Portland police moved early Thursday to start clearing out people who remained inside Portland State University’s fortified library after pro-Palestinian protesters occupied it for the last three days.
Police wrapped yellow police tape around the five-story Millar Library block as day broke and hailed people outside and those still inside to leave now or face trespassing charges.
A handful of people walked out while someone else threw a chair off the library roof and a demonstrator held a shield on the front steps. About a dozen police wearing helmets and goggles were stationed around the tape.
Police delivered a series of announcements over a loudspeaker. “To the individuals that are left inside the perimeter of the South Park Blocks and Millar Library, you are now under arrest for second-degree trespass.”
The occupation led university President Ann Cudd to shut down the campus on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Hours before the police response, Portland Police Chief Bob Day pledged that officers would “pursue all efforts at de-escalation” but would “take appropriate action to do our part to hold individuals and groups accountable for their criminal conduct.”
Though demonstrators had insisted in social media posts that the library remained open to students, the university emailed an alert late Wednesday afternoon that said no one was authorized to be inside the library, including faculty, staff and students, and that anyone who didn’t leave would be considered trespassing on the property.
The barricade in front of the library grew overnight as people added wood and pulled soccer and lacrosse goals in front. The campus was still before dawn except for the sound of hammering coming from the barrier.
A student outside who said she had been sleeping in the library for the past three nights estimated that more than three dozen people were inside and that about 15% aren’t students. “Not leaving, even though being asked to respectfully again, is a very intentional choice,” said Shayla Adkins, 33, a graduate student in social work.
“The goal of this movement is to make sure to advocate for the people of Palestine in a way that’s relevant to the PSU students and kind of following the leader — the students across the nation,” Adkins said as she repeated a protest demand for Portland State to sever relationships to business interests with ties to the Israeli military.
The library sits in the center of the downtown campus. During the past three days, people have scrawled graffiti on its outer curved, glass walls and interior corridors. They piled fencing, wooden pallets, spray-painted trash cans and signs in front of the building.
Inside, sleeping bags were strewn about, an alarm system appeared to be dismantled and shattered glass littered some floors.
Cudd had offered student protesters a chance to emerge from the library by 1:30 a.m. Wednesday with the guarantee that they would not face suspension or expulsion and that the school wouldn’t pursue criminal charges against them.
In a message to the school community later Wednesday, she said about 50 students had left on their own, but a potential agreement with all hadn’t materialized.
She wrote that she believed some number of non-students remained in the library in protest. Many of the demonstrators were dressed in black and kept their faces concealed with masks and demanded they not be photographed.
“Many of us have seen the vandalism to our library and while the cost of property damage cannot compare to the cost of human lives, this destructive protest is weighing heavily on our campus community who collectively pay for our facilities and expect and deserve to use them in a setting that is welcoming to all students,” Cudd said in the message. “We have no control over what happens in the Middle East; we do have control over how we treat each other.”
Adkins, the graduate student, acknowledged some vandalism in the library, including to electronics and alarm systems, but said people haven’t disturbed books and historical archives.
The takeover of the library has followed similar actions at other universities and colleges around the country. Leaders of the schools have wrestled with how to respond to the wave of student activism around the Israel-Hamas war, which began Oct. 7 when Hamas attackers killed about 1,200 civilians in Israel, raiding kibbutzim and a music festival, and taking about 240 Israelis and foreigners hostage.
The Gazan Ministry of Health has since reported that more than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli response. During a weeklong cease-fire in November, Hamas released 105 captives in exchange for 240 Palestinians being held in Israeli prisons.
The protest at PSU began last Thursday night, when Portland police pushed a group of pro-Palestinian protesters in tents out of the South Park Blocks. The next night, after Cudd bowed to student activists and announced that the university would reexamine its partnership with Boeing over its ties to the Israeli military, police again removed protesters from the city-owned park. Protesters then moved into the portico of Millar Library, along the South Park Blocks between Southwest Hall and Harrison streets.
Last Saturday, Cudd allowed protesters to remain under the awning of the library but asked that they keep the south entrance open to students, faculty and other library patrons.
By Monday, Cudd reversed course and asked protesters to dismantle the barricades they erected over the weekend. Protesters who identified themselves as students announced they were occupying the library and renaming it Refaat Alareer Memorial Library for the deceased poet who died in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza in December.
Portland police had made a plan to enter the library early Wednesday but the incident commander decided to delay action “for the well-being of all concerned” as the university sought to encourage students to leave on their own, police said in a statement.