Police have carried out multiple arrests at Emory University in Decatur, Georgia, in what appears to be the first campus crackdown in recent days to involve rubber bullets and teargas, after students set up an encampment in solidarity with Palestine and against Cop City, The Guardian reports. Emory University officials said in a statement that the Emory police department had ordered the group to leave and contacted Atlanta Police and Georgia State Patrol for assistance.”
On Thursday, Emory students set up multiple tents on the campus’s lawns in protest against the university’s ties to Israel, as well as Atlanta’s Cop City, a police and fire department training center being constructed on a 171-acre plot in a forest south-east of Atlanta. The encampment included protest signs and effigies of babies wrapped in white cloth and covered in fake blood. Following the set-up of the encampments, multiple Emory and Atlanta police officers, as well as Georgia state patrol officers, arrived on campus, with videos showing the officers forcefully arresting people.