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Student protesters campaigning for safe spaces 'block white students' at Berkeley university

'This is bigger than you. This is about whiteness,' one demonstrator tells student

Harriet Agerholm
Thursday 27 October 2016 21:41 BST
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Berkeley students form human wall in protest

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Protesters demonstrating for "safe spaces" for people of colour and LGBT students formed a human chain at a US campus, reportedly designed to stop white people getting to their classes.

In a video of the demonstration at the University of California, Berkeley, protesters are heard shouting "Go around!" at white students while they are seen allowing BAME people through the blockade.

One demonstrator tells a student who is trying to make his way through: "This is bigger than you. This is about whiteness."

Students apparently turned away by the demonstrators are filmed walking through the creek that runs beneath the bridge.

Later, the protest moved to the campus book shop, where activists posted an eviction notice that the building was being reclaimed as a safe space for queer and trans students.

"You are hereby notified by the students of the University of California, Berkeley, to vacate the premises immediately," the note said.

"University administration wrongly allocated this two-story facility to a third-party corporation, keeping in line with its intensifying legacy of prioritizing financial profit over student needs."

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