By Luca Rudenstine PZ ’26

On November 29th at 9:45 am, 5C students gathered on Marston Quad at Pomona College in all-black to prepare for a day of actions as a part of an International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People “to demand an end to the siege in Gaza” and “Shut It Down! for Palestine.” The students were adorned in Keffiyehs and carried flowers, stuffed animals, and tables with card-making supplies to create a community vigil on the steps of the Big Bridges Auditorium. 

By 10:00 am, a crowd of 40 students had arrived to help hang red banners with the words “Ceasefire: Now” and “Free Palestine.” The vigil followed weeks of student-led efforts across the Claremont Colleges advocating for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and demands for Pomona’s administration to disclose their investments to weapon’s manufacturers and to divest from Israel’s apartheid. Their demands were made evident under a student organization cross-coalition account, @PomonaDivestApartheid, where five main demands for divestment, academic boycott, permanent ceasefire, public condemnation, and anti-discrimination policies were expressed. 

At 10:30 am, the growing mass of students fell quiet to listen to two student speeches. The first masked student described scrolling through the “chasm of endless word docs” filled with names of Palestinian people killed in the siege and their lost stories. The speech urged students to not become desensitized to the thousands of Palestinian deaths that have occurred since October 7th, stating “the martyrs were professors with their own LinkedIns, teens with their own Instagrams, students with their own scholarships, all with their own hopes and dreams.” 

The speech also acknowledged the recent shooting of three Palestinian college students in Burlington, Vermont. Hisham Artwani, Kinnan Abdalhamid, and Tahseen Ahmed were shot while wearing Keffiyehs and speaking Arabic on a walk together. 

“This instance of violence did not occur in a vacuum,” the second student said. They continued by stating how remembrance and resistance are ingrained in the Palestinian being, and how the temporary ceasefire does not represent an end to the violence, nor an end to the resistance struggle. 

After the speeches, over 130 students continued to assemble the physical vigil. Posters with the names and faces of recent martyrs were tapped to the ground surrounded by roses, mementos, and letters. The mourning was also met with a call to action. 

In a conversation with one of the organizers, he described how as college students who are geographically isolated from the war, there is an unfortunate and inherent privilege our voices have over those in Palestine. He also remarked on his Arab identity and its connection to the war, stating, “one Arab occupation is the occupation of all Arab brothers and sisters, and we are all mourning the same loss together.” His sadness was met with a transnational sense of solidarity, as he encouraged a need for the same collectivity across the Claremont Colleges. 

At noon the vigil transitioned into a teach-in on various liberation movements across South America, Southeast Asia, and Haiti. It emphasized the impact of colonialism and varying historical methods of resistance to occupation. 

Students then transitioned to a die-in, where approximately 175 students lied in front of Pomona’s Bridges Auditorium aside a list of children murdered in the siege. The die-in lasted for an hour and a half, while students read a list of names of children under 18 who have been murdered in Israeli attacks. The powerful impact of student bodies in front of the auditorium filled the walkway, and after the die-in, the demands were re-stated, alongside the comment that there were still approximately 20 pages of names that had not been read yet in the hour and a half reading. This action reified for many the sheer amount of destruction the attack on Gaza has had, and continues to, until permanent ceasefire is enacted. As the temporary ceasefire has ended and Israeli forces continue their attacks, this number is only increasing. 

Meanwhile, only 500 feet away from the die-in, a Pomona professor was arrested by Claremont Police Department while playing music and showing solidarity with the students.