READ: Full Transcript of Fatima Mohammed’s Antisemitic Speech at CUNY Law School

NEW YORK (VINnews) — The activist group “SAFE CUNY” has released a full transcript of Fatima Mohammed’s vicious antisemitic commencement speech at CUNY Law School.

READ FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Hello everyone. (Audience whoops)

Thank you Dean Setty for that introduction. I want to start by greeting you all, with the greeting I know best — (Speaks Arabic) — May peace and blessings be upon you all, my name is Fatima Mousa Mohammed and I come to you all from the rich soil of Yemen, raised by the humble streets of Queens. (Applause)

It is my honor and I’m humbled to be standing before you all as a selected class speaker, daytime speaker of the class of 2023.

To all our loved ones, our parents, grandparents, siblings, partners, and friends, our comrades, aunts and uncles, and all the little kids in the crowd, those who made it and those who couldn’t, we wouldn’t be here without you. Thank you for your unwavering love. My mom’s crying, so that means I (Editor’s note: A few inaudible words and laughter)

Thank for your unwavering love and support; this celebration is yours. This is the moment for those who’ve paved the way for us to be here, those who wiped down our tears, those who are waiting ahead, and to those we now must open the doors.

And now to the graduating class of 2023. Before I begin, I want to tell you all that my grandparents are in Yemen right now and they assured me that there are fireworks lighting up the city of Aden in celebration of all of us. So just know that oceans away, there’s a whole city on the other end of the earth — it feels like — celebrating you all. (Applause)

To the class of 2023, the moment we have all been waiting for is finally here. The class that began this journey during a season of grief, a season where ambulance trucks were the only noise in town, and our neighborhoods became sort of ghost towns. Where we watched our immigrant parents keep the city on its feet as we saw bodies packed into refrigerated morgue trucks.

The class that saw nothing but black Zoom square boxes for the first two years there’s a lot I can say about the loss and the pain we’ve all endured over the last few years, but I am reminded of Frantz Fanon’s words, “Things get bad for all of us. Almost continually and what we do under the constant stress reveals who and what we are. And so I’m here to celebrate who and what we are, who you are.

Like many of you, I chose CUNY School of Law for its articulated mission to be law in the service of human needs. One of very few legal institutions created .. . to recognize that the law is a manifestation of white supremacy that continues to oppress and suppress people in this nation and around the world. We join this institution (Applause) we join this institution to be equipped with the necessary legal skills to protect our communities.

To protect the organizers fighting endlessly day in and out, with no accolades, no cameras, no votes, no Ph.D. grants, working to lift the façade of legal neutrality and confront the systems of oppression that wreak violence on them. Systems of oppression created to feed an empire with a ravenous appetite for destruction and violence. Institutions created to intimidate, bully, and censor, and stifle the voices of those who resist. (Applause)

In this moment . . . In this moment of celebrating who we are, I want to celebrate CUNY Law as one of the few, if not the only law school to make a public statement defending the right of its students to organize and speak out against Israeli settler colonialism. (Sustained applause).

That this . . that this is the law school that passed and endorsed BDS on the student and faculty level (Applause) recognizing that absent a critical imperialism settler colonialism lens, our work and this school’s mission statement is void of value. That as Israel continues to indiscriminately reign bullets and bombs on worshippers, murdering the old, the young, attacking even funerals and graveyards, as it encourages lynch mobs to target Palestinian homes and businesses, as it imprisons its children, as it continues its project of settler colonialism, expelling Palestinians from their homes, carrying the ongoing Nakba, that our silent . . that our silence is no longer acceptable. (Applause)

We are . . . we are the student body and faculty that fought back when investor-focused Admin attempted to cross the BDS picket line, saying loud and clear that Palestine can no longer be the exception to our pursuit of justice, that our morality will not be purchased by investors. (Applause)

We are the class, we are the class that fought for incarcerated clients, and zealously filed for their clemency applications, with nearly zero institutional support. We are the class that fought for clients to get asylum, that went to court to reunite families torn apart by ACS and the family surveillance. We are the class that organized against using LEXUS, a legal research company contracted with ICE. And we did all of this in spite of the racism, in spite of the selective activism, the self-serving interest of CUNY central, an institution that continues to fail us, that continues to train and cooperate with the fascist NYPD, the military, that continues to train IDF soldiers to carry out that same violence globally. A larger institution committed to its donors, not to its students.

I am here, to remind us all, that our existence on its own today in this room is revolutionary. That as we embark on our legal careers, we must practice a discipline of truth and courage, and hold ourselves true to the mission statement we came to this school for. So today, I celebrate the courage and bravery that got us here, and I celebrate every moment of resilience that sets us apart as the number 1 leading public interest school in this nation. (Applause)

I see . . I see before my eyes brilliant future public defenders, I see brilliant immigration attorneys, housing attorneys, business attorneys, civil rights attorneys, and movement lawyers. I see profess .. professors and librarians, I see before me future practitioners who will work on contracts to end partnerships with ICE, and not intellectual property contracts to secure designs for the newest strong technology murdering children. I see future lawyers who will defend tenants in court, and not those that disposses. . dispossess our communities from their homes. I see future attorneys who will protect the communities terrorized by the surveillance state, and not protect the agents of oppression that carry out that terror. Future lawyers who will fight to keep families together, and not tear them apart. I see future lawyers who will work to make this world a better place, one person, one movement at a time. I see a class to be rejoice, a class to be celebrated, a class to be remembered today, and in the years ahead. And as we celebrate who we are today, let us actively fight against the collective amnesia and cognitive dissonance that limits our understanding of the world to what is only directly before our eyes.

Let us remember . . . let us remember that Gaza just this week has been bombed with the world watching. That daily, brown and Black men are being murdered by the state at Rikers. That there are Palestinian political prisoners like HLF in U.S. prisons. That there are refugees at the southern border still locked up. That yesterday marked one year since the murder of U.S. journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and that the murder of Black men like Jordan Neely by a white man on the MTA is dignified by politicians like Eric Adams and Senator Chuck Schumer. (Applause)

We leave our classes and we leave this school to a world that so desperately needs us to stand alongside those who have given up for the sake of liberation far more than we can imagine. So may the joy and excitement that fills the auditorium here, may the rage that fills this auditorium dance in the hallways of our elementary schools, in our home villages of (Arabic place name), Aden, Yemen, Haiti, Puerto Rico and the Philippines, may be rejoiced in the corners of our New York City bedroom apartments and dining tables, may it be the fuel for the fight against capitalism, racism, imperialism, and Zionism around the world.

No one person will save the world. No single movement will liberate the masses. Those who brought the ferocity of the violence, those who carry the revolution, the people, the masses, those who brought the ferocity of the violence, those who need our protection, they will carry this revolution, the revolution that lives so loudly, despite not being televised. No longer are we going to capitulate to oppressors, no longer are we going to put our hope in their depraved consciousness, and as, as the great Malcolm X said, ‘We declare our right on this earth, to be a man, to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being. In this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.” (Applause)

So one client at a time, one case at a time, one hearing at a time, we will show up for our communities, we will show up for ourselves, and we will protect the fight that brings us all closer to the fall of all oppressive institutions, a reality that is only myopic and unrealistic to the oppressors but is the inevitable future for the oppressed.

For oppressed people everywhere, for greater empires of destruction have fallen before, and so will these. So to the class of 2023, the fight begins now. (Applause)