To protest Saint Louis University’s partnership with Boeing and Israel’s persistent bombing of Gaza, around 70 people gathered in front of the Richard A. Chaifetz School of Business on Feb. 9.
The protesters called for a ceasefire in Gaza and said they still await a comment from SLU about the war and their ties with Boeing, an aircrafts and weapons manufacturing company. The protest took place after a weekly sit-in at the on-campus Starbucks also organized by OccupySLU.
DPS officers blocked and locked the doors, preventing any protesters from entering the business school from all entrances. They followed the crowd as it moved, denying entry to Pius XII Memorial Library and the Busch Student Center, as well.
Luke Evans, a protester who works with Community Liberation Network, thinks the university should pull their funding from Boeing and referred to it as a “death machine on this earth.”
“I think anybody who doesn’t take a stance on Palestine is a coward who will be remembered in history the same way we remember those during the Holocaust in Germany,” Evans said.
Other protesters such as Daniel Romano, a community member from the St. Louis area, said they find themselves outraged over the war, which has entered its fourth month.
“I am outraged that the U.S. would support such devastation and destruction and murder in Gaza; and that a local company like Boeing is making money from murdering people, including children,” Romano said.
Romano believes that in order to protest Boeing’s role, people have to divest funding for there to be change. The Business School features a division named the Boeing Institute of International Business as Boeing is a donor to the school.
“You gotta hit them in the pocketbook, that’s how people understand things,” Romano said.
The crowd moved from the steps of the business school down campus to the Marchetti apartments, where doctoral student Ángel Flores Fontánez delivered a rousing and direct speech condemning how SLU has communicated about the war.
“Since Oct. 7, we have only received two emails from the university president. The first one [was] almost a copy-paste from the lies of CNN and NBC, portraying the Palestinian resistance as terrorists, [and] acts of self-defense as unprovoked aggression,” Fontánez said.
He expressed a disdain for the lack of effort from the administrative level to address or comment on the war.
“When students strike, but professors stay home to protect their houses and fancy cars, when students strike, and professors and university executives remain in complicit silence amidst a genocide, thinking that they might still get that raise or that promotion, my friends, what is my education for?” Fontánez said.
Fontánez noted that while the Pope has called out Israel’s violence, Saint Louis University, a Catholic institution, “will not make one clear denunciation of this genocide.”
As the protesters continued their march, they stopped again in front of Pius XII Memorial Library. This is where Saint Louis Community College student, Paige Mathys, tearfully read off the poem, “If only you knew a Palestinian” by Anees.
“If only you knew a Palestinian, then surely you would know how peaceful we are,” Mathys said. “If only you knew a Palestinian. You would see how we swallow our pride, and we bare it. Despite being called savage monsters, barbaric. You’d be as disgusted as we are to see, our character slain by the racists who lead. If you knew us, you’d see through the sinister libel. Your stomach would turn at the headlines and titles.”
Mathys said they found the poem on TikTok while she was having a bad day, but it left her feeling inspired.
“Surely, you too would be led to insanity, watching them strip us [Palestinians] of all our humanity,” Mathys read.
DPS declined to comment on the protest and how many officers were present.
