May 11, 2024
Chris Compendio/PhillyVoice
A small gathering of demonstrators chant in front of police at 34th and Walnut Streets early Friday morning. That evening, a much larger group of protesters marched through University City.
Demonstrators in support of Palestine made their discontent heard in University City Friday evening with a march through the streets and a rally outside the home of Penn interim president J. Larry Jameson.
The march was in response to a police sweep that morning of the encampment on Penn's College Green area, which pro-Palestine protesters established to call for the university to disclose and divest its financial investments relating to the ongoing war in Gaza. Penn says that police arrested 33 protesters and cited them for "defiant trespass."
Around 150 protesters marched through University City, reported the Daily Pennsylvanian. The group gathered around 8 p.m. at the Woodlands and paraded on streets around Penn's campus at approximately 8:45 p.m. The university's Division of Public Safety put out an alert for a "large disruptive crowd."
An Instagram story from Penn Students Against the Occupation of Palestine (PAO) shows a student speaking to a crowd outside Jameson's home. According to the alert, the "group traveled to the 3800 block of Walnut Street in front of the President’s residence. The crowd became disorderly and breached the exterior gate at the President’s House."
Protesters continued their demonstration outside the home, releasing red, green and black smoke representing the Palestinian flag. At some point, four demonstrators briefly entered the gates of Jameson's home. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the protesters knocked on the home's front door before police ejected them out of the gates.
The march continued through Chestnut Street and ended at 33rd and Market Streets around 10:40 p.m. Organizers told the crowd to disperse.
The fallout from Friday morning's arrests included the chair of the university's faculty senate resigning. In her resignation letter, Tulia Falleti wrote that she was "no longer confident of my ability to work collaboratively with our administration that has sent in the police to arrest its own students, staff, and faculty for participating in a non-violent protest."
