In the US South, pro-Palestinians face crackdown on campus and in streets

Pro-Palestinian protests have spread across the US. In New Orleans, they have faced crackdowns both on and off campus.

New Orleans, Louisiana, US – Student protests against the Israeli war on Gaza have rocked the United States over the past few weeks, prompting a police crackdown on many campuses and more than 2,000 arrests. Students who have set up protest encampments at universities across the country are calling for their institutions to withdraw all investments from firms complicit in Israeli abuses against Palestinians.

While the focus has been on Columbia University in New York and other elite Ivy League institutions, students are also organising for Palestine in the US South. Smaller Southern cities were at the heart of the 1960s civil rights movement, but today, like then, protesters operate in a particularly hostile, even violent environment.

In New Orleans, the largest city in Louisiana, protests have taken place on university campuses and on the city’s streets.

On April 28 for a few hours, the campus encampment movement spilled into the city centre. A few dozen protesters set up green tents in Jackson Square, demanding the city, too, divest from Israel.

This was the first time the encampment movement had spread beyond universities in New Orleans. It signalled a desire on the part of protesters to amplify their message – even before Israel seized control of the Rafah border crossing and intensified its bombing on Monday in preparation for a potentially imminent ground assault on an already devastated area where more than 1.4 million Palestinians, including 600,000 children, are sheltering.