Victims of UCLA Mob Attack Sue to “Hold the Aggressors Accountable”

In late April 2024, a mob attacked a pro-Palestinian student encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles. Police and campus security stood by and watched the assault for nearly five hours before intervening. Pleas to university officials went nowhere. And the next day police returned, only to violently and unlawfully clear the encampment and arrest protesters. These are the allegations of a group of students and faculty who are suing the people they blame for the attack, law enforcement agencies, and university officials for violating their civil rights.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court, comes as the federal government deploys all of its might to restrict speech on Palestine in the name of eradicating antisemitism on college campuses. The Trump administration has begun arresting and revoking the visas of students and scholars over their advocacy for Palestine. It has also launched a Department of Justice investigation into the University of California system for allowing “an Antisemitic hostile work environment to exist on its campuses.” And this week, the DOJ threw its support behind two Jewish students who are suing UCLA for alleged antisemitism, accusing the school of trying to avoid responsibility in the case, according to legal filings.

The sprawling 96-page complaint, which identifies 20 alleged members of the mob by name, accuses university officials and police of violating their civil rights, carrying out unlawful arrests, firing less lethal munitions at protesters at close range without just cause, as well as negligence for failing to protect students and faculty from violence in late April. Plaintiffs said the mob incident followed a series of “physical attacks, threats of violence, and harassment” against Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students on or near campus throughout the school year.

“The events at UCLA highlight systemic anti-Palestinian bias and the administration’s failure to uphold its obligation to protect the rights of students and faculty to engage in peaceful protest and expression,” the complaint said. “This action seeks to hold UCLA accountable for its failure to address and prevent Islamophobic, anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab discrimination, its violation of civil rights of all pro-Palestinian protesters — a group comprised of a wide range of people including Jewish people — and to demand systemic changes to ensure the safety and equity of all members of the university community.”

The complaint alleges in stark terms the violence that the school allowed against protesters, said attorney Thomas Harvey, who is working on the suit.

“There’s this notion, broadly speaking, in the media, that there’s some kind of violence from the pro-Palestinian protesters,” Harvey said. “In this case, it’s four-plus hours of unmitigated violence is coming from the counter-protesters, whose problem is pro-Palestinian or anti-genocide speech.”

There were multiple police agencies present, but none stopped the attacks on protesters, Harvey added. Officers from the University of California Police Department, Los Angeles Police Department, California Highway Patrol, and private security were present, he said, but none intervened. “It’s really important to know UCLA did nothing to stop them on that night.”

Amid a wave of university protests in solidarity with Palestine, UCLA students set up the encampment in front of Royce Hall in late April to amplify their demands for the school to stop investing in companies and institutions that fund or profit off of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. The encampment organizers also hosted talks and education sessions featuring professors and journalists.

In the days leading up to the attack, Zionist counter-protesters began to disrupt the protest, attempting to break in and sabotage the encampment and setting up a jumbotron and speakers to play on loop the Israeli song “Meni Mamtera,” a children’s tune used by the Israeli military to torture Palestinian captives, the complaint said. When they arrived on the night of April 30, some of the counter-protesters carried fireworks and chemical agents, the plaintiffs allege. 

In the lawsuit, the 32 plaintiffs — a group that includes students, faculty, journalists, legal observers, and community members who showed up in solidarity with the encampment — detail the specific moments in which they allege members of the mob punched, swung metal rods and wooden boards, aimed and shot fireworks, sprayed chemical agents, harassed and sexually assaulted plaintiffs, as campus law enforcement and security stood by. Others recalled the aggressive tactics used by police to dismantle the encampment. Plaintiffs recounted physical injuries, such as broken bones, nerve damage, and bruises. Some were diagnosed from post-traumatic stress disorder and their mental health continues to be affected by the incident, the complaint said.

Among them was Thistle Boosinger, a Taiko drum instructor and lifelong resident of Los Angeles who had grown up visiting UCLA for its museums, sports games, community events, and is a patient of its hospital system. She joined the encampment in solidarity with the demands of students and had volunteered to help hand out masks and other supplies to protesters. During the attack, a member of the mob repeatedly hit Boosinger’s hand with a metal rod, shattering her bones and severing a nerve in her ring finger, the complaint said. 

Her injuries required three unsuccessful surgeries, as she continues to experience reduced mobility and strength in her hand, Boosinger alleges. Due to her injuries, she can no longer teach music.

“I have a right to protest safely and make my voice heard,” Boosinger told The Intercept, “And because of events that transpired with aggressors attacking the encampment — which up until that point was incredibly peaceful and beautiful and inspiring on the inside — because of damages that I sustained emotionally and physically, I felt that it was necessary to hold the aggressors accountable.”

Graeme Blair, a political science professor at UCLA and plaintiff in the suit, said he hopes that during the litigation process attorneys will be able to find more information on who led, organized, and possibly funded the mob attacks on protesters and plan to amend the complaint as more alleged actors are identified.

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Blair was among the faculty members who had volunteered to keep watch at the encampment after students put a call out to professors for help. He arrived on April 30, just as the mob started its violent attack, in which he was sprayed by chemical agents, according to the complaint. He and other faculty immediately sounded the alarm to school officials, including then-Chancellor Gene Block, who, according to Blair, said police were called and that he could do no more. As TV news stations broadcast the attacks, police stood by watching the violence unfold without intervening.

“I was standing just a few feet from these people who were throwing metal barricades and punching and kicking and using their spray and tear gas, and had been shooting fireworks,” Blair recalled to The Intercept. “And it was just a surreal scene because the California Highway Patrol was standing, you know, 100 feet away in a formation and weren’t advancing.”

When police returned on May 2 and began their sweep of the encampment, faculty had formed a human chain around the students. Blair was among the first of dozens to be arrested. In this roundup, officers fired less-lethal munitions at students and struck their legs, the complaint said.

Police again responded to a UCLA encampment with violence on June 10. In one instance, officers shot a protester in the chest with a less-lethal munition, within 10 feet. The student sustained a heart and lung injury, causing him to cough up blood and to be hospitalized, the complaint said.

In the wake of protests following the police killing of George Floyd in 2020, UCLA changed its guidelines to minimize police presence on campus and use deescalation tactics before calling outside law enforcement to campus. The school violated those new guidelines during protests against the war on Gaza, Harvey said, by calling multiple outside law enforcement agencies onto campus early in response to student encampments. “They went through all these protocols in response to the George Floyd uprising, and then they violated them because of pro-Palestinian speech,” Harvey said. 

Also at the June 10 encampment was Benyamin Moryosef, a fourth-year student studying English at UCLA. A plaintiff in the case, Moryosef, who is Jewish and is the son of an Israeli immigrant, joined the encampment in solidarity with Palestinians. Officers arrested Moryosef by violently grabbing him without explanation, zip-tying him, and forcing him into a painful position that made it difficult for him to breathe, the complaint said. 

Moryosef said he hoped the lawsuit would help protect the free speech rights of other protesters moving forward amid the federal government’s broader crackdown on free speech rights. He said he wanted to use his privilege of having been born in the U.S., since international students may be more at risk for speaking out.

“Our rights to free speech feel very heavily under attack,” he told The Intercept. “Knowing I am a safer target and can provide help in that way, I want to be able to assist in the fight.”

In response to threats from Trump against universities for pro-Palestine speech — including the revocation of $400 million in federal funding from Columbia University — UCLA announced an initiative last week meant to combat antisemitism. The program has been criticized by Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students who say their calls for more safety on campus have been ignored. The new lawsuit follows three separate reports from a task force on anti-Palestinian, anti-Muslim, and anti-Arab racism set up by the school last year, which found long-standing harassment and punishment of students and faculty who have advocated for Palestine. The complaint draws heavily from these reports. Blair, one of the plaintiffs, said the university has yet to implement any of the recommendations from the reports. Instead, the school has only tightened protest restrictions throughout the school year, including a ban on face coverings, and last month, the school suspended pro-Palestinian student groups — Students for Justice in Palestine, and Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine at UCLA — after protesting outside the home of a UC regent’s Brentwood home. 

Harvey said plaintiffs were concerned that the school is bowing to external pressure to crack down on free speech in support of Palestine. “We believe that UCLA knows that its students are not violent people, they’re not antisemitic,” Harvey said. “But we’re concerned, as always, that they’re bowing to outside political pressure. And we’re even more concerned now with the Trump administration.”

Boosinger hoped that she and other plaintiffs would find some relief from compensation, but she also wanted the lawsuit to help shift focus back to the initial demands of the encampment. 

“It’s devastating that such a simple message,” Boosinger said, “to end the genocide and to divest UC funds from companies and weapons manufacturers that have stakes in genocide was such a controversial issue.” 

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