As President Joe Biden and some Israeli officials call for a viable post-war plan for Gaza’s governance and reconstruction, Fareed argues Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hasn’t offered one because continuing the war against Hamas will allow him to stay in power and avoid a looming prosecution.
The Louisiana Senate passed legislation Thursday afternoon to forbid school staffers from talking to students in grades K-12 about sexual orientation or gender identity. House Bill 122 passed 28-7, with all Senate Republicans and two Democrats in support. It now heads to Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican who has claimed without citing evidence that some teachers aim to indoctrinate students with “radical” ideas. Landry is expected to sign the measure into law.
Sen. Beth Mizell, R Franklinton, said the bill’s intent was not to harm LGBTQ+ students but to make schools a “safe space” where parents know that staff won’t discuss sensitive topics with their children. The lawmaker behind HB 122, Rep. Dodie Horton, R-Haughton, also authored a bill to require all public schools and universities in the state to post the Ten Commandments. The Senate overwhelmingly approved that measure last week.
Last year Democratic former Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards vetoed Mizell’s anti-trans bill and Horton’s first attempt at a “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Mizell is an occasional guest on hate group leader Tony Perkins’ podcast. Horton has said she tried again on her “Don’t Say Gay” bill upon the encouragement of her pastor.
Louisiana lawmakers pass 'Don't Say Gay' bill banning classroom talk about sexuality, gender https://t.co/MEh80h9RkP
All this is going to do is fuck up queer kids more than they already are by society, and maybe that’s what they want. Cruelty is always the point. They want to punish queer kids if they dare to come out.
They were very upset when LGBT kids started thriving and everyone around being all functional and stuff, they are ddesperate to traumatize and invest in bullying a whole other generation for them to use to claim America needs complete Christonazi rule.
So I live in Louisiana and I work in a public university. The Ten Commandments will really go over well on my campus, which has a very high student population of Muslims, and, as far as I can tell, almost no Jews. I should post the three versions of the Ten Commandments on my office wall. In Hebrew. Which, yes, I can read.
Don’t say gay. We really are going backwards. I graduated from high school in 1979, and no one ever said anything about gay, except when taunting the faggots and calling them, well, faggots. Like me. I hate this state and have already told my husband that I am leaving upon my retirement in two years.
Similar to you, homophobia was strong in my remote town in northern Alberta. I graduated in 1977, when nothing positive was ever said about gay except ‘faggot’ and ‘homo’ and the french versions fifi’ and ‘tapette’. No wonder I came out at 33, who would want to admit to anyone, or themselves, they were gay in that environment? That’s why is so depressing to see this anti-gay movement today.
I attended the third largest high school in the country, with 6000 students. And it was still a horrible place to be gay. I didn’t come out until I was 27 after a heterosexual marriage and divorce.
Yup, I tried hard to be straight, I had many girlfriends and at least three of them would have married me. Living a lie for so long just destroyed me psychologically. Straight people just don’t understand what we’ve been through. Hugs madknits!
Apparently the “compromise” is allowing things to exist, as long as the people upset by them never have to confront them. Of course, that won’t last very long, since the only way to be certain they’ll never encounter anything upsetting is to eliminate it entirely (which in the case of LGBTQ+ existence requires ignoring the reality that it will always exist, no matter how hard they try to stamp it out.)
They take our important LGBTQ phrase ‘safe space’ and appropriate it for their homophobe parents. Plus, she has the audacity to say “the bill’s intent was not to harm LGBTQ+ students”!
If Trump reoccupies the White House, his religious right puppet masters will demand that he appoint a Secretary of Education who’ll enact these “don’t say gay” requirements nationwide and at all public school levels. Plus, “forced outings” by schools to parents.
Get out your “If Trump Wins” bingo card and be prepared to mark the square described above.
Aimee Dilger / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images
Ninety percent of LGBTQ+ youth in the U.S. say politics have negatively impacted their lives in the past year, according to a new report from LGBTQ+ suicide prevention organization The Trevor Project.
On Wednesday, researchers at the nonprofit unveiled their sixth annual survey on mental health among LGBTQ+ young people. Drawing on responses from more than 18,000 LGBTQ+ people between the ages of 13 and 24, the survey correlated anti-LGBTQ+ political issues with negative mental health outcomes for youth.
Recent politics had a negative impact on 90% of LGBTQ+ youth, researchers found, and 39% said they or their families had considered moving to another state due to new anti-LGBTQ+ policies or laws. (That number rose to 45% of trans or nonbinary youth.) Nearly half of respondents aged 13-17 said they had been bullied for being LGBTQ+ in the past year.
In turn, the report found that 39% of all respondents had seriously considered suicide in the past year, a drop of just 2% since the Trevor Project’s 2023 survey. That rate was higher for trans youth, and significantly so for young people of color. Only 50% of respondents who wanted mental health care were able to access it last year, the report also found.
At the same time, researchers stressed that young people are not naturally disposed to poorer mental health — rather, LGBTQ+ youth are “placed at higher risk because of how they are mistreated and stigmatized in society.” Respondents whose family, school, and/or community supported their identity, and who did not experience anti-LGBTQ+ bullying or discrimination, reported significantly lower rates of suicidal attempts or ideation.
“Once again, this year’s survey shows that considering or attempting suicide is not uncommon among LGBTQ+ young people,” said Dr. Ronita Nath, Vice President of Research at The Trevor Project, in a statement accompanying the full report this week. “However, many of the contributing risk factors for suicide are preventable, and often rooted in victimizing behaviors of others. The results of this survey clearly identify a need for adults and allies to create more affirming environments for LGBTQ+ young people, and better support them in being their true selves.”
The new report also looked at the impact of having a supportive school environment, finding that youth who had access to LGBTQ+-affirming spaces — especially gender-affirming spaces for trans youth — generally reported better mental health and lower rates of suicidal thoughts. An analysis of hate crime data in the Washington Post in March found a spike in intimidation and assault against LGBTQ+ students in K-12 schools between 2021 and 2022. Analysts found that the increase was more pronounced in states where lawmakers had introduced new policies restricting LGBTQ+ speech in schools.
In a lengthy interview with The Atlantic, Radcliffe talked about his relationship — or lack thereof — with the Harry Potter author.
“With such striking numbers and families literally wanting to uproot their homes to seek safety, lawmakers must seriously reconsider the real and damaging impact that their anti-LGBTQ+ policies and rhetoric create,” said Janson Wu, Senior Director of State Advocacy and Government Affairs, in the Trevor Project’s statement this week. “No ‘political victory’ should be worth risking the lives of young people.”
Since last year, the Trevor Project’s leadership has faced criticism for alleged mismanagement and labor violations related to the national 988 suicide prevention hotline. Last summer, members of the Trevor Project employee bargaining unit said they were laid off in an act of alleged union busting, while outside workers contracted for the crisis line said they were abruptly let go despite the now-permanent program’s expansion. In April, the Trevor Project laid off another six percent of its staff, leading some to comment that the internal mood was increasingly “gloomy.”
“The crisis workers are the lowest paid people in the organization […] which just baffles me because, you know, they’re doing the literal work of the mission of the org,” one anonymous source told the Washington Blade last month.
If you are in crisis, please call, text, or chat with the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988, or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741.
According to a new report, anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes in K-12 schools have quadrupled in U.S. states that have laws restricting the rights of LGBTQ+ students.
A Washington Post analysis of FBI data on anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes taking place in K-12 schools and on college campuses, published on March 12 found that anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes “serious enough to be reported to local police” more than doubled across the country in recent years. The Post found that while an average of 108 anti-LGBTQ+ school hate crimes were reported between 2015 and 2019, that average rose to 232 between 2021 and 2022. According to FBI data, the most common hate crimes reported at schools were intimidation, simple assault (assault where no weapon was used), and vandalism.
However, this rise in school hate crimes was more pronounced in the 28 states that have enacted policies restricting LGBTQ+ students’ self-expression and/or limiting how teachers can talk about gender and sexuality in school. In these states, reported anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes on K-12 and college campuses more than tripled from an average of 28 per year between 2015 and 2019 to an average of 90 between 2021 and 2022.
As the Post points out, this increase is even more staggering when you remove college campuses and look at the anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes in K-12 schools only. In states that have enacted restrictive laws, there were more than four times the number of anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes across elementary, middle, and high schools, per year, from 2021 to 2022, compared with the years 2015 to 2019.
Although it’s only March, the American Civil Liberties Union is currently tracking a whopping 478 anti-LGBTQ+ bills across the U.S. this year, with 190 of those bills targeting student and educator rights.
Gerald Declan Radford, 65, initially claimed he shot Lay in self-defense. Prosecutors believe that Declan was the aggressor and was motivated by Lay’s sexual orientation.
Meanwhile, nonprofits that work with LGBTQ+ youth have reported an increase in crisis calls. According to the Post, The Trevor Project received over 500,000 crisis contacts during the fiscal year ending in July 2023 compared to the 230,000 the group received the previous year, while the Rainbow Youth Project received over 1,400 calls to its mental health crisis hotline per month in 2023 compared to 1,000 per month in 2022. According to the Rainbow Youth Project, calls from Oklahoma to the group’s hotline more than tripled after details about Nex Benedict, the trans Oklahoma teen of Choctaw ancestry who died the day after three older girls reportedly beat them in a school bathroom, became national news.
“Young people will say, ‘My government hates me,’ ‘My school hates me,’ ‘They don’t want me to exist,’” the Rainbow Youth Project’s founder and executive director, Lance Preston, told the Post. “That … is absolutely unacceptable. That is shocking.”
Remember that for 50 or longer these hate churches have long claimed that being gay is unnatural, that two men having sex or two women having sex is unnatural because that is the phrasing in their old book. Yes the book written before people understood about germs. Now it is being shown to them it is natural. Oh crap they can’t have that. Hugs. Scottie
A new series from NBC called Queer Planet is providing fascinating looks at both homosexuality in the animal kingdom and at the people apparently incapable of even acknowledging that it exists. The trailer for the documentary series was released on May 17th and gave a preview of a “rich diversity of animal sexuality” with gay penguins, bisexual lions and sex-changing clownfish.
Despite the fact that there’s plenty of scientific basis for animals displaying homosexual behaviour (over 1500 species of animals, in fact), the trailer has caused intense outrage from conservatives who predictably think the series is pushing an agenda. Sentiments are similar in the YouTube comments for the trailer, which has been overwhelmingly swamped with dislikes. “This is actual insanity,” reads the top comment.
Read the full article. The series, narrated by Broadway star Andrew Rannells, debuts on Peacock on June 6th. The cult is busy on X declaring that they will cancel their Peacock subscriptions.
"Queer Planet" will be released in June.
The documentary by NBC is focused on "LGBTQI+ tolerance" among the animal kingdom…
Fundies: Being gay is wrong and goes against god and nature Gays: Being gay is normal, it happens in all mammals, here’s proof Fundies: LALALALA *fingers in ears*
So during Easter there’s always a bunch of Jesus programming that I can stream if I choose.
I choose not to.
That doesn’t mean I feel that I have the right to not allow anybody else to stream these programs. Do I get butt hurt over it? No, I don’t even mention it to friends and family.
I don’t know how these people can have such a narrow world view
Again Rev. Ed Trevors has some great reasons that the church and state remain separate. He says he wouldn’t want the government coming into his church so he doesn’t want church in schools. He asks what if the government mandated some things be posted in church, like protections for LGBTQ+ people and he has quite a list including a post celebrating pride months. What about pictures of presidents being required. I can imagine these hate churches having to put up Biden and Obama’s official photos. Well worth the watch. I love that he says it is not the job of the church to force how to live on others. Hugs. Scottie
I want to thank Ali for the link. Below is what she wrote about the site. For those wondering what the 2S in the LGBTQIA2S is two spirit people, which is how the first people called same sex attracted people which I think is grand. Hugs Scottie
I forget who or where I got this from. But the video on the page clearly shows the violence at the protest for Palestinian rights was caused not by the students, but by supporters of Israel. It has been reported that some of these outside agitators were funded by right wing dark money big donors. Warning the video shows brutal horrifying attacks / assaults on students with weapons, chemical sprays, and anything they could, often a bunch would single out one protester and beat that person to the ground. I will post the article but you will have to go to the link to see the videos and lots of pictures. Also please note that the college security and police simply stood by and let the protestors be attacked. So much for serve and protect. Hugs. Scottie
A young man in a white plastic mask beats a pro-Palestinian protester. Another in a maroon hoodie strikes a protester with a pole. A local instigator pushes down barricades.
Law enforcement stood by for hours as counterprotesters attacked the pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA on April 30, which erupted into the worst violence stemming from the ongoing college protests around the country over Israel’s war in Gaza.
While a criminal investigation is underway into the assaults that occurred at UCLA, the identities of the most aggressive counterprotesters have gone largely unknown. A CNN review of footage, social media posts, and interviews found that some of the most dramatic attacks caught on camera that night were committed by people outside UCLA – not the university students and faculty who were eventually arrested.
Many at the scene appeared dedicated to the pro-Israel cause, according to social media and their own words that night. The violent counterprotesters identified by CNN, which included an aspiring screenwriter and film producer and a local high school student – were joined by unlikely allies, several of whom are known throughout southern California for frequenting and disrupting a variety of protests and public gatherings.
The young man sporting the white mask and a white hoodie in widely shared video clips is Edan On, a local 18-year-old high school senior, his mother confirmed to CNN, though she later said he denies being at UCLA. Video shows On joining the counterprotesters while waving a long white pole. At one point, he strikes a pro-Palestinian protester with the pole, and appears to continue to strike him even when he was down, as fellow counterprotesters piled on.
“Edan went to bully the Palestinian students in the tents at UCLA and played the song that they played to the Nukhba terrorists in prison!” his mother boasted in Hebrew on Facebook, referencing Hamas. She circled an image of him that had been broadcast on the local news.
An image from Fox 11 Los Angeles posted on Facebook by Sharon On-Siboni shows her son, Edan On, with a white hoodie throwing an object into the encampment created by pro-Palestinian protesters at UCLA. On-Siboni highlighted the image.
From Fox 11
“He is all over the news channels,” his mother wrote in a now-deleted post.
Some counterprotesters had been spotted on campus days earlier, drawn by a high-profile pro-Israel rally as inflammatory videos and claims rapidly spread across social media.
Many at the scene Tuesday hid their faces behind masks and scarves. Some attackers sprayed protesters with chemical irritants, hit them with wooden boards, punched and kicked them and shot fireworks into the crowd of students and supporters huddled behind umbrellas and wooden planks, attempting to stay safe. For hours, they sought to pull away pieces of the barrier, scooping up fallen wooden planks and poles to use as makeshift weapons, lunging toward pro-Palestinian protesters who emerged from the camp to protect it from being breached.
Video footage shows the young man in a white hoodie, identified as Edan On, striking at the barrier around the pro-Palestinian encampment. William Gude
In this still taken from a video posted on social media, Edan On removes his mask.
From Social Media
On, a local high school senior, was captured on video striking a pro-Palestinian protester with a pole.
From Social Media
As protesters chanted, “We’re not leaving” from the encampment, some counterprotesters shouted back, “You are terrorists, you are terrorists!”
Video footage shows that some counterprotesters instigated the fighting, while others did little to intervene. Then police did little as a large group of counterprotesters calmy walked away, leaving behind bloody, bruised students and other protesters.
The Los Angeles Police Department and California Highway Patrol referred all questions about the incident to the UCLA Police Department, which did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Law enforcement did not track injuries from the attack. But according to the encampment’s organizers, more than 150 students “were assaulted with pepper spray and bear mace,” and at least 25 protesters ended up being transported to local emergency rooms to receive treatment for injuries including fractures, severe lacerations and chemical-induced injuries.
“I actually thought someone would get killed,” said Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, UCLA Hillel’s Director Emeritus, who called 911 around midnight as he watched the violence on live TV. “They came to beat people up.”
The next day, Hillel at UCLA posted an open letter from student leaders denouncing what it called “fringe members of the off-campus Jewish community” who did not represent “the estimated 3,000 Jewish Bruins at UCLA.”
“We cannot have a clearer ask for the off-campus Jewish community: stay off our campus,” it stated. “Your actions are harming Jewish students.”
‘You guys are about to get f—ed up’
In one of the more dramatic videos of the night, a protester wearing the colors of the Palestinian flag underneath an LA Kings jersey was knocked to the ground and beaten by multiple counterprotesters as he guarded the encampment.
The footage appears to show Edan On, in the white hoodie, and others striking at a pro-Palestinian protester on the ground. Key News Network
One of those assailants was On, who rushed into the middle of the fray with his pole. When CNN showed On’s mother a video of him attacking the protester, she said Edan, who she confirmed is a senior at Beverly Hills High School, was only defending himself.His mother – who previously described a smaller group of UCLA students protesting the war last year as “human animals” on social media – said dozens of his schoolmates had also gone to campus on the 30th and that her son intends to join the Israel Defense Forces.
The school district said federal law prohibits sharing information about students, including confirming their identities. On could not be reached for comment directly. When CNN contacted On’s mother for an interview with him, she replied that her son was in Israel and that he claimed he wasn’t at UCLA despite her earlier confirmation.
The man in the LA Kings jersey was ultimately dragged into a group of counterprotesters and kicked by an aspiring Los Angeles screenwriter and producer who CNN identified as Malachi Marlan-Librett, according to a review of social media photos, footage from the protest and interviews with multiple people who knew him. According to his LinkedIn, he graduated from UC Santa Cruz in 2019 and attended a UCLA professional film and television program the following year.
A man in a maroon hoodie joined Marlan-Librett in dragging the protester into the mob.
A pro-Palestinian demonstrator is beaten by counterprotesters attacking a pro-Palestinian encampment set up at UCLA’s campus. The man in the maroon hoodie is among the attackers, which include Malachi Marlan-Librett (beige cap) to his right.
Etienne Laurent/AFP/Getty Images
A counterprotester, identified by CNN as Malachi Marlan-Librett, pushes a pro-Palestinian protester in the barrier of the UCLA encampment.
Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
Marlan-Librett is seen throwing the bottom of a broom at a pro-Palestinian protester. William Gude
The protester was later seen in a video receiving treatment for a bloody head injury at the encampment. Marlan-Librett and the man in the maroon hoodie, along with other counterprotesters, such as an unmasked man wearing a red bandana around his neck, were seen committing multiple acts of violence throughout the night.
They became prime targets for online researchers who told CNN they had created internal nicknames such as #UCLARedBandana, #UCLANeffHat and #UCLAMaroonHoodie as they attempted to identify them.
In one violent episode captured on video, Marlan-Librett is seen carrying the end of a broom in his hand, using it to strike a protester in the head before kicking him. Even after the protester retreats, Marlan-Librett sneaks up on him from behind and strikes him in the head once again. Marlan-Librett didn’t respond to calls and texts from CNN.
In another video, the man in the maroon hoodie runs toward the encampment yelling, “You guys are about to get f**ked up.” In the over 3-hour-long livestream, the young man is in the thick of the scrum and can be seen hitting another man with a pole before arming counterprotesters with wood planks. The man could be heard yelling at protesters, “F**k you, f**king terrorists,” then, “The score is 30,000” – a reference to the number of Palestinians killed by Israel’s bombing campaign and ground offensive in Gaza.
Journalist Dolores Quintana is pepper-sprayed by the man in the maroon hoodie and other counterprotesters. William Gude
Just minutes earlier, the man pepper-sprayed a journalist in the face, while she was filming the crowd. “I had to walk off because I literally could not see anything,” the local journalist, Dolores Quintana, told CNN. “And it was getting in my mouth. And so, I was starting to choke.”
She said a volunteer came out of the encampment to wash out her eyes with water and saline. Quintana took a selfie when she could open her eyes again. In the photo, her face was drenched and pale, with red blotches on her forehead.
“This was the worst situation I ever found myself in as a journalist,” she said. “I was afraid they were going to kill somebody.”
Dolores Quintana pictured shortly after being pepper-sprayed while covering the protests at UCLA in early May.
Dolores Quintana
Local provocateurs in the fray
According to multiple acquaintances of the man in the maroon hoodie, he attended Los Angeles Valley College with his brother. Both brothers were enrolled at USC in the fall 2023 semester for a couple weeks before disenrolling, according to the school.
CNN could not reach the man in the maroon hoodie, and he did not have any apparent connection to UCLA.
Neither did Tom Bibiyan, a 42-year-old who was once a local Green Party official. Bibiyan was stabbed at a KKK rally where he was a counter-protester in 2016 and has since become an ardent Trump supporter. His colorful Instagram page is a mix of right-wing memes, numerous posts defending famous men against sexual assault allegations and pro-Israel content.
Video footage shows Bibiyan among those at the front line of people rushing the encampment in an attempt to remove protective metal barriers, as campus security guards watched the violence unfold.
Tom Bibiyan is seen throwing a water bottle at a protester. William Gude
Tom Bibiyan is seen rushing the pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA. William Gude
“The moment we rushed the terrorist encampment last night at ucla to take it apart,” he captioned a video he posted to Instagram. “F**k them kids,” he said in a separate post, which has since been deleted.
A CNN journalist reached Bibiyan outside his home, wearing the same jacket he had worn at UCLA, but he refused to say why he had taken part in the violence. “You’re being a little rude, and I’m going to call the police if you don’t leave,” he said.
Other older men spotted among the mob looked familiar to local public school mom Angie Givant as she followed what happened that Tuesday night on social media: a group of right-wing provocateurs who she’d seen protesting LGBTQ rights in public schools at school board and city council meetings around Los Angeles.
“As soon as there were rumors that, you know, things were going to go down at UCLA, there was a mobilization of very familiar reactionary extremists,” she told CNN.
One of the older men, Narek Palyan, joined the group of counterprotesters despite having posted anti-Jewish tropes on his social media accounts. Palyan, who didn’t appear to engage in the violence, claimed to CNN he has a child at UCLA, though a student was not seen accompanying him that night. “I was definitely keeping the peace, at least trying to,” he said.
Student journalists attacked
UCLA junior and student journalist Catherine Hamilton said that when a firework landed a few feet away from where she was standing and she saw the men approaching in masks, it was clear to her that they were about to do something they didn’t want to be recognized for.
“In that moment when that firework went off and started ringing in my ears, I was like, something very bad is going to happen on this campus,” she said.
When the police finally arrived hours later to break up the chaos, Hamilton and her colleagues regrouped to head back to their newsroom. As they walked past a line of cops and along a well-lit street in the center of campus, just before 3:30 am, she says they were encircled by a small group of counterprotesters mainly dressed in black. She told CNN the man leading the group was someone whom she immediately recognized. He was a counterprotester who had previously verbally harassed her and taken a photo of her press badge, she said.
Within seconds, they sprayed the student journalists with a type of mace or pepper spray and flashed lights in their faces. As she tried to get away, Hamilton said, she was repeatedly struck in the chest and abdomen.
One of the journalists confronted the attackers and shoved one before he was pummeled to the ground and beaten, according to video footage of the incident.
‘I was expecting us to start working on an obituary’
The day after the attack, UCLA’s chancellor called the events “a dark chapter” in the school’s history that “has shaken our campus to its core.”
A parent who was at the encampment with their child, a UCLA student, also described the night as feeling like “a civil war movie” with embers raining down and the wounded being treated all around. The parent said they were frantic to find help, calling UCLA campus police six times in a row.
One fourth-year UCLA student – who requested anonymity due to safety concerns – told CNN he was hit in the corner of his forehead with a traffic cone. Minutes later, video captured a counterprotester smashing a wooden plank into the back of his head.
With two deep cuts on his head, he said he rushed to the hospital and ultimately received 14 staples and three stitches for the injuries.
The violence directed at the protesters and his access to medical treatment reminded him of why they had set up the encampment in the first place, trying to raise awareness about the mass deaths and destruction from Israel’s war in Gaza, and calling for the university to divest from any financial ties with Israel. “I had the privilege of going to a hospital,” he said. “In Gaza, there are zero fully functioning hospitals.”
Thistle Boosinger, a 23-year-old member of the encampment who is not a UCLA student, had her hand smashed the night of the violence. She described how her assailant took a piece of wood above his head before slamming it down on her hand. “At first, I just screamed,” she said. “And then after like five minutes where my adrenaline wore off, it was so extremely painful.”
Thistle Boosinger, a 23-year-old member of the encampment, had her hand smashed the night of the violence. Boosinger requested CNN obscure a portion of this image over privacy concerns following recent developments.
Courtesy Thistle Boosinger
In a video call, Boosinger held up her hand wrapped in gauze and described her injury. “My bone is broken totally in half below my knuckle … [which is] shattered into a bunch of pieces and jumbled up.”
Dylan Kupsh, a UCLA graduate student, said he linked arms with other protesters in an attempt to defend the encampment and keep people safe. “We were … trying to keep the barricade wall up because that was literally protecting our lives,” Kupsh said. It wasn’t long before he was pepper sprayed, forcing him to seek medical treatment as the attacks continued.
Kupsh and others still wonder what would have happened had the encampment been breached that night.
“I hate to say it,” said Catherine Hamilton, the student journalist, “but I was expecting us to start working on an obituary the next day because I thought something that serious would happen to the students in the encampment.”
Do you have information to share about the attack at UCLA? Email us at watchdog@cnn.com.
CNN’s Audrey Ash, Isabelle Chapman, Scott Glover and Curt Devine contributed to this story.
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Scottie's Playtime 