Good morning, peeps, and welcome to Look f Daily with Meet Your Girl Danielle Moody. Recording from the Home Bunker, Folks.
With so much going on in this country as it pertains to the college campus protests that have spread across the country, the brutalization of those protesters at the hands of militarized police, I brought in for today's discussion our friend and friend of the show, the Reverend Mark Thompson, host of Make It Plain, to unpack what he has seen, what he's been hearing, what he has participated in at Columbia.
This interview took place before Columbia University was invaded by the NYPD, thousands of NYPD officers, and so I am just at a loss particularly that as of the time of this recording, Joe Biden came out and did a very short press conference where he reprimanded those that are protesting and said that there can be descend without you know, their being disorder in what fucking world? In what fucking
world does that look like? Right? In order for people to affect change, things get messy, right, particularly when the laws that are put in front of us are bullshit.
Right.
So, according to then Joe Biden MLK was a problem, which he was right given the fact that he was assassinated for organizing nonviolent protests that people found disruptive. Right people found it disruptive that black people were boycotting, that they were going into segregated spaces in order to integrate them. Right, they were seen as rabel rouse, they were seen as
trouble makers. Now, of course, history wants to look back on those people as courageous and heroes, the same way that we will look back on the young people that decided to fight back against an entire right system that is complicit in murder and destruction. So I bring in our friend, the Reverend Mark Thompson to you know, to walk us through where we are and where we are headed. But as of this recording, folks, it doesn't feel good. I continue to applaud the young people of this country
that have sparked movements around the world. I'm proud of their commitment, of their courage, and of their no bullshit attitude. And you know the other thing that I will say is that the Boomer generation and not Gen X, because I refuse to loop in Gen X to this, because the generation is so small but the boomer generation failed these young people because they're still in fucking power. As you can look at the ages in Congress and the current president of the United States.
These are young people.
You know why they're so fearless because they've grown up with mass shootings being the norm in their schools, where they've lost classmates right and family members to mass shootings that happen all across this country because we don't care about keeping.
Our kids safe.
They were told that, you know, if they just work hard, they too will be able to have a peace of the American dream. And now they have crushing debt. And that is just to name two things off the top of my head. But coming up next my conversation with
our good friend, the Reverend Mark Thompson. I am so excited to welcome back to Woke Affid Daily our friend, friend of mine and friend of the show, the Reverend Mark Thompson, host of Make It Plain and also Mark, you are currently acting as one of the interfaith leaders working with the students at Columbia who are in the midst of protests that has sparked nationwide protests on institutions divestment.
From Israel, and you have been on the ground.
Understanding what the sentiments of the students are, how the community around Columbia University has been reacting, which we are not hearing or seeing. I saw you most recently on Joy's show on MSNBC, alongside one of the Columbia students.
Tell us what is happening.
I will just start there because I turned on the news today and for twenty minutes I saw the same video of a hammer breaking a window of a building. And I know from media what that is supposed to invoke and what the White House has said as of the time of this recording, which is that peaceful protests don't take over buildings. In my humble opinion, the White House, the Biden administration has been reacting to this in entirely wrong ways.
Tell us what.
The media is getting wrong and what is actually happening on the grounds of Columbia University as love right now.
Well, first of all, first and foremost, hey girl, it's you. Look at you hard.
Yeah, we got a lot to get caught upon, and God bless you the work af audience. I appreciate this, you know. I kind of pride myself. I don't talk about me on my own show. I think it's kind of rude. I don't like people do that. If I have a guest, people want to hear against only any run in my mouth, And if you notice you when I post a clip, you almost never.
Hear my voice. I want people to hear against them. So it's good when you know.
When I have something to share, it to somebody like you brings me on because what I'm about to share I probably won't even share on my own show, and you'd have to get it from here. So so y'all spread the word on walk. So just to be clear, for the past two Sundays, I've been a part of the worship service in the encampment at Columbia University.
Of this past Sunday, I was actually asked to organize a worship service.
Fully, it was inter faith Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, traditional African spirituality. We poor libations and then I preached to Christian sermon. So I have kind of been in this in this role. Let me first of all say that this has been a non violent, peaceful protest. It is false to say non violent, peaceful protests don't take over buildings because throughout history, student movements have taken over buildings we can go to.
I shut down campuses, shut down Georgetown, shut down Howard, shut down u DC my in my lifetime, and and developed an interesting reputation because of that's we can do a whole other show on that. So I've got some expertise in that. Now, we when we did it did not necessarily damage property, and if so, it was unintentional. They're saying these students allegedly damaged property, but these videos.
I was there.
Right after the building was taken over and was not able to see any evidence of damaged property. But it's a big building, So I just leave that there. That remains to be seen at this hour. Though I think we would all have to agree that property damage is preferable anyway, if that's what it is to person physical damage, which is what happens when the police and the National
Guard and stuff like that show up. So at this moment, negotiations are stalled, and this is an you know, this is a fluid situation, so by the time we've done that may change. But April twenty ninth, the university administration cut off negotiations and said to the students, you have two o'clock until two o'clock to leave the encampment or face suspension, and you will not be able to graduate
those who are seniors. Now again, it backfired because recall when the president of the university called the police on her own students that sparked this nationwide campus movement. Now, I ask you, Danielle Moody and your audience.
When was the last time some students in Texas, particularly Austin University of Tennessee, been in solidarity with the rest of us on something like this.
I can't, I couldn't. I couldn't name a time.
There was this Texas sister, a white sister outside with me yesterday and she pointed that out to me.
Gained unchanged.
So I just want to leave that there for a minute, all right. So President not in her wisdom, did not listen. Daniel You and I have actually have a couple of friends on the faculty, people we know. They tried to say, you know, you need to not do this. And she's new, by the way, this president of Columbia. The only reason she wasn't at the hearing with the black president, woman president of Harvard.
And the right yep.
Was because she had a prior engagement. She went last week later, but she would have been in that row of three. She's very I think she's only been there since October. In fairness, it is my understanding that her decision to call the police was based upon her she was the former president of London School Economics. Calling the police in London is different from calling the police here.
They don't carry with them, that's right.
And they have, believe it or not, our former colonizers handle these situations a little bit better. I mean, I know that for what I've seen some situations. They're not coming in to kill. They kind of they know how to do that. They also not shoot each other in the street either, So that's a whole other conversation. Maybe we might need to move over there. But anyway, they
have the gun mass shooting piece under control. So when she called the police, it is my understanding she was calling from that crossed upon experience, and anyway, the result actually helped the movement.
And now we have and a.
So largely unquantifiable number of students in the streets.
All right.
So on April twenty ninth, Monday, April twenty ninth, she draws another line in the stand, saying the students say no. And so at midnight April thirtieth, they took over Hamilton Hall.
So now that's a big deal. We take over a building.
One would think that negotiations would resume, but they have not, and we'll just have to wait and see.
What happens.
I will say this that there have been calls for the National Guard to be brought in, and this is not the first time. I want everybody to listen to me very carefully. If the National Guard moves on Columbia and then other governors follow New York Governor hocals lead, we will.
Literally be reliving nineteen sixty eight.
When LBJ had to drop out of the race because of the Vietnam War protests the Biden administration.
And I'm not saying this to be confrontational. We try to folks. You know how, Daniel, you try to help people and they don't really want to help.
So I want to tell you so you can only help people that want to help them.
Hello, what opens with people tell you who they are believing. So this I'm about to make a helpful statement Biden White House. And I'm not saying anything i haven't said over the phone. You are handing this election to Trump if you don't figure this out, and stopping at Yahoo from your stuff that Yahoo is an ally of Putin and an ally of Trump.
Richard Haass of.
The Council on Foreign Relations was on Morning Joe every morning for the past three weeks saying that Morning Joe was agreeing to it, but now depending on the swamp because some people in this country have been saying no, no, no, we got to identify these students as anti Semitic and that there's some personal safety in danger.
I am there at Columbus.
No, Columbia, no people are under any personal safety or endangerment. That has some foods on the outside, which we call provocateurs, which every movement has, but they're not students, they're just representing themselves.
But I've been there.
That campus is not unsafe. And so they've got to do something about this because the narrative that we know what's are in the sixty eight Chicago we about to do twenty twenty four cargo, same thing is about to happen again, and so they've got to figure this out. Stop attacking these students again. Folks were looking at generational piece.
I'll stop there, but I want to come back to that later when you ask me about what this actually means in November and what it actually means to the most important segment of the electorate that will decide November, and that's women.
As I am watching this unfold, there is no part of me that thinks that this is not going to end badly. And the reason why I say that is because the systems and the people that control the systems are not paying attention. And this was one campus that turned into a nationwide solidarity movement that has reached Gaza with their signs and graffiti that says we see you, thank you.
Right.
So what I am seeing, Mark is that there has never been, to my knowledge, a student movement centered around justice that has been wrong historically. So, whether it was apartheid in South Africa, whether it was Jim Crow segregation in the nineteen fifties and sixties, whether it was the Vietnam War, there hasn't been student led movements that have been on the wrong side of history.
And so.
When we're watching this now and they're trying to couch these young people as a bunch of radical anti Semites, how does that tone and tenor that mainstream media is taking in cahoots with this administration in Kohu, with the political establishment. How do the student to reclaim the narrative so that what they are asking for is not being
discounted because they're being couched. Now, all of these students at these elite institutions as somehow a bunch of thugs and criminals that just you know, decided to turn on their university and ratchet up anti Semitism and.
The I'll answer that your question that you're asking me. I'll add to the question that you're asking myself. Aren't weren't we weren't or not we weren't. Wasn't Israel supposed to be trying to get Hamas or they trying to.
Get students unclear?
See you focused on Hamas. Hamas don't have thirty five thousand members. These are civilians. You've killing, non enemy combatants, non combatants, non enemies.
Reclaiming the narrative I.
Think is still students holding their ground. However, there are many ways to do that. Whether you occupied the building, I mean the schools about to be out in a lot of these places, and logistically it makes it challenging the whole buildings when school is out Uh, these administrations may have the authority of schools out dreams supposed to be and we just get you out of here one or.
See.
I've been a student, so I've watched what the other side does. I can see them saying, Okay, y'all just stay here, but we going on vacation.
We'll see when we get back in September. You know what I'm saying. So you don't want that either.
So it's this is something we've got to figure out, and the students have to figure out. I think those of us in our position are here to advise, but ultimately these are decisions that they that they must make. And I think there are steps in negotiation. I mean, we're got to reinvent the wheel. We have the model of MLK. And some negotiations went on and on and on and on and on, and there were fits and stars to them. Sometimes there was direct action, sometimes there wasn't.
So you can have a period of direct action, then a period of non diirect action and negotiation, and then got another period of direct action.
But you have to and I would say to.
The students, and I intend to say that there's more to them. You got to have a movement mentality. We're in a movement, not a moment. So so do we really want to build like we see? The first two movement I was involved in as a freshman eighteen years old, South Africa and divestment. The university is too divest from South Africa. That's why this is the same thing. And we won, but there was some It was a process. It wasn't we took over buildings one night the first thing.
That wasn't the first thing we did, and then everybody folded. It took time and took pressure. We got it done, and you know, I feel some students. I think there's another element in this because some students are here on student visa.
They have a fear of retaliation. So I gotta get it all done while I can. I get that. So it's complicated.
And so that's sort of the that's not an absolute answer to your question, but I would just say to get that back to reclaim the moral authority from the self righteous media who also is blaming, Well, these students gonna lect Donald Trump. Nobody's gonna lect Donald Trump. Not students don't waging a war, then y'allhoo is gonna reelect Donald Trump.
The students want this to stop.
So you reclaim the moral authority by building a movement. And I don't know who's doing it. I hope somebody started this, but I'm gonna say it out loud. I'm gonna say it to the students the next time I speak to them. Somebody needs to be organizing all these students on all these campuses so that you have a collective movement. And then when school comes back in September, you got to again. You hit it, and you hit it hard. That's really I think how you you you you?
Politics is about who out organized as who. This is a war, not just one battle. These are battles and skirmishes on these canvas. We are in a war for peace and non violence in Gaza against the war of violence that is being waged in Gaza.
But we're you know, the problem that I think There are several that I think that these students are facing. But one of them is the fact that if I am labeled as an anti Semite, then no one is going to listen to you. So so even if which I believe is that the cause is righteous on the right side of history, centered around humanity and justice, if everything is drilled down to broken windows and anti Semitism, then no one is going to listen to you. So
I believe, like Jurassic Times, call for drastic measures. I believe in taking over buildings, right because guess what they wanted to be on the campus.
In an encampment and you fuck that up?
You know? So now the president created the avenue and the space for this. Right, instead of saying, you know what we need is a town hall? Do you know what we need?
Right?
Is the understanding that we're all trying to operate in good faith. Right, that Columbia University has been investing in a lot of fuckery over the course of the school's history, Right, Like, this is not the first unjust thing that they have done.
So let us be really.
Open and transparent about whose campus this has always been. But I wonder, Mark, is this This administration is not engaging in this in the right way. They're not engaging in this frigging war in the right way. I don't know how anybody continues to get a blank check when you are showing yourself, based on the Geneva Convention, to be a fucking war criminal. I don't know how you have rules of engagement. You break those rules and you
there's there's no accountability for it. So if I'm never going to be told that I'm wrong, what's the incentive for me to stop doing wrong.
Well, so to the first.
Part, I really manage it's a regeneration because it's a new one. I don't think they wean First of I'll say this. You know some of the students were cursing around you. Ask man, I called your name, and so we saw a reverend you manus cursing around you. I said, no, Daniel Moody does it all the time.
There's no problem. I'd accept that. That's no thing.
The students this generation are not intimidated by the anti Semitic label that is dying, that weaponization of their terminology. This is all generational. I'm gonna sound like Fannie Willison. Now you want you want to head a conversation, you.
Can have that conversation.
Conversation will checked this out Joe Biden's generation where you have Jews, some of whom are still living direct survivors of the Holocaust. So I get that. I get that whole thing. And then those had I mean just you got their children. You know who wouldn't be here. And then you got the Joe Biden's of the world, the Irish Catholics, other people in Europe who allowed it to happen and turned the blind eye to it.
So you can hold that old people's head as long as they're lave. You didn't do nothing about this. I'm just talking about the Holocaust, not now. Clearly we can save because we're not allowed to. But but I'm not knocking that because you did y'all. That happened.
Y'all were cool with Hitler putting Jews in ovens as long as he'd invade in the countries.
I hope that got heard what I just said.
So it's hard for somebody in that generation to say to the Jewish people.
Well, you know, I'm gonna just not then y'all who do this. Now.
On the other hand, you have the next generation of Jews coming from those parents who survived, and then a couple of other generations below that who was saying, you know what, They have a different mentality to say, Okay, we know that haven that was horrible, but checked this out. We can't justify you doing that to another group of people. That's why you asked so many Jews Jewish students up here. I mean, the rabbis were with me Sunday calling for a ceasefire and we did the song. By the way,
everybody to go to ceasefiresong dot com. It's also available on Spotify and Apple it tunes Ceasefire with Iana Gregory got Rabbi is on that the clock is chicken, so that the NN Yahoo is no different from the Trumps and some of the religious nationalists in this country. This is their last gasp yep. All right, So these these kids, yeah, I know you know you and I probably still care about that. I mean, I don't anybody to call me and anti semi, but I'm at the point what can I do about it.
I'm not.
And unfortunately no one has called me that I made it very hard. But I know some people want to say and they think it because in some respects some people throw that word around like they do they in word. I'm probably saying too much here, but I think that this this thing is flipping and as each generation comes, just like with women and row and all of these things, you're finding people come forward to say, yeah, this is
a new generation, we got to do something different. There are members of the Biden administration who get this, but they are members of the administration who are not doing him a good service. And I've even had a member of Congress say to me whose name will remain anonymous, that Joe Biden is not being well served by his staff and has not been since he's been there. So you know, some of this stuff just does not add up.
If you cannot afford as president of the United States, the vice president of the first black president who needs the black bass vote, you can't afford to go to more House and get protested by the Landa University Center and black students and black parents there because the people who aren't like us and don't listen to us every day and don't watch jord read every day.
This is out here, living.
Lives, black volte just regular black vote who aren't as politically caught up like we are. When they see that picture, Wait a minute, something must be wrong. Maybe I don't need to vote here. Maybe I do need to stay home.
Yep.
And I pleaded with people, say we always we know we can't have Trump, so please, Hey, I'm on the phone with you. This is what you need to do. I should do it more like the teacher Charlie.
Brown, wan't wa want wa wanh wa want, don't get it?
Don't just literally do not get it, And that pushed.
Us all in great peril. Let me just let me just say this because I teased it. Let me just.
Say it was a movie in Meryl Street. Sophie's choice she had in the book too. She had to choose between which child the sacrifice this was supposed to be. Remember remember in November, every election since Dobbs at Overturn Row, women have made the decision. When if women decide, it's over. You know, don't even worry about all these rappers and black men run around talking.
It it's right now.
There's a set pretty much every the same percentage of black men who vote for a Republican and saying it's not going that's not even a big deal.
Just you don't even spend a lot of time on that. We need to educate these younger brothers.
But with Gaza, you hurt, You hurt us, you hurt the mobilization, you hurt young people who you need to vote. And you are naive if you think the generation above them is an also disaffected. But here's where comes down. To women, women who are going to make the decision, and specifically black women and suburban, college educated white women. Those are the two demographics that are going to decide. Now, it helps that you've got to row on the ballot
in Florida and row on the ballot in Arizona. But when it comes to the presidency, and this is what will determine whether role will ever be restored. See, if Trump gets back in, he's gonna put new judges on and they're going.
To pass a federal law banning abortion.
Bion's not going to do that. He's going to pass a federal law reinstating role if he gets reelected. But women are in this Sophi's choice. Do I vote for my own body and my own choice versus voting for someone who is allowing a genocide to happen right before my very eyes as a hell of a choice. I mean, it really really is. And people should not be put in that position. There should be no genocide and there should be women's rights restored. But the Biden administration has
gotta figure that out and get it. And see, ultimately, if you put a human being in that box, then yo, even if you figure out an answer, and I'm figured out yet.
I'm thinking about it. How do we deal with that? How do I how do I say to people, you still got.
To vote for this new I'm working through that. We'll talk about that on the next show. I'm in prayer about that. But even if we figure that out, you still have built some resentment in me towards you that you have even put me in that situation.
Now all gone choice.
I know you have left up everything, the spirit, the movement, anything, and then you want to go to moles.
But I'm not trying to put you down. I'm saying you all need to hear me.
You can't go to doctor King's alma mater, whose life was ultimately taken for standing against the Vietnam War.
Huh. They didn't kill him when he was in Montgomery.
It was the Vietnam War movement that was so large when they saw, wait a minute, look at all these white folks coming around doctor King.
He really is a bigger threat.
One year to today that he announced his opposition gone, you're going to go to his alma mater.
And stand there. And then on the very.
Day May nineteenth that Malcolm X was born, and what do you think you're going to gain from that. There is I'm telling you, this is not what I'm predicting. This is what I know, and it's not. My hand isn't in it because I haven't organized anybody.
I don't know this.
You know some things we don't have to do. We didn't organize these student protests. These are organic. There's going to be a mass demonstration against Joseph Robin ed Biden at the Atlanta University campus at Lanta University Center where Martin Luther King went to school on Malcolm Mix's birthday, on Malcolm X.
Nay, you can't write this shit.
I know that I have to rap soon, but I'm just like, this is I gotta say, Mark, this has gotta be the most apocalyptic time I have ever seen in my.
Decades of life.
That the cataclysm of events that are taking place right now, no bodily autonomy, rise of LGBTQ, anti LGBTQ bills, five hundred plus book banning, environmental mess, student uprising, a complete and total genocide that we are watching in real time on our own stations, not relying on mainstream news to filter through what I need to see, but seeing every goddamn thing and a moral less and grifting Supreme Court. And we have less than two hundred days until this election.
Please dear, like you want to talk about somebody who who is praying on a regular basis. I've been praying. I've been praying for the last seven eight years, right, And I mean that seriously. This is like I have been cussing. Yeah, I don't know where the light is. Oh, because my God, my God knows who I am.
So I don't know. I don't have to I don't have to fame. I don't have to fame that I don't know.
But I or thou has searched me, and you know me.
So I don't understand how we're gonna get from A.
To Z.
I don't understand how we are going to get out of this with an administration that does not see the writing on the wall. They believe that saying that Donald Trump is going to be worse is enough. And people looking around them and they said, I already don't have abortion rights. You kick my kid out of school, my gay kid. I had to move states in order for them to be able to even possibly have a future. I just last word to you honestly, where does the student movement lead us?
Do you think?
I think it leads us every place. It always has.
It's been the student movement that's made the difference. It's been the student movement that led the civil rights movement. It was the students in India with Gandi, it was the students. The South African freedom struggle began with a student movement, and what was going on in Saway till what they were trying to make the students learn in nineteen seventy six, trying to make them learn Afrikaans and they didn't want to. So it's always been the young people.
I am here, Whatever you all think of me, I exist because there was a student movement and it was one I was involved in in my generation. This is what happens, and this is the youth in these situations. You can't expose people to hire knowledge and higher learning and expect them to just to remain stupid.
They're going to question, they're going to be inquisitive.
And let me just shout out again, there are a lot of faculty and even some in administration whenever this happens who were like, yeah, yeah, this is we're with the students.
You know you trip it. You don't need to do this. And so this.
Universally confirmed that this is the largest resistance in history to the mistreatment of the Palestinian people since the establishment of the State of Israel.
So just like these students.
Are going to have to come to some negotiation and hopefully get whatever gains they get or not. I mean, everything is a negotiation. It's time for the next generation. And they don't put on the news all the Israelis that are protesting and Yahoo every day because you're by getting some house, you're gonna get some hostages. You're not blowing up stuff, you're not killing hostages, You're going to
get them. And it's high time a new generation of leadership was there whenever you even have a Chuck Schumer say that. Now he's quiet, but he said that before a generation that realizes there has to be coexistence. Not the king said we've got to co exist. One group can annihilate the other. So the only solution is for the record mission of a Palestinian state as well as
an Israeli state. The problem is it's all Palestine would be the most jerry man that chopped up country in the world because the way it's split all up in the way they You know, when you got Jared.
Kushni saying, well, this is beach front property, we clear our gaza.
You got putin saying BB then Yahoo, if you stay out of Ukraine, even though there's so many Jews there and the Jews and the president is Jewish, stay out of that.
Not only will I let you.
I'll not use my missile defense systems when you launch bombs in the Middle East. Once I went in Ukraine, I'll relocate all the Gazans, I mean, all the Ukrainian Jews in the Gaza. And then Cushion says, well, we want to do that because we want to gentrify it. So you know, that's that's what's going on.
It's I mean, it's Jeff, We're going to have to leave it here today. But let me tell you, I need you back after you are, you know, gain more information on what is going on, and we figure out where we are in the next week or so. Thank you, Mark, Thank you for every every single thing that you do and everything this single thing that you say in front and behind the mic.
I appreciate you.
I appreciate you.
Please keep me and keep these students, all of.
Us in your career.
That is it for me today.
Dear friends on wokef as always, power to the people and to all the people.
Power, Get woke and stay woke as fuck.