Hello everyone. This is Michael Moore.
This is my podcast. Welcome.
Thank you for joining me again. It's the week of May 6th, 2024,
and this week we're doing sort of a deep dive into the student
protest on campuses across the country.
Anti war protest, anti genocide. Pro Palestinian.
They're called many names. So on Monday on episode one, we
visited the campus of City College of New York, where there
were students from all the City University and City College
campuses in the city of New York gathered into one large
encampment. And we went there just to take
our microphones and give voice to the students there instead of
all the pundits and everybody else, telling us what they stand
for and what they think and what they're doing.
And all the mischaracterizations that immediately become apparent
once you enter their protest. And you see how peaceful it is,
how nonviolent it is, how much the students care about what's
going on in the world, how much they stand for peace, I mean.
But you wouldn't know that to to read or to watch TVA.
Lot of the commentary trashing, smearing these young people or
their outside agitators, which means people of the community,
people who pay taxes, people who are raising their kids.
People live in the neighborhood and want to stop by and support
the students somehow. The new thing now, especially
with the mayor of New York, is these are outside agitators.
The students just ignore all that.
They welcome everybody to come and join them.
They're very smart about how they've organized all this and
they won't stop. The police come in, they tear
down their encampments. Within a day or so, the
encampments are either back up or they move to another location
and then it only grows. Instead of it just being a few
dozen students, it turns into hundreds and then thousands.
Because young people generally don't like war and they don't
like their government backing another warring nation that is
going in and slaughtering civilians, children, women, the
elderly. When I read some of this mail I
get after saying things like that, Well, what about how come
you don't say anything about what happened on October 7th and
said that's all I did was talk about that anytime I went on TVI
asked the host. I'm on live TV, on CNN, on
MSNBC, and I ask if we could we just before we start talking
about this, have a moment of silence to remember those who
were slaughtered on October 7th, those who lost their lives in
Israel. And you know, I can just hear
the control room going, Oh no, with dead air.
But I didn't care. I just thought before I wanted
to talk about any of this, we needed to honor and respect
those who lost their lives on October 7th.
It didn't seem to matter though, because the first minute I would
say anything critical of Netanyahu or what they were
planning to do didn't matter that I cared about those who
died in Israel on October 7th. The sort of the rush of such
anger, the vitriol. You are not to be critical.
You are every 45 seconds supposed to mention the
hostages. It didn't matter how much I
mentioned the hostages. Of course all the hostages
should be released, period, Right.
I subscribe now to three Israeli newspapers, the English language
version of them. It's been amazing to read the
Israeli press. You get a whole different view
of what's going on over there. You get investigative reporting.
You have a a vibrant press there that has No Fear of going after
the Prime Minister, of going after all the lies that the
people of Israel are being told by their own government.
It's just, it's just amazing. I'm just so upset at the way the
news is portraying these protests and a lot of it, I'm.
I'm just counting all the kind of boomer stuff where, you know,
I guess all the older generations, I guess our parents
did this, you know, look down on the younger ones, you know,
because we don't maybe have it as together at 18, you know,
maybe we're not that mature, maybe we shout out dumb stuff.
I don't, you know, I don't know. I guess our parents did that to
us and we just didn't pay any attention to them.
But what's being said about these kids and the people who
are there to support the young people and the faculty and all
the it's just been friggin annoying and I hate lying and
there's so much PR and so much lying going on about these
protests and who the protesters are.
I don't even want to answer some of the things that the names
that they're being called because they stand for
Palestinians. So on Monday's episode, we
essentially turned the microphones over to the
students. And you got to hear in their own
words why they were protesting, what they stand for, what they
hope to accomplish. You saw and heard that these
protests are filled with all kinds of students.
It's very diverse. Black, brown, Asian, white kids,
Jews and Arabs, Muslims, Catholics, Protestants,
atheists, America. And of course it's it's very
moving to see how many Jewish students are at what are called
the pro Palestine demonstrations, A Jewish Voice
for Peace, the student Jewish Peace committees.
It's very moving and you're not being told this, you're not
being told that Jewish and Muslim students are working
together on this anti war campaign to stop Biden from
sending money and arms to Netanyahu.
So that's what we did on on Monday.
If you haven't listened to that podcast, please go back.
I I I have a link for it here on the page.
If you are looking at the page. If you're not, just go to
michaelmoore.com and listen to Monday's podcast.
It's the voices of the students in today's episode, today's
podcast. We're now going to move ahead a
few hours on that on that day. So this is now What you're going
to listen to takes place on the evening of Tuesday the 30th of
April. We were there on the campus of
the City College, which is City College there, this main campus
that's up on like 138th, about 20 blocks north of Columbia
University. And So what you heard on Monday,
obviously very peaceful, very quiet.
And within just a few hours, all hell broke loose.
Not from the students. Students were just there.
They were settling down for the night and all of a sudden the
New York City Police Department shows up and starts to attack
the students, starts to try to tear down their encampment.
And they did the same thing too a few blocks down at at Columbia
University. So what you're going to hear now
for the next 20 minutes or so is the police try to disrupt a
peaceful demonstration. And when I say peaceful, I mean
no harm or injury being caused to another human being.
Protesters weren't doing any of that.
They weren't prohibiting classes from taking place.
They weren't. They were just, they were loud
and there were many of them. And so a massive, massive police
force showed up, started doing violent acts against these
students who did not fight back, did not fight back using weapons
or anything against the police. They were angry and there was a
lot of shouting. They were doing what students
do, especially students who are citizens in a democracy and
believe that their voice should be heard.
So that that's what I'm going to play for you now.
This is, this is a lot of this is being recorded by Angie and
Donald who have been working with me now for a number of
years. And so you'll hear their voices,
mostly Angie. So I'm going to just kind of
turn it over to them And and you can hear what maybe you didn't
get to see on TV or elsewhere, what it was like to be caught in
the middle of a what honestly felt like like you had been just
transported to a police state and you hadn't done anything
wrong other than voice your opposition to this insane,
madding, illegal, immoral war that we are funding, We the
American people. So I'm gonna roll the tape right
now and you can hear first hand what that experience was like
and then I'll come back and and say a few words at the at the
end of it. You're standing outside the
gates of City College here in New York.
It's all blocked off so you can't get inside the encampment.
There's police everywhere, but there's also a massive crowd, as
you can hear rallying outside the gates.
There's about 11:50 students on the other side of the gates that
are leading these chances. There's got to be at least 100
students and community members here participating in this rally
in support of the students inside that are presumably being
arrested right now. What has gone out that the cops
have swept the encampment? See some students over on the
other side that Donald and I talked to at the encampment
earlier today. I'm going to go see if they'll
talk to me, tell me what's going on inside the gates.
Day six of the CUNY Gaza Solidarity Encampment.
We have been here holding City College of New York in Harlem as
students and workers and faculty from almost every one of the 25
CUNY campuses. We are part of more than 40
campus encampments across the country and across the world and
on every continent. And our demands are so simple.
We want an end to university complicity and genocide.
It has been 207 days of genocide in Gaza.
Over 40,000 Palestinians are dead.
Our universities are investing in the weapons being dropped on
my people and we are saying that our universities must divest and
that is why we are holding these encampments and this brutality
that we are seeing here. We have reports of injuries, of
arrests, of students with bones broken, of people with their
teeth broken. There are so many injuries here.
The brutality that is being unleashed on students right now
who are demanding an end to a genocide is unconscionable.
It is absolutely unconscionable. Our demands are simple.
We asked for divestment and disclosure.
We asked for the demilitarization of our campus.
And instead of demilitarization, you have the NYPD coming down
full force not only on CCNY right now, but also on Columbia.
We have seen them be unleashed on the new school in the city.
We are seeing them unleashed on campuses across the country.
We are fighting for liberation. We want liberation and every
single one of these university administrations on the wrong
side of history. The crowd is chanting.
NYPD, KKK, IOF. They're all the same.
I'm a student at CUNY School of Law.
I'm involved with the CUNY Gaza Solidarity encampment.
We're here right now outside the gates of City College, where
there's been an exponential escalation in the law
enforcement response. I've been here in and out of the
encampment since the minute that we launched, and we haven't seen
a law enforcement response that comes anywhere close to this in
in the almost week that we've been up.
They waited days without engaging in this type of
brutalization of student protesters.
And so it was clear that today the way that they've responded.
Was a policy choice. I'm seeing a lot more police
vehicles approaching buses as students chant NYPD out of CUNY
now. They're going.
To kettle people, they're. Going to kettle, people.
Someone's just walking through saying the police are kettling.
If if a cops have an area kettle, that means completely
surrounded. As I look around I see I see
cops on all sides. They just keep kind of
assembling of someone's calling for a mic check
in case you couldn't hear. That news just broke to the
crowd that NYU students have put their tents back up after they
were taken down, NYU students put their tents back up and
everybody is cheering, OK? There's a whole group of of cops
that are moving on to the sidewalk.
The. Police loudspeaker is telling
the crowd they're unlawfully blocking pedestrian traffic on
the sidewalk and risk being arrested if they don't move.
God cops just charged into the crowd, students on the ground.
The protesters are trying to help the people on the ground
get back up and the cops just keep.
Pushing and pushing. Forward, the police appeared.
Half the sidewalk and the students now are kind of pushed
to one side against the gate. They're all linking arms and not
moving, and now they're calling for all white allies to make
their way to the front, to make themselves the front of the
line. It's against the gate.
We need you on the. Now.
Since you have refused to disperse, you will be placed
under arrest on the charge of disorderly conduct.
Students are now getting arrested.
You wake up every morning, children, and now you're still.
Going. To do more.
Like seriously, how do you sleep at night?
Let's go. Let's go.
Are you peddling? Show
me how I get out. The cops are kind of picking off
protesters and arresting them. The cops have a student pushed
against the side of a vehicle. He's asking what did I do?
What did I do? He's pushing back to Createspace
between himself and the car as they're trying to get the zip
ties on to arrest him. You're going to kill somebody.
You're about to kill him. Why do you have his neck down
like? They have the zip ties on.
They're leading him now to the police bus.
An officer just instructed the other cops to take these bodies.
Cops are pushing back. Now they're pushing everybody
back. Open up the sidewalk.
Open up the sidewalk.
Yeah. And if he is, we'll take his
press pass. I heard you, you bitch ass.
I heard you try to whisper that you think I didn't hear you.
Oh, oh, oh. Now you're making a face because
you're going to illegally take my press badge.
For what reason? Oh, oh, you got real quiet right
now. Tell us what's going on.
There's a student having an asthma attack.
They've pulled her off to the side, They've gotten her an
inhaler. They're asking the cops, please
call an ambulance. And the cops are just standing
there, not doing it now. Now they're all turning around
and just leaving. Can you tell me what brings you
here today? Yeah, my son is in the
encampment currently being arrested, so it so it would
seem. How long has he been there?
Four days? Oh, you know what?
My phone's ringing, so just give me one second.
Yeah. Oh, that's my son.
Hang on. Oh, wait, that's our son.
Hold on. Oh, shit.
I just missed it. Wait, can I hear?
Can I hear? Speak up.
Hey, honey. Oh, my God.
It's OK. He hung up quickly, so it might
have been that. They we told him to call if he's
getting arrested. So we think he's getting
arrested now. Fuck.
Well, maybe they're leaving you a message.
Hold on. Let me check my phone.
I didn't hear my phone ringing. Let me try to call.
Try to keep calling them. It's mom.
Could you please tell me or pick up the phone?
Or call me or daddy? You just missed your call.
You said you were going to call if you were getting arrested.
So we are pretty sure to what's happening right now.
Do you know if they took out the kid?
You got any encampment? They're going in now to rest.
Oh, they're going in now to rest.
We don't have enough people to watch.
Be careful, they might pepper spray they.
Have been pepper spraying pressed.
They did pepper spray pasta side as well.
What has your communication with them been like?
Pretty regular up until 5 minutes ago.
I'm expecting that he'll be marched out pretty soon.
So, and we're standing here at the police barricade where
they're taking students out of the university.
We. We were at the encampment the
past two days. And things.
Were really peaceful. Yes, the.
Students were really inspiring and smart.
And yeah, yeah, definitely. Everything about the encampment
was. Kindness.
Absolutely. That I've seen tonight.
No, no, no, no. NYPD is treating them really
poorly. You see, they're marching in
like stormtroopers, You know, these are kids.
This is like, you know, this is like the community's children
here that they're treating like criminals, you know?
So it's it's terrible, you know, I'm just going to step over
there and see, but feel free to, I'll, I'll come back to you.
He's trying to talk to the police officers about what's
happening inside the gates. He won't answer any questions.
I got, I got to remember, we can't answer questions.
I'm sorry about that. But but I'm saying you don't
have to answer it. But but I'm sure some of you
guys got kids, right? They're probably in college,
maybe even in the kids. My kids have been sitting
peaceful and now they're undergoing all intimidation and
sitting. On come on, you know.
Did you ever get a hold of your son?
Did you see him? I haven't seen him yet.
Unless I saw somebody that was kind of cloaked, you know?
I mean, it's hard to tell through all the people, but so
it's possible he might have come through, but I'm not sure.
This can't be everyone. I think there's more people.
There incredible waste of tax dollars, you know?
Yeah, it's. True.
So we're paying taxes for money for Israel and money for this.
Does anyone in this slide need jail support?
Anyone need jail support? Give us your name or your
contact number. Did you get any info?
No. He kicked my foot.
I said you just, like kicked my foot back.
He's like, I didn't touch you. I might have my body Cam.
I said your body Cam didn't register you kicking my foot
back to the sidewalk. You put your, your, your body on
my body. I just want that for the record
and and if it was an accident, just say I'm sorry.
It's like they want you to go after them.
And I said I'm a peaceful person, I'm not going to touch
anybody. I calmly talk about things.
So literally that's assault, you know what I mean?
It didn't hurt, but I'm saying it's like rude.
It's like that's how the escalation starts and.
Especially, to be clear, there's nobody.
Around. I'm looking to see because.
See the kid right there? He looks just like my son.
Are you still on a second? Oh, you saw?
OK, he looks exactly like that kid, though he might still be in
there. Is that a possibility that there
are still people in there? Well, just for bringing more
people out like. Oh, they're bringing more people
out now. Where are they walking in down
here. Unbelievable.
These kids are doing nothing but peacefully protesting.
And they go here they're. All day today.
Yeah, all day. They're peaceful.
Yes, it's so peaceful, They. Haven't put in daycare where
they're singing. Sing alongs.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they were arresting people,
what with the kids there? The kids were there during the
arrest. She was actually.
Oh, you know who you talked to here.
Wait a minute. Where'd she go?
Over here. Did you say that they were
resting with the kids? This is what was.
Happening. I was inside and I saw a bunch
of student protesters because cops had blocked off this
entrance going to our Willie administration building where
President Boudreaux typically resides.
They were going there and that's when they were masked pepper
sprayed. When I saw that happening, I was
already helping a mother who's distressed and she couldn't find
her daughter. She had a small baby in a
stroller, so I immediately got them blankets, gloves and masks
in case pepper spray would come to us.
I guided them out along with another mother who also had a
baby in a stroller for at first. When I first got the mother,
there were two kids that came running and I usually see them
all around camp and they were crying because they couldn't
find their mother. So I was like, all of the kids
need to be as far away from the encampment inside as they can
because at this point police have already blocked off
entries. We tried to exit one way we we
couldn't. Police had blocked off the
entries. So I'm just gathering them here.
And I'm making sure the mother is not going in the encampment,
not taking her babies. And it was so hard to get them
out because they were worried about their daughters.
And then once we marched, we marched on one side.
I can't remember the name of the entrance.
It was this is the knack. It was on this side.
There were fences barricading us.
I talked to the cop. I tried to humanize.
I tried to say they just want to leave.
They're scared. It's loud here.
He didn't care. Then next step was.
Will one of you please come with us to the other side?
It imagine this block and a whole other side.
Will you at least come and assist us so we know nothing
will happen to these kids? He refused.
He refused multiple times, his forcers next to him.
The people refused. We walked to the other side.
There are fences there with officers who are barricading
them and more coming in wearing riot gear and Sr.
GS. So at this point I'm trying to
get them out as safely as I can. I have my hands in the air and
I'm saying these are just children.
So what they do is they open the fence and they start yanking
people inside, pushing people inside, including the kids.
They couldn't care less about kids and babies in strollers.
Actually, they're pushing them all outside.
And then finally they were safe. And yeah, it was really
traumatizing. The kids were shaking.
I was trying to do deep breaths Recently, 30 minutes ago, we had
someone have an asthma attack. As police were marching behind
us, I had to put my hands in the air with other people to stop
them, help the person having an asthma attack.
We yelled, can you call an ambulance?
Can you please call an ambulance?
And they refused. They didn't even acknowledge
that. Some of them chuckled.
Literally ran away. Some of them chuckled.
The others, actually, after that warehouse helping her breathe,
we were getting inhalers, water. They turned the other way.
They turned their backs on us while I'm yelling at their
backs. Can you call an ambulance for
us? And they refuse.
Shortly after, finally an ambulance was called, and then
she was in there safely. Now, if there were other kids in
that encampment and I didn't know about it because I was
gathering as much as I could, we don't know what would happen
because these cops are walking with batons in their hand, you
chewing gum nonchalantly, and they're going in and brutalizing
students, you know what I mean? So we wouldn't know what would
happen if there were other kids. Thank God I noticed.
Thank God I got people to help me round up the kids.
Otherwise there would be two little children and a baby in a
stroller, another baby in a stroller, lost and not knowing
what to do. So this is all through our
community effort for a free Palestine.
This is how we treat our people and this is how they treat us.
They don't see us as them, they see us as the other.
There's a power imbalance here, just as there is in Palestine
and Gaza. We really came down to provide
support. We put, we have at least extra
rain jackets for tonight, but they had a feeling that they
were going to be kind of storming in tonight like they
were. And they were figuring a way to
be very peaceful and to get them to just not to let them just.
They're so peaceful. Yeah.
And they're so brilliant and they're so smart and they're on
the right side of this. You know the 1st.
Thing they said in a big meeting.
They were like what we need to. Come up with protocol.
Yes, how to. Protect all the people here.
With disabilities. Yes, yes.
How they can get get out exactly.
They were raised right. They were ready to to defend
people when Occupy Wall Street was going on.
We were supporting that and they were coming with us to support
that. So they were kind of raised to
be a peaceful protester. You protested justices in the
world, not just in your immediate little bubble.
It's a global situation and we're very enmeshed in this
situation as a country. And it's so sad.
It's so sad all of the ways. We have our tentacles, right?
Because we're colonizers too. We're colonizers too.
We've committed genocide ourselves.
Well, we're paying for this. One.
And we're funding this genocide absolutely.
Billions of dollars. Billions of dollars.
So they're on the right side of this, you know, and I just can't
wait for this generation to be hopefully getting into these
positions of power where they can actually change the world,
you know, really change it. This is the generation that I
think is going to save us or we're just going to keep
destroying ourselves, you know, because this is pretty intense.
So what's going on right now? Like, this is back there and
from 1968. And we had a talk with our kids
today. At first it was like, don't get
arrested. Then it's like, you're getting
arrested. Just be safe and don't get
killed. You know, be smart.
Oh, wait, it's not More people. Oh, they're going back in again.
You're going back in. Wow, that was really moving.
Afterwards, we all got back together inside my apartment in
New York. Went over everything that just
happened. It was, it was pretty intense,
pretty tense. And it was it felt really good.
I think for everybody to stand with the students.
I think it just, I think it was just so shocking to everyone.
Maybe not so much to me because I mean I've, you know, first
demonstrations I went to or during the Vietnam War.
So nothing probably I hadn't seen before and I've seen much
worse. I just have an overwhelming
sense of pride in our young people.
I want to talk about that, but at first let me thank our
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Now let's get back to the students.
I don't understand why fellow boomers are being so snide and
snarky about them or, you know, telling them they're a bunch of
idiots. They don't know what they're
talking about. They don't understand the
history. They don't.
Jeez. You know what they understand is
right and wrong and the fact that they are not apathetic and
they are not. They don't want to be silent.
These are all very positive things and you may not agree
with everything they say or do or whatever, but none the less,
they're not out there to hurt anybody.
They've not hurt anybody. There's no police officer that
was sent to the hospital. None of that.
None of that, and yet they're ridiculed in the media, on the
Internet. But I understand there are big
stakes involved here, and sadly, there are some people that can't
bring themselves to be critical of Benjamin Netanyahu and his
regime, his war council. All I could do is just encourage
you to Get the facts, read the Israeli press, watch their TV.
They do a very good job, a lot of them, of covering what's
going on over there, stuff that we don't see on the nightly news
here. Thank you for listening.
Thank you to Angela Vargos for being the executive producer of
this podcast and the editor. Thank you to Donald Bornstein
for going up there to the campuses.
And a couple of other people, I think, who want to just remain
anonymous because they they want their jobs tomorrow.
We'll be back in a few days with part three, third episode of
this week's podcast. And hopefully bring this
together and hopefully share some good news.
Thanks, everybody. Talk to you in a few days.
I'm Michael Moore, the.