On April 29, 2024, hundreds of UNC community members and protesters sat on the Chapel Hill campus’ Polk Place, entering their 72nd consecutive hour on the quad in protest of Israel’s military action in Gaza and the university’s administration’s unwillingness to take a stand as well. One day later, the scenes were much more charged — as demonstrators criticized UNC leaders and police for arresting people over violations of its public space policy and for cleaning out the area.
One year later, pro-Palestine activists returned to Polk Place for an anniversary demonstration with a similar message, but a toned-down approach.
To honor of one year since the Triangle-Gaza Solidarity Encampment, dozens of university students and faculty gathered on Tuesday to hear speeches and programming about Palestine, historical examples of protest against oppression, and the current protest movement at UNC. The campus’ chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine — who organized both Tuesday’s event and the 2024 encampment — reiterated during the event that its requests of the university remain the same: disclose investments and divest from companies that support Israel’s attacks on Palestinian communities amid the county’s war against Hamas.
A speaker who only identified themselves to the attendees as Cami opened the event by stating how it is not only important for Palestinian advocates to recount and study history, but to draw strength from it and carry it forward.
“Palestine’s story is not only one of dispossession, but of steadfastness,” she said, “of organization, and resistance — resistance built by workers, farmers, students, women, and fighters. Resistance by generation after generation, standing against the machinery of Zionism and imperialism.”
The event had hourly programming from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, featuring a variety of speeches, speakers and defense training about physically and legally protecting oneself during an attempted arrest. In addition to teach-in’s about the history of Israel-Palestine relations and tensions, the group also focused on more local protest efforts. One hour titled “From Chapel Hill to Palestine” focused on contextualizing racial struggles in Chapel Hill and drawing lines across histories of manufactured displacement, oppression, and cultural struggle. It opened with the group playing an audio clip of Harold Foster, one of the Chapel Hill Nine protestors, via the From the Rock Wall series.
“This town is hard to crack,” Foster said in the interview clip. “It’s called a liberal place, but that’s just a mirage, man. When you go to get water, you just get a mouthful of sand.”
The leaders of the talk then discussed that sentiment, likening their experience during the encampment protest last year. Speaker Renna Voss urged the crowd to explore how the quote is still relevant to the Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and UNC community today, citing how the university “violently swept” the encampment and framed the protestors’ actions afterward as damaging.
“Displacement in Palestine and displacement in our local Black communities are not the exact same and we could never say that they are the exact same,” Voss said. “But we are looking at the same oppressor, and we are looking at injustice in manufactured displacement.”
Many of the demonstrators chose not to identify themselves and wore masks to protect their identities amid national scrutiny and punishment of college students who participate in pro-Palestine events. Some of the hand-made signs displayed around the group referenced the ongoing detainment of Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Kahlil, who helped organize Columbia’s demonstrations in 2024 and was arrested by immigration officers in March. President Donald Trump and his administration referenced these protests as reasons to deport international students, part of a broader push to cancel the visa statuses of international students with any type of criminal record. Six UNC students saw their legal status terminated earlier this month — with all being restored by April 25 after Immigrations and Customs Enforcement said it was scaling back those efforts.
Some of the signs held up at the Triangle-Gaza Solidarity Encampment anniversary demonstration on Tuesday, April 29. 2025. The campus flagpole, which was a central spot of tension during the April 30, 2024 demonstrations, stands nearby. (Photo by Emma Cooke/Chapel Hill Media Group.)
In total, 39 people were charged related to the April 2024 encampment and additional demonstrations in the following weeks. Twenty-five participants charged agreed to deferred prosecution by District Attorney Jeff Nieman’s office, which Nieman confirmed to Chapelboro in December and said largely involved community service. Fourteen other demonstrators, though, disputed the charges and ultimately saw theirs dismissed on First Amendment grounds. Additionally, UNC banned five of the demonstrators — two of whom are UNC students — over their involvement in the encampment, with the group of activists being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina, Emancipate NC and Muslim Advocates in a lawsuit against the decision.
A UNC Police officer drags students away to clear the pathway for the police carts in Chapel Hill, N.C. on Tuesday, April 30, 2024. The carts carried students who were arrested for trespassing on campus grounds due to the Gaza solidarity encampment. (Photo via Jennifer Tran.)
A timeline highlighting the Israel-Palestine demonstrations on campus in 2024 can be found here.
On Tuesday, though, campus police officers kept their distance from the activists as the group sat in chairs and on the ground instead of setting up tents. Organizers held a dinner for attendees and other campus community members to help cap off the night, sending the group forward into their advocacy efforts for Palestinians.
“Today,” Cami said earlier, “I want us not only to revisit that resistance [by Palestinians], but to learn from it. Because liberation is not given to us — it is organized.”
Editor’s Note: Chapelboro’s Emma Cooke contributed reporting to this story.
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