“And when I’m talking about non-violence I’m not talking about — you do have the right to take over the administration building. I’ll tell you, just speaking from Flint, we would have no UAW, no Auto Workers Union if back in the 30s the auto workers, including my uncle, had not taken over the factories. They broke windows, they locked all the doors. They kept all the police and the National Guard out for 44 straight days in the middle of winter, until they won the right to be recognized by General Motors and to be paid a living wage. That only happened because they took over the factories.”
Moore continued to reiterate that taking over buildings is not violence, before thanking two anonymous protesters who helped him and his media team into the encampments around NYC’s schools.
“Yes, you have to take over buildings. That is not violence. My thanks to Angie and Donald, a couple of anonymous people that I don’t want to say their names out loud because they were able to sneak into places on the campuses that I guess we weren’t supposed to be in because we’d be trespassing on publicly owned property, no less. But the students are all so cool. So wanting their story told and they know that they were just getting a raw deal from the media. And I’m telling you go in there and it’s all these Palestinian students, and all these Jewish students Jewish and Palestinian students working together to stop this war,” Moore stated.
Students at Columbia University sparked nationwide protesting across the U.S. after demanding on April 17 that their university divest from companies connected to Israel. However, after building encampments on the school clashes between authorities and activists escalated, leading to the protesters taking over of the school’s Hamilton Hall in the early morning of April 30.
Video footage posted online showed some activists in black masks breaking into the school’s door through the glass and flying an ‘Intifada’ flag outside of the building. By the late evening of April 30, Columbia administrators gave NYC police officials the
green light to raid the building, with mass arrests seen and the school noting those inside who were students would be facing consequences.
By the first week of the protests, the university
decided to switch their remaining classes to an online format, and subsequently
announced the cancellation of their main stage graduation ceremony Monday as protesting has continued in the city.
