EVERGREEN ENCAMPMENT: Bargaining Steps Back From Role
By the CPJ auxiliary team
News Brief Gathered as a part of ongoing developments around the Evergreen Gaza Solidarity Encampment. For the previous article on the early stages of the camp, click here.
After the last negotiation meeting yesterday afternoon, April 26th, in which demands were continually moved, communication between those going to negotiate on behalf of the students between each other and the wider body of the camp had begun to break down.
In informal conversations between Cooper Point Journal staff and encampment members Friday afternoon, students expressed excitement over the negotiations in providing outlines for committees of divestment in BDS, divestment in academics, task forces for the creation of a Police Services Community Review Board, and a non-police crisis response system. The language of these proposals were in their 3rd exchange of bargaining, having reached consensus in the student group the previous night that they had not sufficiently addressed student demands, and that the encampment had expressed that “more specific language would have to be reached.”
In a 3:00AM forwarded message between the GSU and Dexter Gordon, the students who had been participating in this bargaining process seem to have suddenly declared that they could no longer properly represent the encampment, and removed themselves from this role.
There seems to have been some attempt to re-establish a bargaining team within this email that was not able to be fully solidified. Because there was a meeting scheduled at 1:30pm, GSU member Juniper Campbell went to report on the situation. Juniper themself was confused about how things were to go forward, stating that: “the only communication I had gotten was to ensure the exception of the habitation policy until Monday at 5pm. That makes bargaining quite a difficult job… it’s just like it all fell away.”
Juniper shared that in this meeting, this single goal was established with the expectation that another meeting would happen on Monday at 1pm to potentially re-establish negotiations, but how this will occur without representation is still unsure.
