UW Students DEMAND: University of Washington will no longer be complicit in genocide
May 6, 2025
The students of SUPER UW have just begun an occupation of a new Boeing building on the University of Washington campus in Seattle
The following is the full manifesto of the SUPER University of Washington students who have taken the Boeing-funded “IEB.” Tariq El-Tahrir Youth and Student Network salutes the students taking this escalation and we echo their demands listed below. We call on the youth and students of conscience around the world to join with the students in Seattle, to occupy buildings on campuses, target weapons manufacturers, and besiege the embassies of the Zionists, the Americans, and the Traitorous Palestinian Authority around the world and to choose resistance against the global imperialist order.
We are taking this building amidst the current and renewed wave of the student Intifada, following the uprising of student action for Palestine after the heroic victory of Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7th, which shattered the illusion of zionist-imperialist domination and brought Palestine to the forefront for all justice-loving people of the world. We respond to the call made by the Palestinian student movement in Gaza to “raise the pace and ceiling of your struggle and your honorable stances, quantitatively and qualitatively, against the institutions, corporations, and governments that participate in the slaughter of our children, our students, and our people. […] We call on you to besiege the […] buildings and offices of the corporations that finance the Zionist entity and arm its criminal army with all kinds of bombs and means of death and destruction.”
We are entering a new global phase of repression and resistance, both in the international student movement and on the ground in Palestine. Our brothers and sisters in Gaza are living under a sky of constant US-funded rocket fire, while the zionist regime is continuing its land thefts and the torture and imprisonment of over 10,000 Palestinians who are facing lengthy sentences and unspeakable abuse. The assault on the refugee camps, cities and villages of the West Bank, especially in Jenin and Tulkarem, continues. Meanwhile, American and western institutions, like UW, continue to fund these atrocities and attempt to demonize the just struggle of the Palestinian people.
This current phase is not only witness to these new and dangerous challenges, but we are also witnessing the great courage, steadfastness and heroism by the Palestinian people and their resistance. From Palestine, to Lebanon, to Yemen, to Iraq, to Iran, and together with the global Intifada, the people are defending their lands and advancing the revolutionary struggle against zionism, imperialism and all their allies.
The University of Washington is a direct partner in the genocide of the Palestinian people through its allegiance to its partnership with Boeing. Boeing manufactures the F-15 fighter jets, Apache helicopters, Hellfire missiles, and 500 pound bombs which israel uses to murder entire Palestinian families and destroy Palestinian homes, schools, hospitals, and mosques. As a company which makes over half of its profit from weapons technologies, it is a top supplier of weaponry to israel to carry out its genocidal aims. These bombs and missiles designed and manufactured by Boeing were used by the israeli Occupation Forces to massacre over 100 displaced Palestinian people seeking refuge in the Al-Tabin school in Gaza City.
These weapons of destruction are made possible through Boeing’s access to UW research facilities and student labor. In exchange for Boeing’s $10 million donation to the construction of the IEB, UW has promised to create a “pipeline” of students into the Boeing workforce, give Boeing executives control over UW curriculum, and allow Boeing to establish a hub for its research within the IEB. The second floor of the IEB, named “Boeing Landing”, holds an AI for Engineering Education Institute, which will undoubtedly be used to funnel students into the high-tech war machine of AI-powered genocide. Boeing also plans to invest at least an additional $6 million every year for the next 5 years to continue expanding its control over engineering education at UW.
We demand that our tuition money and our research not be used to fund and fuel genocide.
Time and time again, UW administration prioritizes their ability to rake in blood money over the demands of their students and workers. This March, after months of delays, the Board of Regents completely rejected the formation of an Advisory Committee on Socially Responsible Investing (ACSRI), the first step in the official process to intiate divestment. This is a complete refusal to even investigate UW’s ties to companies complicit in zionist genocide and occupation. To the admin: this is no surprise given the lengths you go to in order to protect your investments. You have enacted police violence on UW students and workers multiple times to repress the fight for a university that serves its people — whether it be for a fossil-free campus, fair working conditions for UW workers, or a liberated Palestine. We know that the forces behind the apparatus of state violence here and in Palestine are one and the same.
It is clear that UW does not care about its students and workers. We saw it when you authorized the police to brutalize students during the Gerberding Hall sit-in of December 2023. We saw it multiple times when you brought in UW police and state troopers to attempt to repress students and workers’ rights when we rallied at the corrupt Board of Regents’ meetings. And we saw it in your invitation of ICE agents to recruit on campus, while providing no support for one of your own workers who remains unjustly detained in the Northwest Detention Center. We reject the use of police and state violence to quell the just and popular demands of students and workers, as part of the pattern of repression against people’s movements worldwide.
The organizing of university students in solidarity with liberation movements has played a major role in the struggle against US-backed war crimes, from the fight against the war in Vietnam to the fight to dismantle South African apartheid. Looking back, we can clearly identify who was on the right side of history. Though UW loves to talk about the legacy of student activism on its campus, these times were not an exception to its prioritization of profit at all costs. It has always been the students and workers of UW who have fought tooth and nail for every concession given to them by the university — through strong community organizing and radical actions, from occupations to strikes.
In 1968, the Black Student Union, including members of the Black Panther Party, occupied Gerberding Hall with the goal of forcing UW to take action to serve its students of color. After four hours of threats, followed by the removal of protesters by approximately 70 riot police, the acting UW president signed a statement agreeing to work toward BSU’s goals. We look to the rich history of struggle in our university for strength and inspiration as we take action. The ripples of those who struggle for a better world, one that exists beyond the bounds of capitalist and imperialist exploitation, are felt by us every day.
We will not voluntarily leave this building until the following demands are met in full by the University.
- Boeing out of the IEB. Repurpose the building into a community-controlled space with pro-people education.
- Boeing out of UW. Stop receiving any and all donations from Boeing. Return any existing donations, financial investments, and eliminate all other material ties to Boeing. Prohibit Boeing executives and employees from teaching classes or having any influence over curriculum.
- End the expulsion, suspension, and all repression and targeted assault of pro-Palestine activism and activists, especially providing protections for our fellow students being targeted by the federal government for their immigration status.
In order to accomplish these demands, we are willing to engage in meetings with the university. We will engage in meetings on our terms. Representatives of SUPER at these meetings must be ensured anonymity. Personal contact information of any of the negotiators will not be shared with administration and no one else is qualified to speak on behalf of our action except those who we send. We will also discuss a binding agreement to full amnesty (legally and in Code of Conduct proceedings) for all participants of the action, whether students or community members.
We call on our fellow UW students, teachers, workers and youth to take action with us alongside the people of Palestine and their brave resistance. Here in the center of the US war machine, our university education is geared to produce the next administrators of the empire. But people of conscience everywhere are standing up! We refuse to be engineers of genocide. Our role must be to hinder the US empire — to stop the flow of bombs and ease the struggle of those fighting for liberation in Palestine and around the world. We know that it is the fight of the Palestinian people and their resistance that will ultimately free Palestine. And if we, at UW, play our part in organizing for the collapse of this violent system which represses our fellow students and workers to expand its genocidal regime, we will sooner be able to see our brothers and sisters in a liberated Palestine, from the river to the sea.
Yes, we are in a moment of escalating repression. These tactics are not new and are meant to scare and divide us — but now is the time to strengthen our unity and recommit ourselves to the fight. As political prisoner Georges Abdallah says, “Together, and only together, comrades, we will win!”
Follow for updates on the occupation: t.me/SUPERUW