On April 26, I had a final presentation due for my Youth Subcultures class. But when I left class and went to the bike racks to unlock my scooter, I stopped upon hearing a chant from a distance. “Disclose! Divest! We will not stop, we will not rest!”
Following the noise, I found myself on Landis Green, greeted by a sign painted with the red, black, and green Palestinian flag that read “FSU Students Demand: Disclose/Divest From Israel! End Partnership With Boeing!” I looked back over my shoulder at the classroom I had left, then back at the students chanting at the encampment, and thought to myself, “Well, it doesn’t get more youthful and subcultural than this, does it?” So, I clumsily parked my scooter on Landis Green and walked over to the metal gates of the encampment to ask for an improvised on-the-scene interview.
I spoke with Joelle Nunez, the president of Tallahassee Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), at FSU’s encampment for Palestine. As I took out my recorder to begin the interview, a student next to me walked up to the barrier and asked an organizer, “I was wondering how long y’all are gonna be out here. Is it indefinite?”
Nunez responded with an earnest “Yup,” and my mind immediately went back to the reports from the media on the encampments at Columbia University, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Southern California (USC). The rhetoric of these reports has differed in their characterization of the protestors — some label them as confident and passionate; others label them as aggressive and unrelenting. I wondered how these writers would characterize this “Yup” in response to being asked about the existence of the encampment.
For me, it’s a word heard so many times before in conversation, but never with the honest, albeit exhausted tone that Nunez delivered it with. It’s an exhaustion, I assume, that can only come from seeing online what you consider unjust acts of violence from across the seas, feeling powerless to stop them, and taking up the only course of action you can to attempt to garner the American attention necessary to cease that violence: an encampment on your college campus.
I began my interview on this hot spring day on Landis Green, eager to put a voice to a local demonstration of the college encampments for Palestine that have been featured in the media in these past weeks.
Her Campus: What time did you start to set up the encampment?
Joelle Nunez (JN): Yesterday, we set up at 4 a.m. We were there all day, for 18 hours. We couldn’t stay overnight for safety reasons, and we set back up out here at 9 a.m. We’ve been out here since.
HC: I see that you have a list of demands here. I know that the encampments at USC and Columbia had a similar list. It looks like you all have the shared demands of asking for an academic and financial boycott of Israel. Have you all been keeping active with the news about the fellow student protests across other universities?
JN: Yes. We’re having a call-in to demand that they free the protestors that were arrested at Emory. They’re still being held right now.
HC: Have you had any interactions with law enforcement today?
JN: This morning, we tried to set up over there. (Nunez points over at the grass by Strozier Library.) But there was an event happening. They tried to get us off Landis, but we just set up over here (Nunez motions to the trees on the left of Landis Green) and they haven’t said anything.
But yesterday, they moved us around quite a bit. We set up at 4 a.m. with tents. They said no tents. Then they said they had to mow the lawn, so we moved off the grass and to the fountain. Then they said they were doing maintenance on the fountain, so we moved off the fountain in front of Strozier. Then they said we couldn’t be in front of Strozier because we were being too loud and people were studying … and then we didn’t move. Then the sprinklers turned on. Right on us, right? Only the sprinklers around us. But eventually, they stopped. People were blocking the sprinklers, and they left us alone for the rest of the day.
HC: Speaking of interactions with protestors, we’ve seen the police conducting arrests of students and even using force at certain encampments on the news. Are you prepared for an interaction like that if it happens?
JN: Yeah, definitely, we’ve known that from the beginning. Actually, we’ve been in communication with a lot of the organizers doing those encampments in those cities.
HC: Expanding on those other encampments, many of them had activities planned for the day, like poetry readings and songs. Does the FSU encampment have any activities planned?
JN: Yeah. We were doing some readings of leftist literature earlier, and we’ll be having a teach-in in a bit. We’ve had food and music set up. A lot of people have just been, like, dropping by with donations. It’s really nice. Even people from the internet have been ordering things to here because our Tweet went viral. People have been sending money, so we’ve been ordering things too.
HC: And you all are staying here indefinitely until they ask you to disperse?
JN: Yeah, we’re trying to keep this going on as long as we can.
HC: So, the ultimate goal is meeting the list of demands that you’ve written down here?
JN: Yep. Yeah.
HC: Do you have an expected number of people to show up at the encampment?
JN: Not really. We didn’t do any outreach before yesterday. We were trying to keep it secret. The amount of people that showed up was just incredible. We posted as soon as we were set up. By 8 or 9 a.m., the post had gotten over a thousand likes. A bunch of people started coming out.
HC: Can you estimate the maximum number of people that you had out here?
JN: 100 people yesterday, probably.
HC: I see that the state troopers have just arrived, and they’re parked here behind us. Can you speak on any developments you had on interactions with the police since yesterday?
JN: Yeah, they brought the state troopers out, which is interesting because DeSantis is making threats against all the college encampments.
We concluded our interview there as a new round of chanting began, with a keffiyeh-wearing student starting to pound on a drum. I wished Nunez good luck, and before I left, they reminded me of the FSU encampment’s unique demand — that the university end its relationship with Boeing, the aircraft and defense manufacturer that’s partnered with the Israeli government and sponsors FSU’s Center for Aeronautics.
If you’re interested in reading more about the protest, check out @tallysds on Instagram. There, you can also see live updates as students continue to participate in the encampment.
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