On Wednesday, San Francisco State University’s General Union of Palestinian Students, in collaboration with Faculty for Justice in Palestine, hosted a screening of the new documentary “The Encampments” in the Coppola Theater.
The film documents the pro-Palestinian encampments that were set up at Columbia University and UCLA, and includes interviews with organizers from both campuses and Palestinian journalists both in and out of Gaza.
Michael T. Workman, co-director of the film, was present and participated in a discussion and Q&A about the movie following its showing.
The screening drew 30 to 40 attendees, with both students and faculty.
Through its interviews with student organizers, the film tracked the lead-up to the decision to create an encampment at Columbia, a decision that would end up inspiring the creation of encampments at universities in North America and Europe, including one at San Francisco State University.
Omar Zahzah is a professor of Arab and Muslim ethnicities and diaspora studies and is of Palestinian descent.
“They really set an example and showed us what it means to believe in a better world and to actually put your bodies on the line to work for it,” Zahzah said. “And I think the moral of the story is that’s really contagious.”
SFSU’s encampment in May 2024 resulted in the university agreeing to divest from weapon manufacturers.
“I think we had a successful outcome in terms of divestment on this campus because of the relentlessness, the hard work, the dedication and the ethical intrepidness of our students,” said Zahzah. “I think the students are going to keep finding a way to make sure that we divest from death and destruction and genocide.”
Chloe Murray, a student who participated in SFSU’s encampment, said she is really proud that most of the demands from the encampment were met.
“We got a divestment, which is the biggest thing and I’m just incredibly proud,” Murray said.
Until the University of San Francisco agreed to a divestment demand, the pro-Palestinian protesters of SFSU’s encampment were the only students to successfully negotiate a university’s divestment from direct investments in weapons manufacturers.
This was not included in the documentary, but Workman said that he was very impressed by SFSU’s encampment.
“The level of organization seems to be very tight,” Workman said. “The students really know what they’re talking about and put so much of the admin to shame with their lack of actual knowledge of the topic at hand: The genocide of the Palestinian people.”
The discussion after the screening included reflections by faculty members. A major focus in their statements was the essential role that solidarity between students and faculty played in the SFSU encampment.
“There was a very strong feeling that students and faculty were united on this campus,” said Professor Blanca Missé. “We built a very strong solidarity with the students and we were able to build a lot of connections between union organizing and student organizing, democratic bargaining and open bargaining.”
An attempt by students to screen the film on UCLA’s campus without permission ended with police arresting three individuals and confiscating the students’ projection equipment, according to an official statement from UCLA.
Workman was not surprised by this news and by the fact that UCLA’s response had been what he called “cartoonishly repressive.”
“It’s also kind of funny because the more that they repress this, the more people are going to want to watch it,” Workman said. “There likely wouldn’t have been a global student encampment movement if they wouldn’t have made the historic mistake of calling the police on their own students and creating that spectacle of repression, which really was the spark that lit the fire of this movement.”
