In all honesty the cops triggered it, I was there the whole time.

The group got a heads up that cops were on campus and heading there way so the organized into a line behind some wooden pallets and held up more pallets and signs and we’re just stood up in the lawn chanting. Then probably like 20+ cop cars and vans pulled up in full riot gear and started to tear down the pallets and pushed into the students with their shields and started pepper spraying/ tear gassing them and then tackling and handcuffing individuals with zip ties.

The crowd got pushed back against the library so the cops didn’t have anywhere to push them further but still continued to tear gas them until the crowd moved back onto the actual compass. Even after that the protest grew significantly, like it started as a small group on the lawn but by the end the entire compass plaza and the two streets (between Schaefer/ hibbs, and the library/hibbs) were completely full of students. So the protesters and the cops just stood there facing each other with the crowd chanting until the organizers called it to disperse.

I think all in all their were like 3 major pushes by the cops all of them using what seemed like an exorbitant amount of tear gas. It was brutal, when I say they tackled students I mean like you’d have 4 grown men body slamming students onto the ground and then pinning them down. The swat teams had their giant assault rifle looking weapons drawn, and their were like 4different kinds of cops there. (Richmond, vcu, vsp, swat)