Cal Poly Humboldt home to "nation's most entrenched protest"

Jonathan Wolfe reports today for the New York Times from Arcata, California, home of California Polytechnic Humboldt. Here's the lede: 

When university administrators across the nation worry about the potential fallout from campus protests, they may have Siemens Hall in mind.

The building at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, includes the campus president’s office and has been occupied for a week by pro-Palestinian protesters who barricaded themselves inside and fought off an early attempt by the police to remove them. Protesters have since tagged walls and renamed it “Intifada Hall” by ripping off most of the signage on the brick exterior.

Inside, they painted graffiti messages like “Time 2 Free Gaza,” “Pigs Not Allowed,” and “Land Back,” according to a video posted by the local news site Redheaded Blackbelt. They occupied and defaced the office of the president, Tom Jackson Jr., spraying “Blood On Your Hands” across one framed wall hanging and “I Will Live Free or Die Trying” on his door.

Here's how the New York Times described the university and region: 

To those outside Northern California, the show of force at Cal Poly Humboldt, in the college town of Arcata, has been a surprising turn in a region more typically associated with a hippie pacifism and marijuana farms. But beneath the good-vibes image, locals say, a culture of protest and resentment toward authority has percolated at the 6,000-student campus.

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The majestic redwoods in the region draw tourists from across the world; nearby, visitors can drive through a tree with a 21-foot diameter. The forests also have satisfied the thirst for lumber in the growing West as far back as the early Gold Rush days when San Francisco became a boomtown.

The natural beauty and the timber industry have long been at odds, however. The region was an early battleground in the “timber wars,” in which environmentalists fought against logging companies to prevent the destruction of old growth forests across the Pacific Northwest in the 1980s and 1990s. Perhaps the most famous protest of that era occurred in Humboldt County, where the activist Julia Butterfly Hill lived for 738 days in a California redwood that she named Luna.

The campus has been shut down through May 10, the day before commencement.  

I blogged about what is happening at Cal Poly Humboldt last week here, and the Lost Coast Outpost continues to provide daily updates on what's been happening there since students occupied Siemens Hall a week ago.  (This link is to coverage of what happened in the early hours this morning).  The Los Angeles Times has more coverage today, too.

Here's another NYT story illustrating the point that it's not just young people who are upset about the U.S. role in the Israeli-Palestinian War:  older residents of rural areas--like their urban counterparts--are agitated about the War and pressing their members of congress to get the Biden administration to change its  position.  

Postscript:  At 9 am on April 30, the Los Angeles Times reported that 25 students had been arrested at Cal Poly Humboldt.  Here's an excerpt from the story:

Ending a weeklong siege, police on Tuesday arrested at least 25 protesters at Cal Poly Humboldt, where Gaza war demonstrators had occupied buildings and forced the campus to close.

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Shortly after 2 a.m. Tuesday, police moved in and made the arrests. The university said “those arrested faced a range of different charges depending on individual circumstances, including unlawful assembly, vandalism, conspiracy, assault of police officers and others. In addition, students could face discipline for conduct violations while any university employees arrested could face disciplinary action.”