(Reuters) – In the days since police arrested more than 100 pro-Palestinian demonstrators at Columbia University on April 18, a protest encampment has been re-established on the New York campus and hundreds of protesters have been arrested at schools from California to Massachusetts.

The protests over the conflict between Israel and Palestinians – and the response from administrators, politicians, faculty and students to the demonstrations – have roiled college campuses and divided the American public. Here is a look at some of the key players.

STUDENT GROUPS

The protests at Columbia have been organized by Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), which describes itself as a coalition of more than 100 student groups. It was founded in 2016, and unsuccessfully sought to end investments by Columbia in weapons manufacturers and other companies that support Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories.

Students, including Jewish, Muslim and Palestinian members, “reactivated” the coalition and its divestment demands after the deadly hostage-taking incursion by Hamas militants from Gaza into Israel on Oct. 7 and Israel’s fierce response in the Gaza enclave controlled by Hamas.

Columbia students have organized both Muslim and Jewish prayers at the encampment, and some have given speeches condemning Israel and Zionism and praising Palestinian armed resistance.

The lead CUAD negotiator in talks with university officials is Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian second-year postgraduate student in Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. Though he often stops by to speak to people at the encampment and to journalists, Khalil has not stayed at the protest camp.

Among the lead student groups in the coalition are the Columbia chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine. The two decades-old anti-Zionism advocacy groups that protest Israel’s military occupation have chapters across the country that have been key to protests on other campuses.

Columbia suspended both groups in November, saying they had helped organize a protest that violated the school’s events rules. The students, helped by the non-profit New York Civil Liberties Union, are suing the school, saying Columbia did not follow its own disciplinary procedures and that the punishment is disproportionate.

NEMAT MINOUCHE SHAFIK

The Egyptian-born international and public affairs professor has been president of Columbia University since last July. She was called to testify before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce about alleged antisemitism on campus on April 17. She told lawmakers: “It is distressing that some in our community have acted in a manner that is inconsistent with our values.”

The following day, Shafik authorized New York police to enter her campus to clear the protest encampment. A pro-Palestinian U.S. group filed a civil rights complaint against the university over its actions.

HOUSE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE

The House of Representatives’ committee and its subcommittees have held at least four hearings and events focused on student activity stemming from the conflict in Gaza, with member Elise Stefanik, a top House Republican, playing a key role.

Claudine Gay resigned as president of Harvard University and Liz Magill resigned as president of the University of Pennsylvania after being criticized for their testimony late last year before the committee. They had declined to give a definitive “yes” or “no” answer to a question by Stefanik as to whether calling for the genocide of Jews would violate their schools’ codes of conduct regarding bullying and harassment, saying they had to balance it against free-speech protections.

Virginia Foxx, the panel’s chair, accompanied House Speaker Mike Johnson on a visit to Columbia University on April 24, saying in remarks on campus: “Columbia University is in a freefall … The inmates are running the asylum.”

ASNA TABASSUM

The University of Southern California selected Asna Tabassum, a biomedical engineering student with a minor in resistance to genocide, to be its valedictorian. Tabassum, who is Muslim and from a South Asian family, had posted a link to a pro-Palestinian page to her Instagram account.

On April 15, the school announced it would not be allowing her to deliver the traditional speech at the school’s graduation, citing security risks.

“I am both shocked by this decision and profoundly disappointed that the University is succumbing to a campaign of hate meant to silence my voice,” Tabassum said in a statement.

USC announced on April 25 it would be canceling its main commencement ceremony altogether following student protests on that campus this week.

(Reporting by Makini Brice in Washington and Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing by Donna Bryson and Bill Berkrot)

NEW YORK (AP) — From New York to California, students protesting the Israel-Hamas war slept in tents at college campuses, as some universities moved to shut down encampments and arrested dozens of demonstrators.

With the death toll mounting in the war in Gaza, protesters nationwide are demanding schools cut financial ties to Israel and divest from companies they say enable the conflict. Some Jewish students say the protests have veered into antisemitism and made them afraid to set foot on campus.

At Columbia University in New York City, where early protests sparked pro-Palestinian demonstrations across the country, students and administrators have engaged in negotiations, the university said in a statement Saturday night.

“Dialogue between university officials and student organizers is ongoing. We want to be clear: There is no truth to claims of an impending lockdown or evictions on campus,” the Columbia administration’s statement said.

Though the university repeatedly set and then pushed back deadlines for the removal of the encampment, the school sent an email to students saying that bringing back police “at this time” would be counterproductive.

Decisions to call in law enforcement, leading to hundreds of arrests nationwide, have prompted school faculty members at universities in California, Georgia and Texas to initiate or pass votes of no confidence in their leadership. They are largely symbolic rebukes, without the power to remove their presidents.

Washington University in St. Louis locked some campus buildings and arrested protesters Saturday. The St. Louis Police Department said in a social media post that it assisted campus police, although city officers did not make any arrests.

The Riverfront Times, a St. Louis weekly newspaper, reported more than 80 people were arrested during the protest that began in public areas before moving to the campus in the afternoon. Megan Green, president of the St. Louis Board of Aldermen, said in a social media post that she was present and the protest remained calm “until the police came in like an ambush.”

Green Party Presidential Candidate Jill Stein said in a social media post that she and two of her campaign managers were among those arrested on the Washington University campus.

The University of Southern California said on Saturday it had temporarily closed its University Park Campus to nonresidents, without providing details of the closure or possible enforcement measures.

Joel Curran, senior vice president of communications, said in a statement that USC property was vandalized by members of a group “that has continued to illegally camp on our campus,” as well as disrupting operations and harrassing students and others.

Students declined numerous attempts by university President Carol Folt to meet, and the administration hopes for “a more reasonable response Sunday before we are forced to take further action,” Curran said.

“While the university fully supports freedom of expression, these acts of vandalism and harassment are absolutely unacceptable and will not be tolerated,” Curran said.

In Boston, police in riot gear cleared an encampment on the campus of Northeastern University on Saturday. Massachusetts State Police said about 102 protesters were arrested and will be charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct. Protesters said they were given about 15 minutes to disperse before being arrested.

As workers pulled down tents and bagged up the debris from the encampment, several dozen people across from the encampment chanted, “Let the Kids Go,” and slogans against the war in Gaza. They also booed as police cars passed and taunted the officers who stood guard.

Northeastern said in a statement that the demonstration, which began two days ago, had become “infiltrated by professional organizers” with no affiliation to the university and antisemitic slurs, including “kill the Jews,” had been used.

“We cannot tolerate this kind of hate on our campus,” the statement posted on social media said.

The Huskies for a Free Palestine student group disputed the university’s account, saying in a statement that counterprotesters were to blame for the slurs and no student protesters “repeated the disgusting hate speech.”

Students at the Boston protest said a counterprotester attempted to instigate hate speech but insisted their event was peaceful and, like many across the country, was aimed at drawing attention to what they described as the “genocide” in Gaza and their university’s complicity in the war.

The president of nearby Massachusetts Institute of Technology said in a statement Saturday that an encampment there had become a “potential magnet for disruptive outside protesters” and was taking hundreds of staff hours to keep safe.

“We have a responsibility to the entire MIT community — and it is not possible to safely sustain this level of effort,” MIT President Sally Kornbluth said. “We are open to further discussion about the means of ending the encampment. But this particular form of expression needs to end soon.”

Indiana University campus officers and state police arrested 23 people Saturday at an encampment on the school’s Bloomington campus. Tents and canopies were erected Friday at Dunn Meadow in violation of school policy, university police said in a release. Group members were detained after refusing to remove the structures with charges ranging from criminal trespass to resisting law enforcement, police said.

Arizona State University said 69 people were arrested early Saturday on suspicion of criminal trespassing for setting up an unauthorized encampment on a lawn on its Tempe campus. The protesters were given chances to leave and those who refused were arrested.

“While the university will continue to be an environment that embraces freedom of speech, ASU’s first priority is to create a safe and secure environment that supports teaching and learning,” the university said in a statement.

The tensions have piled pressure on school officials, who are scrambling to resolve the protests as May graduation ceremonies near.

USC drew criticism after refusing to allow the valedictorian, who has publicly supported Palestinians, to make a commencement speech. Administrators then scrapped the keynote speech by filmmaker Jon M. Chu. The school on Thursday announced the cancellation of its main graduation event, a day after more than 90 protesters were arrested by police in riot gear.

Folt, the university president, made her first public statement late Friday, addressing the controversies as “incredibly difficult for all of us.”

“No one wants to have people arrested on their campus. Ever. But, when long-standing safety policies are flagrantly violated, buildings vandalized, Department of Public Safety directives repeatedly ignored, threatening language shouted, people assaulted, and access to critical academic buildings blocked, we must act immediately to protect our community,” Folt said.

The nationwide campus protests began in response to Israel’s offensive in Gaza. Hamas launched a deadly attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, when militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages. Vowing to stamp out Hamas, Israel launched an offensive in Gaza. In the ensuing war, Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the local health ministry.

Israel and its supporters have branded the university protests as antisemitic, while critics of Israel say it uses such allegations to silence opponents. Although some protesters have been caught on camera making antisemitic remarks or violent threats, organizers of the protests, some of whom are Jewish, say it is a peaceful movement aimed at defending Palestinian rights and protesting the war.

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Perry reported from Meredith, New Hampshire. Associated Press journalists in various locations contributed, including Jacques Billeaud, Aaron Morrison, Stefanie Dazio, Kathy McCormack, Jim Vertuno, Acacia Coronado, Sudhin Thanawala, Jeff Amy, Jeff Martin, Mike Stewart, Collin Binkley, Carolyn Thompson, Jake Offenhartz, Jesse Bedayn and Sophia Tareen.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Police departments across the United States are reporting an increase in their ranks for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 killing of George Floyd, which led to a historic exodus of officers, a survey shows.

More sworn officers were hired in 2023 than in any one of the previous four years, and fewer officers overall resigned or retired, according to the 214 law enforcement agencies that responded to a survey by the Police Executive Research Forum, or PERF.

Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers spurred nationwide protests against police brutality and heightened scrutiny of law enforcement.

As more and more officers left, many of the departments had to redeploy stretched resources by shifting officers away from investigative work or quality of life issues such as abandoned vehicles or noise violations to handle increases in crime and, in some cases, the shortages meant slower response times or limiting responses to emergencies only, police officials say.

“I just think that the past four years have been particularly challenging for American policing,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of PERF, a nonprofit policing think tank based in Washington, D.C. “And our survey shows we’re finally starting to turn a corner.”

Individual departments are turning that corner at different rates, however, according to Wexler, who noted many are still struggling to attract and keep officers.

As a whole, the profession “isn’t out of the woods yet,” he said.

The Associated Press left phone and email messages with several unions and police departments to ask about increased hiring.

The survey shows that while small and medium departments had more sworn officers than they did in January 2020, large departments are still more than 5% below their staffing levels from that time, even with a year-over-year increase from 2022 to 2023.

The survey also showed smaller departments with fewer than 50 officers are still struggling with a higher rate of resignations and retirements.

The survey asked only for numbers, Wexler said, so it’s hard to say whether those officers are leaving for larger departments or leaving the profession altogether. He also said smaller departments, which account for 80% of agencies nationwide, were underrepresented in the responses PERF received.

Many larger departments have increased officer pay or started offering incentives such as signing bonuses for experienced officers who are willing to transfer, something smaller departments can’t really compete with. At least a dozen smaller departments have disbanded, leaving the municipalities they once served to rely on state or county help for policing.

But even some of the highest-paying large departments are still struggling to get new hires in the door.

“I don’t think it’s all about money. I think it’s about the way people perceive their job and feel they are going to be supported,” Wexler said. “You have West Coast departments that are paying six figures, but still seeing major challenges in hiring.”

In addition to pay and bonuses, many agencies are reexamining their application requirements and hiring processes.

Wexler believes some of those changes make sense, including allowing visible tattoos, reweighing the importance of past financial issues and processing applicants’ background checks faster. But he cautioned that PERF does not support lowering standards for training or for applicants.

Maria “Maki” Haberfeld, chair of the Department of Law, Police Science and Criminal Justice Administration at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, says departments have been too focused on officer numbers. She worries some are lowering education requirements and other standards to bolster numbers instead of trying to find the best people to police their communities.

“Policing is a real profession that requires more skills and more education than people can understand,” she said. “It’s not about tattoos or running a mile in 15 minutes. It’s really more about emotional intelligence, maturity and making those split-second decisions that don’t use deadly force.”

Haberfeld also cautioned that any staffing gains made through incentives could easily be erased, especially as officers, including some in riot gear, have been seen breaking up protests against the Israel-Hamas war at universities across the country.

“In policing, it takes decades to move forward and a split second for the public attitude to deteriorate,” she said.

PERF’s survey showed a more than a 20% drop in resignations overall, from a high of almost 6,500 in 2022 to fewer than 5,100 in 2023. They are still up over early pandemic levels in 2020, however, when a few more than 4,000 officers resigned across all responding departments.

As with the hiring increases, the rate of decrease in retirements tended to depend on the size of the departments. There were fewer retirements in 2023 than in 2019 at large departments, slightly more retirements at medium departments and elevated retirements at small departments. The survey found a steep drop in resignations at large agencies with 250 or more officers and medium-size agencies with between 50 and 249 officers.

In addition to pay and benefit increases, the improved retention can be partly attributed to a shift in how some public officials view their public safety departments, Wexler says.

“We went from having public discourse about defunding the police just a few years ago to public officials waking up to the fact their workforce is leaving,” he said. “I don’t think there’s any question that there has been a sea change among political leaders.”

OKMULGEE, Okla. (AP) — As winter fades to spring and the bright purple blossoms of the redbud trees begin to bloom, Cherokee chef Bradley James Dry knows it’s time to forage for morels as well as a staple of Native American cuisine in Oklahoma: wild green onions.

Wild onions are among the first foods to grow at the tail end of winter in the South, and generations of Indigenous people there have placed the alliums at the center of an annual communal event. From February through May, there’s a wild onion dinner every Saturday somewhere in Oklahoma.

The bright green stalks of the onions reach a few inches above the dried leaves that crunch under Dry’s feet on a crisp morning in March as he hunts through parks and empty lots near downtown Tulsa. The land he forages straddles the Muscogee Nation and the Cherokee Nation, and he’s thinking of his elisi — grandmother in Cherokee — who taught him how to pick and cook wild onions.

“Being able to cook like this, cook the things that my grandmother would cook for strangers, that’s really cool,” Dry explains as he scans the forest floor. He’s careful not to overharvest, taking only what he needs.

“Traditionally, what I grew up with, you just boil them in a little bit of water and then fry them with scrambled eggs,” Dry said.

That’s the way wild onions are typically cooked for large gatherings, a side dish of greens with a familiar peppery bite, served alongside fried pork, beans, frybread, chicken dumplings, cornbread, and safke — a soup made with cracked corn and lye from wood ash that is common among tribal nations in the southeast, including the Muscogee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Cherokee, and Seminole.

Dry likes to mix tradition with contemporary, such as using wild onions to make omelets and kimchi.

“I’ve even used them to create salsa or chimichurri for steaks,” he said.

The following Saturday morning, at least 100 people wait for the tribal community center to open in Okmulgee, the capital of the Muscogee Nation about 40 miles (65 kilometers) south of Tulsa. For the second consecutive year, the community is gathering for a wild onion dinner to raise travel funds for Claudia McHenry, a tribal citizen hoping to compete at this year’s Miss Indian World Pageant in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Dozens of people cook and hand out food, there is a silent auction, and a local mekko — a Muscogee spiritual leader — gives the opening welcome.

Over the last several generations, churches in Oklahoma — particularly United Methodist Churches in Native American communities — have used wild onion dinners to raise funds for church bills and annual dues, said Chebon Kernell, a mekko for his community and a UMC clergy member.

“But as the years went by, it became an enormous community event,” he said.

McHenry said seeing the community rally behind her gives her the courage she needs.

“To just see people turn out for me physically,” she said. “It gives me really a lot of good emotions and pushes me and propels me to continue forward toward my goals.”

For the next three hours, hundreds show up and pay $15 for a plate of food to send her down that path. For many, helping McHenry or the local church is the only thing that could improve upon the undeniable allure of hogfry. And in no place is that truer than the Springfield UMC in Okemah, another 35 miles (55 kilometers) south, the following Saturday.

It isn’t uncommon for people to come from Arkansas, Kansas, or Texas for a piece of that community’s famed fried pork and a heap of wild onions. Some travel that far because they’re part of the Muscogee diaspora. Others simply follow the church’s signs down a dusty gravel road until the canopy of trees opens up to an endless field of waving grass, still copper from the winter’s rest.

For nearly two decades, hundreds have lined up on the porch of the church’s small gathering hall on the first Saturday in April for a plate of food. And every year you’ll find Carol Tiger there, elbow deep in a bowl of frybread mix.

Everyone calls Tiger the head cook.

“I just let them know what we have to do,” she said, sending a wave of laughter through the kitchen.

In past years, Tiger and other church elders would take their grandkids to pick onions, but this year they’re expecting 500 to 600 hungry people, so they purchased their onions cleaned and chopped for $40 a gallon. The families of the church also contribute a gallon each.

Elders tell stories from the rocking chairs on the porch, children play in the woods nearby, and vendors sell beadwork and clothing. The small field around the church has been cut and edged and is full of vehicles with tribal tags from across the state. Men fry pork in a giant pan over a fire outside, while women fill the dining hall with the warmth of home-cooked food.

After clearing their plates, attendees enjoy a piece of cake or a bowl of grape dumplings — a dessert traditionally made from wild grape juice that today is often made with frozen juice and canned biscuits. They stay well into the afternoon, talking and eating, certainly sad when it’s time to go.

But it’s mid-April, and wild onion dinner season isn’t over yet. There’s always next Saturday, a little further down the road.

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Graham Lee Brewer is a member of the AP’s Race and Ethnicity team.

JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-HICKAM, Hawaii (AP) — Richelle Dietz, a mother of two and wife of a U.S. Navy officer, often thinks about water.

The family, stationed in Honolulu, spends more than $120 a month on jugs of bottled water for drinking, cooking and cleaning, as well as showerhead and sink filters. Each night the children, ages 13 and 5, carry cups of bottled water upstairs to their bathrooms to brush their teeth.

“I hope that one day I can not think about water all the time,” Dietz said. “But right now it’s a constant.”

That vigilance is to avoid more vomiting, diarrhea, rashes and other ailments, which they said they started experiencing 2021, when jet fuel leaked into the Navy water system serving 93,000 people on and around the Pearl Harbor base. It sickened thousands in military housing, including, Dietz says, her own family.

She’s one of 17 relatives of U.S. military members suing the United States over the leak from the World War II-era storage tanks. She said her entire family — including dog Rocket — continues to suffer from health problems they link to the tainted water. Her husband, a chief petty officer, declined to be interviewed by The Associated Press because he fears retaliation from the Navy.

The 17 are considered “bellwether” plaintiffs representing more than 7,500 other military family members, civilians and service members in three federal lawsuits. The outcome of their trial, which starts Monday, will help determine the success of the other cases and the damages that could be awarded.

Kristina Baehr, one of their attorneys, said she already considers it a success because the U.S. government has admitted liability.

U.S. Department of Justice attorneys wrote in court documents that the government admits the Nov. 20, 2021, spill at the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility “caused a nuisance” for the plaintiffs, that the United States “breached its duty of care” and that the plaintiffs suffered compensable injuries.

But they dispute the plaintiffs were exposed to jet fuel at levels high enough to cause their alleged health problems. Lingering issues plaintiffs say they are battling include seizures, memory loss, anxiety, eczema and asthma.

When the Dietz family arrived in Hawaii in February 2021, “we thought we were moving to heaven on earth,” Dietz wrote in a declaration filed in the case.

But around Thanksgiving — soon after the leak — they couldn’t figure out their stomach pain, vomiting and diarrhea. Other families in the neighborhood were also sick. Then they developed rashes.

“My throat is burning. I feel like I just drank gasoline,” Dietz remembers telling her husband on Nov. 27.

The next night, her Facebook timeline was filled with neighbors complaining about the smell of fuel in their water. The Dietzes ran to their faucets and smelled fuel, too. They noticed the tap water also had an oily sheen.

Attorneys representing the families say the trial will show Navy officers failed to warn residents after learning about fuel in the water, and even maintained that staff members were drinking the water.

Navy representatives and government attorneys didn’t respond to an email seeking comment on the lawsuit.

The fuel storage tanks have long been a flashpoint in Hawaii, with Native Hawaiians and other residents raising concerns over the past decade about leaks that threatened the broader water supply. The tanks sit above an aquifer that delivers water to 400,000 people in urban Honolulu.

At first, the Navy said it hadn’t determined how petroleum got into the water, but its own investigation eventually pinned the cause to a cascading series of mistakes.

On May 6, 2021, a pipe ruptured due to an operator error and caused 21,000 gallons (80,000 liters) of fuel that was being transferred between tanks to spill. Most of the fuel, however, entered a fire suppression line and remained there until six months later, when a cart rammed into the line and released 20,000 gallons (75,700 liters) that eventually got into the water system.

Red Hill workers noticed that one of the tanks was short that amount, but didn’t report the discrepancy to senior leadership.

Dietz didn’t want to risk her husband’s career by asking to leave Hawaii. So they stayed and were committed to avoiding tap water while they figured out their next steps.

“They’re just going to put another family in this house,” she said. “So we need to stay here and we need to try to fight to get this fixed.”

In doing so, Dietz says she found unexpected allies among Native Hawaiians, who revere water as a sacred resource and already have a distrust of the U.S. military, which can be traced back to at least 1893, when a group of American businessmen, with support from U.S. Marines, overthrew the Hawaiian kingdom.

Kawenaʻulaokalā Kapahua — a Native Hawaiian political science doctoral student and one of the activists who pushed to shut down the tanks — said the water crisis forged a sense of solidarity with affected military families. It also fostered relationships within a military community of members who often cycle quickly in and out of the islands, he said.

When families felt abandoned by the military, “the people who did show up for them was the Native community,” Kapahua said.

Dietz agreed. “They gave us a seat at the table,” she said through tears.

Eventually, under orders from state officials, pressure from the outcry and ongoing protests, the military drained the tanks.

Dietz’s husband later got new orders and the family is relocating to Jacksonville, Florida, this summer. They don’t plan to live in military housing there.

As she prepares to move out of a house where the ice maker has remained off since 2021, Dietz hopes the trial will renew awareness about what happened to the water.

“Somebody’s going to move in,” she said, “and I’m worried they’re going to turn on the ice machine.”

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — During three years of working as a parade performer at the Disneyland Resort in Southern California, Zach Elefante always has had a second or third job to help him earn a living.

Unlike the experiences of his peers at Disney’s parks in Orlando, Florida, where there is a much smaller talent pool, the performers who play Mickey Mouse, Goofy and other beloved Disney characters at the California parks aren’t always provided a consistent work schedule by the company.

It’s among the reasons the California performers are organizing to be represented by a union now, more than four decades after their Florida counterparts did so.

While Disney asks character performers to be available to work at any time, that demand isn’t always rewarded with scheduled work hours, the California performers said.

“A lot of performers get the sense that if they don’t give their full availability, we won’t be in shows … and that will impact other jobs we need to sustain a living in this area,” said Elefante, who lives in Santa Ana, California.

Earlier this month, the California character performers and the union organizing them, Actors’ Equity Association, said they had filed a petition for union recognition.

It’s a different era and a different union doing the organizing this time around, so the California character and parade performers likely will avoid some of the bad blood that the Disney performers in Florida have experienced with their union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

It has been a rocky four-decade marriage in Florida between the performers who put the “magic” in the Magic Kingdom and the Teamsters, a union historically formed for transportation and warehouse workers which had deep ties to organized crime until the late 1980s.

Why now for the California character performers, so many decades after their Florida counterparts organized? Unlike in Florida where performing as a character often is a full-time job, many of the character performers in Southern California have multiple other gigs, often in Hollywood movies and TV.

Elefante performs at rival Universal Studios Hollywood and works as a tour guide for the movie studios. In addition to performing in the “Fantasmic!” show at Disneyland, Chase Thomas works as the director of operations for a theater festival and previously has had jobs as a visual effects coordinator and entertainment licensing agent.

Angela Nichols moved to California to be a TV writer and often works as a writer in addition to her job as an entertainment host at Disneyland, where she assists the character performers when they’re interacting with guests.

“Disney really is a cornerstone of the stories we grow up with in our culture. Being able to watch people immersed in these stories and live it out is magical,” Nichols said. “And when we’re being supported as cast members and performers, we’re able to make that happen. We’re just not being set up for success in the way we need to be at this time.”

When many of their Hollywood gigs dried up because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the recent actors’ and writers’ strikes, the character performers wanted more consistent scheduling at Disneyland once it reopened after a yearlong, pandemic-related closure. The pandemic also made them more alert to health and safety concerns concerning things like hugging guests or having sanitary costumes.

Most of the more than 35,000 workers at the Disneyland Resort in Southern California already were unionized, and the parades and character department members were among the holdovers.

“A lot of cast members want to do this fulltime and make it work,” Thomas said.

Unlike their Florida counterparts, the character performers in California are being organized by a union devoted to performers. As such, Actors’ Equity Association officials understand the unique needs of the theme park performers in ways that would be difficult for other unions to grasp.

When there is a new stage show, the shoes of the costumes need to be tested to make sure the performers won’t trip or slip on stage. Union representatives make sure “face performers,” whose faces are visible, such as Cinderella, have the right makeup and double check that parade dancers have ice packs available to nurse sore knees.

Unclean costumes are a perennial problem, and it was a top reason for the Florida performers wanting to organize with the Teamsters in the early 1980s. The other reasons included kids kicking Disney villains like Captain Hook in the shins and adults grabbing at the chests of performers playing Mickey Mouse to see if there was a man or woman underneath.

Clean costumes were so important to the Florida character performers that more than two decades ago the Teamsters succesfully inserted a contract clause to assign individual undergarments that the performers could take home to wash after pubic lice and scabies were shared via the garments.

There always existed a culture clash in Florida between the costumed character performers and the traditional Teamsters union leaders of truck drivers and warehouse workers. The drivers often viewed the performers as living charmed lives, paid to dress up every day as if it were Halloween.

Those tensions came to a head in the late 2010s as a new leader of the local Teamsters affiliate in Orlando began targeting the costumed character performers for harassment. The character performers pushed back and the fight went up to James Hoffa, then-head of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, who intervened.

In California, Elefante is hopeful union representation will give performers a voice in decisions about issues including the larger-than-life costumes, which can cause long-term injuries when ill-fitted, and the safety of performing in parades during rain.

“It’s about having a seat at the table and being a part of the conversation from the performers’ perspective,” Elefante said.

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Associated Press reporter Amy Taxin in Orange County, California, contributed to this report.

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Mike Schneider’s book, “Mickey and the Teamsters: A Fight for Fair Unions at Disney,” was published in October by the University Press of Florida. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter.

Maryam Alwan figured the worst was over after New York City police in riot gear arrested her and other protesters on the Columbia University campus, loaded them onto buses and held them in custody for hours.

But the next evening, the college junior received an email from the university. Alwan and other students were being suspended after their arrests at the “ Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” a tactic colleges across the country have deployed to calm growing campus protests against the Israel-Hamas war.

The students’ plight has become a central part of protests, with students and a growing number of faculty demanding their amnesty. At issue is whether universities and law enforcement will clear the charges and withhold other consequences, or whether the suspensions and legal records will follow students into their adult lives.

Terms of the suspensions vary from campus to campus. At Columbia and its affiliated Barnard College for women, Alwan and dozens more were arrested April 18 and promptly barred from campus and classes, unable to attend in-person or virtually, and banned from dining halls.

Questions about their academic futures remain. Will they be allowed to take final exams? What about financial aid? Graduation? Columbia says outcomes will be decided at disciplinary hearings, but Alwan says she has not been given a date.

“This feels very dystopian,” said Alwan, a comparative literature and society major.

What started at Columbia has turned into a nationwide showdown between students and administrators over anti-war protests and the limits of free speech. In the past 10 days, hundreds of students have been arrested, suspended, put on probation and, in rare cases, expelled from colleges including Yale University, the University of Southern California, Vanderbilt University and the University of Minnesota.

Barnard, a women’s liberal arts college at Columbia, suspended more than 50 students who were arrested April 18 and evicted them from campus housing, according to interviews with students and reporting from the Columbia Spectator campus newspaper, which obtained internal campus documents.

On Friday, Barnard announced it had reached agreements restoring campus access to “nearly all” of them. A statement from the college did not specify the number but said all students who had their suspensions lifted have agreed to follow college rules and, in some cases, were put on probation.

On the night of the arrests, however, Barnard student Maryam Iqbal posted a screenshot on the social media platform X of a dean’s email telling her she could briefly return to her room with campus security before getting kicked out.

“You will have 15 minutes to gather what you might need,” the email read.

More than 100 Barnard and Columbia faculty staged a “Rally to Support Our Students” last week condemning the student arrests and demanding suspensions be lifted.

Columbia is still pushing to remove the tent encampment on the campus main lawn where graduation is set to be hosted May 15. The students have demanded the school cuts ties with Israel-linked companies and ensure amnesty for students and faculty arrested or disciplined in connection with the protests.

Talks with the student protesters are continuing, said Ben Chang, a Columbia spokesperson. “We have our demands; they have theirs,” he said.

For international students facing suspension, there is the added fear of losing their visas, said Radhika Sainath, an attorney with Palestine Legal, which helped a group of Columbia students file a federal civil rights complaint against the school Thursday. It accuses Columbia of not doing enough to address discrimination against Palestinian students.

“The level of punishment is not even just draconian, it feels like over-the-top callousness,” Sainath said.

More than 40 students were arrested at a Yale demonstration last week, including senior Craig Birckhead-Morton. He is due to graduate May 20 but says the university has not yet told him if his case will be submitted to a disciplinary panel. He worries about whether he will receive a diploma and if his acceptance to Columbia graduate school could be at risk.

“The school has done its best to ignore us and not tell us what happens next,” said Birckhead-Morton, a history major.

Across the country, college administrators have struggled to balance free speech and inclusivity. Some demonstrations have included hate speech, antisemitic threats or support for Hamas, the group that attacked Israel on Oct. 7, sparking a war in Gaza that has left more than 34,000 dead.

May commencement ceremonies add pressure to clear demonstrations. University officials say arrests and suspensions are a last resort, and that they give ample warnings beforehand to clear protest areas.

Vanderbilt University in Tennessee has issued what are believed to be the only student expulsions related to protesting the Israel-Hamas conflict, according to the Institute for Middle Eastern Understanding. More than two dozen students occupied the university chancellor’s office for several hours on March 26, prompting the university to summon police and arrest several protesters. Vanderbilt then issued three expulsions, one suspension and put 22 protesters on probation.

In an open letter to Chancellor Daniel Diermeier, more than 150 Vanderbilt professors criticized the university’s crackdown as “excessive and punitive.”

Freshman Jack Petocz, 19, one of those expelled, is being allowed to attend classes while he appeals. He has been evicted from his dorm and is living off campus.

Petocz said protesting in high school was what helped get him into Vanderbilt and secure a merit scholarship for activists and organizers. His college essay was about organizing walkouts in rural Florida to oppose Gov. Ron DeSantis’ anti-LGBTQ policies.

“Vanderbilt seemed to love that,” Petocz said. “Unfortunately, the buck stops when you start advocating for Palestinian liberation.”

___

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LUPTON, Ariz. (AP) — Crews plan to extinguish a fire on Saturday night from a freight train derailment near the Arizona-New Mexico state line that forced the closure of a stretch of Interstate 40.

Some wreckage has been removed from the tracks, but about 35 rail cars remain, including a half-dozen rail cars that were carrying non-odorous propane and had caught fire, said Lawrence Montoya Jr., chief of fire and rescue in McKinley County, New Mexico.

No injuries were reported in the derailment Friday of the BNSF Railway train near Lupton, Arizona, though, as it turned out, the derailment happened on the New Mexico side of the tracks.

About 40 people living within a two-mile radius of the derailment site remain evacuated as a precaution as winds carried away thick smoke and local firefighting crews responded.

“We are hoping we can extinguish the fire before midnight,” Montoya said.

Once the fire is extinguished, any fuel that isn’t burned off and remains on the site also will be contained.

The eastbound lanes of Interstate 40 are closed around Holbrook, Arizona, and the westbound lanes of the interstate are closed at Grants, New Mexico.

Authorities say people should expect long delays and look for other routes or postpone travel in the area.

No dates have been specified for when that stretch of interstate will reopen. Montoya said he expects the interstate to remain closed until the fire is put out and hazardous materials are mitigated.

The cause of the derailment is under investigation.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Former Arkansas Gov. and U.S. Sen. David Pryor was remembered during a Saturday funeral service by family, friends and colleagues, including former President Bill Clinton.

Pryor died at the age of 89 on April 20 from natural causes. The memorial was held at a Little Rock church.

Clinton said during the service that Pryor — whom Clinton had worked with for years in Arkansas politics — was one of the few people he could count on in Washington to give him difficult news.

“You’d be amazed how many people are so intimidated by the office of the presidency that they go into the Oval Office time and time and time again, and they tell the president what they think the president wants to hear, not what the president needs to hear,” Clinton said. “David Pryor wasn’t like that.”

Clinton highlighted Pryor’s years of work to improve nursing homes.

“He thought that every person was entitled to live their whole lives in dignity,” Clinton said.

Pryor was a Democrat who was elected governor in 1974 and served four years before being elected to the U.S. Senate. He served three terms before deciding to not seek reelection in 1996. Pryor’s son, Mark Pryor, served two terms in the U.S. Senate.

David Pryor was considered one of the party’s giants in Arkansas, alongside Clinton and the late U.S. Sen. Dale Bumpers. He also served in the U.S. House and the Arkansas Legislature, and remained active in public life in recent years, including being appointed to the University of Arkansas’ Board of Trustees in 2009.

He also temporarily chaired the state Democratic Party in 2008 after its chairman was fatally shot in his office.

Pryor was one of the state’s most beloved figures, praised by Republicans and Democrats. Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and former Gov. Jim Guy Tucker were among the mourners with family and friends at the rotunda Friday as Pryor’s casket lay in state at the Arkansas Capitol.

Despite all the work Pryor did, Clinton said Pryor always felt like he could do more.

“He proved it by the votes he cast, the actions he took, the speeches he made and the life he put together after he left office,” Clinton said. “And when you run the score up, there’s a lot of people who are better off because David Pryor lived. And all of us that were along for the ride, we’re better off, too, aren’t we?”

WASHINGTON (AP) —

The war in Gaza spurred large protests outside a glitzy roast with President Joe Biden, journalists, politicians and celebrities Saturday but went all but unmentioned by participants inside, with Biden instead using the annual White House correspondents’ dinner to make both jokes and grim warnings about Republican rival Donald Trump’s fight to reclaim the U.S. presidency.

An evening normally devoted to presidents, journalists and comedians taking outrageous pokes at political scandals and each other often seemed this year to illustrate the difficulty of putting aside the coming presidential election and the troubles in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Biden opened his roast with a direct but joking focus on Trump, calling him “sleepy Don,” in reference to a nickname Trump had given the president previously.

Despite being similar in age, Biden said, the two presidential hopefuls have little else in common. “My vice president actually endorses me,” Biden said. Former Trump Vice President Mike Pence has refused to endorse Trump’s reelection bid.

But the president quickly segued to a grim speech about what he believes is at stake this election, saying that another Trump administration would be even more harmful to America than his first term.

“We have to take this serious — eight years ago we could have written it off as ‘Trump talk’ but not after January 6,” Biden told the audience, referring to the supporters of Trump who stormed the Capitol after Biden defeated Trump in the 2020 election.

Trump did not attend Saturday’s dinner and never attended the annual banquet as president. In 2011, he sat in the audience, and glowered through a roasting by then-President Barack Obama of Trump’s reality-television celebrity status. Obama’s sarcasm then was so scalding that many political watchers linked it to Trump’s subsequent decision to run for president in 2016.

Biden’s speech, which lasted around 10 minutes, made no mention of the ongoing war or the growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

One of the few mentions came from Kelly O’Donnell, president of the correspondents’ association, who briefly noted some 100 journalists killed in Israel’s 6-month-old war against Hamas in Gaza. In an evening dedicated in large part to journalism, O’Donnell cited journalists who have been detained across the world, including Americans Evan Gershkovich in Russia and Austin Tice, who is believed to be held in Syria. Families of both men were in attendance as they have been at previous dinners.

To get inside Saturday’s dinner, some guests had to hurry through hundreds of protesters outraged over the mounting humanitarian disaster for Palestinian civilians in Gaza. They condemned Biden for his support of Israel’s military campaign and Western news outlets for what they said was undercoverage and misrepresentation of the conflict.

“Shame on you!” protesters draped in the traditional Palestinian keffiyeh cloth shouted, running after men in tuxedos and suits and women in long dresses holding clutch purses as guests hurried inside for the dinner.

“Western media we see you, and all the horrors that you hide,” crowds chanted at one point.

Other protesters lay sprawled motionless on the pavement, next to mock-ups of flak vests with “press” insignia.

Ralliers cried “Free, free Palestine.” They cheered when at one point someone inside the Washington Hilton — where the dinner has been held for decades — unfurled a Palestinian flag from a top-floor hotel window.

Criticism of the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s military offensive in Gaza has spread through American college campuses, with students pitching encampments and withstanding police sweeps in an effort to force their universities to divest from Israel. Counterprotests back Israel’s offensive and complain of antisemitism.

Biden’s motorcade Saturday took an alternate route from the White House to the Washington Hilton than in previous years, largely avoiding the crowds of demonstrators.

Saturday’s event drew nearly 3,000 people. Celebrities included Academy Award winner Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Scarlett Johansson, Jon Hamm and Chris Pine.

Both the president and comedian Colin Jost, who spoke after Biden, made jabs at the age of both the candidates for president. “I’m not saying both candidates are old. But you know Jimmy Carter is out there thinking, ‘maybe I can win this thing,’” Jost said. “He’s only 99.”

Law enforcement, including the Secret Service, instituted extra street closures and other measures to ensure what Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said would be the “highest levels of safety and security for attendees.”

Protest organizers said they aimed to bring attention to the high numbers of Palestinian and other Arab journalists killed by Israel’s military since the war began in October.

More than two dozen journalists in Gaza wrote a letter last week calling on their colleagues in Washington to boycott the dinner altogether.

“The toll exacted on us for merely fulfilling our journalistic duties is staggering,” the letter stated. “We are subjected to detentions, interrogations, and torture by the Israeli military, all for the ‘crime’ of journalistic integrity.”

One organizer complained that the White House Correspondents’ Association — which represents the hundreds of journalists who cover the president — largely has been silent since the first weeks of the war about the killings of Palestinian journalists. WHCA did not respond to a request for comment.

According to a preliminary investigation released Friday by the Committee to Protect Journalists, nearly 100 journalists have been killed covering the war in Gaza. Israel has defended its actions, saying it has been targeting militants.

“Since the Israel-Gaza war began, journalists have been paying the highest price — their lives — to defend our right to the truth. Each time a journalist dies or is injured, we lose a fragment of that truth,” CPJ Program Director Carlos Martínez de la Serna said in a statement.

Sandra Tamari, executive director of Adalah Justice Project, a U.S.-based Palestinian advocacy group that helped organize the letter from journalists in Gaza, said “it is shameful for the media to dine and laugh with President Biden while he enables the Israeli devastation and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.”

In addition, Adalah Justice Project started an email campaign targeting 12 media executives at various news outlets — including The Associated Press — expected to attend the dinner who previously signed onto a letter calling for the protection of journalists in Gaza.

“How can you still go when your colleagues in Gaza asked you not to?” a demonstrator asked guests heading in. “You are complicit.”

___ Associated Press writers Mike Balsamo, Aamer Madhani, Fatima Hussein and Tom Strong contributed to this report.