Following the speeches, protesters then marched to Polk Place, surrounding and pushing over barricades set up that morning.

Shortly after, autonomous individuals took down the U.S. flag and replaced it with the Palestinian flag.  

The removal of the American flag and the replacement of the Palestinian flag was a monumentous moment.

There was just an organic expression of rage and frustration at injustice over Palestine and what also the University put on the students and arrested the students and detained the students for the encampment that led to the flagpole where students brought down the American flag and put up the Palestinian flag.

And goddamn, it was beautiful. It was beautiful. It was beautiful. And again, it doesn’t stop bombs, it doesn’t stop bombs, it doesn’t stop home demolitions.

But I did hear from folks that were like, Oh yeah, I know someone in the West Bank who saw that and thought that was cool. And that means something to me, and that’s embarrassing, that that means something to me. But if I can’t stop the bombs, but if I can make someone be like, Oh, we have eyes on us. People are caring. People are trying. People are doing things and that. If the only thing I can bring is that I want to bring that. — Sophia

Lee Roberts & the Reinstatement of the American Flag

Shortly after the Palestine flag went up, while students were dancing on Polk Place, Roberts walked toward the flagpole flanked by a contingent of 30–40 police officers. “The flag represents all of us,” Roberts later said to the media. “To take down that flag and put up another flag, no matter what flag it is, that’s antithetical to who we are, what this University stands for, [and] what we have done for 229 years.”¹Ananya Cox, “Pro-Palestinian Protest Escalates, Police Engage with Demonstrators after Silent Vigil,” April 30, 2024, https://www.dailytarheel.com/article/2024/05/university-0430-vigil-for-palestine. 

““The flag goes up, the Palestinian flag goes up, the American flag came down, and the Chancellor is just walking out of South Building, straight shot to the flagpole, flanked by police officers on both sides. And it was genuinely the most dystopian thing that I had ever seen before. Looked like it was straight out of a movie that I never, ever signed up to see. And it was really, really scary. I mean, there were several students. There was a student pushed out of her wheelchair. There were metal fences being thrown onto people by police. I just remember at the time like hearing and seeing so many people scream and going in circles to find our people, and in the process of doing that, seeing the police officers take their mace out and start pepper-spraying us. Because we had masks on. Some of the pepper spray, sunglasses and other things, I remember running through the crossfire of a police officer’s mace, and it had gotten stuck, in my mask, and so I felt like I just kept breathing. 

Seeing our friends and people who we’d spent the week sleeping at this encampment with, literally be body slammed and have their hair ripped out and have, I mean just a brutal day, and it was that level of I can’t even tell you the details of everything, because I don’t even know that I remember it. It was that bad. I just remember afterwards, like running to find you. While I’m going in circles trying to find you, Julian is coming in circles to find me, and Renya is also coming in circles. And we’re just running in circles around the quad. It was just a very scary day. I never would have expected or anticipated that was how something like this was gonna end, something so beautiful and moving. I take that back. At the end of the encampments, I didn’t expect that this was how it was going to end. I had never seen and felt something more peaceful in my life, and I was like, there’s no way. Why would this have been the response?”– Pragya

To put back the American flag, police officers brutally assaulted protesters, deploying pepper spray and physical force. A metal barrier was thrown on a student using a wheelchair. Multiple students were concussed. A student was thrown headfirst into a metal barricade. A counter-protestor emboldened by the administration-sanctioned police violence “beat and bloodied a student who lay on the ground.”²Florence Park, “Viewpoints: There Are No Universities Left in Gaza,” Chapelboro.com, May 10, 2024, https://chapelboro.com/town-square/viewpoints-there-are-no-universities-left-in-gaza. 

These incidents were only a fraction of the violence that was documented and captured on video. To justify the violence, Lee Roberts and his administration, following the rhetoric of the morning’s University-wide email, evoked the language of “law and order,” depicting students protesting genocide as unruly, disruptive, and “outside agitators” in need of institutional discipline. 

In the aftermath, Roberts stated to the media, “I would tell those students that we’re going to keep them safe from a very small minority of students who want to disrupt their experience. This University is for everybody.”³Ananya Cox, “Pro-Palestinian Protest Escalates, Police Engage with Demonstrators after Silent Vigil ,” When The Daily Tar Heel asked what he would say specifically to Palestinian students, Roberts turned away and walked back up the steps into South Building without responding.  

One of the students assaulted and concussed on April 30 questioned this framing of safety:  

“If the UNC response is ‘we’re trying to keep people safe,’ my question is — who are you trying to keep safe? You didn’t keep me safe. You haven’t kept a lot of my friends safe. Who is safety on campus preserved for?”⁴Aisha Baiocchi, “UNC Police Officer Remains on Force despite Accusations of Violence toward Protesters -,” The Daily Tar Heel, September 24, 2024, https://www.dailytarheel.com/article/2024/09/sp-holland-police-accountability.  

In the aftermath, community members called for the dismissal of UNCPD Officer Rahsheem Holland, a central perpetrator of violence on April 30, with a documented history of violence on campus. Two years earlier, Holland assaulted Black students at a Board of Trustees meeting. In response, both the Black Student Movement and UNC NAACP back in 2021 released statements declaring Holland’s presence on campus as a threat to Black students.⁵Matt Talhelm, “NAACP Call for Removal of UNC Acting Police Chief Accused of Punching Student Protester,” WRAL.com, July 12, 2021, https://www.wral.com/story/naacp-call-for-removal-of-unc-acting-police-chief-accused-of-punching-student-protester/19768849/. Yet despite all the long history of violence, video evidence, and community outcry, Rahsheem Holland is still employed and protected by the University. 

By effectively granting violent police officers immunity from accountability and shaking hands only with student counterprotestors, the University administration continues a legacy of injustice deeply rooted in institutional racism that normalizes and excuses state violence against marginalized communities, particularly Black, brown, and students from marginalized communities. During the encampments, it was disproportionately queer students, women, and students of color, who were selectively targeted, arrested, and/or prosecuted for evoking their First Amendment rights to protest. In their brutal response to the encampment, University administration reinforced racist heteronormative hierarchies in determining whose lives, bodies, and voices are worth protecting and listening to and those are rendered violent, disposable, and expendable.

In their brutal response to the encampment, University administration reinforced racist heternormative hierarchies in determining whose lives, bodies, and voices are worth protecting and listening to and those are rendered violent, disposable and expendable. 

• 1
  Ananya Cox, “Pro-Palestinian Protest Escalates, Police Engage with Demonstrators after Silent Vigil,” April 30, 2024, https://www.dailytarheel.com/article/2024/05/university-0430-vigil-for-palestine.
• 2
  Florence Park, “Viewpoints: There Are No Universities Left in Gaza,” Chapelboro.com, May 10, 2024, https://chapelboro.com/town-square/viewpoints-there-are-no-universities-left-in-gaza. 
• 3
  Ananya Cox, “Pro-Palestinian Protest Escalates, Police Engage with Demonstrators after Silent Vigil ,”
• 4
  Aisha Baiocchi, “UNC Police Officer Remains on Force despite Accusations of Violence toward Protesters -,” The Daily Tar Heel, September 24, 2024, https://www.dailytarheel.com/article/2024/09/sp-holland-police-accountability.  
• 5
  Matt Talhelm, “NAACP Call for Removal of UNC Acting Police Chief Accused of Punching Student Protester,” WRAL.com, July 12, 2021, https://www.wral.com/story/naacp-call-for-removal-of-unc-acting-police-chief-accused-of-punching-student-protester/19768849/.