Building Bridges: Speech on Trial: Labor, Campuses & Tech Repression and Resistance for Palestine

Building Bridges – Pacifica Radio

Building Bridges: Speech on Trial: Labor, Campuses & Tech Repression and Resistance for Palestine

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Building Bridges: Speech on Trial: Labor, Campuses & Tech Repression and Resistance for Palestine

Sep 8, 2025

Mimi Rosenberg

Sep 08, 2025

Speech on Trial: Workers, Students, and Tech Challenging Repression for Palestine

Host Mimi Rosenberg brings together frontline voices resisting a sweeping crackdown on pro-Palestine political expression across workplaces, universities, and the tech industry. Guests Eddie Hatfield (former Google engineer, No Tech for Apartheid), Grant Minor (Student Workers of Columbia–UAW Local 2710), Corinna Mullen (CUNY adjunct, one of the “fired four”), and Taylor (BMCC student activist) expose how repression—firings, expulsions, suspensions, visa cancellations, and arrests—echoes McCarthyism, while also sharing strategies of resistance. From Google picket lines to campus union bargaining, from defending students against account holds to honoring the Palestinian picket line through BDS, they chart pathways to politicize labor, defend academic freedom, and build global solidarity to “shut it down for Palestine.”

00:00 Introduction: The assault on political speech and solidarity with Palestine

04:45 Eddie Hatfield on protesting Google’s Project Nimbus and tech worker responsibility

12:10 Union protections, teaching Palestine across disciplines, and academic freedom (Grant Minor)

18:40 Precarity and the “fired four” adjuncts at CUNY; echoes of McCarthyism (Corinna Mullen)

27:55 Student repression through arrests, disciplinary hearings, and account holds (Taylor)

34:30 Columbia University expulsions and normalization of mass discipline (Grant Minor)

41:25 The politicization of labor: beyond wages and benefits toward international solidarity

48:05 Centering political prisoners and the most targeted voices (Taylor)

52:30 Faculty duty to defend students, BDS as honoring the Palestinian picket line (Corinna Mullen)

56:10 Union organizing, contracts, and academic freedom protections (Grant Minor)

58:00 Calls to action: Google pickets, campus organizing, labor solidarity, and shutting it down for Palestine

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Rough TRANSCRIPT:

I’m Mimi Rosenberg, and we’re Building Bridges. Today’s program exposes a sweeping and coordinated assault on political speech,

especially speech in solidarity with Palestine. Across workplaces, academic institutions, government agencies, and even within the private sector, political speech in support of Palestine is being censored, punished, and suppressed.

A chilling wave of repression echoing across every corner of public life. This is not just censorship. It is a systematic purge, a new McCarthyism designed to crush dissent, destroy careers, and silence resistance. From union halls to university campuses to tech corporations, workers and students are surveilled and doxed,

being fired, expelled, visas canceled, and kidnapped for deportation. The Heritage Foundation’s Project Ester has laid out a blueprint for dismantling the Palestinian solidarity movement. It calls for labeling activists as part of a, quote,

Hamas support network, end quote, revoking student visas and using litigation and surveillance to destroy reputations and livelihoods. The U. S. government and private contractors are deploying AI-powered surveillance tools from Palantir and Babel Street,

targeting international students and migrants who speak out for Palestinian rights. These tools scrape social media, track visa status, and automate threat assessments, leading to unlawful detentions and deportations. With Virginia Fox’s term ending, Trump loyalist Tim Wahlberg now chairs the House Education and Workforce Committee, intensifying efforts to silence progressive labor and educational voices.

Wahlberg has backed subpoena against unions. Like my union, the UAW Local 2325 for supporting a Gaza ceasefire and promotes legislation punishing institutions that show solidarity with Palestine. His support for dismantling the Department of Education reflects a broader agenda to suppress racial justice, LGBTQ plus rights, and pro-Palestinian advocacy.

At Columbia University, Grant Minor, president of the Student Workers of Columbia, UAW Local 2710, was expelled for participating in Palestinian solidarity protests. His removal came just before, hmm, contract negotiations. At CUNY, faculty like Corinna Mullen and students like Hadika Abbas, Arzu Malik have been fired and suspended for their advocacy.

Indeed, Malik’s suspension bars have from all 25 CUNY campuses. And faculty like Mullen have been terminated without cause. despite stellar evaluations and departmental support. And students like Venus Blue and Taylor Anam Daguerre from Borough of Manhattan Community College, BMCC, challenging censorship and the weaponization of anti-Semitism definitions for self-determination for the Palestinian people.

Those students have been suspended and banned and expelled and arrested and student visas canceled and immigrant students detained, deported. The government is using a vague accusation of anti-Semitism to justify ideological deportations. And along with those guests is also from the tech sector, Eddie Hatfield, a former Google engineer who was fired after publicly confronting Google,

Israel’s CEO, over the company’s $1. 2 billion contract with the Israeli government. Eddie’s protest was part of the No Tech for Apartheid campaign. These folks are our champions. They’re the champions of political expression, free speech, and for a free, free Palestine. And just to give a kind of context to all this, I want to read a couple of statements that were put out today relevant to the issue

of Gaza and a ceasefire. The first one is from the Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz. And he writes, Today, a powerful hurricane will strike the skies of Gaza City and the roofs of the terror towers will tremble. This is a final warning to the murderers and rapists of Hamas in Gaza. and in luxury hotels abroad.

Release the hostages and lay down your weapons or Gaza will be destroyed and you will be annihilated. the Israeli Defense Forces continues as planned and is preparing to expand the maneuver to decisively defeat Gaza. Right? This was in response to a statement by Hamas for a ceasefire. And their statement was, Hamas welcomes any initiative that helps in the efforts to stop the aggression

against our people. We affirm our immediate readiness to sit at the negotiation table to discuss the release of all prisoners in exchange for a clear declaration to end the war. The full withdrawal from Gaza. and the formation of a committee to manage Gaza from Palestinian independents who will immediately begin their work. Hamas on negotiations and cease fire. And lastly, from Trump, war criminal in chief and U.

S. president. This is your last warning. For the leadership, now is the time to leave Gaza while you still have a chance. Also, to the people of Gaza, a beautiful future awaits. But not if you hold hostages. If you do, you are dead. Capital D-E-A-D.

Make a capital house. S-M-A-R-T, a smart decision. Donald Trump, war criminal in chief and U. S. president. That’s the backdrop for this discussion. And now I’d like to begin to ask Eddie Hatfield. Now,

you disrupted a community-sponsored tech conference in New York in March 2024, declaring that And I quote, I refuse to build technology that powers genocide, apartheid, or surveillance. Eddie, what compelled you to publicly protest Google’s role in Project Nimbus, the $1. 2 billion cloud services contract with the Israeli government? How do you see tech workers’ responsibility in confronting corporate complicity in

war and repression? And I thank you for joining us along with Taylor and Corinna and Grant. You are the hope. What you do in the workplace and what you do on the campuses mean everything. So, Eddie, you are rambunctious. You actually went to a tech conference and disrupted it. Tell us a little bit more about what you think the responsibility of those tech employees are,

were, what you think yours is to challenge corporate complicity and war and repression. Sure. Yeah, so I protested at that conference. I had raised concerns internally for months because it was clear that our work was being sold to the Israeli military within Google Cloud during this genocide. And it made it impossible to do my work in good conscience. So, yeah, I just decided that action had to be taken as soon as possible.

So this this conference was was was happening. And so I protested it and I was fired a couple of days later. And Google really tried to decontextualize what I did and say that I bullied the person on stage and harassed them. when really my bosses were in the middle of committing huge crimes. Um, and so, yeah,

I, I, I think as, as, as tech workers, um, I mean, I think this condition holds true for,

for a lot of workers in, in, in America is, is that, um, when, when it comes down to it, when you have to do something in defense of people’s lives,

um, bosses here can fire you. Um, and, prevent you from doing that, from doing your job. So, yeah, I think this applies to many people in America, many different workers and also community members.

You know, are we gonna, stand up and try to change things? And when does that become a better option then to try to get by and keep yourself safe? But, you know, when you think about the world that your children are going into, yeah, that was something that I thought about a lot was my teammates’ children.

If they’re in a world where we can’t speak up about this happening, then, you know, what are we doing it for? We have to change things. And you’ve actually been part of a group or helped form a group, No Tech for Apartheid. So you were not only lost your job, but are acting affirmatively because you seem to be suggesting that,

hey, labor can shut it down for Palestine and should. So tell us a little bit more about what you’re doing in response to the firing and No Tech for Apartheid. Yeah, so. . . around the time that I was fired and then after that.

So here in New York, there’s this system of home care agencies where Immigrants are often employed to take care of the elderly, and so they are oftentimes forced to work 24 hours a day, and they’re only paid for 13 hours. So around the time that I got fired, I saw them putting on a hunger strike against this. And so I saw that their protests were really having an effect on – their bosses and the whole political system of New York, which seems a raid to keep them down. And so I felt really similarly about the position that I was in,

where speaking out for Palestine and people in Palestine, you get the entire political system and all of your bosses turned against you. So yeah, since then I have been helping organizing to end the 24 hour workday, um, and also to fight displacement here in, in New York. Um,

you know, there’s constantly different luxury projects like casinos and luxury apartment buildings that raise people’s rents and get them kicked out of their apartment and it tears, tears communities apart. Um, so that’s also something that’s very difficult to, to,

to challenge and almost seems inevitable. Um, So since then, I had been organizing around that, and I just got really confident with a lot of the wins that we were having. And I think right after I protested at Google, I thought I had made my statement, and Google wasn’t even worth changing.

But looking for jobs in my industry, Google really set a huge precedent, not just with the firings, but with the collaboration with the Israeli military. military during the genocide. So yeah, I was growing more confident because of these wins that we were having. And I was also learning that these conditions for us in all of our workplaces, not just tech companies,

but people get fired in many different workplaces for saying anything against the genocide. Yeah, I decided that I had to keep fighting back to change things for myself. So, yeah, we started a picket line outside Google once a week at 5 p. m. on Tuesdays, which if you’re in New York, please pull up. And, yeah,

stand with us and show Google our determination and that it’s not acceptable for us to be fired for speaking out about it. A genocide happening at our workplace. Yeah, we’ll find out more about that. Let’s bring Grant and Corinna into that discussion as well in terms of the responsibility of workers and the workforce in dealing with a genocide, a genocide in our name. So,

Grant, Corinna, in light of Google’s billion-dollar investments in Israeli tech and propaganda during a military campaign condemned as genocidal, how should labor unions, educators, and civil society respond to Defend workers’ rights, academic freedom, and democratic values.

I mean, Grant Minor, Corinna Mullen, particularly within your respective areas as educational workers and union activists on your college campuses. And let’s begin with Grant, and you’re welcome to all of you have a discussion. We do not need to do a call and response thing. And then, Corinna, certainly interact on this.

You folks are stellar. students, educators, union activists, and both of you have been sacrificed on the wheel of Israeli-U. S. partnership in the hegemonistic interests of a greater Israel in the Middle East. Grant, taken.

Sure, and thanks for having me on, Mimi. Well, as you said, there’s multiple sort of ways that you can sort of fight against this, both as an educator and as an educator in a union. I mean, in the classroom, I think people have really come up with a lot of ways to sort of to raise this and

to sort of have a positive impact on their students, both inside and outside the classroom. Stuff like teaching about Palestine, even if it’s not necessarily related to your discipline. Like, you know, there’s the classic idea of, OK, well,

you can teach, you know, the Middle East history from a sort of decolonial lens. But I mean, we’ve had some of our members in like the astrology department. you know, have a unit where you based around like stargazing in Gaza and represented in that stargazing exercise are like the lights of drones. And so what is it like to do the same work that we’re doing now in our intro astrology courses?

But, you know, if you were perhaps a student in Gaza, I mean, so that’s important. And obviously we face a lot of pushback whenever we do something, even something as innocuous as that, which brings in what unions can do. And I think particularly academic unions have a real challenge before them because our universities are not institutions like many employers that will really brook any sort of attempts to take back autonomy on

the parts of their workers. I mean, SWC, the student workers of Columbia, are looking forward to proposing some articles around academic freedom in our upcoming negotiations that would hopefully protect a lot of our members from being pushed out over expressing themselves. I mean, we’ve done so already. And being in a union already is really crucial protection against a lot of this. I remember one when a student instructor was threatened with discharge for wearing a cofee at a

class, and union protections had helped her. But I think that Karina’s case really shows that even with academic freedom items in a contract, you really need the support of the entire union to make sure that you don’t get pushed out for doing something, you know, even outside the classroom,

which is, you know, perhaps she can talk more about that, but it’s a really crazy situation. But I’ll give it to one of the other guests. Well, Karina, you have the invitation. Yeah, thank you. Thanks, Mimi, for having me on, too.

And thanks for that, Grant and Eddie. Yeah, it’s true. Having a union, being a member of a union is definitely crucial at this moment in terms of at least providing some protections, even though, you know, we’re one of

uh. . . the lowest moments i think in in history in terms of union membership although i think it has been growing uh. . . still you know not not where it needs to be uh.

. . and and certainly uh. . . though in the case of academia There are, you know, there’s multi-tiered, of course, contracts. And we have been fighting this for years,

certainly at CUNY and I think across all, you know, institutions, fighting back against the neoliberalization of the university and the increasing number of workers who are precarious. And, you know, adjuncts really, you know, dominate now in academia in terms of teaching. I myself am an adjunct and you know all adjuncts know our contracts provide

structurally provide very few protections you know we can be fired for any reason or no reason at all and you know we’ve always thought about it in terms of job security and low pay of course which all adjuncts have but also now it’s becoming increasingly clear that we don’t really have academic freedom Because, you know, we could be fired for any reason or no reason at all. The university doesn’t have to actually provide those reasons. In the case of the fired four adjuncts at CUNY, we at Brooklyn College,

but, you know, many of us worked in multiple campuses. We haven’t been provided with any reason. And that, you know, that. . . uh the the sort of lack of reasons on the part of the university makes it you know

their vagueness makes it they think at least it makes provides them from protection for loss from lawsuits um and you know we see something similar happening in regards to the students there have been multiple students um who have been suspended at CUNY. And this is all part of the broader context that, you know, both Grant and Eddie have laid out of increasing, you know,

fascist repression across the country. You know, that includes, of course, you know, the ICE raids and the targeting of undocumented communities, the attacks on LGBTQ rights, black and brown working class communities,

you know, racist police violence, all of that. And, of course, the attack on Palestine solidarity and people organizing in solidarity with Palestine liberation. And at CUNY, you know,

we’ve also seen, and that’s the case, of course, at Columbia and multiple universities across the country, is that students are particularly vulnerable. And now it’s not just the suspensions, but also putting, for example,

and I think maybe Taylor can talk about this more, putting holds on the financial accounts of students so that they can’t register, but without telling them why. And this is, you know, so the administration is not only repressing, you know, undermining our academic freedom,

firing faculty, repressing students, but also doing so in a way that is, you know, makes it very difficult to fight back because they’re not providing reasons. Of course, you know, we know what the reasons are. um what we all share in common is our you know our organizing work in solidarity with palestine um and also in the case of the um fired four is our union activism

and i just want to add um that uh it’s not only impacting adjuncts now we’ve argued all along that we’re the canaries in the coal mine and now we have What we’re referring to is the singed six full-time faculty members who also are facing investigation, again, for their, you know, for Palestine solidarity,

essentially. And we should say that, and just to clarify, and then Taylor, you have your invitation from our wonderful faculty member here. I want you to weigh in. But I guess there were two, you know, a couple of things that are just Swimming around in my mind.

Be a little bit more specific, Corinna, about exactly what happened to you and the three other faculty member and how that does relate to education, agitation, and organizing in an educational venue for education. Palestine. And Grant, yourself as well, you were expelled.

And by the way, I’m curious whether they accept you as a bargaining agent for the Union in what Rashid Khaliday, who’s a Supreme Educator who worked at Columbia University now calls Vichy on the Hudson. So, Corinna, tell us a little bit more about the specifics of your case. Then I want both Grant and Taylor to weigh in, please. Sure.

In my case, I was one of four adjunct faculty members who were fired. We received notices in June that we would not, you know, because we’re adjuncts and we depend on semester by semester contracts. that our contracts had already gone through for that semester but we were told they were being reversed and one of the fired four already had started teaching a summer course so was more formally terminated and you know we were told only one of the adjuncts was told the reasons for this firing for conduct unbecoming which is a you

know a label that was used in the 1940s and 50s during the McCarthyite era. If you know, you know, the history of the Rapp Coderre report and the impact that had, especially on CUNY. Tell us a little bit about it, because that’s the whole point to give people an understanding of that.

This is just not a spontaneous, but this is historic, contextual. It’s been used before we have. . . The UAC committees, the House on American Activities Committee, we’ve done it before and it’s being revitalized and it’s being revitalized by people who are attacking you and Grant and students like Taylor and so on.

So just give us a little bit of that historic lesson. Sure. Yeah. So, you know, there was the Rapp Coderre Committee, which issued a report in the 40s, and that resulted in the firing of hundreds of educators and targeted especially

CUNY. There were many faculty members who were accused of being communist or war communists who were fired from CUNY and other New York schools. And that led to that kind of set the stage, really, for the later nationwide McCarthyism. And, you know, the university system at that time collaborated really with the state to silence dissent leftists.

and that really paved the way for what we’re seeing today because administrations are showing that they are on the side of the ruling class, not on the side of their students and workers and the communities in which they’re embedded and that means a lot especially for a university like CUNY, which is the largest public urban university in the country, largely black and brown, working class,

student body embedded in communities that are largely working class and black and brown. And so our administration, though, and the board of trustees, which is comprised of real estate moguls, Wall Street financiers, people that you would not imagine,

you know, who don’t represent the interests of the CUNY community. And so, of course, they are governing the university, not on behalf of those communities, but on behalf of ruling class interests. So in the similar way that we saw the administration collaborating with

you know, an increasingly fascist state in the McCarthyite era, this is what is happening today. And we saw that the chancellor, for example, in my case, went in front of this McCarthyite hearing on so-called anti-Semitism, and I’m saying that because the premise of

These hearings are all about falsely conflating anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, support for Palestinian liberation with anti-Semitism, which we all know is false. And that hearing, the Chancellor of CUNY, Felix Matos Rodriguez, was asked by this fascist Congress member, Randy Fine,

who, by the way, said that the U. S. should drop a nuclear bomb on gaza and he praised hiroshima and nagasaki in the use of nuclear bombs to um target the japanese people during world war ii and and he this this fascist congress member um you know is the person who raised mine uh who raised my case and

my name at um during the congressional hearing our chancellor essentially threw me and other faculty members under the bus rather than defending us and our academic freedom. And he could have easily just said, we don’t discuss personnel matters in Congress, but instead acknowledged that the university was complying with this fascist government to crack down on dissent. and you know said yes um this person has been fired so you know i think over and

over what we’re seeing and this is and the reason is because the student movement has exposed these connections it’s exposed how our universities are entangled in capital you know in in in imperialism in settler colonialism their through their investments through their contracts through their boards of trustees and and it’s that you know the fact that the student movement was winning you know the student intifada was exposing and demanding an end um to um to these relationships because they couldn’t they can’t stand you know then this is the amazing thing about young people is

they’re not as propagandized as older people and they um see through the lies and they can’t stand a genocide being done in their name and and you know more and more faculty also realizing that and of course the broader movement on the streets um saying enough And it’s our building, you know, and the labor movement and shutting down, you know,

or at least attempting to, and what Eddie was talking about with Google, trying to shut down supply chains that are delivering weapons to the Zionist entity to commit this genocide. You know, pointing these things out, fighting back, that’s why the state is repressing us. And it’s clear whose interests the universities are being governed. And it’s not the working class people of this country. And in case you tuned in late, this is Building Bridges.

I’m honored to be speaking with our lineup of frontline organizers and educators and activists who are challenging repression and defending the right to speak out for justice from campus to the tech sector, from union halls to student coalitions, Grant Minor, President of Student Workers of Columbia, UAW Local 2710, Corinna Mullen,

adjunct professor at Brooklyn College and John Jay College, one of the fired four CUNY faculty. Eddie Hatfield, former Google engineer and organizer with no tech for apartheid. And we now get to a tailor who has been waiting and goes to one of the working class, particularly working class schools. The whole CUNY system is. But BMCC, Borough of Manhattan Community College, most certainly is.

So your response and your thoughts about teachers using as a bully pulpit the university, or for that matter, students, to proselytize around what’s happening in Gaza. And I’m saying this a bit tongue-in-cheek, but the fact of the matter is that the issue of what education is and what the universities are,

uh colleges are up for is really up for grabs and so taylor how do you respond to some of the things that particularly grant and corinna was saying and then i want to come back to to to grant about what is actually happening with the union and how they are choosing to deal with him as its president notwithstanding the fact that they have expelled him Yeah, I want to add on to what Karina said, sort of just about the ways that,

you know, the student movement has really exposed the complicity of CUNY, of CUNY in this genocide and the investments that CUNY has in, like, for example, weapons manufacturing and I think that what has been a new tactic that we’ve been seeing against students and what I’m experiencing right now is the administration knows that our protests are,

you know, lawful and they are expressions of our First Amendment and they are truthful. And so instead of allowing us to have what we are entitled to, which is due process, you know, a hearing there instead just entirely preventing us from being students. through these bogus extended disciplinary hearings.

For me, what I am currently being punished for or unofficially being punished for is a walkout that I participated in at the CCNY graduation because we as students recognize that it is ridiculous that our chancellor can go up onto stage and self-congratulate about this graduation while there are no universities left in Gaza. And he is, in fact, you know, complicit in that destruction. And so we decided, along with many other graduates, decided to stage a walkout.

And CUNY Public Safety, on our way out, prevented us from leaving and violently arrested us very brutally. And. . . detained us for five hours, including three Palestinian students,

and I believe seven other students other than me, including the three Palestinian students. And during the arrest, I remember looking around just seeing these students who were just trying to leave be pinned to the ground and violently assaulted. And there’s just no way that CUNY Public Safety did that without the okay from the administration. And so now,

because of that arrest, which, you know, all of our charges were dropped because it was a completely ridiculous incident that we even had any pushback for. . . that for just a walkout um which by the way many graduates were participating in

you know our charges were dropped now the dean of students and the vice dean of students want to meet with me and so we scheduled a disciplinary hearing um with student affairs the day before the enrollment period started um and Last minute. Well, actually, they rescheduled four times and then last minute they scheduled for a week later, which was way after the enrollment period.

So and I’m not the only student that’s experiencing this. They are weaponizing. these disciplinary hearings in order to completely bar us from coming onto campus to register for classes. And there’s a few reasons they’re doing it. Obviously, it is a part of repression, but it’s also because there are certain requirements for if you want to take up a

leadership position in student clubs, such as Students for Justice in Palestine, there are certain requirements that you need to fill, certain amount of classes that you need to take. You need to be enrolled in a certain amount of classes, and you need to be enrolled in classes at all. So they’re using that to bar us. And I had met with an academic advisor,

and when he looked at that hold, it said a dean of students hold, and he said that he had never seen that in his entire life. So we’re seeing this continuous ramping up and these completely ridiculous tactics that they’re using to repress us. You know, it’s interesting. Every time I speak to, which I do frequently,

and have the voice, the many voices of Palestine, from Gaza to the occupied West Bank, Jerusalem and the like, from the river to the sea, on this program and Equal Rights and Justice, one of the first things that’s said to me is make sure the students, make sure the students understand how vital,

how dynamic, how important, how they really give us, the Palestinians, some mood, a hope and a steadfastness, their youth, their vigor.

They are undaunted. They are so strategic to the struggle for a free, free Palestine. So you should know that. And when you do get into any of those hearings, you make sure you tell them that some of the most important leaders in the world who may indeed, with a free, free Palestine,

save the soul of this country, for goodness sakes, how they believe in the students and the kind of things that you are doing. And I just want to rotate back for a moment to Grant in that respect. You were a student. You were expelled. And you now work in an institution or you are negotiating with an institution that, as I said,

is now called Vichy on the Hudson. Ah, the Ivy League schools. So what is it that we are supposed to understand about this period of time and what those institutions, the Ivy League institutions, mean and the nature of capitulation such that they expel people like you so that they victimize people and cooperate with the government if their hand is directly, their fingerprint is all over the efforts to deport Mahmoud Khalil?

Give us some more meat on your Samud in the process and why you think it is so critical for the unions and the campuses to take up the issue of Palestine grant minor. Yeah. Well, I mean, as everyone here has really laid it out, a lot of these universities are deeply complicit in providing political and at

times financial resources to Israel. And, you know, of course, it’s a genocidal regime. and uh you’re right i was expelled but really i mean like over a hundred students have been expelled suspended or had their degrees revoked and the uh the recent round of expulsions which was i think around 84 um expulsion suspensions and degree revocations i’ll just say expulsions as a shorthand I believe was the largest disciplinary action ever taken in the United States and didn’t really register as much on the news,

which I found really remarkable. And I think that what these institutions are trying to do is to normalize this sort of crackdown. after the initial shock of people being expelled and people being deported they’ve realized that while they may not be able to get away with having one of their own students deported if it’s you know suspension or something like that they can pretty much ensure that the whole population of activists in a given student body or employee workforce

are pushed out. And I think, I mean, your listeners may be interested to know that the terms for these suspensions, you know, a lot of people will say, oh, it’s only a one or two year suspension,

include community service and requirements for apologies. And I think that Columbia knows that these are people of conscience who aren’t going to be apologizing for attending a sit-in, which is, again, the sort of crazy reason why these folks were expelled. They’re certainly not going to say, you were right to suspend me for two years

for attending a sit-in and they’re just trying to force these these folks out and to answer your question is why is it important to make this a workplace issue so it sort of is a microcosm for a lot of the other things that are happening to our universities and colombia is a bit different from cuny in a lot of aspects but in the specific aspect in that it’s has the resources to fight back against trump It’s not an underfunded public institution. And instead, it’s just completely joined forces. And what we’ve learned over this past summer is that the university is just going

to keep selling us out. It’s really up to unions to fight back. against that. And that doesn’t just extend to stuff relating to Palestine. I mean, we’ve touched on academic freedom here, but it’s also it’s issues of stable employment. It’s issues of health care. It’s like these people are being suspended for two years. They’re not being fired.

They can’t really pursue long term careers elsewhere. And they’ve now lost their health insurance. And they are a lot of our members are really struggling. now that they’ve had their insurance taken away from them. And so, you know, if we don’t fight back against this, we’re going to just see the continued crumbling and,

you know, further degradation of our workplaces and the, you know, the increasingly small amount of good outweighed by the tremendous amounts of evil that Colombia and its associate Ivy League institutions are putting out into the world. I want each one of you, as time grows too near to bring this program to an end,

but only for this day, we’ll continue these discussions. But I do want each one of you to talk about both the politicization of the labor movement, Rather than it’s merely taking an economist’s stance on things, it needs its wages, it needs its benefits. But if it isn’t an engine that drives for the power of the working class through organized labor organizations –

then I believe we are lost or certainly at a loss. So I want to talk about that, and I want to talk about people such as you, Taylor, and Eddie. What is it that we, in the community sphere or in sister unions, as I said, I’m in the UAW, Local 2325, and.

. . A staunch advocate and supporter of unions. This is a labor-oriented show. And yet, I certainly have grave criticisms of our leadership, who has done well on many of the issues. on economist-based issues,

and that’s Sean Fein, and yet when it comes to issues such as political issues around Palestine and the issue of divestment, which is so critical to the support of the Palestinian people, that is boycott, sanction, and divestment, they’re less than cooperative,

quite the contrary. and tend to sacrifice their own membership and union democracy in the process. But I’ve said enough. I want to know from Corinna, and I want to know from you, Grant, and Eddie, and Taylor,

what is it that we, who are listening to this program, need to do in the community sphere, as individuals even, And as people of goodwill and humanitarians and hopefully internationalists, what is it that we do to support you folks who are in the forefront of this struggle and to bring our universities back to where they should be in terms of dialectic and a discourse and a place to nurture and cultivate activism for human

rights? What are your thoughts? What do we do to help you? Because this is, first and foremost, a venue for activism. We educate, we agitate, and then we organize. So Taylor, let’s start with you and then go to Corinna and back to Grant. And Eddie, you take us out with,

again, reminding us of what needs to be done to support the tech workers who are arduously working with no tech for apartheid. Taylor, what do we do to support you? I think it’s important to remember, and I think that what I was inspired by is what you said, the politicization of whether it is being a student or being a laborer, being part of a labor movement is that,

well, I’ll give an example. For example, I’m trying to be in social work and I could leave my, hopefully, hopefully I can graduate someday around all this repression. We’re going to make sure that happens. Maybe we’ll even make you the dean.

be a social worker and I can feel really great about myself that I’m helping these people but what does that mean if I’m working within an institution that while I’m trying to help you know individuals as like say like for the cases that I’m working on when then the same institution is completely destroying and taking away the lives of other people and it’s important to remember that there is no liberation until everybody is liberated So, for example,

for you guys, I don’t want to answer your guys’s question, but I do think about how there is no worker liberation without global worker liberation. So you have to think about this in an international perspective. You have to think about it in. . .

the context of of liberation um systemically like for example say i go into like social work as a someone that’s working with immigrants but then i’m not taking the time to then think about how i’m going to help dismantle the systems that are oppressing immigrants and who are um kidnapping and dismantling these institutions that are kidnapping and throwing immigrants into concentration camps. So I think it’s remember to help us look at your field, look at where you are and think about how you can make change there.

If you are a doctor, there is so much systemic oppression and there is a role that the medical industry has played in the oppression of others and not only just help people on an individual level, but think about how you can change Change it systemically. And if you mean more like how can I how can you help the students specifically? I mean,

honestly, I feel super supported by like the faculty, by all of the people that come stand in solidarity. But I. I think also look at the students who have been experiencing the strongest repression. Look at Tariq Basruq, who is currently a political prisoner, and he’s not getting nearly the amount of attention that say Mahmoud Khalil did.

And obviously Mahmoud deserved all of the support and all of the. . . all of the attention that he got because his case was extremely terrible, what happened to him. But also look at maybe the people who. . . who are being kind of discarded by certain aspects of the movement and who maybe,

you know, have been abandoned because maybe they didn’t fit this like perfect victim role that a lot of more liberal activists will try to shoehorn us into, all activists into. So, yeah, look at political prisoners. Look at the people in the movement who are being suppressed the most. Look at the people who others are afraid to defend. And look at, you know, where you are and the systems that you work in.

You are fierce, my sibling. And from there, I’m going to give it to. . . this faculty member who was kind enough to introduce you to me. And that is Corinna. Corinna, what the heck do you say in relationship to what Taylor said? And how do we support you?

And then we’re going to pivot back to Grant and Eddie. That was so powerful, I would almost just end it on that. But I will say, you know, I just agree with everything that Taylor said, you know, certainly in terms of focusing on the most vulnerable, on political prisoners,

and of course, always centering Palestine. You know, you talked about Samud Mimi. And, you know, all of our resistance here, we also have to remember is inspired by the Palestinian resistance. And,

you know, the point that Taylor made, you know, none of us are free until all of us are free, you know, Fannie Lou Hamer’s mantra. You know, and I think that,

you know, that really, you know, Palestine and the Palestinian liberation struggle has demonstrated that for all of us because they are fighting on behalf of humanity. They’re fighting against the genocidal, capitalist, imperialist,

settler colonial system that, you know, needs to be taken down and, you know, in order for real liberation to happen. And the student movement is constantly reminding us of that. And that’s why, you know, one of the a mantra in the university organizing is our our students our working conditions or

our students learning conditions so you know going back to making that connection as well thinking that so many especially at cuny of our students are people coming from countries that have been destroyed by imperialist interventions economic or military you know the imf and world bank and structural you know adjustment and all of that and so if we don’t talk about, and then genocide in Palestine, especially our Arab,

Palestinian, Muslim students, if we don’t, if we can’t talk about that, if we can’t fight these systems, you know, what are we doing in the university? And that’s also how I feel about protecting students who are brave enough and

courageous enough, like Taylor, like Grant, like all of our, you know, Hadika Arzou Malik, who’s another student who has been suspended, Tariq Barzouk,

as you mentioned, Taylor, you know, these people who are courageous enough to be out there fighting, despite knowing, as you said, Mimi, that their careers are on the line,

that more than that, that they could be deported, they could be arrested, they could be facing years in jail for bogus trumped up charges, felony charges, but yet they still do it. So it’s our duty, if you are a worker,

an academic worker in a university, you have a duty to speak out. You have a duty to speak out about your institution’s complicity, to respect, as we say in Labour for Palestine, the Palestinian picket line, which is BDS, and to defend your students who are under attack.

Otherwise, what are we doing? Indeed. Grant Minor, union president of UAW Local 2710, Student Workers of Columbia. What do we need to do to support a decent contract and make them see their evil ways and bring you back? And who knows? You may not want to be, but I sure would. You’d have my vote for becoming the dean.

Yeah, I don’t know if that’s in the cards for me, but I think being a dean of a school makes you evil. I’ve never known one that fails to turn bad in some respect. But yeah, I mean, the other folks here said it better than I could on the issue of Palestine, but I’ll add that

You know, it’s really important that we support all aspects of higher ed labor, whether that’s people who are coming back to fight for essential protections in successor contracts like SWC is, or instructors who are newly unionizing. We have a contingent faculty organizing committee, which, as Krita said,

are some of the most precarious employees of universities. They can be fired for anything. And then, of course, without union protections, it makes them much more scared to speak up against pretty obvious injustices. I mean, even when we weren’t unionized,

at least we had a sort of contract with the university specifying the years of funding. And if you’re not all organized, then it only takes the weakest link to break sort of that chain of solidarity and allow one group of workers to take the hit just so the other one gets out of it. And so I’d say to support us, I mean, just,

you know, come on down to our picket line if we end up going on strike this fall. But, you know, if you’re not already organized at your university, get involved with your union, you know, start a union.

If there is a union, you know, get involved. Because really, I mean, the Palestine issue is just, as I said, like a microcosm for a lot of other issues on campus I mean of course besides the the really really urgent I mean it’s like the most one of the most urgent political questions of our time um like if you

don’t stand up for for Palestine if we can’t stand up for Palestine um this sort of issue which is um really um you know maligned by everybody in the political establishment then like you you won’t be able to stand up for transgender students you won’t be able to stand up for immigrant students And soon you won’t really be able to teach anything but what they’re allowing you to teach. And Eddie, you’ve, Eddie Hatfield, you’ve taken a courageous stand speaking out. Former Google engineer, now with no tech for apartheid,

an organizer fired after protesting Google’s $1. 2 billion monster contract. And, you know, we’ve got to have Eddie back to talk just to a whole section on the technology that’s gone on and Google specifically. and what their contracts are they’re virtually propping up seriously the israeli economy so eddie hatfield how do we support you we just have about 30 seconds left

on that and then i just want to add in how i think we can all do something eddie hatfield yeah so i think simply uh Like I said, our picket line at Google in New York City at 5 p. m. on Tuesdays, that’s at the Google Chelsea headquarters office. Please. And where is that? That’s at 111 8th Ave in Manhattan and Chelsea.

And can people who are listening in D. C. and around the country, what can they do? Well, for them, I would say I appreciate their support. They can follow Youth Against Displacement on Instagram with underscores between all that. But beyond that, thank you for your support. But also, I know that they’re probably paying a lot of rent. Their health care is in jeopardy.

And I know that they probably can’t speak out about genocide at their workplace. So. . . If you’re scared to speak out about genocide at your workplace, you should join us and fight for yourself and unite with us and unite with your community. You’re all great.

You know, we’ve heard about repression of political speech, especially around Palestine. It’s not, you know, it’s definitely not incidental. It’s strategic. But we also heard something else. We heard about resistance and students and faculty and workers are refusing to be complicit. They’re organizing, they’re educating and mobilizing, not just for free speech,

but to confront the genocide, the ethnocide, and the American-starved famine crisis. being waged against the Palestinian people. This is not just also about Palestine. It’s about whether we will allow the machinery of repression to define our institutions or whether we will shut it down for Palestine, for justice,

for the future of political struggle itself. We invite you, our listeners, to join that struggle on your campus, in your workplace, in your union. in your neighborhood, because silence is complicity and solidarity is our weapon.

I’m Mimi Rosenberg. This has been Building Bridges, and that’s what we do with Grant and Corinna and Taylor and Eddie and all of you.

Thanks for listening.