Student & staff-led (de)encampment in LSE's Marshall Bloom Building (formerly Marshall building) in solidarity with Palestinian liberation. ig:
@lse_encampment
The encampment demands that LSE:
1. DIVEST
2. DISAFFILIATE
3. DROP THE SILENCE
4. DESIGNATE
5. DEDICATE
6. DISENGAGE
7. DISAVOW
8. DENOUNCE
9. DEMOCRATISE
10. DEFEND
and seeks meaningful engagement with each, followed by commitment from the school.
Details below 🧵
Beyond grateful for all our community who showed and up and showed out to show lse that we aren’t going anywhere!!!! Council votes on divestment on June 25, even Jeremy knows it.
@LSEnews
in other words, we are watching you.
We were so proud to watch some of our comrades graduate this week, honouring the martyrs in Palestine and calling
@LSEnews
to choose justice, not genocide ‼️
On June 25, the LSE Council will vote on divestment from crimes against the Palestinians, the arms trade, and climate breakdown. Read the proposals and sign the petition urging council to DIVEST NOW!
While LSE was spending its 7th month contemplating whether it may-or-may-not be right to divest from its assets in apartheid, we felt a duty to inform the incoming Summer School Students on this university’s shameful complicity in the genocide of Palestinians.
Amazing turnout for our staff student- assembly
This meeting along with the massive success at the student referendum on divestment shows that the LSE Encampment is the voices of many within our campus
“You don’t represent everyone on campus”. Okay. Why don’t they encamp then? Or win 89% of the vote in a record-breaking referendum (in 2 days)? Or get thousands of signatures on petitions? We won’t compromise our ethics or our proposals for some imaginary opposition. DIVEST NOW.
🚨 THE LSE ENCAMPMENT IS BEING EVICTED. RALLY OUTSIDE THE MARSHALL BLOOM BUILDING AT 2PM TOMORROW (15TH JUNE) 🚨
We call on our allies in and outside LSE to demonstrate against the SMC's use of law to force student protestors out of the encampment
‼️ THE MOVEMENT NEEDS YOU ‼️
On June 25, the LSE Council will vote on divestment from crimes against the Palestinians, the arms trade, and climate breakdown. Read the proposals and sign the petition urging council to DIVEST NOW!
Shameful decision by LSE council to remain invested in crimes against the Palestinian people, the arms trade, climate breakdown, and the financing of these activities. Read LSESU Palestine Society’s full 9-page response here:
LSE served us formal notice to vacate the Bloom building by 9am Monday (just in time for the
#LSEFestival
)… here’s what we think of that. Full statement in bio.
Our wonderful alumni making it very clear— no more donating money, time, networks; no more business as usual in your fancy building — until LSE divests.
Join us outside centre building (CBG) at 1:45 pm tomorrow to urge the LSE’s Council to vote in favour of divestment! It is time to end LSE’s complicity in crimes against the Palestinian people, the arms trade, and climate breakdown. Let’s show Council it’s time to divest!
Hey LSE, start living up to your commitment to “the betterment of society” and divest from the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza! Please sign the petition urging the LSE council to DIVEST on tuesday! The divestment proposals build on findings from the ‘Assets in Apartheid’ report:
We began the protest together, we built community together, and we shall leave together. On our own terms. Read our response to the IPO:
🚨 JOIN US TODAY 1PM AT MARSHALL BLOOM BUILDING 🚨
Today is the day we need you the most. We are losing so much leverage w the end of this encampment and all of us NEED to keep up the pressure ahead of the June 25 Council vote on divestment
Two statements in solidarity with the student encampment at LSE (
@lse_encampment
&
@LSE_UCU
):
1. A statement signed by more than 300 staff so far:
2. A statement by 50 Jewish staff and students:
2/15
No time to read the ‘Assets in Apartheid’ report? No worries! We’ve made a little stop-motion breaking down LSE investments in Israeli apartheid step-by-step. (pls still read the full report tho) :)
#lsedivest
Link to full report :
Tomorrow, we must leave the Bloom building WELL BEFORE 3:58. Our negotiators sit down with SMC at 4:30. They need to go in there with leverage, and we need to get through this eviction even as many are home for Eid. Please come, this is our most important call out yet.
Beautiful space for reflection and mourning today in interfaith prayer- Christian, Jewish and Muslim comrades shared profound and powerful thoughts that can only strengthen our resolve to fight for divestment, a free Palestine, and collective liberation.
Lots of pride and love for the protest today, but the highlight for me was the prayer in CBG plaza. Reminding each other that this is only the start, that we are a community and a collective… Eid Mubarak and Free Palestine ❤️🔥
@lse_encampment
Yesterday: ALUMNI ACTION INSIDE LSE’S ALUMNI CENTER!! The entire university community wants COUNCIL TO VOTE YES ON DIVESTMENT. Alumni won’t donate funds to be invested in genocide, or give their time to a complicit university. Isn’t that a risk your board should care about, LSE?
LSE’s investment subcommittee meets today to discuss anything but divestment. We will be rallying to put that on the agenda. Please join us in an hour in CBG plaza !!!!
LSE never told Palestinian students and staff about scholars at risk. We had to find the scheme by looking at the Ukraine response, and now we got 250 000£ more for academics in war zones. What else don’t we know about? Those with institutional knowledge, please tell us!
While many of us are staff, few of us sit on LSE’s different decision making bodies, and we are not present in all departments. If there’s something you can do to help us, we might not know to ask for it. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch!!!
1/2 🎙️NEW STATEMENT 🎙️Yesterday, after meeting with members of the SMC, the Liberated Zone was served papers informing the collective that LSE has applied for both an Interim Possession Order (IPO) and Possession Order (PO) against students & staff.
T MINUS 2 HOURS BEFORE OUR RALLY.
T MINUS 3 HOURS BEFORE OUR EVICTION, AND BEFORE ANYONE AT THIS UNI IS FORBIDDEN FROM ENTERING THE BLOOM BUILDING DURING A PROTEST, FOR A YEAR.
LSE won’t let our independent fire brigade specialists come in to assess the encampment!!! They’ve locked down several of the doors… you know, as you do when you’re concerned for fire safety
Wake up, it’s time to rise 📢 At today‘s council meeting members will be voting on proposals on divestment! Join our rally at CBG plaza at 1:45 today (June 25th) and help us urge LSE council to cut its ties to genocide! We refuse to be complicit!
#LSEdivest
🇵🇸
This last week of management speaking about tents & fire, but to justify continuing to finance genocide, has been the most perverse, upsetting irony imaginable.
LSE's Marshall building has never looked better, thanks to
@lse_encampment
in solidarity with Palestine. In recent days, as appalling images from Rafah have come in, LSE administration has increased hostility to the camp & is threatening eviction.
While many of us are staff, few of us sit on LSE’s different decision making bodies, and we are not present in all departments. If there’s something you can do to help us, we might not know to ask for it. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch!!!
In January, LSE’s investment advisor, Caroline Butler, stated that the ESG policy was about risk, not ethics. LSE council votes on divestment on June 25th. We must make *not* divesting more of a risk than doing so. That is our aim & what you can do to support us.
This UN OHCHR press release names JP Morgan, one of LSE’s two fund managers, explicitly. So does the student divestment proposal put to Council. If LSE cares about risk & law —let alone the university’s mission or, I don’t know, morality during a génocide—divestment is imperative
In light of the UN OHCHR’s press release stating that companies and states need to end investments in manufacturing weapons to Israel, it seems the perfect timing for the Council at
@LSEnews
to vote to divest!
#LSEdivest
#LSECouncil
LSE's Management have threatened students & staff in the
@LSE_encampment
with an Interim Possession Order (IPO) twice.
We are calling on LSE students & alumni to sign this open letter notifying SMC that they cannot obtain an IPO to suppress our protest
As LSE moves to shut our whole building down, notice who is on the front lines: racialised students, people on visas and precarious contracts… now is the time to assure your PHDs you will protect them & get down to the camp yourself!!!!!! Petitions linked in bio!!
We’re so grateful for all the work and care our graduates have put in this year, and we know they’ll go on to do incredible things ❤️🔥 To graduating students: congratulations, and keep your eyes peeled for how to stay connected to our struggle!
We will not stop, we will not rest!
@SL1MEW4TCH
@LSEnews
To be fair, LSE doesn’t only protect predators… it also protects property :) at the cost of physical violence to protesting students, staff and alumni :)
We reject LSE’s mischaracterisation of student protestors as anything but a collective driven by love, empathy, and a passionate belief in Palestinian liberation!! We are not “bullying, harassing, or threatening members of the community“ we are exercising our right to protest.
'I'd rather be a racist than a bore' – Israeli historian Benny Morris at
@LSEnews
, when some of his quotes on Palestinians as a 'time bomb', a 'fifth column', and 'wild animals' were put to him by students
Yesterday: ALUMNI ACTION INSIDE LSE’S ALUMNI CENTER!! The entire university community wants COUNCIL TO VOTE YES ON DIVESTMENT. Alumni won’t donate funds to be invested in genocide, or give their time to a complicit university. Isn’t that a risk your board should care about, LSE?
Beyond touched that research that launched this encampment also reached Workers In Palestine, who are fighting so hard for their own liberation, but also spurred incredible activism (like arms factory pickets by the amazing
@Workers4Pal
). Now if only it would reach
@LSEnews
SMC.
We are appalled that our university remains blatantly indifferent to the violence of its own investments. As an institution entrusted with our health and safety, LSE’s complicity and apathy doesn’t just intimidate us, it TERRIFIES us.
Graduating students reminded those attending the ceremony: with over 180,000 dead in Gaza, LSE chose to evict our student encampment over divesting from arms companies fuelling the genocide. They also highlighted Isoc‘s report showing discrimination towards Muslims at LSE! Shame!
It is an immense privilege to be graduating at all, knowing that students across the world, from Palestine to Bangladesh, are having their lives destroyed and opportunities to complete their education stolen from them.
Are you one of the academics flown across the world to ask for donations? Do you teach executives on courses costing thousands per day? Call in sick. We have to give LSE a reason to divest- help dam their streams of income until they do.
We got a dm from someone who dropped out of volunteer chairing an alumni network & told the uni it was bc they fund genocide. This makes a difference!!!
A full response to LSE’s disgraceful ‘community update’ on divestment will be released shortly, but we had to clarify this gross misrepresentation in the meantime. SHAME ON YOU LSE.
For months now students and staff have been protesting at LSE to demand that our uni cut its financial ties to the slaughter of Palestinians and the destruction of Gaza where all universities have been destroyed. Here are their messages to council!
LSE Council decided that LSE:
- won’t divest
- won’t consider excluding investments in crimes against the Palestinian people or financiers of egregious activities in their upcoming ESG review
The proposals build on the ‘Assets in Apartheid’ report precisely detailing LSE financial ties to egregious activities like the ongoing genocide and continued dispossession of the Palestinian people.
LSE’s decision not to divest stands in start opposition to students‘ values! In a historic
@lsesu
referendum 89% of students voted in favour of “full and meaningful divestment” in line with the Assets in Apartheid report. 🇵🇸
The university’s decision on divestment comes after LSESU Palestine Society submitted the following extensively researched and reasoned proposals to council!
Join us outside centre building (CBG) at 1:45 pm tomorrow to urge the LSE’s Council to vote in favour of divestment! It is time to end LSE’s complicity in crimes against the Palestinian people, the arms trade, and climate breakdown. Let’s show Council it’s time to divest!
Management threatening to shut down the Marshall Bloom building on bogus “fire safety” grounds (bogus bc they didn’t even tell us they were shutting it down, we heard from staff + they won’t tell us what to change to be safe!!!). Absolutely shameful.
10. DEFEND
Announce an amnesty for all students, staff, and faculty involved in peaceful pro-Palestinian activism on LSE’s campus, including the ongoing occupation inside the Marshall Building. Guarantee that security staff, cleaners, and café workers will not have their pay,
job security, or wellbeing threatened by Management due to the establishment and continuation of the student occupation and relevant student protest activities.
apology to the LSE community for the "rather be racist than boring" Benny Morris event, with condemnation of the Law School and David Kershaw as its Dean for openly hosting racism and supremacism on campus and thus endangering students’ wellbeing.