“Divestment is our demand, no peace in stolen land”
MONDAY – A protest of 12 students in front of the RBC branch on campus in the UCU elicited a police response within 30 minutes of commencing at 11 a.m. With a number of campus protection dispatched, the police were quickly called in to respond to the protest organized by Climate Justice UOttawa (CJCUO) and other student groups. The protesters had appointed two liaisons to speak with protection and police as the need arose.
Chants from the group included: “Free free Palestine,” “Divestment is our demand, no peace in stolen land,” “We are unstoppable another world is possible,” and “Climate justice is what we need, not billionaires or corporate greed” among others.
Originally accompanying their chanting with drumming on plastic garbage bins and one metal pot, the drumming ceased when protestors passed messages to each other with the information that police could make arrests for the drumming.
Police left around 12:05 p.m. shortly after the drumming stopped. The chants continued.
Taking place feet away from the entrance and exit to the dining hall, the protest garnered negative and positive attention from passing students and staff members. Around five students joined the protest in the first hour and a half.
At 12:35 p.m. campus protection remained, telling the students to stop chanting and handing out informational leaflets to students passing by inside.
One of the organizers went to the UCU basement and returned shortly with a table, under the impression that the group needed a table to be allowed to pass out their leaflets. This too was prevented by campus protection.
Protestors brought the table to just outside of the dining hall’s entrance and continued handing out their leaflets there. Protection also made efforts to stop this by speaking with the protestors distributing the leaflets.
By 12:50 p.m. all campus protection officers had departed.
The Fulcrum spoke with a protest liaison as the sit-in shifted to a die-in. Martha Capener, a fourth-year conflict studies and human rights student and an executive with CJCUO shared that campus protection and the Ottawa Police Service (OPS) arrived shortly after the protest had begun at 11 a.m. as a result of an RBC employee calling.
“We asked if [university] admin would come down and speak with us about our demands to get RBC off campus and for them to not renew their contract with them [RBC]. They said that’s not a possibility today,and we were forced to turn this into a silent die-in because security threatened to call OPS to arrest us if we can continue to chant and drum.”
“It’s definitely an evolving situation, we don’t know how long we’re going to be here. As of now they’ve said we’re allowed to be here if we’re quiet but I anticipate that might change in the near future.”
“We as CJCUO have been trying to get RBC off campus and have been doing this campaign for over two years now and this has been very escalated in terms of past times.” Capener shared.
“We’ve flyered outside of RBC before and that’s been fine; we also did a sit-in last year and Ottawa Police weren’t called. We’re just dealing with protection services, so this seems very escalated. I’m not sure if this has to do with the a shift in the university’s response to campus protest and whether this escalation has to do with the fact we are now also demanding RBC divest from weapons manufacturers complicit in genocide in Palestine.”
As of 4 p.m. on Monday, the protest is continuing as a blockade of the RBC branch. Check back with the Fulcrum for more coverage as events unfold.
