ideas on our campuses.”
The statement added that tuition and fees are the primary funding sources for the university’s core operations and that none of these funds are used for investment purposes.
“Through careful management of the university’s retirement and endowment funds, UC investments provide a stable and growing revenue stream that benefits current and retired employees and supports the university’s education, research and public service mission,” the statement concluded.
Seth Sanders, a UC Davis Jewish studies professor, attended the event and said he had no problem walking around the demonstration and speaking with a dozen individuals while openly wearing Jewish symbols.
“I had nothing but positive interactions, which shows this kind of student political expression, at least in Davis, is not a threat to Jews or to Judaism,” Sanders remarked. “I think that Davis is a model here of coexistence because there was an Aggies for Israel table about 100 feet from the demonstration and they had a big Israeli flag and they were doing their own thing.”
Sanders said he believes that the student government calling on the administration to join the boycott movement makes sense given their vote to divest funds from pro-Israel companies.
“[Boycotts] are a significant form of civic engagement and I think that a peaceful protest that presents the will of the student body is something worth listening to,” he said.
Additionally, he argued that UC Davis is providing an example of how administrations should act by allowing its students to politically express themselves through peaceful demonstrations.
“It’s an important form of civic engagement and I think that they stand in sharp contrast to the savagery that we’ve seen at UCLA and Columbia where you have armed people, whether that’s militarized police or counter-protesters, wielding clubs and pepper spray attacking nonviolent students,” he highlighted.
Willa Smart, a graduate student and PhD candidate at UC Davis who teaches gender studies and feminist theory, noted her class ties indirectly to the movement for Palestinian liberation. She helped keep people fed during the event.
“As a graduate student, I think it’s really important for me to show up for my students that I teach and show them that… this is not abstract, this is ongoing and it ties in very concretely into material struggles in the present,” she said. “We’re seeing a need to show solidarity with other student movements that are happening around the country.”
Congressman Mike Thompson, D-Yolo, provided the following statement regarding the demonstration.
“I support the UC Davis students’ right to organize a peaceful and respectful protest that prioritizes the safety of fellow students, faculty and the Davis community,” he stated.
Thompson was criticized by several Yolo County residents, including Sanders, who met with him on Nov. 11, 2023, to discuss the Israel-Hamas war.
To read more about this, visit dailydemocrat.com/2023/11/18/yolo-county-constituents-criticize-congressman-thompsons-stance-on-israel-hamas-war.
