MIT police arrest 8 people protesting Israel-Hamas war for blocking parking garage News
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MIT police arrest 8 people protesting Israel-Hamas war for blocking parking garage

Police at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) arrested Thursday eight people who were protesting the Israel-Hamas war and asking college administrators to terminate all research contracts involving Israel’s Ministry of Defense.

In order to urge the college’s immediate response, protestors blocked the entrance of the campus parking garage, for which the school issued an alert and claimed that it impacted significantly campus safety and life. The school then dispersed protestors from the parking garage and Vassar Street by calling Campus Police and Cambridge Police, and later they reopened it at 5 p.m.

Eight protesters were detained during the incident, and the remaining were dispersed away and continued chanting “Free Palestine.” The leader of this protest movement, Hannah Didehbani, is a MIT student who has been issued a suspension and an eviction notice by the school. She said that the purpose of blocking campus garage was to bring more attention to MIT’s complicity with the Israeli military, and that suspensions cannot stop protest movements.

Tensions have been increasing significantly nationwide amid campus protests like the one at MIT and police responses to them. Local or campus police have detained more than 2,800 people protesting the Israel-Hamas war, including 118 protestors at nearby Emerson College, 52 students at Yale University, 9 students at University of Minnesota, and more than 200 students in Columbia University.

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