Faith leaders from the Atlanta Multifaith Coalition for Palestine held a press conference on Tuesday on the campus of Emory University to denounce the use of force by police against student and faculty protesters on college campuses. The group also echoed the call of demonstrators for Georgia colleges and universities to divest from companies affiliated with the state of Israel and to end the construction of Atlanta’s controversial Public Safety Training Center that activists have called “Cop City.”
The coalition of faith leaders are also urging President Joe Biden not to speak at Morehouse College’s commencement ceremony unless the president is calling for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza.
“We’re here on this rainy Tuesday morning,” Rev. Leo Seyij Allen said, “because our faith compels us to be here to stand in solidarity with students, with activists with faculty, and the administrators who support these students in calling for an end to investment in Israel, an end to the war and genocide happening against Palestinians and an end to the construction of ‘Cop City.’”
Rev. Keyanna Jones, a co-pastor at Park Avenue Baptist Church in Atlanta’s Grant Park, was present at the April 25 protests on Emory’s campus and emphatically denied Emory President Gregory Fenves’ initial claim that outside agitators started the encampment. Fenves walked back that claim on Monday and apologized for the mischaracterization.
“Don’t cut out the clips when I’m calling Fenves as a liar because he is, don’t cut out the clips when I’m saying that this was student-led and organized because it was, don’t be a part of the perpetuation of this outside agitator narrative,” Rev. Jones said. “Don’t be a part of saying that police brutality here on Thursday was justified because it was not. Someone was tased repeatedly while being handcuffed — while already handcuffed.”
Also present at the press conference were students who gave their accounts of last Thursday’s protests.
Mozn Shora, a graduating senior at Spelman College, was one of three other Atlanta University Center students on the ground at Emory on Thursday morning. She called on her school and the AUC to condemn the actions of Emory University and the Georgia State Patrol.
“Spelman College teaches me that you have to make a choice to change the world,” Shora said about joining the Emory University protests. She also called for Emory to be transparent and to sever ties with Atlanta’s Public Safety Training Center and the state of Israel.
“I would like to see our boards off of any organization that is affiliated with Cop City or apartheid Israel — have some decency!” Shora pleaded, “That is all I am asking you for. Care about your students, care about the community, care about the victims of genocide in Palestine. Do not let Biden speak at commencement until he has called for a permanent ceasefire.”
Daniella Hobbs is an ethics PhD student at Emory and a member of Occupy Candler, a coalition of graduate students from Candler School of Theology and the graduate division of religion that had occupied the seminary until Sunday. She spoke on Tuesday about the group’s decision to occupy the building.
“While these injustices rage unbridled across the world and across our campuses Friday night, we occupied Candler knowing full well we were risking arrest but also knowing we were standing in a long lineage of religious leaders and scholars who have unapologetically put their bodies on the line for justice,” she said.
“It was like looking out of a fishbowl at a world of militarized terror,” Hobbs said of witnessing Thursday night’s clashes between Emory Police and Georgia State Patrol outside of the seminary.
Emory’s administration assured the students who occupied the seminary that they would not be forced out as long as they didn’t let in any demonstrators from outside. Occupy Candler decided to offer refuge to others anyway.
“We cannot call ourselves people of faith while turning away exhausted and traumatized people out fighting for the end of a genocide,” Dobbs said, saying that the movement had no regrets because they were able to provide the only refuge on campus.
Since ending their occupation of the seminary, Occupy Candler members have found other ways to support the protest actions on campus. They’ve provided snacks, drinks and art supplies in carts they’re calling The Ark of the Occupation.
In addition to the demands of the greater movement, Occupy Candler is also calling for the complete removal of outside police forces from campus, reparations and no disciplinary action for all arrested protesters. The liberationist religious scholars also requested a meeting with U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia.
