BOISE — After district judge Jonathan Medema issued a preliminary injunction last week in favor of their right to maintain symbolic tents around the clock and not have their property seized by agents of the state, pro-Palestinian demonstrators continued their more than 90-day occupation of the Capitol Annex.
Tents line the sidewalk of West Jefferson street inked with messages like “Blessed are the Martyrs Murdered for our Sins” and “All Roads in Gaza are Rubble.” Canopies, tables and chairs remain manned through afternoons of triple-digit temperatures, and on Wednesday afternoon, a guitarist roamed around the protest site singing and playing a tune by punk rock musician Laura Jane Grace while a dog rested in the shade.
According to participants, this is all to raise awareness of Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories and the displacement and killing of Palestinians in Israel’s war with Hamas, launched after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7.
As many college students across the nation staged similar protests, the PLU demonstrators marched from the Idaho Anne Frank Memorial to the Capitol Annex grounds on May 3, and have had a continuous presence there ever since. They have hosted guest speakers and held groups like book clubs and meditation classes.
A protester who identified himself by the alias of “Rafiki” said the demonstration aimed “to make request of the public to divest [from supporting Israel] in business and education.”
Participants in the Capitol Annex protest wish to present themselves as a collective and would not identify themselves by their real names or initials. The group, known as the People’s Liberated University (PLU), is one of several defendants in the Idaho Department of Administration’s lawsuit, which was filed in May, a day after another federal judge ruled that the protesters’ actions were not covered by a decade-old injunction allowing symbolic tents in relation to the Occupy Boise demonstrations.
The Department of Administration argued that the activists are violating the state’s ban on camping and causing damage to public property such as the Annex lawn.
“This Court has no evidence that the grass is dead or the soil so compacted that the grass will never grow again. Less than pristine looking lawns is something many Idahoans struggle with during the summer heat,” Medema’s preliminary injunction memo reads.
Meanwhile, the protest groups argued in their counter-suit that the police’s seizure of property effects from the demonstrators was a violation of First and Fourth Amendment rights.
“The Idaho State Police seem to read [Idaho Code] 67-1613A as authorizing the seizure of ‘indicia of camping.’ It does not. If police obtain sufficient indications that someone is camping on Capitol grounds, police may decide to issue that person a citation,” Medema wrote.
Medema’s memo states that an Idaho State Police lieutenant, according to video evidence, appeared to seize property from a protester without first citing her and even after she had attempted to remove the property.
While said protester and another involved individual were allegedly “vulgar and argumentative” toward the lieutenant, Medema said that they were constitutionally allowed to do so as long as they were not being threatening.
Camping, meanwhile, is defined in state statutes as using a space for the purpose of temporary or permanent dwelling. The use of tents is one example of “indicia of camping” cited in Idaho Code 67-1613.
Tents are “symbolic” when they are used as a means of protest.
“[The protesters] are using the tents that they erected on the grounds as a form of symbolic expression, to make visible the condition that the Palestinian people are facing right now,” the PLU protesters’ attorney, Casey Parsons, said.
Medema’s preliminary injunction protects tent use as long as a person is present to move them when moving them is necessary, such as during times of lawn maintenance. In those cases, the state must provide a space where demonstrators can temporarily move their tents.
On their Instagram page, the PLU has sought to raise bail funds for demonstrators who have been arrested and jailed on charges apparently unrelated to the presence at the Capitol Annex. This includes two women, Hannah Tucker and Crystal Grosenbach, charged with malicious harassment on accusations that they yelled antisemitic remarks at a kippah-wearing Jewish man on a restaurant patio on the Fourth of July.
An image posted by the @peoplesliberateduniversity Instagram account on July 5 alleges that Tucker and Grosenbach were physically attacked by two men on the street. The Boise Police Department press release about the incident makes note that bystanders began to intervene after Tucker allegedly touched the Jewish man’s nose with her cell phone.
“THEY WERE CHANTING FOR A FREE PALESTINE, BEFORE BEING SPIT ON, SCREAMED AT, AND SHOVED, BUT INSTEAD THESE TWO WOMEN WERE ARRESTED AND CHARGED,” the text of the image, which requests that supporters send money to the @poppiesandwatermelon Venmo account, reads.
Along with three other individuals, Tucker is named as a defendant, counterplaintiff and third-party plaintiff in the competing lawsuits to which Medema issued the preliminary injunction.
“[Tucker] is named in the lawsuit, so I represent her in that capacity, but I’m not representing her in a criminal case,” Parsons said.
At the Capitol Annex on Wednesday, PLU demonstrators asserted that their movement was comprised of and welcoming to people of all religions and none. They have hosted and participated in events with a local chapter of IfNotNow, an anti-Zionist Jewish organization.
The Department of Administration and Idaho State Police declined to give comment, as litigation is still ongoing.
When asked how long the PLU planned to have a presence at the Capitol Annex, the demonstrator “Rafiki” replied, “As far as I’m concerned, until Palestine is free.”
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