Juno News - May 06, 2024


Confronted at the University of Toronto anti-Israel occupation

Topics
divestment protests at U of T
Mentioned
Mohawk Harrison Faulkner Tim Hortons
Liberals keep pushing for drug decriminalization, despite failure in B.C. Can the CBC be saved？

Episode Stats


Length

15 minutes

Words per minute

191.8

Word count

2,941

Sentence count

248

Harmful content

Misogyny

5

sentences flagged

Toxicity

13

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, we talk about the protest against the University of Toronto's ban on halal and halal food on campus, and what we can do about it. We also talk about how the situation has changed for Jewish students at U of T over the past few months, and how they are dealing with it.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Free, free, pro, sky!
00:00:02.000 Free, free, free, pro, sky!
00:00:04.000 Free, free, free, pro, sky!
00:00:06.000 Write another nickel and write another dime! 1.00
00:00:08.000 You're so full of s**t. 1.00
00:00:10.000 Oh, that's nice of you. 1.00
00:00:11.000 She's so full of s**t. 1.00
00:00:12.000 She's so full of s**t. 1.00
00:00:13.000 That's nice of you, ma'am. 0.99
00:00:14.000 No problem.
00:00:15.000 Do you agree with this method of protest?
00:00:17.000 I totally agree.
00:00:18.000 Yeah, yeah.
00:00:19.000 Yeah, it's not a problem for me.
00:00:21.000 Have a good day.
00:00:23.000 Thank you. 1.00
00:00:24.000 You're a total a**hole. 0.99
00:00:30.000 So all throughout this occupied territory here, 1.00
00:00:36.000 along this blue border wall,
00:00:38.000 I'm pretty sure the people inside here
00:00:40.000 hate the concept of a border wall,
00:00:42.000 but they love this one right here.
00:00:43.000 It just so happens to be blue and helping their cause.
00:00:46.000 You will find these letters from the University of Toronto
00:00:50.000 outlining what makes this protest illegal,
00:00:54.000 what makes this protest against the rules here.
00:00:56.000 And it's quite obvious.
00:00:58.000 Now, in fact, they have actually tried to, you know,
00:01:01.000 erase or block out the language here,
00:01:03.000 but come in closer and take a look at this.
00:01:07.000 Obviously, it says here that
00:01:09.000 U of T's grounds and buildings are private property.
00:01:13.000 Unauthorized activities such as encampments
00:01:15.000 or the occupation of university buildings
00:01:17.000 are considered trespassing.
00:01:19.000 Such things involve no structures of any sort.
00:01:23.000 Tents, shelters, etc. may be erected.
00:01:27.000 Well, looks like that rule has not really worked out.
00:01:31.000 How has the atmosphere changed for Jewish students at U of T
00:01:34.000 over the past few months?
00:01:36.000 It has become a lot more hostile and a lot more scary
00:01:39.000 for many Jewish students that I know here at U of T.
00:01:42.000 Students are scared to wear them again to be.
00:01:44.000 They're scared to walk around being identifiably Jewish. 1.00
00:01:48.000 Recommended, like, not to go to halal or Jewish campus events 1.00
00:01:51.000 because they're scared of what could happen.
00:01:53.000 I personally was called a kike walking out of U of T campus,
00:01:56.000 even though I'm not a U of T student.
00:01:58.000 So just anyone walking around U of T campus being Jewish right now,
00:02:02.000 it's a hateful world and it's scary.
00:02:04.000 There's a lot of people here, I feel like,
00:02:05.000 don't actually know the full situation of what's happening
00:02:08.000 and the full scope of things.
00:02:09.000 And I feel like we just are here to find common ground
00:02:12.000 and have those productive conversations with people
00:02:14.000 who are willing to talk.
00:02:15.000 We haven't really gotten the chance to do so,
00:02:17.000 but we're here today to do that.
00:02:18.000 What do you make of the fact that the University of Toronto
00:02:20.000 has not actually enforced the rules that they put in place
00:02:23.000 in regards to this protest?
00:02:25.000 I think that basically this protest is Hippocratic
00:02:29.000 and just like people that don't really know the facts
00:02:32.000 and they occupy a land, a public land,
00:02:36.000 and not allowed people to even go across the circle.
00:02:39.000 And they put a fence and don't allow people even to walk in a public area.
00:02:44.000 And then they talk about other stuff that they don't really understand.
00:02:48.000 Supporting violence, supporting murder of kids 0.98
00:02:54.000 in front of their parents, supporting, you know, rape of women.
00:02:57.000 Why do you think it is that the University has not done anything to enforce this,
00:03:01.000 enforce the rules here in this public area?
00:03:04.000 Mostly I think that, like, their claim is that they don't want to leave
00:03:08.000 until the University completely boycott Israel, including academic relations.
00:03:13.000 Like, for example, I'm a faculty in Israel.
00:03:15.000 So they claim is that I'm not supposed to collaborate with people in U of T
00:03:20.000 or be a visiting professor at U of T.
00:03:22.000 And I think that this is definitely something that is not plural,
00:03:26.000 is not progressive, is exactly the opposite.
00:03:29.000 I mean, they try to boycott people, try to boycott countries.
00:03:32.000 In academia, the entire idea of academia is that there are no borders
00:03:37.000 and people are collaborating all around the world.
00:03:39.000 It's a global and scientific environment.
00:03:41.000 And they are doing exactly the opposite thing.
00:03:43.000 Do you guys know exactly how much the University of Toronto gives to Israel?
00:03:50.000 Just a number?
00:03:55.000 Very interesting.
00:03:56.000 So, as you can see, there's a couple things going on.
00:03:58.000 There is an occupation of this circle in the university.
00:04:02.000 That's not new. We've seen that at other universities.
00:04:04.000 But they don't want to talk to media.
00:04:06.000 They don't want to explain exactly how much University of Toronto gives to Israel.
00:04:10.000 I guess they don't want to have their voices heard.
00:04:13.000 They don't want to have their story put out in the media.
00:04:15.000 Very strange.
00:04:16.000 Hi there, ladies. 1.00
00:04:17.000 What brings you out to the protest today?
00:04:19.000 Why are you guys here?
00:04:20.000 There's media liaisons on site.
00:04:22.000 You can speak to them.
00:04:23.000 How do you think encampments like this and displays like this benefit your cause
00:04:28.000 and get more people to join your cause?
00:04:29.000 Yeah, that's a really good question.
00:04:31.000 So, as we know, student organizers have played a really critical role in social movements for decades.
00:04:37.000 And like I mentioned with South African Apartheid, they played a really critical role in getting universities to divest.
00:04:43.000 And so, we've been seeing, I think last I heard there was 120 encampments at the universities across the U.S.
00:04:49.000 I know there's one at the University of British Columbia, one at McGill happening right now.
00:04:53.000 There was one at the University of Alberta.
00:04:55.000 I think there's a few others as well.
00:04:57.000 But really, like, these are, this is a new wave that's happening.
00:05:00.000 And there's a lot of energy and students are really excited.
00:05:03.000 And there's a new wave of faculty support.
00:05:05.000 Well, we're protesting an occupation by being on a space that we're allowed to be in.
00:05:10.000 You're not letting us in. Or, frankly, people who you don't ideologically agree with.
00:05:16.000 Well, it's for safety. Right now, again, I don't want to keep going back to this.
00:05:21.000 We are trying to maintain the safety of our campers. And that's all I'm going to say on this issue.
00:05:25.000 Of course. So, again, as soon as possible, we are going to try and let as many people in as we can.
00:05:29.000 Media are going to be allowed in. Other people from the community are going to be allowed in.
00:05:33.000 So, here we go. We're about to be let in, but only with a media escort who we don't know.
00:05:39.000 And I guess they're going to maybe determine what we can and can't see, what we can and can't write.
00:05:44.000 Or maybe they'll just want to walk with us and become friends with us as we go through this encampment.
00:05:49.000 Let's see what happens here. And let's meet our media escort at this encampment, shall we?
00:05:54.000 Hi there. How's it going? You're going to be our media escort?
00:05:57.000 Yes. Great.
00:05:58.000 We've gotten you guys around there.
00:05:59.000 Okay, great. All right. Let's see.
00:06:00.000 So, Dakota, how long have you been at this? How long have you been here for?
00:06:03.000 Two days.
00:06:04.000 So, you've been here since the beginning?
00:06:05.000 Yep.
00:06:06.000 They wanted this to be an open space, a public space. They want it to be open for everybody.
00:06:11.000 But, of course, that isn't really exactly what's going on here. You would agree, right?
00:06:15.000 It's not really an open space for the public.
00:06:17.000 I'm not going to be answering too many questions. I will say we're doing our best to make sure that it is as open as possible and the media can access the space.
00:06:24.000 Okay. Okay, great.
00:06:26.000 We will ask that you guys refrain from people's faces, maybe. Try to grab, you can grab tents, you can grab, like, the general structure. It's just anonymity reasons.
00:06:36.000 Well, it is a public protest, right? I mean, so there's not much we can do about not getting people's faces on board, although I will say the majority seem to be masked, so they don't need to worry too much.
00:06:50.000 How many people here are actually students of U of T? Because it seems like, you know, there are quite a few people who are not U of T students.
00:06:58.000 I don't have an answer to that. Okay.
00:07:00.000 We haven't done, there's no census yet developed. Right.
00:07:04.000 We're not sure. Look at these tents here. There's quite a few of them, and they're quite nice, actually, I have to say. They seem to be new.
00:07:12.000 Wow, interesting. Actually, the majority of these tents are matching, believe it or not. They've got the grey and the blue on top. They look brand new.
00:07:20.000 How do you feel the need to have people like yourself and others escorting the media around? Do you not trust the media?
00:07:30.000 I'm just here to keep the people in the camp safe.
00:07:32.000 All right, well, it's Harrison Falcon reporting for True North here at the University of Toronto in King's College Circle.
00:07:50.000 This is day two of the encampment. I think they're calling it the People's Circle for Palestine.
00:07:57.000 We've actually been allowed into the encampment before we were denied access. It seems that they didn't want the public to, you know, enter their occupied territory, if you could call it that.
00:08:07.000 But they've now allowed the media with media escorts. And we've got one here ourselves. He's a great guy. Can't, don't have anything wrong to say.
00:08:15.000 Now, another couple of important things to point out here. There's quite a lot of food donations, quite a lot of, you know, Tim Hortons, Timbits coffee and all that.
00:08:25.000 I want to just point out this sign here. We're not taking food donations.
00:08:29.000 Well, that's interesting because we've actually seen several people walking into the encampment, walking into the occupation with food.
00:08:37.000 So clearly they are taking food donations. A few moments later.
00:08:40.000 We've just got some people in the shot here are doing some alterations to their signs.
00:08:46.000 Actually, they're trying to take off an FCK Hamas sticker. They wouldn't want criticism of Hamas, would they, at this encampment, I guess.
00:08:55.000 Anyway, what's interesting, of course, is that the people at this protest, the media liaisons who have spoken to the press here, have tried to say that they wish the perimeter never existed, that they want this to be open to the public.
00:09:08.000 They want people to be able to come and go and to basically do what they're doing now exactly as it would have been prior to the university setting up this blue perimeter fence.
00:09:18.000 We don't want to have a fence. The whole idea we had before was that we wanted this to be an open space for community. We're not out here.
00:09:26.000 So then why not let people in whenever people want to go in? They're not doing that.
00:09:31.000 Well, currently, it's for people's privacy. People have personal property there, especially when there's large numbers, when there are agitators.
00:09:38.000 We are worried for people's safety and security. That's the only thing about it. It's not about enforcing a particular perimeter.
00:09:44.000 We're not here to be police. We are trying to maintain people's safety.
00:09:48.000 And if we think that it's going to compromise people's safety in any way, then we think that it would be in the best interest of the students inside to maintain that.
00:09:56.000 But of course, that's not really what's going on, is it? They can say that to the press, but they're actually not allowing people in.
00:10:02.000 They're not allowing people who they do not think will agree with them on political issues, whether it be this issue or maybe other issues.
00:10:10.000 It does seem to be a strange situation going on here. What is the objective of this protest?
00:10:15.000 Well, the media liaisons have told us that they want to have the University of Toronto divest their investments in Israel military companies.
00:10:24.000 You know, ultimately, like we are here, whether or not, you know, this encampment, however long it lasts, whatever happens next, students will be continuing to make this demand and continuing to demand that U of T divest from Israeli apartheid.
00:10:36.000 You know, in 2000, students have been demanding this of this university since 2006. So this is not a new demand. And we're not, you know, this is not a demand that will end anytime soon.
00:10:46.000 The amount of money that the university invests into these companies that these people want to have the university divest from is not actually known.
00:10:53.000 So it does make it a bit difficult to advocate for such a cause, but you don't know the actual figures because we don't know the figures.
00:10:58.000 And according to the media liaisons, they don't know either.
00:11:01.000 Which is why one of our demands is to disclose.
00:11:04.000 Disclose, I see. It's very interesting here. Very tight messaging control.
00:11:08.000 And we've got, now we've got, now we've got a crowd of people involved in watching this.
00:11:12.000 You know, it's very interesting. I guess, let's, let's take their instructions.
00:11:16.000 Let's go to the front and interview the people who are media trained, media savvy, who can answer our questions.
00:11:23.000 And we've even got them following us out of here. So very, very nice.
00:11:27.000 We started with one escort. We've now got, oh, I thought we had three. We've now got, what is that? Five.
00:11:32.000 You know, my map is correct.
00:11:34.000 We've explained what the protest is, what they're fighting for.
00:11:37.000 We've explained the strange inconsistencies about this protest and the people they're targeting, that being Israel, of course.
00:11:43.000 They are opposing an occupation of Palestine by occupying a public space, controlling the media narrative,
00:11:52.000 controlling what the media can see and not allowing us to interview other people.
00:11:57.000 Why don't we also just take a look at some of these flags here being hung on this tree?
00:12:01.000 You've also got the Mohawk warrior flag. Here's a very interesting fact about this as well.
00:12:04.000 The Mohawk warrior, well, they believe that this is stolen land itself. 0.51
00:12:09.000 So you'd think that if they're flying the flag in solidarity with the Mohawk warriors,
00:12:13.000 the people who are occupying the land which the Mohawk feel is stolen from them might give it back and give it up to them.
00:12:18.000 Again, that goes, that's another inconsistency in the message here, isn't it?
00:12:21.000 They're occupying a space that is not theirs to occupy in protest of an occupier.
00:12:27.000 So there you have it, everyone.
00:12:29.000 You've seen how strict and enforced the messaging control is at this encampment.
00:12:35.000 The only people that we were really able to speak to were the media liaison representatives of Occupy UFT,
00:12:42.000 who spoke with the legacy media doing scrums.
00:12:45.000 And we got in a few questions at the end there.
00:12:48.000 Everyone else, however, was not willing to speak to us.
00:12:51.000 The people who did speak to us either gave us very little information or, as in the case of one old woman, 0.89
00:12:56.000 told us that we were assholes for even documenting the protest in itself. 0.89
00:13:00.000 This is a protest full of double standards and irony here. 0.90
00:13:06.000 Because, of course, what these people are protesting is an occupation by occupying a place that is not theirs to be on.
00:13:14.000 They have been told by the University of Toronto that they should have left yesterday by 10pm.
00:13:19.000 It is now a day into this and about a day and a half, actually.
00:13:23.000 It's now about two o'clock on the second day and no one has done anything.
00:13:27.000 The students and the people who are occupying this area, many of whom who are not students, by the way, have not left.
00:13:33.000 The university has not enforced their rules.
00:13:35.000 As you can see, there's actually two border fences around this area.
00:13:42.000 And the people involved in this protest are very strictly enforcing their border.
00:13:46.000 Something I don't think they would like to see the United States do.
00:13:49.000 Something I don't think they believe in on any other country.
00:13:52.000 But when it comes to their own protest, they will strictly enforce a border
00:13:55.000 and determine who is allowed in and who is not allowed in.
00:13:58.000 Let me ask you, did you see any of this during the Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa, for example?
00:14:04.000 Was there an occupation of an area in which the organizers didn't allow certain people who they didn't want to be allowed in to the area?
00:14:11.000 Did they determine what media is allowed to enter?
00:14:13.000 Did they force media like True North or even the legacy media who were in fact reporting on their protest with a extreme bias?
00:14:22.000 Did they force those journalists to walk around their encampment with a media escort like they've done here today?
00:14:29.000 Of course they haven't.
00:14:30.000 There are two standards being applied at this protest and in this protest movement.
00:14:34.000 Before we sign off, take a look at this sign here.
00:14:36.000 Glory to all martyrs.
00:14:38.000 That's just one of several signs we've seen at this protest, including one chalk message written on the ground here,
00:14:44.000 which said, leave Palestine alone and go back to Europe.
00:14:48.000 I wonder how that makes Jewish students at the University of Toronto feel.
00:14:51.000 One can only guess, but the real question is whether or not the university will actually enforce the rules they have put in place.
00:14:58.000 The rules they have told the people involved in this protest that they are breaking.
00:15:02.000 Will they enforce the rules or will they just simply allow this to go on?
00:15:06.000 I can tell you, if these people were protesting against maybe the federal government,
00:15:10.000 if they were protesting against a liberal government policy, something tells me the standards would be quite different.
00:15:16.000 Reporting for True North at the University of Toronto, Harrison Faulkner.