Alex Jones, left, and Ti Dunigan of AFSC St. Louis
Alex Jones (they/them) is the Program Coordinator and Ti Dunigan (he/him) the Organizing Fellow for the AFSC St. Louis Healing Justice Initiative. A student at Washington University in St. Louis, Ti was one of 23 students and 100 people in total arrested by police following a peaceful encampment at WashU on April 27, 2024. AFSC Midwest Region Program Group member Steve Tamari was brutally assaulted by police during the arrests.
In this interview, Alex and Ti share what they saw and experienced.
Ti: After an art build at a nearby park and having marched and chanted for a while in the middle of WashU’s campus, an encampment was established. Then law enforcement intervened and let people know that if we didn’t exit the area, they’d start arresting people. And so the encampment decided to pick up and move elsewhere. We moved toward the eastern part of campus.
We did a lot of community building and holding space for each other. There was chanting and prayers. I remember one small girl sharing her dream of becoming an investigative journalist -- because she understood the importance of stories, of realness and authenticity.
At that point, Alex joined us. People were handing out food and things to drink – we were just being in community together. And then law enforcement decided to escalate.
Alex: When I came to the encampment, people were eating snacks. Children were playing. There were families around. As time went on, more and more law enforcement came in. It ended up being five police departments and SWAT. When we tried to go to the bathrooms, the police ran in on us, and we ran back to our encampment.
When the sun goes down, that’s when the police start doing things. They started getting rough with people. Soon after, they started advancing on the encampment. We linked arms, and they started grabbing people and throwing them to the ground.
One cop pushed a bike into a bunch of people, including Jill Stein, who was there to protest with us. [Jill Stein is a Green Party candidate for president.] They subsequently charged them with assaulting a police officer.
The police started grabbing and pulling people, zip-tying them and throwing them in vans. We tried holding on, but they kept pulling and throwing people to the ground. They threatened to break people’s arms. They pointed out people they were going to take down.
At some point during our chanting, police started coming to the back. I have a lung disease. I was starting to have an asthma attack, so my partner took me across the street where people were funneling supplies.
But from there, I could see police dragging people and throwing them in vans. They were threatening and grabbing people who were videotaping and recording.
Ti: I was one of the people who was dragged down, zip-tied and hauled into a van. I was handled by five different officers who are twice my size. I’m 5-1, barely 100 pounds. Once they got me on the ground, one of them put his knee in my back. Two others helped him zip-tie me. One of the officers who helped zip-tie me used to be a regular of mine at a previous job.
After I was taken down, I was hauled to an area where they took my picture and information, and they hauled us into a van. They made us sit in there for a while. I guess they were taking people down in rounds until they could disperse the encampment.
I was in the third round, at about 6 or 7 pm. The last round ended close to 9 pm. They held us at our campus “welcome center,” where they welcome potential students.
The zip ties were very, very tight, so we spent a lot of time waiting to have them cut off and have them redone looser. Mine cut off my circulation. My hand actually went pale, which is very hard to happen. As a Black person, I don’t usually go pale in that way.
They held us for a few hours. Around 10 pm or so, they hauled us into heavily armored vans. I like to call them the “bears.” They’re locked down with three different plates on the doors. They’re soundproof, windproof, and very hot. There were five or six of us in each armored vehicle, and they carried us in rounds to different municipalities.
Once we were taken into the actual jails, we were held another five hours. They processed us in rounds. They gave us court dates, and they gave us no-trespassing orders. They let us know we’d be fined as well, along with whatever charges were given and potential sentencing.
I went in around 10 pm and left mid 1 am. The last round of people left mid 2 am. So we were held for quite a long time.
As of now, nothing has come of it. No charges have actually been filed. My court date is a week or so from now. None of us are sure where we stand. We’ve been told we should show up for our court date, but the odds are the judge probably won’t know our names or know why we’re there.
They’re really dragging out the process. I’ve been told they have up to a year to file charges. They might just file charges on the court date or wait until after. But if you look any of us up, we’re not in the system.
Alex: Ti is also banned from campus because of his trespassing charges on an open campus that he attends. Anyone in St. Louis is allowed to walk on that campus.
Ti also had to make a case for why he should be able to go to graduation. His transcripts and degree are on hold. He can’t receive those things until student conduct charges are pressed and the process is completed. And that might not be done until late July.
Ti: Yes, they’re dragging it out until late July, right before the next semester starts. So we’ll see how that turns out. I only have three credits left to take, which is the equivalent of one class. I was allowed to defer a course so I could lessen my workload over this previous semester.
So with them dangling our diplomas over our heads, and this trespassing order, I’m not sure what taking that class will look like.
Alex: They were also very rough and brutal with other protesters, too. There’s a protester who has a concussion. They ripped someone’s shirt.
After Ti was arrested, we protested again outside of where he was being held for hours, demanding everyone’s release. Again, police were being menacing, but we were on a public street so they couldn’t do anything about that. I was out there from 9 pm until Ti came out at 1:30 am.
It was WashU that called the police in the first place. The mayor was against the police being called. It was completely the idea of the administration.
The administration also told faculty that we were outside being antisemitic and waving Al-Qaeda flags. That’s obviously not true, and there are videos of what we were doing -- reading poems and children speaking and playing.
No one was being antisemitic. There was no Al-Qaeda flag. There was a flag that had Arabic on it, and you would think a distinguished university with an Arabic program would be able to call on its Arabic speakers and easily read that it said, “From the river to the sea.” So obviously again, complete hogwash and propaganda.
The chancellor also said there was a violent protest that took a turn, and that’s why they called the police. Yet we were completely aggressed by the police. There was no “turn” that we took. They wanted to deny us bathrooms and food. They were hoping they could wait us out. And when they couldn’t wait us out, they started being violent.
All the university statements about the arrests have been disgusting and completely disreputable. All the top administrators at WashU should be ashamed of themselves for prioritizing profit over the lives of Gazans and Palestinians everywhere, and for brutally aggressing and harming its students who were only protesting and standing together for the humanity of Palestinians everywhere.
It’s 2024, the ten-year anniversary of the Ferguson uprising following the police murder of Mike Brown. In 2014, WashU later made all of these promises to the community about social justice. It created the Center for Diversity and Inclusion. It offered scholarships to Ferguson activists. It made statements on police violence against protesters, though it was also a perpetrator of that itself.
After all these WashU proclamations and support for the Ferguson uprising, trying to memorialize itself as St. Louis’ most progressive university – to reach the ten-year anniversary and learn nothing and forsake everything it professed to stand for….
That’s really telling, because there were so many Ferguson activists who were involved in the encampment and march, who came back out for Palestine, after years of persecution and harassment.
WashU put up a wall around the university. It has checkpoints where you have to show your student ID. For them to do all of this is just appalling and egregious.
Both Alex and Ti added that AFSC should use the strongest possible language in demanding an end to Israel’s illegal occupation.