Support UGA Palestine Solidarity Encampment Arrestees

Dear friends,

We're starting this fundraiser to gather support for the sixteen students and community members arrested at the UGA encampment this past April, who participated in a protest to demand that the University of Georgia divest from genocide.

They have faced suspensions, campus bans, holds on graduation, and are awaiting court dates and student tribunals in the coming months that carry monetary consequences. Some of them have lost their on-campus jobs and housing.

Since their arrests, our community has come together to support them in a manner that has been unendingly heartwarming. They are so greatful for the legal observers, lawyers, community members, and advocates who have made this process so much easier, and are asking that our broader community contribute what you can to supplement their support, including but not limited to future legal fees.

Since the encampment, students and community members have continued to call on UGA to meet our demands for solidarity, protection, disclosure, and divestment, and your support ensures that those affected by the university's harshly punitive actions can stay in this fight. As the broader UGA and Athens community, we are so grateful for any amount you're willing to contribute to their support during this time.

Above all else, we want to reaffirm our commitment to solidarity with the Palestinian people and their resistance to genocide, apartheid, and occupation. In choosing to ignore our asks to meet for over 8 months, UGA's administration has made clear their complicity in the attrocities being waged in occupied Palestine. In arresting, banning, and suspending their own students for protesting genocide, the university administration further confirmed it's stance in opposition not just to free speech, but to speech in support of Palestinian liberation which calls out their role in Israel's slaughter.

The actions taken that day and beyond were in the pursuit of justice, and with the people of Palestine in our hearts. Be they suspensions, bans, or charges, any retribution from a state and an institution complicit in ongoing genocide is nothing less than a badge of honor.

In solidarity, until return.