By Phil Wilayto

RICHMOND, VA, April 29 — At about 8:30 this evening, Virginia Commonwealth University put out an alert that a “violent protest” was taking place on the campus of the state’s largest public university.

There was violence, but it wasn’t from the protesters, who had set up a modest encampment on the lawn outside Cabell Library. No, the violence was from the VCU, Richmond and Virginia State Police, in full riot gear, who attacked a line of students chanting against the cops who were ransacking their encampment.

The scores of young protesters valiantly stood their ground, eventually bringing up wooden pallets as a kind of shield wall, facing the line of cops with their riot shields as hundreds of other students yelled at the police in support of the protesters. Those watching from the second and third stories of the library banged on the windows as they watched the scene unfold below.

The cops attacked a second time. Chemical agents filled the air. (ABC Channel 8 news reported that both tear gas and pepper spray were used.) The line fell back a bit, then regrouped, with the protesters chanting, “Who do you serve? Who do you serve?” And then, “Shame! Shame! Shame!”

About a dozen people have reportedly been arrested, with several people suffering injuries from the chemical agents. Meanwhile, the protesters have vowed to return to campus to press their demands that VCU make public the investments it has in companies that do business with Israel and then divest from those companies.

Similar protests, also with police aggression and arrests, have taken place on campuses across the country, including at George Mason and Virginia Tech.

Six months after the beginning of the Israeli siege of the blockaded Gaza enclave, more than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed, with tens of thousands more wounded. Most of the victims have been women and children.

Now the Israeli government, the most right-wing in a long string of right-wing governments, is threatening to invade the southern Gaza city of Rafah where some 1 million people have taken refuge after being told by the Israeli military to flee south.

Meanwhile, in the midst of this genocidal carnage, Congress has passed and President Biden has signed a bill to allocate $26 billion more for Israel. Both Virginia senators, Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, Democrats, voted for the bill. The money is in addition to the $3.8 billion Washington sends to Israel each year, the largest amount of foreign “aid” it gives to any country.

The Virginia Defenders are urging people outraged by the VCU administration using hundreds of campus, city and state police to violently suppress a peaceful student protest in support of the Palestinian people to contact VCU President Michael Rao and demand that the university not press charges against any of those arrested and allow the protest to continue on campus.

Contact:

President Michael Rao
Office of the President
910 W. Franklin St.
Richmond, VA 23284-2512
president@vcu.edu
Ph: (804) 828-1200