Culture & Community | Music | Arts & Culture | Visual Arts
Javier Villatoro, Jade Villegas and Michelle Lee. Lucy Gellman Photos.
The first strains of "We Shall Not Be Moved" drifted over the grass of Yale’s Cross Campus, tinny and mellow at once. To two ukuleles, a drum entered the fray, the beats soft but persistent. Across the lawn, two students rolled in after a day of classes at Wilbur Cross High School, and sat down to do their homework on a large blue tarp. Across from them, a row of cardboard missiles read "Books Not Bombs" and "Paid for by Yale" in bright red paint.
It was just one of the ways New Haveners and Yalies joined forces Friday, as students continued their occupation of Cross Campus in support of Palestine. Since Monday, hundreds of students have taken over the space with tents, sleeping bags, chalk art and painted signs, demanding that the Yale Corporation divest from weapons manufacturers. According to its 2023 SEC filings (read them here), Yale has shares in an exchange-traded fund (ETF) managed by BlackRock, with access to military suppliers like Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Its endowment is currently around $40 billion.
Students were previously in Beinecke Plaza, from which they were forcibly removed by Yale Police on Monday morning. Since that morning, when Yale police arrested a mix of students and New Haven organizers, there have not been any arrests.
"Yale as an institution is not the same as its students," said Villatoro, an organizer and artist in New Haven, where they are a member of the Semilla Collective. "To me, I have experienced the segregation that Yale has created. But these students deserve love and care. They are putting their bodies and their health on the line. I am not a leader here, but I can be a companion. I can be here to witness and support them."
From impromptu ukulele lessons to Indigenous beadwork tutorials, that collaborative spirit spread across the space, embodied in multimedia bursts of art and visits from thinkers, writers, academics and poets throughout the afternoon. Over a week into the occupation, it joins poetry workshops, a cappella performances, dance lessons and zine- and sign-making sessions that have popularized the space.
Students participating in the beading demonstration asked that their names and faces not be in the article.
On a large patch of grass in the center of Cross Campus, a group of students quietly crafted pairs of red-and-green earrings, meant to represent the watermelons that have become a symbol of Palestinian liberation across the globe. Organized by Students of the Indigenous Peoples of Oceania (IPO) and Native and Indigenous Student Association at Yale (NISAY), the event brought almost a dozen students together, bits of conversation flowing between the glittering beads.
A member of NISAY, one student (she declined to give her name and did not want to be photographed) said that the Palestinian struggle speaks to her as an Indigenous person in what is now recognized as the United States. As a student, she wants to see both Yale's divestment in weapons manufacturers and renewed investment in New Haven, where residents are often the first to feel the crunch of a rising mill rate and Yale's tax-exempt status.
"Beading is a craft that I grew up with, and it has cultural significance to me," she said. "I believe it to be a fine art form ... it's important for us to do with each other because it's passed down for generations. Each bead is intended to be a conversation, a prayer."
"Art is so important because it's all about the freedom of expression," she added. As she watches governments and universities alike crack down on free speech, "art is one of the better ways to fight back."
Harmony Solomon Cruz-Bustamante and Reem Saood, both seniors at Wilbur Cross High School. In the fall, Cruz-Bustamante is headed to Columbia and Saood is considering UConn.
Opening her laptop on a tarp nearby, Wilbur Cross senior Reem Saood counted the minutes until Linda Sarsour arrived to speak. Nearly two decades ago, Saood came to the U.S. as a refugee from Basrah, Iraq with her mother and sister. Now, she can't imagine not standing up for Palestine: she sees what is happening in Gaza as bound to her own story as a refugee.
"I think it's important to show up here," she said. "I know the feeling of being in a war because I had to flee my home country. A lot of refugees, they feel like they belong in two places, not one. It's the feeling of ... you literally don't know where your home is."
It felt like a natural destination, she added. In the past five days, the space has welcomed all manner of New Haveners: high school writing classes, teaching artists, longtime organizers and parents with small children, sometimes drifting through the liberated zone with a baby carrier in tow.
For Saood, who wants to practice human rights law, that's what community looks like. Friday, she was working on an English paper for a college class she is taking at Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU), on why activism is important.
Coming to sit beside her, fellow senior Harmony Solomon Cruz-Bustamante soaked in the afternoon sunshine, trying to figure out how much work they would realistically get done before sunset marked the beginning of Shabbat. Like Saood, they said, they were there to show solidarity with both Palestenians and the students present.
"It's time to disrupt the narrative that Yale students and New Haveners are incompatible," they said. “We're a united front right now and we're calling for the divestment from necropolitics and investment in New Haven. There's so much need in New Haven and so much wealth that Yale has."
As the child of Ecuadorian immigrants, they said, the displacement, forced migration, and sheer violence of the past six months has been painful and horribly, unspeakably relatable. Cruz-Bustamante's parents didn't come to the U.S. because of a romantic notion of a melting pot; they came "because they needed to survive," they said.
"The violence of empire has always been in my home, even if we don't speak about it," they said. That's been especially true this year, as they deepen their own practice in Judaism. "It's being done in our name."
As she fastened a small fleet of cardboard signs to rope, Yale School of Music alum M. (she asked that only an initial be used) agreed that the conflict feels personal—her great-grandmother was one of the first women to get an education in Iran. For years, she served as the headmistress of a preparatory school for women. "She was a force of nature," M. said.
Then during the Iranian Revolution, her family's life was no longer safe in the country they had for generations called home. They came to the U.S. as refugees, instilling in M. a sense of responsibility to advocate for the liberation of all oppressed peoples. As a person with both Persian and Jewish lineage, she said, she struggles deeply with the label of peaceful protests as antisemitic. For the better part of two weeks, it has brought her out to the occupation every day.
"The demonization of Palestinians, of those who fight for them, is an extension of the racism" that followed Sept. 11 and a wave of Islamophobia that swept the country, she added. Just feet away, an artist that asked not to be named or identified agreed. Decades after members of her family survived genocide in Southeast Asia and fled to the United States, she sees her own history as intertwined with that unfolding in Gaza.
"None of us are untouched by the architectures of violence," she said. "None of us get to escape from those histories."
They were still fastening the signs to rope when a strummed version of "We Shall Not Be Moved" floated over the grass, Villatoro jamming on the ukulele in a sun-soaked patch of ground. Drawn by the sound, Yale sophomore Michelle Lee joined in, a ukulele in her hands. Jade Villegas, a senior at the school, settled beside them and began hammering out a steady drumbeat. Every few moments, she stopped playing to write out the chord progression in thick green marker.
Between lyrics, Villatoro discussed their own reasons for coming out to the protest. In the city's Edgewood neighborhood where they live, they can see a lack of resources that doesn't exist downtown, where wealth is more concentrated. The struggle also feels personal; Villatoro fled Oaxaca with their family when they were 18. When they left, they were escaping both poverty and anti-Indigenous violence.
Friday, they were excited to be in community with students, they said. In the past week, young people have taught them lessons "about commitment, steadfastness, resistance to police," they said.
"My role is not to tell students what to do," they said. "My job is to be here and to hold the space for them.”