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To read more about Episode 318, visit the main episode page.

Michael Moore [00:00:14] 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 each week, I don’t know, I keep hoping, “Well, okay, 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’ve been leading the protests on the campuses. They had a press conference here a couple of weeks ago — a group of them, a group of colleges. Again I saw nothing of this on any kind of mainstream media, it didn’t seem to be covered. And because, we’ve, this podcast, 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. 

[00:01:34] 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 though the line is being crossed by MAGA-heads and crazy Republicans and vicious right-wingers and white supremacists and whatever, it just, you know, we’ve now seen it all starting back in, you know, 2015. Well, it 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 now that I’ve just said that, 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 Palme d’Or, 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 share it with you, the podcast listeners here, because, you’ve been such 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 Palme d’Or win in Cannes. It means a lot. 

[00:03:39] So I just wanted to say a couple things about this week, 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 while 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, “Wow, 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 but in fact, it’s enforced poverty — that’s the majority of us, 55, 65, 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 years, meh. 40 years ago, I well, I know it was a little lonely out on that limb, but that’s okay. I thought what I believed in was right. And a lot of you did too, and we all kind of stuck together. And then here we are. Now we’re the majority. The 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. 

[00:05:54] Two stories that appeared in the press this week: Number one, unbeknownst to any of us, though, somebody must have known because this happened over three years ago after the vicious, violent attempt to overthrow the election of 2020 on January 6th. Ten 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 had been arrested, they were going to be put on trial. So they called themselves the Stop the Steal movement. The “stealing” meaning 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 Steal 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 that 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 flag upside down in support of, I would assume, like 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. The 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 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 picture surface? Why are we finding out now that one of the nine 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? 

[00:09:52] What are we going to have to face in these coming months? I mean, it’s one thing to say that, “Well, this Justice believes in this, and, you know, I believe in that and we have a difference of opinion.” But when they are 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 in the, you know, at the big rally there on January 6th, that became the violent uprising. She was just was my wife. That wasn’t me.” Now, Alito is 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, in your title. We’re onto 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. 

[00:11:35] 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, he was 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 with, didn’t pointed 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, all the bad things that Abbott has done. Scummy type stuff. All the migrant that put on busses 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. 

[00:13:48] 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, and they’re not going to make the mistake they made last time. Matthew Gaetz, the crazy Republican representative from Florida in the U.S. 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.”. 

[00:14:40] 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 going to 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 $1 billion 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 all of us turn off the TV. We don’t want to watch this anymore. We don’t want to 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 who don’t believe in violence. People who believe in democracy, 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. 

[00:16:57] So listen, I’m going to thank our underwriters for today’s episode and then in a minute or so here come back to you with the voices of the college students at a press conference that they held a couple of weeks ago. I kept waiting to see some coverage of it in the mainstream media, but 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 have had to suffer a lot of smearing and slander and whatever, but, you know, by now we know when our leg is being pulled, right? We know when we’re being lied to. We know when all the PR people are spending the money they spend to put out 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. 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. They’ll still be rich, and they’ll still get the same number of votes you or I get: one. So it’s not like we’re going to take their voting rights away from them. They’re just not going to run the country anymore in the sort of white, male Christian way that things have always been done. And they know that. They know 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. 

[00:19:22] 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’ve got a nonprofit you want to get out there to the world, check out Shopify. It’s the platform, online platform, where your nonprofit can sell things to support your organization or your school can do it. Or if you have a small business or I mean, it’s been around now for quite some time. It’s in 175 countries around the world. And they have these excellent tools that can help people like you or me — I’ve used them — tools that will help them succeed with this in ways that, you know, you don’t have to be a multinational corporation. Whether you’re looking to launch your own online shop or maybe even a brick and mortar store, whether you’re hoping to make your first sale or maybe your millionth sale, they’ve got you covered. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com/rumble. And that’s all lowercase: rumble. 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. 

[00:20:50] 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, is music to your ears because, as we all know, it’s hard to know when you’re shopping in the supermarket exactly where the 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 growth hormones or antibiotics. They don’t live in confined buildings or sketchy growing practices here, just good old fashioned farming methods from independent American family farms. Plus, you can customize your meat selections with every order and you can cancel at any time. So keep your money out of the pockets of Big Agriculture and keep American farming going by signing up at moinkbox.com/rumble. Okay, that’s moinkbox.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 moinkbox.com/rumble. Moinkbox.com/rumble. 

[00:22:30] Okay, let’s roll the tape here of this incredible press conference. There were students there from colleges in New York City that had or still have encampments — at City College, City University of New York, Columbia and, ah, I was just so impressed with what they had to say, and I wanted everybody to be able 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, they’re 18, 19, 20, 23 years old. These kids are smart. They’re really smart. You know, and some of you listening to this, you already know that too, because you raised them. You raised 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 very difficult job: to stand up for the Palestinian people. 

[00:23:49] 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… 

Call & Repeat: Leader & Student crowd [00:24:07] Free, free Palestine! Free, free, free Palestine! CUNY your hands are red! 40,000 people dead!  Columbia your hands are red! 40,000 people dead! In our thousands, in our millions — in our millions, in our billions — We are all Palestinians! Say it loud say it clear: we don’t want no Zionists here! Say it clear, say it loud: Students you make us proud! Students you make us proud! And we will free Palestine, within our lifetime! 

Call & Repeat: Press Conference Organizer & Student Crowd [00:25:22] Mic check! Do not engage with agitators. That is not the purpose and reason we are here. The reason we are here, is to Free Palestine. Free, free Palestine! Free, free, free Palestine! 

Press Conference Organizer [00:25:49] Everyone, we’re going to begin now. This is a press conference that has been called between CUNY and Columbia. 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. We’re going to go through the speakers. And at the end, if we have time, we’ll take a few questions. 

Columbia Student Speaker #1 [00:26:16] 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 and 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 Hind’s Hall in memory of Hind Rajab, a martyred 6-year-old Palestinian girl who was violently murdered by the Israeli occupation forces in Gaza. We honor 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 [Israeli Occupation Forces]. Columbia’s surreal response to the protesters’ nonviolent takeover of Hind’s 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 own 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 this 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 Hind’s Hall belong to a rich, beautiful legacy of civil disobedience at Columbia. Indeed, on April 30th, 1968, nearly 700 antiwar student protesters at Columbia met the brutal force of state violence for taking over the same building now named Hind’s Hall. On the 56th anniversary of that day, to the very same day of the week, we met the same militarized adversaries with a resolve fiercer than before. The brave protesters in Hind’s Hall put themselves in harm’s way to force Columbia to divest. In response, Columbia University broke every written an unwritten rule of university norms by inviting a SWAT team and hundreds of armed riot cops, including the vicious Strategic Response Group (SRG), to invade Columbia’s classrooms. They barricaded students and press the like 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 Colombia. Your only goal, which you will defend at any cost, is to enrich your endowment at the expense of 40,000 Palestinian 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 revolution will help free Palestine within our lifetime. Thank you. 

CUNY Student Speaker #1 [00:32:09] May peace be upon you. On the afternoon of April 30th, City College, following the despicable actions we’ve seen at Columbia, warned these students and faculty and community members that the encampment must be dismantled by the morning of May 1st. At approximately 11 p.m., without warning, CCNY President Vincent Boudreau requested the NYPD to enter the encampment to arrest students and faculty. He claimed to do this in the interest of student safety because students and workers united protesting posed a safety risk. Protesters stood their ground as SRG officers came in with their batons and their mace. They stood their ground as [the police] 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 Rafah in tents are being bombed by a Zionist entity. As we are protesting, there are children in Gaza 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 Gaza on fire that we will not rest, we will not rest, we will not rest until they divest and until the Zionist entity falls. 

Columbia Student Speaker #2 [00:36:42] I’d like to begin by saying that our protest, our encampment, the occupation of Hind’s 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, its priority of profit over life, its alignment with congressional pressure and U.S. geopolitical interests, too blind to recognize this opportunity. Instead, Columbia University chose to condemn its students who were 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 dialog 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. 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 universities 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 say Columbia University, who say CUNY is protesting for them. Our students remained principled, remained strong, remained 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. 

Columbia Student Speaker #3 [00:39:35] 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 are against the death of over 40,000 people. It’s honestly… 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 30 family members, 20 family members. We are all grieving 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 okay. This is not okay. 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 NYPD. I 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 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 rape 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 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. 

Columbia Student Speaker #4 [00:42:25] “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. Two weeks after being arrested myself, and on the 56th anniversary of Columbia’s brutal arrests of over 700 students protesting the Vietnam War and gentrification of Harlem, I was pushed and barricaded into John J. by riot police called onto campus by our 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 over-blowing property damage in order to justify brutality and distract from their complicity in 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. 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 trauma 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. Six-year-old Hind Rajab’s name will be memorialized in textbooks and on Columbia’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 is invading Rafah, a location it 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 health care is being funneled to destroy the last standing hospitals in Gaza. We Americans are the most complicit in 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. 

Columbia Speaker #5 [00:45:34] Let us be clear, the attacks yesterday on students were not only an attack on a handful 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 Gaza 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 ask the media to have some shame and cover what’s happening in Gaza as well. Over 40,000 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 UCLA, a group of hundreds of Zionists, terrorists, domestic terrorists, attacked students peacefully protesting on their college campus. That is an act of terrorism. So once you start calling out what’s really going on and what we’re protesting, stay the fuck off of our campuses. 

CUNY Student Speaker #2 [00:47:23] 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 Boudreau 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-crimed, I’ve been threatened, I’ve been harassed. And every single time I, quote unquote, “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 have 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 phases 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 [speaking in Arabic] god, may he be praised and exalted. And we will not be intimidated into silence. In fact, we know that the more they try to silence us, the louder we will be. 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.

Columbia Speaker #6 [00:50:17] 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 will become smarter, stronger and better prepared to stand our 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 Humboldt, to CUNY — we will wage not only a fight against the oppressors, but an effort to educate the world on our government’s complicity in 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 imagined. In our hearts are olive trees that will sprout 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 that will take back our campuses from 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! 

Call & Repeat: Leader & Student crowd [00:52:17] From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free! And we will free Palestine, within 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! Palestine is almost free! Palestine is almost free! Palestine is almost free! Thank you so much. 

Students praying [in Arabic ] [00:54:27]  

Michael Moore [00:54:27] I know, 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.