I was a part of the Western Washington University Popular University Encampment occupation and protest of May 2024. The main purpose of this demonstration was to get the university to divest from companies supporting Israel. Students followed suit with other university students around the country who have banded together to support resistance against Israeli imperialism.

I woke up at four in the morning to quickly rendezvous at someone’s house. We waited in the living room, and I cracked a joke to a tired and unreceptive audience. We grab our things and walk up the hill in the darkness. People had already arrived as we rounded the trees. People and supplies littered the lawn: the start of the encampment.

I spent the first day putting up tents and getting to know those around me as we established ourselves. Running on four hours of sleep the night before, I was in a caffeine fueled frenzy of tasks and conversations all day. By most accounts, everyone got far less sleep than I did. I must have met around 200 people on the first day.

I spent time on safety, patrolling the confines of the encampment and answering to the confusion of passers-by. Most of the sentiments I heard were supportive, although there were a few hateful comments as well.

In being a part of this direct action, I began to adopt a new revolutionary fervor from the ashes of apathy. It was inspiring to witness people putting labor into a system in which they expected nothing in return.

Despite the arrests and escalation that other encampment protests around the country had seen, ours was relatively peaceful but not without fear. The safety working group was vigilant about any disturbance or tip-off they encountered. Meanwhile, the school administration touted generic platitudes about safety, belonging and grief through email. It was said that WWU administration were avoiding the negotiations team, delaying our resolution. There was hardly any police interaction or counter-protests at all, leading to a rather unprecedented lack of impediment or violence.

At times I felt so connected to the people around me; I felt genuinely useful. This experience highlighted what I’m missing in my daily life. I find myself missing being outdoors while engaged in meaningful work with amazing people.

I began to see everyone in a different light. Disciplined and hard-working personas had taken over the carefree personalities that I had seen in these young students at the beginning. Despite our difficulties and joy, the Palestinian focus was salient as we held times of silence for grieving.

I heard rumors of certain groups feeling more alienated than others. The overwhelming number of new people being onboarded made it increasingly difficult to feel a sense of cohesion amongst the group. I eventually observed a spat between the leadership in terms of the camp vibes and performative white activism. To strike a balance between hard-working direct action and community oriented friendly place was a challenging task. I became dedicated to promoting social cohesion in any small way I could.

Over time, there were various pressures put upon leadership that made new issues feel less manageable. There was a tangible balance between trusting the process and the expertise of the organizers involved and being content with the limitations of direct action.

The authority structure was relatively informal and fluid, leading to some confusion about the implementation of new initiatives. The leadership consisted of the “centers,” people who had been involved with organizing behind the scenes, and the “spokes,” people in charge of various working groups. The structure itself is less rigid than the ones that we are used to living in, so when people became frustrated, their qualms pointed not up, but inward—to the centers of the encampment.

The leaders took on a lot of responsibility trying to manage the issues which arose in every working group. They were always busy with endless tasks and meetings. Every night we had an all-call meeting with everyone in camp. Qualms were presented during these meetings, easily attended by 100 or so people. The loudest voices and the most popular people began to have more authority.

The leaders wanted to focus on BIPOC and especially Arab voices. It was pointed out by one of my comrades that this is one of the first spaces not centering whiteness that some of the inhabitants have experienced, and that this fact caused some discomfort among the mostly white students having frustrations. This was a practice in decentering the self to achieve tangible goals.

One of the best ways to get to know people was to be on a safety shift with them. Otherwise, people would gravitate towards pre-existing social groups. It was so exhausting to be around 100 or so people all the time with such a lack of privacy, being a spectacle to the swarm of the others on the outside world.

Almost all the people I talked to were having complications of mental illness or were at least under a lot of stress. I was an advocate for greater community orientation, and I would have been more a more vocal advocate for a democratic decision-making process had the encampment continued.

The situation became heavier as some people wanted to escalate which led us into a limbo of being unsure what exactly we were signing up for. Despite the fact that people were overworking themselves, we were generating copious plastic waste, and tensions were rising, we achieved our goal and meetings were held with the university administration to begin the implementation of our demands.

Although interpersonal dramas enunciated this collective experience, the encampment carried a mutual conviviality as imbued with largely congruent ideological structures. We were all aligned on the reality of violence in Gaza and Palestine despite how far away we stood from the warfront. From this learning experience, I still glean lessons of cooperative behavior, autonomous specialization, interpersonal dynamics, and praxis.