Hundreds of Meat Pies, Trays of Kibbeh: How Communities Are Keeping College Campus Protesters Fed

At universities like Columbia, Emory, and City College New York, thousands of students protesting the war in Gaza are camping out and refusing to leave until university administrators meet their demands, which largely focus on divestment from corporations that conduct business with Israel. Hundreds of students have been arrested, campus lockdowns have been initiated, and there have been reports of violence toward protestors and harassment of students. But in the midst of everything, everyone has to eat.

Since the first protest began at Columbia on April 17, Abdul Elenani, the co-owner of acclaimed New York City Palestinian restaurant Ayat, has spent much of the last two weeks preparing and delivering thousands of meals to protesting students in the city and beyond. Elenani isn’t a college student, but he first visited the encampments at New York University and Columbia with the Palestinian photojournalist Motaz Azaiza, who was there documenting the protests and the universities’ draconian reaction to them. “Once I found out that these students were actually living on campus and making that sacrifice, I knew I had to step in to support them,” Elenani says.

Elenani’s restaurant whipped up 600 shawarma sandwiches for its first delivery, along with dozens of trays of kibbeh, spinach pies, and meat pies for protesters at Columbia. Later, he delivered pots of maklouba to more than 300 protesters at NYU. In the coming days, he plans to head to Harvard in Massachusetts and Princeton in New Jersey to feed protesters living in encampments at those campuses. When Eater spoke with Elenani around lunchtime on May 1, he was driving to feed protesters at One Police Plaza, the city’s law enforcement headquarters, who were demanding the release of City College of New York students who had been arrested for protesting on campus. “We originally planned to deliver dinner, around 6 p.m., but when I found out that the protests were moving to One Police Plaza, I had my kitchen expedite the pots [of maklouba] so I could get them there as soon as possible,” he says.

For the protesters, who are barricading themselves inside buildings and living in tents pitched in courtyards, the question of how to feed themselves is paramount. And people like Elenani are stepping up to help across the country by donating food, cash, and supplies to keep the movement going in the face of incredible pushback from those in power.

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In Evanston, Illinois, where protesters started camping out on Northwestern University’s Deering Meadow on April 25, activists Taylor Yates and Navi Valentine have delivered more than 2,000 meals to protestors. Their organization Welcome Home Kitchens, which they started a couple of months ago to provide free meals and direct mutual aid to queer people in the Chicago area, had sent a Welcome Home Kitchens staffer to campus to survey the need. At first, WHK’s effort was ad hoc, raising cash to order hundreds of meals from DoorDash and pick up lunch at local restaurants. Eventually, it evolved into a full-fledged feeding operation at the protests, complete with a complicated spreadsheet to track the food it hands out to recipients. The organization still feeds the broader community, Yates says, but over the past few weeks, it’s focused largely on feeding protesters.

When not ordering from local restaurants, Yates cooked the food themself, packing hearty dishes like white bean chili and pad thai into individual bags alongside face masks, COVID tests, and goodies like mood rings. They also prepared meals that were decidedly sophisticated for a protest setting, like BLT sandwiches slathered in truffle aioli. “We’ve had sweet cream custard cornbread, I made a tamarind Pop-Tart that was absolutely fucking insane,” they say. “We’ve made scallion pancakes, we’re getting free nonalcoholic beverages from our community. It’s been incredible.”

On April 30, a group of activists met with Northwestern University administrators and reached a deal to “deescalate” the protests in the coming days. According to the Daily Northwestern, most of the tents have been removed from Deering Meadow in compliance with the agreement, creating an uneasy truce between protesters and administrators. It’s a decision that many involved in the protests don’t approve of, but it does provide the opportunity for some much-needed rest for Welcome Home Kitchens workers who are now butting up against burnout. The organization is currently working to raise $3,000 that it will use for a retreat to decompress and strategize for the future. “Right now, I feel like our role is to step back a little bit, because we’re prone to overworking ourselves and burning out,” Yates says. “We have to set boundaries.”

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In Richardson, a suburb of Dallas, organizers with Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Texas at Dallas set up an encampment in the early hours of May 1 that they called Gaza Solidarity Plaza, demanding that UTD divest “from five militarism manufacturers and war profiteers that have been enabling the ongoing genocide in Gaza,” according to the Dallas Morning News. (In late March, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories issued a report that found “reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating Israel’s commission of genocide is met.” Israel “utterly reject[ed]” the report, and the U.N.’s International Court of Justice continues to litigate cases involving the Genocide Convention.)

The Dallas encampment’s tents and awnings were largely in place by 4:30 a.m., and just a few hours later, the protesters were serving a breakfast of hummus and falafel to attendees. “We are taking back space on our campus and creating a community for all of us to engage in direct action and confront our campus with the genocide that our university is profiting from,” says Noor Saleh, an SJP organizer, who spoke with Eater from the encampment before Department of Public Safety officers dressed in riot gear dismantled it that afternoon. “We have really seen the power of our community and the support that we have when it comes to advocating for Palestine. We have been very blessed by business owners who have donated hot meals for us, because that’s very needed. It allows us to sustain our protesters.”

Saleh declined to name restaurant donors, saying that they have asked to remain anonymous to avoid using the protests as a promotional opportunity. “They want to emphasize the action that we are taking, and to support it without taking the spotlight off the purpose of our action,” she says. “Dallas has a large Muslim and Arab demographic, and I really want to emphasize that it’s this community that is sustaining us. That’s an incredibly powerful thing.”

Feeding the hundreds of people who showed up required coordination. SJP’s Supply and Care Committee handled supply runs, picking up food and other necessities for distribution. There were gluten-free and vegetarian options available at the buffet-style meals, and a process for handling food allergies and other dietary concerns. A centralized food distribution area served the meals and snacks, while other spots in the encampment hosted a community library and space for making art. And of course, there were a lot of people sharing meals together, an experience that offers the encampment’s residents a distinct opportunity to connect and reflect.

“To sit in a common space and share a meal gives you room for conversation and building bonds,” Saleh says. “It’s also a moment to recognize our incredible privilege. As we establish an encampment with tents on our campus, 1.4 million Palestinians in Rafah are displaced in tents. We have the privilege of having meals provided for us, whereas they’re finding it a struggle to obtain their next meal. Recognizing that inspires you to stay steadfast in the action that you’re taking, and to stay consistent in your demands.”

Though several encampments have been cleared for now, organizers say the movement itself will continue to grow. After police dismantled the encampment at UTD, the protests continued at the nearby Collin County Jail, where activists gathered to demand the release of students, professors, and supporters who were arrested on campus that day. And across the country, encampments continued to pop up at campuses like Dartmouth College and the University of Kansas, despite the crackdowns. “Our encampment declares that there will be no business as usual on our campus until there is justice in Palestine,” SJP at Kansas said in a statement demanding divestment.

And as long as there are protesters, there will need to be food, and Elenani is committed to sticking it out for the foreseeable future. “The students feel like they have no choice because they’re tired of their country funding a damn genocide,” Elenani says. “And it’s working, it’s bringing a lot of attention, even to the Israeli government and to Netanyahu himself. I have no idea how things will end up, but I’m going to keep feeding until the students accept the solutions their universities offer them. As long as it’s what the students want, then I’m in support.”

Disclosure: Eater senior editor Jesse Sparks is related to Taylor Yates and did not participate in this reporting.