It’s Wednesday, May 1.
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Yesterday at dawn, student protesters sleeping in the Gaza Solidarity Encampment on UNC-Chapel Hill’s campus were awoken by campus police who detained dozens of them and dismantled their tents in a jolting but not unexpected confrontation that crescendoed later in the day.
The encampment had remained relatively calm until then. Students from UNC, Duke, and NC State set up tents at Polk Place on Friday with demands that their universities disclose their investments and divest from products and companies supporting Israel. They spent the weekend rallying support for the cause.
At 5:30 a.m. on Tuesday, UNC Interim Chancellor Lee Roberts and Provost Christopher Clemens released a joint statement warning protesters to evacuate Polk Place. Thirty minutes later, officers began making arrests.
Six protesters were taken to the Orange County jail and charged with trespassing. Thirty others were detained, cited for trespassing, and released on site.
In the afternoon, protesters bypassed barriers that officers had set up around the encampment site and removed an American flag from a flagpole at Polk Place, replacing it with a Palestinian flag.
The News & Observer reported that “a man approached and appeared to grab a person holding the Palestinian flag that was being attached. After fighting him off, at least 50 protesters encircled the flagpole as the Palestinian flag was slowly raised, chanting, ‘We are not afraid of you.’”
Roberts arrived at the scene flanked by more than a dozen police officers and reattached the American flag as students threw water at Roberts and the officers and attempted to push past them. The officers sprayed pepper spray at protesters several times. The university canceled classes and suspended non-mandatory operations for the rest of the day.
The show of force at UNC came hours before hundreds of N.Y.P.D. officers in riot gear descended on the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University and drove off with correctional buses full of protesters in zip ties.
On Monday, U.S. Rep. Wiley Nickel of Wake County was one of 21 House Democrats who told Columbia University’s board of trustees to “act decisively” to disband the Columbia encampment, or resign.
—Lena
Durham
Durham bar owners say that ongoing construction downtown is hurting their business.
Op-Ed: Symone Kiddoo, the president of the Durham Association of Educators, says the Durham Public Schools Board of Education should adopt a policy to recognize educators’ rights to have a collective voice through their union, the DAE.
Wake
The public can weigh in on proposed Raleigh City Council election changes, including adding three district seats to the council, at a community engagement workshop tonight at the Chavis Park Community Center.
Orange
Officials in UNC’s Kenan-Flagler business school secretly recorded classes of an economics professor, likely violating the school’s own policy.
North Carolina
An anonymous post on Reddit accuses NC lawmakers of being drunk and disruptive at a bourbon tasting in Kentucky last weekend.
NC Senate Republicans advanced a bill forcing law enforcement agencies in the state to cooperate with ICE.
Today’s weather
Sunny with a high of 84 degrees.
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