Hello everyone, this is Michael Moore and this is my podcast.
Welcome. Thank you for joining me.
Well, it's another crazy week. I should just record that line
once and just put it on a continuous loop and begin every
podcast this way. But on each week, I I don't
know, I keep hoping, well, OK, I think we've hit the total limit
of madness. And then the next week happens.
So on today's podcast, I've got a special thing I'm going to
play for you from students who been leading the protests on the
campuses and they had a press conference here a couple of
weeks ago a group of them group of colleges.
I never again, I I saw nothing of this on any kind of
mainstream media didn't seem to be covered.
And because we've this podcast has been we've been going to
various campuses and handing the microphone over to the students
so that their voices are heard. I'm going to do that one more
time again here on this podcast. But before we do that, let's
just dig in for a few minutes into what has transpired in the
last week or so. Two main things that seem to
have crossed the line that just when I think we've already
crossed every possible line, then a new line, One that you
would never expect to happen, even even though the line is
being crossed by mega heads and crazy Republicans and vicious
right wingers and white supremacists and whatever, Just,
you know, we've now seen it all starting back in, you know,
2015. That was really long before
that. But my brain can just handle so
much. And then I have to erase things
that were going on in 2003 and onward.
But, and now that I've just said that, see, I've already erased
the fact that I got some nice notes from people this week.
This was the 20th anniversary of US winning the Palm Door, the
top prize at the Cannes Film Festival for Fahrenheit 9/11.
And normally, you know, if this was just a normal podcast, we'd
maybe take a few minutes and celebrate that incredible moment
that a documentary film was awarded the top prize in Cannes
and what that meant and what it did and everything that happened
in the weeks and months after that.
And maybe I'll find a moment or two during this 20th anniversary
year for Fahrenheit 9/11 and share some of that with you.
Things that I always thought, someday I'll put this in a book
and I will, but I maybe I'll just, I'll share it with you,
the podcast listeners here, 'cause you've been such a good,
a good group of people. I love hearing from you.
I read all your letters. I read all your comments.
Occasionally I'm able to reply, but I hate to even promise you
that because I'm just so busy with, you know, the various
things we've got coming up this year and next year.
And I know you'd rather me be doing my day job, so we'll get
to all of that. But thanks to those who sent me
something nice about the 20th anniversary of our palm door
when and can that means a lot. So I just wanted to just say a
couple things about this week because.
And I just thought, why are you putting off telling them what
you want to say? And I thought, well, yeah,
because it's not that I'm scared, it's just that I realize
we're in a heap of, it's not trouble, it's worse than
trouble. We've got an ugly year right now
that we're in, that we're facing.
And well, I don't put anything past Trump or his cohorts this
past week, these two things that happened really reminded me
that, oh, that's right, we're in a big mess and the mess is
staring us right in the eye. It really did it to me this
week. And I thought, well, I've got to
really think about how do we deal with this?
How do we, the majority. That's everybody who believes
that women should have the right to control their own bodies,
Everybody who believes that what's happening to our earth is
actually happening. That's everybody who believes
that $7.25 an hour is not anything near a living wage.
In fact, it's enforced poverty. That's the majority of us, 5560.
Five, 75% of us, in some cases 90% of us.
When it comes to wanting more gun control laws or wanting
more, I mean, the vast majority of Americans agree with what I'm
saying right now. 20 years ago, not so much. 30, 30-40 years
ago. Well, I know it was a little
lonely out on that limb, but that's OK, I thought.
I thought what I believed in was right.
And and a lot of you did too. And we all kind of stuck
together. And then here we are now we're
the majority majority of Americans agree with us.
And that has frightened, frightened the white, Christian,
former majority of this country. And they're not going to go away
quietly. And they made that very clear
this week. Two stories that appeared in the
press this week #1. Unbeknownst to any of us,
though, somebody must have known 'cause.
This happened over three years ago, after the vicious, violent
attempt to overthrow the election of 2020.
On January 610, days after that, Supreme Court Justice Samuel
Alito had a flag on his flagpole in the yard of his beautiful
house in the DC area had a flag that had become, in those short
couple of weeks, the symbol for the January 6th rioters.
Because so many of them have been arrested, they were going
to be put on trial. So this what they called
themselves. The stop the steal moment, the
stealing meeting, stealing the election, stop the steal.
Their symbol became flying the American flag upside down, and
all of a sudden tons of right wingers around the country,
including in DC, started flying the American flag upside down.
And this past week, photos, video surfaces of the Alito home
with its Stop the steel upside down flag flying at his home, a
justice, a conservative right wing justice of the Supreme
Court who at that time was and would become involved with
having to hear all of Trump's appeals because he was claiming
that the election was stolen from him.
So while he's hearing all this, while it's going between
different appeals courts and then some of it went up to the
Supreme Court and he's voting on this stuff just like with
Clarence Thomas, his wife having been part of the January 6th
uprising. And he's just very publicly
flying this, this flag upside down in support of, I would
assume, the thousands of other people around the country who
are doing the same thing, standing up for the those who
got arrested on January 6th. This is a justice of the Supreme
Court. This is a justice who's going to
hear the things that are before the court right now regarding
these trials that Trump is in the middle of.
They have the power to stop these these trials, except for
the one that's going on right now this month, the hush money
trial in New York. That's a state trial, but the
other ones are federal and they could just shut this sucker
right down. Why didn't we know about this?
Why didn't those pictures surface?
Why are we finding out now that one of the 9 justices and two if
you want to throw Thomas into that crowd, is maybe perhaps
also part of these group of traitors, people who are calling
for the overthrow and the overturn of a legitimate, much
investigated national election for President of the United
States. How freaking scary is that?
What are we going to have to face in these coming months?
I mean, it's one thing to say that, well, this, this justice
believes in this. And you know, I believe in that.
And we have a difference of opinion.
But when they're active participants or if they say now
Alito has come out, he's using the Clarence Thomas excuse.
Oh, that was just my wife there, there in the, you know, at the
big rally there on January 6th that became the violent uprising
she was. That was my wife.
That wasn't me. Now, Alito was saying that I
think my wife went out there and put the flag up there upside
down. I mean, really, I mean, you
don't even have the courage to just admit that it was you.
Well, of course, you know, I guess the lawyers would say.
Now, Mike, you got to be sure and say, well, you don't know
it's really him. You don't have any evidence that
he was flying the flag, even though it was on his flagpole in
a house that he owns. But you know, he probably owns
it with his wife. So let's blame the wife.
I don't give a rat's ass right now.
We are on to you, all of us. The majority of Americans are on
to you, Justice Alito. How dare you even have that word
justice now in your name and your title?
We're on to you. We're on to Clarence Thomas.
We know what Trump's going to do.
He's already told us because he's so friggin stupid.
He's already told us what he's going to do on day one.
And then, a few days later, this past week, the Governor of
Texas, Governor Abbott, pardoned and is releasing a murderer, a
man who shot a Black Lives Matter protester back in 2021.
He shot the man because, well, he first of all decided to run
his. I forget if it was a car or a
pickup truck through a large group of demonstrators.
Basically it seemed to the police trying to run them over.
And so some of the protesters surrounded his vehicle to stop
him from doing any more harm. And because being Texas, you
know, you can have a gun on you, a visible gun in a holster or a
strap. And I guess this protester was
obeying the law by having an open carry, a weapon that he
wasn't threatening anybody would didn't point it at this guy and
the guy just took his gun there in the car and blew the guy
away. This is where we live.
But a governor, I mean, is all the bad things that Abbott has
done, scummy type stuff. All the migrants that he's put
on buses just to drop them off in the middle of cities up
north, pardoning A convicted murderer.
He's convicted by a jury pardoning him and letting him
go. What's the message there to the
other crazed MAGA people? That they can kill somebody who
opposes what they stand for and get away with it.
That's the message of this past week.
I know, I know. You can see what's going on.
You can see they're getting ready.
They're getting ready in part because they know that no matter
what the polls say, Trump, they're worried he's not going
to make it. They're not going to make the
mistake they made last time. Matthew Gates, that crazy
Republican representative from Florida in the US House, tweeted
out a thing to Trump this week, saying something to the effect
of Mr. President. Don't worry, we're standing back
and standing by. But Trump, as you remember a
number of years ago, told the white supremacist groups he was
appreciative of their efforts. Just hang on.
I'll let you know when I need you.
So that was this week. And in the middle of all this,
you've got President Biden going from one week saying to the
Israelis, I told you not to invade the city of Rafah in
Gaza. So I'm gonna put a hold on our
weapons to you, which sounded great.
And then a week later, he's changed his mind again and
sending them immediately a billion dollars worth of weapons
to the Israelis. Wow.
I know. It's like, this is the point
where you turn off the podcast just like you turn off the TV.
Just like I all of us turn off the TV.
We don't watch this anymore. We don't listen to it.
But we can't stick our heads in the sand either, can we?
And I have a lot of faith in the fact that the good and good
people are outnumbering the not so good people right now.
And we just have to get through this.
We have to get through this year and we have to listen to our our
youth, our young people. We have to listen to the women
of America who've been made second class citizens 23 months
ago by this very Supreme Court. We have to listen to the people
who are the victims of white supremacy and white privilege
for well, for a very, very, very long time.
But that's our majority women, youth, people of color, you know
right there that's I would say close to 70% of the country.
That's our side. People don't believe in
violence. People believe in democracy, and
especially believe that we never actually really got to have the
full democracy that was promised 250 years ago, that we have more
work to do. So listen, I'm going to thank
our underwriter for today's episode.
And then in a minute or so here, come back to you with the voices
of the college students. I had a press conference that
they held a couple of weeks ago. I kept waiting for to see some
coverage of it in the mainstream media.
Haven't seen it. So I will bring it to you here
on this podcast and it'll only be another 20-30 minutes.
So please come back, stick with me here and listen to our
college students who have been absolutely incredible and I've
had to suffer a lot of smearing and slander and whatever.
But but you know by now we know when our our leg is being
pulled, right? We know when we're being lied
to. We know when all the PR people
of spending the money they spend to put out a a narrative that
isn't true, Yeah, we're on to all of it.
So we just have to hang in there.
We just have to get through this year.
It doesn't mean there isn't work to do next year, but we'll do
the good kind of work that's been put off for far too long.
The stuff that will take us to that place where we'll be a full
democracy, where no group of people is a second class
citizen. Come on, we're already most of
the way there. We just have the people that
have held power for so long, unhappy that they're not going
to have that kind of power for much longer.
They will have power still there.
They'll they'll still be rich and they'll still get the same
number of votes. You or I get 1.
So it's not like we're gonna take their voting rights away
from them. They're just not gonna run the
country anymore in the sort of white, male, Christian way that
things have always been done. And they know that.
They know that the clock is ticking, The time is running
out. And sorry, not sorry.
We're going to make this country and this planet a better place.
We have no choice. So let me take a moment here to
thank our underwriters for today's episode.
First up is Shopify. Thank you, Shopify, for
supporting my work. If you've been thinking about
starting your own business, if you're looking for a little help
to grow the one you've got, if you got a nonprofit you want to
get out there to the world, check out Shopify.
It's the platform online platform where your nonprofit
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or I mean it's been around now for quite some time, it's in 175
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that can help people like you or me.
I've used them, tools that will help them succeed with this in
in ways that you know you don't have to be a multinational
corporation. Whether you're looking to launch
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whether you're hoping to make your first sale or maybe your
millionth sale, they've got you covered.
Sign up for a $1.00 per month trial period at
shopify.com/rumble and that's all Lower case Rumble RU, MB,
LE, go to shopify.com/rumble now to grow your business no matter
what stage you're in. shopify.com/rumble and thank you
Shopify for supporting this podcast and for supporting my
voice. Our other underwriter today is
Moink. Now most of you who are faithful
listeners to my podcast or maybe some of you are Shark Tank fans,
you know all about Moink. They're the meat subscription
service that delivers grass fed beef and lamb, pastured pork and
chicken and fresh caught Alaskan salmon straight to your door.
For all you listeners that do eat meat this I'm sure it's
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meat is coming from and how the animals were treated.
With moink, you don't have to wonder.
All moink farmers raise their animals outdoors on grass and no
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So keep your money out of the pockets of big agriculture and
keep American farming going by signing up at
moinkbox.com/rumble. OK, that's Moink box.com/rumble.
And right now listeners of this podcast get free bacon for a
year. That's one year of the best
bacon you'll ever taste, but it's only for a limited time.
It's spelled Moink, MOINK, Moink Box, box.com/rumble,
moinkbox.com/rumble. OK, let's roll the tape here of
this incredible press conference.
There were students there from colleges in New York City that
it had or it still have encampments at City College,
City University of New York, Columbia.
And I was just so impressed with what they had to say.
And I wanted everybody to be able to to hear it in their
words. What you've heard maybe in some
of the media about things that they've been saying on these
campuses. It's one lie after another being
told about these kids. And you know, you know, they're
18/19/2023 years old. These kids are smart.
They're really smart, you know, And some of you listening to
this, you already know that too, 'cause you raise them, you raise
them to be good people, to question authority, to not be a
homophobe or a misogynist or a bigot of any kind.
So nobody should be surprised at any of this.
They have taken on a a very difficult job to stand up for
the Palestinian people. Enough of me, I want you to
listen to these college students and what they had to say at this
incredibly powerful press conference a couple weeks ago.
I'll turn it over to them right now. 20,000 people.
Dead 40, 1000 people. Dead. 20,000
people dead. We don't want to.
Do not engage with agitators. That is not the purpose.
And reason. We are here and reason.
We are. Here the reason we are, here the
reason we. Are here is to.
Free Palestine. Free.
Palestine.
Free. Free.
Palestine, everyone, we're going to begin now.
There's a press conference that has been called between CUNY and
Colombia. Both student groups organized
encampments on their campuses as part of the movement to liberate
Palestine, to end the genocide in Palestine and the occupation.
And we're going to go through the speakers.
And at the end, if we have time, we'll take a few questions.
On the 207th day of genocide in Gaza, pro Palestinian student
activists struck a decisive blow to Israel by exposing Columbia
University's use of violence to protect their investments in
Israel's vicious assault on Palestinians.
After having ignited a global movement hereby dubbed the
student Intifada by Palestinians in Gaza, the shocking police
violence we all witnessed on Columbia's campus followed the
student decision to escalate after the university repeatedly
attempted to use force to extract concessions in
negotiations. On Monday, a group of autonomous
protesters took over the university's historic
administrative building on campus without the use of any
physical violence and renamed it Hinds Hall in memory of Hind
Rajab, a modern 6 year old Palestinian girl who was
violently murdered by the Israeli occupation forces in
Gaza. We honour Hind to call attention
to Israel's systematic disregard for Palestinian lives after
Israeli soldiers prevented an emergency medical crew from
reaching Hind and rescuing her as she sheltered in a car
surrounded by the dead bodies of her family who were murdered by
the IOF. Columbia's surreal response to
the protesters nonviolent takeover of Hinds Hall turned
our campus into a war zone. The university called the NYPD
to storm campus with militarized police brutally attacking and
arresting over 100 students with multiple hospitalizations.
The NYPD then removed our peaceful encampment on the lawn,
destroying our belongings, tents, artwork and the community
where we have spent the last 13 days sharing meals, praying and
protesting for liberation. Columbia's attempt to oppress
the movement only strengthens our resolve.
We are not finished. There is a reason why the
student LED movement has garnered unstoppable momentum on
campuses worldwide. Because we stand on the right
side of history. We stand for humanity and we
will not rest until Palestine is free.
The protesters defending Hinz Hall belong to a rich, beautiful
legacy of civil disobedience at Columbia.
Indeed, on April 30th, 1968, nearly 700 anti war student
protesters at Columbia met the brutal force of state violence
for taking over the same building, now named Hinz Hall.
On the 56th anniversary of that day, to the very same day of the
week, we met the same militarized adversaries with the
resolved fiercer than before. The brave protesters in Hinz
Hall put themselves in harm's way to force Columbia to divest.
In response, Columbia University broke every written and
unwritten rule of university norms by inviting a SWAT team
and hundreds of armed riot cops, including the Vicious Strategic
Response Group, to invade Columbia's classrooms.
They invaded Columbia's classrooms, barricaded students
and pressed alike inside their dorms, and brutalized hundreds
of us with metal equipment, Tasers, flash grenades, and
batons. Over 100 students were arrested.
At least one student was hospitalized due to injuries
from the NYPD. Video footage shows police
shoving students to the ground, Tasers crackling in the
background as our classmates screamed, and a student being
thrown down concrete stairs, leaving her unconscious.
She was then denied medical care by Columbia.
The world sees you clearly, Columbia.
Your only goal, which you will defend at any cost, is to enrich
your endowment at the expense of 40,000 Palestinians martyrs and
every student in your care. We honor the memory of every
university in Gaza destroyed by Israel, and we will continue to
use our education to speak truth to power.
We call on students and faculty worldwide to escalate their
protests. To students and their
supporters, academia is meant to advance our understanding of
humanity. With Gaza as our metric, we call
on you to resist this militant war making status quo.
You must create your own campus agitations.
University business cannot continue as usual amidst A
genocide. Rest assured that history will
absolve many of us, but certainly not all of us.
And to every professor who has expressed shock at the events of
last night, if you do not take action to demand divestment and
an end to police presence on campus by withholding your
labor, you too are complicit. You must do more than make
statements. You must strike.
Do not create exams, do not teach classes.
Our universities, which put profit over life, must grind to
a halt until our demands are met.
Divestment, disclosure and end to campus militarization and
amnesty for all the student The student revolution will help
free Palestine within our lifetime.
Thank you. On the afternoon of April 30th,
City College, following the despicable actions we've seen at
Columbia, warn these students and faculty and community
members that the encampment must be dismantled by the morning of
May 1st. At approximately 11:00 PM,
without warning, CCNY President Vincent Boudreaux requested the
NYPD to enter the encampment to arrest students and faculty.
He claimed to do this in the interests of student safety,
because students and workers united protesting pose a safety
risk. Protesters stood their ground as
SRG officers came in with their batons and their Mace.
They stood in their ground as they swarmed and viciously
attacked them. SRG police broke the ankle of an
undergraduate student, broke the teeth of two protesters,
attacked and burned many students, faculty and at least
one journalist with pepper spray at close range, and they beat
many more with batons. Legal observers were denied
entry, and amongst some of the very first people to be arrested
was a faculty member who had been in negotiations with the
president and the vice chancellor.
Moments ago, 173 arrests were made at City College, a
university that champions brown and black students, that uses
the labor of brown and black students to advance its
reputation. A university of the people that
is supposed to be for the people.
And as officers made their way into campus, brave students
managed to occupy the finance office of Howard E
administration building. In a final act of resistance,
the students held the building for over an hour until they were
violently removed and arrested. We salute those brave,
autonomous students and we salute each and every single
person standing up to this genocidal machine.
We remind the larger community that we are protesting not to
assert our First Amendment rights, but we are protesting to
end this genocide. We are protesting to call for a
dismantling of Zionism, which includes complete divestment.
SRG violence is not new to us. It is not novel.
We are. Accustomed to these threats of
intimidation, we are accustomed to this violence, and we know
that it is an attempt to plant fear in our hearts.
But we remind students all over the globe that together we are
stronger than they are. We call on CUNY students
everywhere, and we call on students in every corner of this
country to resist, to stand tall and proud, to resist.
Because as we are protesting. People.
In Rafa, in tents are being bombed by the Zionist entity.
As we are protesting, there are children in Qaza dying of heat
and starvation. As we are protesting, there are
people who are being bombed with our tax money and our tuition.
And so, as CUNY students, CUNY alum, and as part of the CUNY
community, we remind people that as of 2016, CUNY was invested in
at least 1.1 million in weapons manufacturer companies.
And as of 2016, CUNY was invested in nearly 8.5 million
in companies that either aid or profit from the ongoing
occupation of Palestinians. And so, if CUNY does not like
our encampments, if CUNY does not like the images of our
encampments, if we are disturbing their peace, then we
tell them that they must divest. They must stop disturbing the
lives of the Palestinian people. We remind the president and the
larger CUNY community and all media correspondents, we remind
everyone who set Raza on fire that we will not rest.
We will not rest. We will not rest until they
divest and until the Zionist entity falls.
I'd like to begin by saying that our protest, our encampment, the
occupation of Hint Hall, formerly known as Hamilton Hall,
was a blessing in disguise for Columbia University.
It was an opportunity for them to recognize a moment in which
they could choose to divest, a moment in which they could
choose to clarify their position on one of the most important
moral questions of our lifetime. Columbia University was too
blind, too blind, based on its money, its endowment, its
capitalist interests, It's its priority of profit over life,
its alignment with congressional pressure and US geopolitical
interests too blind to recognize this opportunity.
Instead, Columbia University chose to condemn its students
who are standing on the side of justice.
And this will be a stain on its legacy, which we will not let it
forget. Not today, not tomorrow, and not
for the next few decades. Throughout our two weeks of
negotiations with this university, we were consistently
met with bad faith negotiating, despite the fact that the
university claims that they had constructive dialogue with
students. Yesterday, under threat of law
enforcement, the university Senate members reached out
again, asking us to accept a deal that was far removed from
what students demanded. Though our demands were
divestment, disclosure and amnesty.
The university gave us nothing more than bureaucracy, nothing
more than proposals, nothing more than speculation that one
day soon maybe they would consider divesting.
Shay. While law enforcement was
descending on the campus, students were joyful.
They were not afraid. They were not cowed in fear by
their university because they knew that they were taking the
principled ground. They refused to accept a deal
that would disgrace their movement.
They refused to accept capitulation, and they took the
moral high ground. They refused to allow the
university to to say that they had come to agreement with us.
Our students sang songs saying that they will not be moved
unless by force, knowing that they were being watched by the
eyes of children in Gaza who write our names on their tents,
who who say Columbia University who say Cooney is protesting for
them. Our students remain principled,
remain strong, remain tenacious in the face of police violence,
in the face of brutalization, and in the face of bad faith
negotiating by their university thank.
You. As a Palestinian American
student at Columbia University, especially as someone who has
lost family members, I have experienced consistent
dehumanization from media outlets and from Columbia's own
administration. We are regularly treated as if
we are national security threats for simply being against the
bombing of our relatives. That is done with our tax
dollars. It should not be controversial
to say that you were against the death of over 40,000 people.
It's honestly it. Colombia has been such a
challenging place to grieve for me as a student.
I just lost another cousin last week.
I've lost over 15 members of my extended family.
My family members are some of the last Palestinian Christians
in Gaza. They have nowhere left to go.
And I'm not the only student that has lost family.
There are students here who have lost thirty family members, 20
family members. We are all grieving.
I'm just saying, and the university does not care.
They want to appease their donors and trustees so bad that
they are willing to use systematic violence against us
and they think it's OK. This is not OK.
This is not acceptable. Regardless of whether or not you
agree with the encampment or whether or not you agree with
people occupying a building, students should not be brutally
attacked by the NYPDI. Also want to call out some
specific outlets, specifically CNN and the New York Times.
Your coverage has been horrific of Palestinian students and of
what what we are dealing with at Columbia.
Reporters were laughing yesterday, CNN reporters when
talking about showing the faces of students.
We are receiving death threats. I am receiving break threats.
We have been constantly harassed and the media is subjecting us
to more violence just so they can get clicks and views.
We are we are students. We are human beings.
We are not your content, and it has been beyond frustrating as
someone who has greatly admired media, who wanted to be a
journalist when I was younger to be treated like this.
Members of the media such as Anderson Cooper from CNN, he was
repeating rumors our reporters at WKCR were doing a better job
of verifying the facts than the professional journalists out
there. As a journalist, you have a
responsibility to the people you cover, and many people have
neglected that and ignored that so they can sell a story.
Shame they thought we fucking shot someone, were the recorded
text messages on a police officer's phone on Columbia
University's campus Tuesday night and posted on Twitter.
This was one of many officers who also denied all medical
access to a student that they knocked unconscious. 2 weeks
after being arrested myself and on the 56th anniversary of
Columbia's brutal arrest of over 700 students protesting the
Vietnam War and gentrification of Harlem, I was pushed and
barricaded into John Jay by riot police called onto campus by
Earth administrators. Yet again, I watched as an EMT
pleaded to be allowed to treat students as police, laughed and
turned off their body cameras, and as press were prevented from
bearing witness. Columbia and the cops
collaborated to brutalize my classmates in the dark for
standing up for what is right. The mainstream media is
currently lying about outside detractors and overblowing
property damage in order to justify brutality and distract
from their complicity and genocide, just as they did with
the Civil Rights Movement, Black Lives Matter, and every other
social movement for change. I was posting videos of the
police throwing tables and breaking windows in real time
yesterday. To be clear, the police caused
far more property damage and physical endangerment than my
classmates ever did. Shave.
There is not a single student
LED uprising in history met with severe state sanctioned violence
that did not end up being right. Frankly, I am tired of press
conferences performing Palestinian drama to the
American public. How many more children have to
be trapped under the rubble of our bombs for you all to wake
up? History will not look kindly
upon you. 6 year old Hendra Job's name will be memorialized
in textbooks and on Colombia's website one day.
Her story is just one of the over 40,000 slaughtered
Palestinians that we could not possibly name enough buildings
after. As we speak, Israel was invading
Rafa, a location that previously designated a safe zone.
Last week President Joe Biden sent $14.1 billion to fund more
genocide money that could be used to fund our Healthcare is
being funneled to destroy the last standing hospitals in Gaza.
We Americans are the most complicit and the worst
atrocities of modern history. We refuse to be distracted from
genocide. My message to the Columbia
University administration and the United States government is
this. When the tide inevitably
finishes turning and your investment in moral bankruptcy
is no longer politically profitable, understand that you
have always been the villains. And when Palestine is finally
free, we, your students, will never, ever forgive you.
We will not stop fighting. This is only the beginning.
Let us be clear. The attacks yesterday on
students were not only an attack on a head full of students, it
was an assault on the very foundations of freedom and
democracy. Hundreds of our community
members were unjustly imprisoned last night, their only crime
being the defense of justice against the monstrous tyranny of
Zionism. Genocidal agenda.
We say over and over again, our leaders are complicit.
They are not here to help us. Power is with the people and we
keep us safe and we will keep Ghazda safe and we will keep all
of those who are oppressed safe. And I ask you all if you are
covering the student protests, if you are covering the street
protests. I asked the media to have some
shame and cover what's happening in Ghazda as well.
Over 40. 1000 innocent Palestinians have been killed to
pursue a terroristic campaign for no just cause.
Over 15,000 children have been seen on social media for the
last six months hanging off of walls, parents carrying their
children in plastic bags. Yet the shameful media has only
been covering anti-Semitism, which has not been proven.
Yesterday in California at UCLAA, group of hundreds of
Zionists terrorists, domestic terrorists, attack students
peacefully protesting on their college campus.
That is an act of terrorism. So once you start calling out
what's really going on or what we're protesting, stay the fuck
off of our campuses. So.
We do not trust our institutions to keep us safe.
We trust ourselves and our community to keep us safe, and
I'm calling on my own President Vince Boudreaux and the CUNY
administration who sold us out by calling in the NYPD to
brutalize us for simply condemning A genocide standing
against the genocide last night, which violated their own CUNY
policies. I don't feel safe on my campus,
not after tonight, but even before then.
With the NYPD on our campus, I never felt safe.
We've been protesting for months and I've been hate crimes.
I've been threatened, I've been harassed, and every single time
I quote, UN quote, played by the book and reported it to the
public safety, they ignored it. They swept it under the rug.
So I do not rely on them to keep me safe, or any of us.
I rely on my community. In fact, I've never felt safer
on this campus than how I felt back in the encampments last
night. If you see, it's the most
beautiful society in there. We support each other.
We have little art clubs, little book clubs, mutual aid, food
security, a library for the people, and our encampment is
what it could look like to be liberated.
I will continue to help cultivate these spaces of
liberation in the belly of the beast, and I will continue to
advocate for Palestine and not back down even when all of this
violence continues. Because the only thing I fear is
Allah. Subhanahu at the Allah.
And we will not be intimidated into silence.
In fact, we know that the more they try to silence us, we are
calling for an end to the genocide in the Gaza immediately
and the end of the colonization in Palestine from the river to
the sea. And we will continue to do that
here in Palestine on every part of this earth, because we
declare our right on this earth to be a human being, to be
respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human
being in this society, on this earth on this day, And we intend
to bring that into existence by any means necessary.
To police brutality, we say we are not deterred and we will
win. Columbia will divest to
repression, we say Our numbers will only grow to state
violence. We say we'll become smarter,
stronger, and better prepared to stand on ground to the
Palestinian people. We recommit our love to you and
affirm that our hope and will has never been stronger.
Our people, arrested yesterday, will soon be free and ready to
fight again with even greater insight into the oppressor.
We, the students, will win. From Emory to humble to CUNY, We
will wage. We will wage not only a fight
against the oppressors, but an effort to educate the world on
our government's complicity and the genocide and the sham that
is the American Empire. From the belly of the beast, we
proudly state that we are unafraid.
We are strong, Tomorrow is ours, and victory is nearer than we
imagine. And our hearts are olive trees
that will sprawl passion unlike anything this country has ever
seen. We with our hope, with our
voices, with our hearts and our minds, we'll build a student
movement and we'll take back our campuses for morally corrupt
administrations that disregard humanity for the sake of profit.
We are the students, and we are not afraid.
We will win all of our demands and more.
From Harlem to Palestine, we will win.
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.
Palestine will. Be free.
And we will free Palestine. We will free Palestine within
our lifetime. In our lifetime, from the river
to the sea, Palestine is almost free.
From the river to the sea, Palestine is almost free.
Palestine is almost free.
Thank.
You so much. I.
None. I know.
I'm just grateful for Gen.
Z I'm so moved. My thanks to Angie and Donald
for this podcast. I appreciate all of your good
work and all your help. I'm Michael Moore.
Thanks to all of you for making this happen.
I'll talk to you real soon.