Today marks one week since the first pro-Palestinian protesters set up an encampment on Emory University’s campus.
Since then, protests have popped up at the University of Georgia and Kennesaw State University.
So far, police have arrested more than three dozen people in demonstrations across Georgia.
State Rep. Ruwa Romman, the Georgia Legislature’s only Palestinian American representative, not only came out against the arrests at Emory but met protesters on campus.
“I was actually on a phone call getting ready to go to a different event when I started getting frantic text messages and phone calls saying that police were taking down an encampment at Emory,” Romman said.
The Duluth Democrat also formed a coalition of elected officials who wrote a letter to Emory’s administration criticizing the police response to the protests, and she penned an op-ed for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on the matter.
Dov Wilker, the American Jewish Committee’s Atlanta director, took a different stance on the demonstrations during an appearance on Wednesday’s edition of “Politically Georgia.”
“I don’t consider this to be a pro-Palestinian protest because they’re not advocating for, for something to support the Palestinians,” Wilker said. “They’re everything is against Israel.”
Romman disagrees.
“I want to be clear. If a Jewish student is being targeted,” Romman said, “if they are being followed, for example, if they are like being cyberbullied, which is something I don’t think we talk about enough, absolutely, the school needs to step in.
“But if a student, for example, passes a protest and they don’t like what they’re hearing or they don’t like a poster, I don’t think that is a good enough reason to use state violence to then stop that protest.”
Like the protesters, Romman has been critical of President Joe Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, which is why she is withholding her support for her party’s presumptive nominee in November.
Romman backed the “Leave the Ballot Blank” movement in Georgia’s March presidential primary to pressure Biden to take more action on the war.
“There are three asks,” she said, describing her conditions for support. “A permanent cease-fire, conditioning military aid to Israel, which is literally just applying our already existing laws and something that Democrats are consistently asking for, and a flood of humanitarian aid.”
She also wants to hear more messaging on the subject during the Democratic National Convention.
“I need to be able to take a message back to my community that isn’t just vote for Joe Biden only because he’s not (Donald) Trump,” Romman said.
Friday on “Politically Georgia”: We hear students from Georgia’s colleges and universities talk about their perspectives on protests.
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