It Could Happen Here - What's Really Going On At the Columbia Palestine Encampment

Episode Date: April 25, 2024

Mia and James are joined by Talia Jane to discuss the campus occupation at the University of Columbia and how it’s been misrepresented in legacy media.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking música, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and

it's all packed with gems, fun, straight up comedia, and that's a song that only nuestra gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google Search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast coming to you from a week where decades are happening. Call zone media. who is currently covering the Gaza Solidarity encampments at Columbia University. Talia, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, guys.

Yeah, thanks for joining us. Hell yeah. Yeah, so I'm excited to talk about the Columbia occupation. I also want to briefly mention that there are a lot of, there's been a wave of occupations of campuses across the country. Just right now, this is being recorded on wednesday night by the time this goes up on like friday a lot of the stuff we're going to be saying is probably going to be out of date because everything's moving really quickly but i mean

there's occupations obviously like columbia there's like csu humboldt university of texas at austin ohio state harvard yale berkeley uh some university in Italy, Emerson, Tufts, MIT, NYU, City University of New York, the new schools, University of Rochester, University of Pittsburgh, USC, University of Minnesota, University of Michigan, Vanderbilt, UNC Chapel Hill. I mean, there's so many of these. By the time that this goes up, there will be more of them. Yeah, it's been wild. There's been a lot of. I mean, at Humboldt's there was a lot of very intense fighting with the police they the bunch of kids occupied a building they beat the shit well okay

that's that's going a bit too far but they barricaded it kept the cops from coming in cops ran off of campus so lots of incredibly wild stuff happening yeah which i guess brings us to the gaza i guess the original one well the first one that got a lot of media attention the gaza solidarity encampment at columbia yeah so talia i wanted to ask you so how did this sort of start and what's kind of been making it different from the really pretty large number of other uh free palestine anti-genocide protests that have been on campuses and off campuses for the past like time yeah six seven months yeah well i think the the genesis of this was that columbia university as we've seen in universities across the country suspended a number of pro-Palestine advocacy student groups. They were very slow to

move their feet about targeted attacks against students who were demonstrating for Palestine, including an incident where someone was allegedly sprayed with a chemical irritant, or people were sprayed with a chemical irritant by former IOS soldiers who are also students here. And just this, you know, building tension of there is a actual genocide occurring and universities are being forced to bend towards the people committing the genocide instead of standing on the right side of history or they're actively choosing to do that too because their their whole thing is not about actually educating people and preparing them to be tomorrow's leaders and and managers or baristas

but to to get people you know to give them money to fill their coffers and portray this image of, you know, exceptionalism and elitism and whatnot. So that was the genesis. And then Tuesday night, I got a text at like 11pm, I want to say, asking me if I wanted to come cover a late night slash early morning de-occupation demo. And this was from someone I'd never talked to before. I had no idea who it was, but they said it was at Columbia and they said it was late night, early morning. I thought I'd be out of here at, you know, 10 AM the next day. And then, you know, standing there witnessing it all unfold it became pretty evident that that was not the case and I think the reason why this stands out is because this is an elite university where you can't say oh well these are just dumb TikTok kids these are kids who have like the

these are like adults who have you know they they have incredible resumes really high academic excellence they got into an extremely difficult school to get into and they are joining the ranks of the you know frazzled fringe stinky anarchists and the silly kids who are being brainwashed by TikTok. And they said like, no, those people are right. Like this is bad and you need to disclose and divest and we're not going to stop until you do. And I think that that stance from a position of privilege really shook things up. What followed also set a tone of the university deciding to call the police in, claiming that this encampment posed a clear and present danger to the safety of

students on campus, which anyone who has spent any length of time in or around the encampment can plainly see that that is nonsensical. It's absurd. These are kids that are studying on a lawn. But that choice of bringing the NYPD in and having 108 students arrested by the NYPD Strategic Response Group, which is their counterterrorism goon squad that violently represses protests pretty consistently, terrorism goon squad that violently represses protests pretty consistently to have them arrest 108 people including carrying them out from their by their arms and legs and arresting legal observers you know that that was like this is the it was an outsized response for something that was pretty straightforward they're hanging out on the lawn they have everything set up to sustain within that space. They're not going out and roaming around and, you know, breaking things or assaulting people or anything like that.

And they're just using this to call attention to their cause, which is divestment from genocide and from, you know, war profiteering and to end the school school's gentrification of harlem and and to you know a institute an academic boycott of israel and israeli campuses that are in community with columbia like their satellite schools that bring the iof soldiers to columbia to commit harm against students here and you know you know, so these are very basic asks, and they were met with state force signed off by the president of the school. And seeing that, I think, is what provoked a lot of other schools of like, well, if Columbia's doing it, then we definitely gotta, because you have a major elite institution taking this step,

making clear that this is not just a cause that, you know, the scrappy little weirdos at the bottom like me care about, you know? And so I think that's what, what set it off. And the fact that they returned, they just took over the other lawn while their classmates were being processed after being arrested. They just took over the other lawn and they're like, all right, we're going to set it up here. It was such a hilariously based move that it was like the defiance and the determination was undeniable and when you see a group like with the students at humble where the the cops with the riot shields are trying to barge in and they're pushing them back and they're screaming get the fuck out and they're bonking them over the head with the empty uh water jug when you see things like that yeah when you see things like that it's it's it's very like there is an energy to this that has always been there but that has

not been very easily seen by the masses and we're now seeing it show its head of like no we're not fucking around like you need to listen to us. We're tired of the song and dance game that you're doing, dismissing all of our valid concerns because we know concretely and statistically that we are on the right side of history. And we're going to make you listen and trust that if you beat us up, we're coming back. Like we're not going away. If you beat us up, we're coming back. Like, we're not going away. It doesn't scare us, which is what the kids at UT Austin were chanting, I think, when they brought the horses and the state troopers in.

It's like, we're not scared of you. And that tone has permeated throughout the demonstrations for Palestinian liberation since and prior to October. But if you don't follow the protests, or if you only go by what the major news outlets are saying about them, you don't see that tone. So this for me is not surprising. This is a continuation of an energy that has not ceased for upwards of six months. I think it's the 201st day of the genocide so it's not surprising for people who've paid attention it's a relief for kids who are who are here and who have been involved and who have been silenced and ignored and written off this whole time it's a very long answer i know that's a good one though i think it's uh yeah it's great to have your perspective of someone

who's been on the ground one thing i wanted to ask is like obviously this is a protest that at its core is about state violence and it has predictably enough been responded to with state violence and like you said that people were generally not swayed by that i wonder if you've seen people who kind of had the opposite reaction like i i can remember the student protests that i have been involved in i'm just gonna say that and i can remember like the reaction by students when seeing that fellow students being assaulted by the police was like okay fuck this like you know like george orwell has this thing about like uh when i see a real flesh and blood worker fighting his natural enemy the policeman i don't have to ask myself what side i'm on did you find the same thing with students where they were like okay i wasn't out here and now

i've seen the way the university and the cops have responded to this and now i'm coming out because it's not okay the encampment went up uh wednesday and it was forcibly removed with arrests on Thursday, I think. Or was it Friday? I don't remember. It was a long time ago for me. It's fine. the possibility of it provoked a significant response from the student body here at Columbia to show up and rally around the encampment all night. They did this march, this daisy chain, where they were chanting, the more you try to silence us, the louder we will be, and disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest, all night around the encampment to keep

it safe and to show that they had larger support beyond the students who chose to stay on the lawn at risk of being arrested. After they were arrested, more students came onto the other lawn and have continued to occupy that second lawn. So absolutely, it was a Streisand effect. They tried to shut it down and it made people feel very strongly that they need to show up and put themselves on the line as well. And they also, I think they saw what, I think it also showed them what the state does and what the university does and seeing it firsthand eliminates a lot of the mystery that you know the fear that that can circulate of like the uncertainty of it seeing what it looks like they're like oh whatever and

now they're seeing you know videos of of protesters being brutalized on other campuses and like I heard someone told me last night they said that that they overheard someone like talking to another student on the lawn. And they were like, oh, so you had jail support. Like, yes, you're there. Like, it's this sort of, they're going to do what they're going to do. We don't care. Like, because these are, the threat of violence, physical harm, is a threat to cease whatever it is that you're doing. Of academic harm. These are things that are trying to get you to stop doing what you're doing. And when you know

that they are being deployed as tools and tactics, you're not going to stop because they're not scary to you. Well, what are you going to do? You're going to suspend me for joining in a historic protest. Okay. See if I care, you know? I think that's the energy for a lot of students. Yeah, unfortunately, we need to go to ads for a second, but I don't know, skip them, and we'll be back in however long it takes you to press the forward button like six times.

Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field

and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong though, I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to god things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts.

Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian.

Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian.

Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation.

Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not.

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So something I wanted to ask about, I've been seeing a lot of stuff floating around about the negotiations that are happening between the university and the students. I wanted to know, like, what have you actually heard about these because the statements that have been coming out don't seem to really be matching anything else i've seen going on on the ground um do you know what's happening so the university has taken a stance of this is a clear and present danger it is disruptive it is harmful etc that's because it's impeding with them building stairs and and stadium seating for the commencement that's

happening in a couple weeks so you know it's like that's that's the clear and present danger is that it's costly for them to have to wait to complete this setup. But my understanding is that the students are very much holding their ground very firm and their demands are very reasonable. It's saying like, tell us where your money comes from so we can look into it and see that you're keeping your nose clean. This isn't a difficult ask. I think if you ask to see my receipts, I could show it to you. Although I'm not an elite university,

but I'm also not profiting off of weapons manufacturing. And so the university's stance is very much trying to kind of spook them into quitting. And there was a you know a statement released by the president uh last night at 4 a.m saying that the students made some concessions two of which were things that they're already doing one of which was an easy adjustment that's not a concession which was just making the camp more ada accessible and in compliance with fdny regulations for fire safety which i think would be crazy if a fire broke out at this camp um i anyway that was a tangent but um and then there was a thing saying that they're

going to be ending negotiations in 48 hours. And what the students reported out from those negotiations at the time was that the university at around midnight threatened to call in the National Guard and to call in the NYPD. And that shut down negotiations. And it was only after they put out these widespread calls and thousands of people gathered on the lawn in support of the encampment that that was changed. And the university agreed in writing to not call the NYPD and to not mobilize the National Guard, which I don't think they have the authority to do regardless. But it was this written concession from the university. And their perspective of it was that the students provided concessions. And I think it's kind of, it speaks to who each side is speaking to.

The students are speaking to the movement that they have kind of shepherded into existence. to existence and the university is speaking to uh their donors and their trustees and the right-wingers who are having nuclear meltdowns on twitter that's something else i wanted to sort of ask about because i it's it's kind of hard for me to get a sense of it like okay so speaker of the house spike johnson who is a utterly deranged christian zionist yeah like you mean the new church hillmere god like real weirdo like like anti-evolution guy he's been he said he said that like he's going to go to congress and call for the national guard to play which also doesn't make any sense because congress can't do it either. But I think they're trying to get the governor. What do you think of the actual odds of a National Guard deployment? Because I've heard a lot of talk

about it, and I can't gauge it at all. So Hochul has said that that's not on the table, I believe. And there's no interest, from what I can tell, of the actual elected reps in calling in the National Guard. There is interest from Eric Adams, who is a former cop and basically still a cop, to use the NYPD. And the NYPD has been very allergic to when the National Guard comes out here because they want to be the ones cracking skulls and being in charge of brutalizing New Yorkers. And they take a great offense when someone else comes in and does it for them. So they wouldn't really be on board with the National Guard mobilizing here either.

The school doesn't have the authority to do that. It's only the governor. The governor hasn't made any indication. And Mike Johnson is doing conservative stunt work. He was joined by Elise Stefanik, who is a conservative. And, you know, she regularly disseminates disinformation and pushed by Shai Davidi, or however you pronounce his name, who was an assistant professor here, who attempted to hold a rally in the center of the Gaza Solidarity encampment with a slew of Zionists. And his ID card was deactivated, and he found out in real time, in front of a a bunch of cameras that he called to come watch him and it was it's one of those things you witness in real time that you feel like uh you're you're living in a movie but it was great and he had a nuclear tantrum and claimed that it

was because he wasn't safe on campus when he was told that his protest was not safe for their students. So, you know, I think it's, we're seeing a lot of rhetoric and a lot of saber rattling from the far right, from conservatives, from people who have never had any kind of support for Palestinians or for the cause of Palestinian liberation. You know, Mike Mike Johnson makes he receives over a quarter a million dollars from AIPAC you know these are these are not people whose statements should be taken seriously in the context of what is possible what is reasonable and what is you know reality to put it nicely yeah yeah I think a reason it's fascinating like at least to me like i went to a fancy university you know and engaged in plenty of including pro-palestine actions when i was there

but a thing that i see like as a journalist now is that the right wing and wealthy folks generally seem to see that ivy league universities particularly in the u.s is like their safe space and i think the reason that they're so mad at this is that they feel like it's not just that it's happening it's it's where it's happening and like that that's causing to have these massive tantrums like you've reported on yeah i mean there's the there's there's it's it's all hypocrisy for them because on the one hand these are liberal universities who are ushering in an era of DEI and purple hair and queer kids. And then on the other side, they feel about really elite campuses of higher learning. But it doesn't matter either way. They don't care.

They don't actually care. They just hate the cause and will do anything they can to bring it to a halt. But the DNA of this cause is to keep going regardless of the efforts to stop it. Right. And it wasn't so long ago that everyone was up in arms. When I say everyone, everyone on the right was up in arms about campus free speech, which is something that seems to have largely been forgotten in the last couple of weeks. We've all seen videos in Texas today, right, of the DPS and state troopers and horses and bikes. They love to misuse bikes. But yeah, I guess the hypocrisy is kind of the point with those people. Yeah. I mean, like Mike Johnson made

his speech today on the steps of the low library. He was talking about how, you know, there was a repression of free speech on campus. But then in the same breath, he said that and that's why I want to call on the National Guard to eliminate same breath he said that and that's why i want to call in the national guard to eliminate this protest their argument is that this protest is inherently anti-semitic because it rejects the state of israel and the genocide and apartheid that the state has been doing since its inception and prior to its inception of the palest. And in the IHRA, in the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, it is any criticism of the state of Israel, which would include people who are living in Israel, criticizing their own government would be labeled as anti-Semitic. And they're trying to redefine

reality in real time by claiming that these students who just don't want for mass death to be occurring and they don't want their university to be responsible in facilitating that are somehow anti-Semitic. Meanwhile, a large number of them are Jews themselves who, you know, they heldeder um at the start of Passover yeah I think uh maybe do you know Bing Guan a photojournalist yeah our mutual friend Bing Bing took this photo which went viral on Twitter I saw it in the New York Times of a Jewish graduate student just like sitting on a folding chair being like no I'm fine I don't feel unsafe here oh yeah Yeah. I mean, that's the thing is that the people who feel quote unquote unsafe are also the people who are known antagonizers of pro-Palestine demonstrations. These are the kids that bought like fart spray from Amazon to spray on students who were demonstrating peacefully. These are students who show up with giant flags outside

of Columbia University to antagonize people. They brought thick wooden poles with flags affixed to them to a demonstration on Wall Street the week prior to this encampment launching, and they were antagonizing people. They were trying to instigate arguments with people, and they were getting in they were trying to you know instigate uh arguments with people and you know they were just kind of trying to incite and then they claim to be victims when people respond to their inciting behavior and it's very much like an abusive mentality that they have but in terms of like actual anti-semitism all of that all of that rhetoric ends up being a distraction from actual instances of anti-Semitism. And the more that you try to fuse the political ideology of Zionism with the prejudice against Jewish people for being Jewish, the more you try to fuse those together as one thing, like, you know,

fusing Jewish identity to Zionism, the more you see instances of anti-Semitism, actually anti-Semitism. So, if anything, like the students who are coming in cheering on Israel and boasting about the murders of, you know, tens of thousands of children, the starvations and the displacements of millions of people, the more that they do that, the more that teaches people like, oh, maybe all Jews are like that. Maybe all Jews are bad. And then I end up getting DMs from people photoshopping my face into an oven calling for my death when, you know, I don't give a fuck about the state of Israel. I don't give a fuck about any states, you know? the state of Israel. I don't give a fuck about any states, you know? So it's just, it's, it's one of those things like this is like, they are, they are planting toxic seeds and then flipping out when they sprout. Talking of toxic seeds, uh, now is the time for some marketing professionals

to plant some toxic seeds in your mind as we take our second advertising break. exceeds in your mind as we take our second advertising break. of AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong though, I love technology, I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better.

Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel.

I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom.

At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now,

and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing

parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts it's the one with the green guy on it all right well we're back uh hopefully you haven't bought anything since we last spoke talia i wanted to talk a little bit about a thing that we've seen a lot. It's like this idea of the universe. And this happens to every protest movement, right?

Like the state, the university, whatever, will seek to appoint people leaders and allow them to negotiate on behalf of everyone, even if those people have not consented to be negotiated for. And then they'll use that to co-opt the movement offer concessions that these particular people might want and in doing so kind of defang the original sort of protest is that something that you've seen happening or the universities try to do to like divide people or to kind of pull people out and appoint them as leaders they've suspended the the people that they believe to be primary student organizers. But in terms of other divisions, they have not been successful.

These are students organizing with their classmates. It's not possible for some outside group to infiltrate that space because they are not students at this university. You know, there's SJP chapters that students are members of in their schools, but they are ultimately making the choices of what their SJP chapter is doing. And, you know, a lot of those SJP chapters have been suspended. So, you know, I think in terms of the possibility of the university having any sort of in to build some sort of op is is very low the solidarity that we're seeing is i don't think i've seen levels of people on the same page um and able to organize the literacy of it is just phenomenal you know there's there's people who are just

they're all very clearly knowledgeable about what it is that they're organizing for, what the risks are, what the history of the movement is. And they've spent a lot of time learning those things to make sure that when they decide to take a step forward, that they're doing so fully informed and fully empowered. And trying to break that down is something that has not been successful. And we've seen that time and time again. They have this chant, the more you try to silence us,

the louder we will be. And it's true. And these institutions should probably start believing it because it would save them a lot of trouble by trying to write this off as something that people don't know what they're doing or you know whatever it is because they are they know everything they know

everything these are kids that all they do is study you know like you're talking about huge nerds joining into a massive you know decades- social movement. They've done the reading. Yeah, talking to people who've done the reading. I wanted to talk about like faculty, because I know a lot of people who are faculty at universities listen to this podcast. And I'm sure they're interested in like how faculty have been in solidarity with students there, how they can be in solidarity with their own students. Have you seen that? Have you seen faculty showing up? Oh, yeah. There was a massive faculty walkout the other day between Barnard and Columbia faculty members. The schools are kind of related. They're right across the street from each other and they have a lot of overlap. Barnard's kind of under, slightly under the university, the Columbia umbrella, but still has some precedent and things like that.

And there was a huge faculty walkout from both campuses that gathered on the low, the steps of the low library. And it was easily hundreds, I would say maybe like 500 people. And that was it. That was at Columbia. And then at NYU, the students set up an encampment and they were surrounded by faculty who had linked arms as a daisy chain around the encampment to protect the students. So we're seeing a very real, you know, multi-layer of solidarity emerging in these spaces. And I think it's, you know, even if the, even if professors and faculty don't necessarily wholly agree or wholly understand, they're not fully on the same wavelength as the student organizers necessarily. They're still showing up on the basis of like these students have the right to express their opinions and they should not be getting met with severe academic or state discipline for doing so because we've seen these same campuses open their doors to people like Charlie Kirk and Gavin McInnes and, you know, like white supremacists and white nationalists who are able to go on their campuses and spread hate

and, you know, right-wing disinformation and try and recruit people through their you know young republican school chapters those chapters aren't being disbanded you know there's there isn't an urgent rush to prevent uh the hosting of white nationalists and white supremacists and you know people who are actually politically and intensely anti-Semitic to an extreme, they're not doing anything to actually like prevent those people from appearing on campus. So I think that there's a lot of layers to it, but there is a very strong surge of faculty saying like, hey, this is fucked up and we're not going to let you think that this is just kids that you're picking on. Like you're also attacking your own staff who has a longer relationship to the university, has a, as hard as it is for these kids

to get into the school, it's harder to get hired to work here. And so we're seeing a lot of that. There's also security people who were put in charge of evicting students from their rooms at Barnard because Barnard has chosen that students at Barnard who participated in this demo, they weren't only going to be suspended temporarily, but evicted from their housing, banned from campus, unable to access any food or meal plans. campus, unable to access any food or meal plans, whereas the Columbia students have been suspended, are still able to access housing and meal plans, but they aren't allowed to go to class or any campus events, which is fine because the only one that's happening right now is the encampment. But, you know, there was a security person who sent an email to the school at Barnard saying,

like, I quit. Like, this is inhumane. This is undignified. This is crazy. You're giving these students 15 minutes to uproot themselves from their rooms. They might not have another place to go. These, you know, these might be students who don't have a family's house nearby or, you know, or the funds or the means to live somewhere else uh and not worry about the cost you're you know destabilizing people's lives in a very severe way and this uh this you know security person resigned they're like this is nuts so i think there's there's the fact that just the the overall what is of how these universities are responding has provided a type of solidarity and then there's also the fact that a lot of people just generally understand that genocide is bad and it's gotten to a point where there's a lot of rhetoric trying to obscure that and obfuscate like

what is genocide and you know israel has a right to exist and all this other like bullshit like uh propaganda and and disinformation and and you know fear-mongering all these things and people can see very clearly what the game is and so we're kind of at a pivotal moment for just common reality and critical thinking and I think that we're seeing a lot of people show that the efforts to alter what our established common reality is, is not working. And this brings me to the thing I wanted to close on, which is where do you see this going? Oh, I'm gonna need a minute on that one. I mean, you know, we're at a very pivotal moment in history. There's a lot of comparisons being made to protests against the Vietnam War.

And in those protests, there was a lot of state violence, a lot of state repression. But there was also a lot of people willing to throw down in a very intense way. people willing to throw down in a very intense way and you know we're already seeing levels to that that have very very strong parallels you know with like aaron bushnell which is also a story that i i ended up breaking um yeah and you know like so this is this is big and i think that right now in the in the midst of it is hard to guess what's going to happen two weeks from now or six months from now but i guarantee you we all know what's going to happen 50 years from now we're all going to look at this 50 years from now and be like wow the state was on some dumb shit those protesters were right and it's good that they didn't stop totally yeah i think that's a great place to end talia i wonder if you would like to

let people know where they can find you where they can read your work how they can support your work sure so i mostly report live on twitter talia otg as in on the ground. And you can support me by signing up on Patreon for hopefully more than $5 a month. Those small donations cover the entirety of my living and survival and allow for me to do this work for the past four years. So I'm like incredibly grateful. You know, people can support on Patreon. They can also, if you just want to do this work for the past four years. So I'm like incredibly grateful. You know, people can support on Patreon. They can also, if you just want to do like a one-time, heard you on the pod, loved it. I have like a PayPal and a Venmo

and all that other shit on my Twitter account. If people want to send a couple bucks that way. And, you know, another way to support is send me tips. If you decide that you're going to do something, feel free to, you know, email and bio. I always want to know. Send Talia all your tips, especially if you're at Columbia University. Anything else you want to plug or me or anything else we need to do before we go? I'm sorry that my voice

sounds really like this it's i've i i don't think i've i haven't gotten a lot of sleep and i hope that everything i said was coherent even though i was just giving you essay after essay after essay that was fantastic thank you so much shalia thank you so much and thank you guys. So something I could say from everyone at it could happen here from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. Fuck him.

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Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking musica, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life life stories combos on the issues that matter to us and it's all packed with gems, fun straight up comedia and that's a song

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