PCC Students Join National Chorus of Gaza Protests

Joining a growing chorus of college students nationwide, hundreds of pro-Palestinian students at Pasadena City College staged a peaceful walkout Tuesday morning, chanting and displaying signs outside the administration building before walking through the campus and gathering along Colorado Boulevard. 

“Today,” PCC student Robert Schaeffer said, as the students gathered before the march across campus, “we are walking out of class and in solidarity with students across the country and around the world calling for divestment from Israel and from wars and occupation in the militarism that our government engages in. They have not been listening to us for the last six months, as we’ve been protesting. So we are now here walking out in solidarity with Columbia students.”

The march was the second protest action in 24 hours, as pro-Palestinian demonstrators also marched through the streets of Pasadena Monday evening. The Monday march, organized by the group Pasadena For Palestine, moved throughout the city, including stops at Caltech and Pasadena City College.

Schaeffer also said that the protesting students are demanding that Pasadena City College divest from weapons companies and from companies engaged in oil and fossil fuel drilling.

Asked about the current ceasefire offered to Hamas by Israel, Schaeffer said, “We want to make sure that it is applicable to the Palestinians and it is what they want after they have been facing a genocide for the last six months, (with) over 35,000 people killed, and over 14,000 of them children. So we need to make sure that any deal that is reached is satisfactory to the Palestinians.”

Another participant and organizer, who gave her name only as Saria, said that there were no current plans to occupy the campus, and there has been very little overt counter-protest. 

One student heckled the group on Monday, and was escorted away before eventually leaving the demonstration.

Numerous campus protests, some violent, have roiled campuses nationwide following a Hamas attack on Israel October 7. At least 34,535 Palestinians have been killed and 77,704 wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza since then, according to al-zjazeera.com. The death toll in Israel from Hamas’s October 7 attacks now stands at 1,139 with dozens of people still held captive.

By publication time, PCC administration officials had not responded to a request by Pasadena Now for a comment or reaction to the current protests.