Commencement speaker slams CUNY Law for supporting ‘fascist’ NYPD, oppressive systems
A graduate speaking at the City University of New York’s law school commencement called for a “revolution” to challenge oppressive institutions in the US — name-checking the “fascist” NYPD, the military, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the prison system.
Future lawyer Fatima Mousa Mohammed, a Queens native who was selected by the graduating 2023 class to speak during the May 12 ceremony, praised CUNY for supporting student activism — but said the school still managed to fail students by supporting the NYPD.
“Like many of you, I chose CUNY School of Law for its articulated mission, ‘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,” she said.
CUNY Law initially removed Mohammed’s fiery speech from YouTube, however, it was later uploaded once again after critics chided the public law school for silencing a pro-Palestinian voice.
“We joined this institution to be equipped with the necessary legal skills to protect our communities,” she continued, noting that she and her peers enrolled in the program to confront systems of oppression.
“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,” she said.
Mohammed then lauded the school for supporting students who spoke out about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
She said the graduating class of law students also fought for incarcerated clients with “nearly zero institutional support,” fought for clients to get asylum, and went to court to reunite families “torn apart” by the Administration for Children’s Services.
According to Mohammed, the class of 2023 was able to accomplish all of this in spite of racism, selective activism and “self-serving interests” of CUNY, which she deemed an “institution that continues to fail us.”
The future lawyer slammed CUNY for continuing “to train and cooperate with the fascist NYPD, the military” and for continuing “to train IDF soldiers to carry out that violence globally.”
She then called on her fellow grads to dismantle capitalism, telling them she hopes their rage becomes “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 brunt the ferocity of the violence, those who carry the revolution, the people, the masses, those who brunt the ferocity of the violence, those who need our protection. They will carry this revolution,” she continued.
Mohammed noted that a revolution was ongoing, but was not widely known.
“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,” she said.
She then called for “liberation” in light of the “murder of Black men like Jordan Neely by a white man on the MTA,” and claimed such killings were “dignified” by politicians like Mayor Eric Adams and Sen. Chuck Schumer.
Mohammed began to conclude her speech by saying, “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,” she said.
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