Protesters Shut Down BLM Critic, Threaten Student Journalists
On Thursday, a raucous crowd of student protesters blocked the exits to Claremont McKenna College’s Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum, shutting down a scheduled lecture and question-and-answer session by Heather Mac Donald, a prominent scholar and critic of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Chanting “Black lives matter here” and “no cops, no KKK, no fascist USA,” protesters massed tightly around the exits, blocking fellow students from entering Mac Donald’s scheduled presentation, entitled “The War on Police.” Even faculty members who sought to enter the building were denied, with waves of protesters screaming and resorting to physical force to repel anyone who drew too close to the building. At one point, a crowd of White students screaming “Fuck White supremacy, fuck White supremacy” pushed an elderly White professor away from the Athenaeum entrance.
.. Upon locating the source of the livestream, students stood outside the glass windows and screamed in the hopes of disrupting the presentation. They also gathered outside all the entrances and exits from the building, including the service entrances and fire escapes, to block anyone seeking to enter or exit and to trap the speaker inside.
White male students watching the chaos were ordered to leave, while journalists — including several from the Independent — found themselves surrounded by a mob seeking to block their coverage. One editor from the Independent reported receiving threats of physical violence for recording video at the scene, while another had to retreat to safety from the mob under the protection of a line of campus security officers.
.. “What we face here is not an attempt to demonstrate, or to ask tough questions of our speaker, all of which are protected and cherished on this campus, but rather to make it impossible for her to speak, for you to listen, and for all of us to debate. This we could not accept.”