Charges were dropped on Wednesday against 80 protestors who were arrested during a pro-Palestine demonstration at the Art Institute of Chicago in May.
During that protest, a group of students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago called on the university to “divest from all entities and individuals financially supporting the Zionist occupation of Palestine.”
The school had reportedly asked the protestors to move an encampment they had set up, but they did not do so. A museum spokesperson said that some protestors “surrounded and shoved a security officer and stole their keys to the museum, blocked emergency exits and barricaded gates.”
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The museum called the police, and sixty-eight arrests on counts of trespassing followed. The institution previously said that the protestors were “given many opportunities to leave.” Shortly afterward, the museum requested that the charges be dropped.
According to ABC’s Chicago affiliate, the Illinois Attorney’s Office ultimately decided to drop the charges because the protests were peaceful, echoing the terminology used by the museum itself to describe the how it negotiated with demonstrators. The report included a quote from a police admiral who disputed this, accusing the protestors of vandalism and “assault,” and alleging that “several police officers were physically attacked.”
Jeffrey Sun, one of the student protestors who took part in the demonstration, told ABC, “They did not have a case against us; I think on some level they just did not want to actually engage with considering what protesting genocide means.”
“Commandeering the North Garden of the museum without permission, locking gates, barricading emergency exits, and refusing to leave constitutes criminal trespassing and will not be tolerated,” a museum spokesperson said in a statement. “Ultimately, whether charges are prosecuted is up to the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office and they decided to drop the charges against all protesters involved on May 4.”