SEATTLE — Pro-Palestinian students at the University of Washington occupied the Interdisciplinary Engineering Building Monday evening, renaming it the Shaban al-Dalou Building, in protest against the university’s ties to Boeing.
The pro-Palestinian protestors, in their manifesto, wrote that they wouldn’t voluntarily leave the building until the following demands were met:
Boeing out of the IEB. Repurpose the building into a community-controlled space with pro-people education.Boeing out of UW. Stop receiving any and all donations from Boeing. Return any existing donations, and financial investments, and eliminate all other material ties to Boeing. Prohibit Boeing executives and employees from teaching classes or having any influence over curriculum.End the expulsion, suspension, and all repression and targeted assault of pro-Palestine activism and activists, especially providing protections for our fellow students being targeted by the federal government for their immigration status.
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“We are taking this building amidst the current and renewed wave of the student Intifada, following the uprising of student action for Palestine after the heroic victory of Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7th, which shattered the illusion of zionist-imperialist domination and brought Palestine to the forefront for all justice-loving people of the world,” wrote the protestors in the manifesto.
The manifesto continued to note they believe the UW administration “prioritizes their ability to rake in blood money over the demands of their students and workers.”
“This March, after months of delays, the Board of Regents completely rejected the formation of an Advisory Committee on Socially Responsible Investing (ACSRI), the first step in the official process to initiate divestment,” wrote the protestors. “This is a complete refusal to even investigate UW’s ties to companies complicit in zionist genocide and occupation.”
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The occupation of the Interdisciplinary Engineering Building comes over a year after pro-Palestinian protestors set up an encampment in the campus’s quad.
The pro-Palestinian protestor’s calls for action come as Boeing has donated more than $100 million to the University of Washington in the last century. As a result, thousands of UW graduates have found work at Boeing, particularly in engineering positions.
In 2022, Boeing also gave $10 million toward a new interdisciplinary engineering building on the UW campus, the same location that students occupied on May 5.
The protestors wrote that “Palestine teaches us that true power comes not from the state but from the people themselves and that no amount of money, brutality, or technological advancement can destroy a true people’s movement.”
The pro-Palestinian protestors ended their manifesto with a call to action, urging students, teachers and workers to take action alongside the people of Palestine.
We call on our fellow UW students, teachers, workers, and youth to take action with us alongside the people of Palestine and their brave resistance. Here in the center of the US war machine, our university education is geared to produce the next administrators of the empire. But people of conscience everywhere are standing up! We refuse to be engineers of genocide. Our role must be to hinder the US empire – to stop the flow of bombs and ease the struggle of those fighting for liberation in Palestine and around the world.
