The Latest on the College Campus Protests & an LA DASH Attack

ICYMI: Hour One of ‘Later, with Mo’Kelly’ Presents – A look at the latest in the ongoing college campus protests, from Columbia’s canceled commencement to KFI Reporter Kris Adler’s on-site reporting from UCLA and MORE…PLUS – Thought’s regarding video of a homeless woman attacking an LA DASH Bus driver - on KFI AM 640…Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app

Episode Transcript

(00:22):
It's later with Mo Kelly can ifI am six forty, We're live everywhere
on the iHeartRadio app. Obie hada great weekend, I know I did.
The weather was beautiful, had agood weekend working out. I was
watching all the videos that Tuala putup he and his family went to Disneyland.
I was only kind of jealous,not really jealous, because I wondered

(00:43):
how many lines they had to waitin for so long, And I said,
well, it's just good enough towatch the videos that he was posting.
I know his family had a wonderfultime, but there's this I was
thinking, over the course of theweekend, what are these schools going to
do? I saw how law enforcementhad to clear out another encampment at USC.

(01:07):
I saw the more recent news howColumbia had canceled its campus wide commencement
and is opting for smaller school focusedgraduations. But it reminded me every single
school campus from coast to coast,is going to have to make a decision.

(01:29):
Unless you're USC, you've already alreadymade that decision. Columbia made that
decision. Can you anticipate, canyou control? Can you handle what may
happen on your main commencement day.There are some schools which don't have a
singular commencement day. For example,you see Irvine. You see Irvine has

(01:52):
a School of Law ceremony on Maytenth. They have the School of Medicine
on May eighteenth, the School ofNation on June fourteenth, the School of
Social Sciences on the fourteenth as well. They have the School of Information and
Computer Sciences on June fifteenth, theSchool of Engineering on June sixteenth, June

(02:12):
seventeenth, the School of Arts.I mean, it's just graduation after graduation.
At the graduation, why do Imention UC Irvine. Well, if
you go to the KFI Instagram page, you will see one of our reporters
be led around the campus and theencampment by one of the protesters. They
are settled in. They're going tobe there for the foreseeable duration. Their

(02:38):
intentions obviously are to be there throughoutall of these graduations. How disruptive they'll
be, I don't know, butit says to me that every single campus
in southern California and beyond will haveto make a decision, and they'll have
to make it sooner than later.Do you try to clear them out,

(03:00):
and does clearing them out mean that'sthe end of the problem. We're gonna
check in with kfi's own Chris Adler, who was on the campus of UCLA
earlier today. And we all knowthat USC has cleared out encampments twice.
UCLA cleared out the encampment last week. We reported to you Live on that,

(03:22):
but then protesters came back today andyou heard Mark Ronner during the news
report signal how forty or so protesterswere arrested again today. This should say
to you and me and everyone elsethat this is not over in the sense
of people who are willing to protest. Will the protests lead anywhere? I

(03:44):
still seriously doubt it. Now.I will admit that Brown University those students
were able to negotiate some sort ofsettlement to vote on divestment in the future.
But those students did not gain anythinghere in California. Nothing even approximating
that has happened. No strides forwardhave been made on USC's campus, on

(04:09):
UCLA's campus, on UCI's campus.This is not over. And I can
also say that this is not goinganywhere. But all of these universities are
going to have to make a decisionand fast. What are you going to
do? Are you going to tryto squash the encampments and risk the blowback
that UCLA has had to deal with. Do you want to deal with what

(04:32):
usc has had to deal with?Do you want to try to ride it
out, which seemingly, seemingly Usee Irvine is trying to do maybe the
path of least resistance, if youwant to call it that, but whatever
it is, you're going to haveto make a decision because clearly these protests
are not only coordinated on some level, they have enough people power, and

(04:57):
we know that it's more than juststudents. We now can be honest with
one another. This is just notabout students only. We have outside individuals
who are not students. You cancall them agitators, you can call them
paid protesters, whatever you want tocall them. They are part of this
equation. They are participating in multiple, multiple protests, They are probably connected

(05:24):
to multiple campuses. And so whatare you going to do? U se
Irvine? Because I saw that encampmenton Instagram and I said, wow,
it almost looked like an apartment complex. Not trying to be funny, but
it was elaborate in nature. Itwas very clear that there was some planning

(05:46):
this time around. Maybe they learnedsomething from USC. I don't know,
maybe they learned something from UCLA,but I did notice, at least on
UCI's campus, there was a mediawhere there was going to be a much
more concerted effort to talk to membersof the media to somehow present a more

(06:08):
cohesive and coherent message. Will thatchange anything, I don't know, but
it does seem like they might havebeen listening to me or someone else.
I remember when I spoke to ChrisAdler last week. They mistreated, at
least on UCLA's campus. In USC'scampus, they mistreated members of the media,

(06:30):
and they were loth to actually havea conversation with members of the media
and be able to put forth amessage that people could understand and get behind,
and their message subsequently got lost inthe midst of violence on some level
and vandalism, And so I wouldsay they did themselves a greater disservice than

(06:53):
they did help themselves along in thisendeavor. There's been no public comment or
public decision made by UC Irvine,but I know every campus has to consider
this because these protests can pop upanywhere at any time. They are coordinated

(07:13):
in nature, and I know they'regoing to be planned to pop up during
these graduation ceremonies, the main ones, the satellite ones, the small ones,
the various schools. They're going tobe there and they're going to be
visible, and they're going to bedisruptive. Hopefully these schools have learned something

(07:35):
and they know how to handle it. If UCLA did anything to help these
other campuses, be it UC Irvineor Santa Barbara, San Bernardino, Riverside,
what have you. If UCLA didanything, it should have given all
these other places a primer, somethingto go by, what to do,

(07:57):
what not to do. But ultimatelythey're going to have to do something because
the protests are not going away bythemselves. When we come back, wing
to check in with Chris Adler,who spent much of the day at UCLA,
and get her read on what happened, who got arrested, and where
it goes from here, at leaston UCLA's campus. It's Later with mo

(08:18):
Kelly canf I AM six forty.We are live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
You're listening to Later with mo Kellyon demand from KFI AM six forty
last segment, I was basically runningdown what the nation was looking like in
the wake of many of the protestslast week. I touched upon how Columbia

(08:39):
had canceled its commencement. We talkedabout last week, how USC has a
quasi commencement celebration going on at thecoliseum. And I was looking at the
news today. I was looking atactually Chris Adler's feed, and she was
at UCLA, and it seemed theprotests came back earlier today. But what
is up with that? Joining usright now is camfi's own Chris Adler with

(09:01):
her on the ground coverage, Chris, fill me in what happened earlier?
Today came well. Today was supposedto be the first normal quote unquote normal
day back to campus since the clearingand the arrest. Over two hundred people
were arrested after police moved in lastweek to clear out that camp that had
been there for days. And sincethen, it was supposed to you know,

(09:24):
classes were canceled, they were movedonline, and today was supposed to
be that first day back for normalday back. But this morning, early
this morning, pro Palestinian protesters wereback on campus and forty more than forty
of them were actually detained in aparking structure for what the Ellet County Sheriff's

(09:45):
Department said was a violation of curfew. These protesters in the structure also did
not want to provide their identities.They would not tell deputies whether or not
they were actual students. We sawvideo and we heard a faculty member actually
declaring herself a faculty member who wasone of the people out there in support
of these protesters who were being detained. And so there were about there were

(10:11):
more than forty taken to the VanNight's Detention Center to the Van Nuys Jail
afterwards. And then following that,there was a sit in in one of
the buildings where about maybe fifty tosixty protesters gathered for a sit in calling
on the university to divest, callingon a boycott of Israel. And those

(10:31):
protesters marched throughout the campus this morning. They were probably I say, I
would say it got to about maybeone hundred protesters at one point, marching
throughout the campus, chanting say antiZionist remarks, and police were watching closiya.
The Schurch department was out in tacticalgear with pickup trucks waiting for any

(10:54):
kind of vestilation, and just kindof watching Jane's unfold. Mo. We
saw LAPD take the lead, orat least visually seemingly take the lead last
week, last Wednesday, But todayyou're telling me that the presence was predominantly
or all La County Sheriff's deputies.I didn't see any LAPD on campus this

(11:16):
morning during these protests. It wasLa County Shriff's Department again in tactical gear
and pickup trucks, in large truckswhere it looked like they could put a
lot of detainees if necessary, andlots of campus security scattered throughout the campus,
kind of marching like, following behindthe protesters, keeping an eye on
them, planted in various spots throughoutthe campus. This was La County Shriff's

(11:39):
Department, along with several patrol cars, several campus PD officers. But no
LAPD was seen this morning, Moll. I wonder, though, given what
happened last week, and given Iguess the reluctance to have last week happened
again, did these students try toi'll say, re incamp in front of

(12:01):
Royce Hall. What does that arealook like? No, I was.
Actually I was in front of RoyceHall this morning. It's still barricaded off,
but there are safety officers standing alongmanning that area, in that grassy
area where that encampment was, butthey are not allowing anybody to walk in
walk through. I was talking toa security officer just scanning out. He

(12:22):
was standing behind the barrier and I'mon one the other side of the barrier,
and I was like, wow,just looking at it. They can't.
It's completely cleared out. The vandalismhas been covered up. They are
still tying up some loose ends andclearing up some minor things, but the
majority of it has been completely clearedout. It's a completely different scene mode.

(12:43):
It's empty. There's not a singletent in sight. It's been completely
wiped out, you know. It'sit's there's some spray paint, some paint,
this coloration of the grass where thecamp was, but it's been completely
cleared out. They are not allowinganybody to go in there though. They
want to make sure that there's noother camp get set up outside of Voice
Hall again. Over the weekend,you and I informally went back and forth

(13:07):
with some listeners on my Instagram talkingabout the protesters, the perception of the
protests versus various protests in history,and I made the point that these protesters
at UCLA didn't exactly seek out ortry to treat the media. Well,
that was then, what was yourexperience today? Was there any interaction between

(13:30):
you and this group of protesters?There was. I was able to speak
to one protester who was part ofthe camp and she was there for the
rally today. She said that thereare extremists on both sides. She knows
there's radicals on the Jewish side,on the pro Kalestinian side, but she
says the majority of the people thatare protesting, she says, are neutral,

(13:50):
and they are peaceful, and they'rethere for an important cause. They
want to make a difference, theywant to save people. But she said
there are extremists. She acknowledged thereare extremists on both sides. And last
week I interviewed several Jewish students whosaid that they were being blocked from going
into the library, several buildings,and even Assemblyman Rich shavz Dbor, whose

(14:13):
district includes UCLA, is now pushingfor an investigation through the Department of Education
to find out if there was infact a civil rights violation, particularly against
Jewish students MO who were allegedly stoppedfrom entering buildings, and they were asked
if they were quote Zionists supporters,and if they were not, they were

(14:33):
given risk bands and free to enterit. But if they were Zionist supporters,
they were not allowed to enter.So there is an investigation that is
being pushed in that sense. Butas we spoke, and you know,
during my life it's last week,they were very hostile towards the media that
were shining lights in my eyes.They didn't want us there, they didn't
want police there. Today it seemeda little bit more friendly towards the media.

(14:58):
I'd say they were willing to speakwith us today, at least very
quickly. I got about thirty secondsleft. Do we know, since this
protest led to other arrests and itdidn't seem like they got any they gained
any ground as far as their demands, what is next for this group of
protesters as far as you know,well I can tell you mode they were
chanting, we will not go,we will be back. When the arrests

(15:22):
were made last week, protesters asthey were in handcuffs, said we will
be back. They vowed to beback, and we saw them back.
They were there this morning and theysaid they will continue to rally. They
will continue to occupy the campus untilthe UC system divests in Israeli connections and
boycott's Israel. So from there fromtheir mouths, they have no plans of

(15:46):
letting up on these protests. Mo, Well, we shall see Chris Adler.
Thank you for the fantastic reporting,and of course kf I will continue
to follow this story wherever it maylead. Chris, be safe out there,
and I'm sure we'll do it againsometime soon. If they're committed.
We're committed. Did you know it? Moo, have a great night.
You're listening to Later with Mo Kellyon demand from KFI Am six forty.

(16:10):
By now you've probably seen the video. The video of the woman who was
caught on camera attacking a bus drivera dash bus driver in South LA took
place yesterday, and kudos for thebus driver fighting back because clearly no one

(16:32):
wanted to help her. Happened aroundone pm yesterday at the bus stop near
South Central Avenue and East thirty fifthStreet. If you know that neighborhood.
It's not a nice neighborhood. Thebus driver took care of business. And
if you haven't seen the video,I just posted it on threads at mister
mo Kelly if you just need tosee it. The easy conversation is this.

(16:56):
The easy conversation is we need topet our bus drivers. I've had
that conversation any number of times.That's the easy conversation. It's easy to
point and say something needs to bedone. But tonight I want to have
a more uncomfortable and I would thinkmore difficult conversation. The video has its

(17:22):
place. I'm glad someone got videofootage of that assault. If anything,
it makes the adjudication the legal processthat much easier, and I would hate
for that bus driver to have gonethrough that and there be any type of
what I would call reasonable doubt.I'm glad from what I understand the bus

(17:45):
driver wasn't seriously injured. But here'sthe more difficult conversation. It's easy to
point, and it's easy to saysomething's wrong. But I think we need
to be more honest about or failingshere. There's something or actually a bunch

(18:06):
of things wrong with our society.Like I said, the video has legal
value, but there's no excuse forno one trying to intervene. Nobody tried
to help that woman out, notbecause she was a woman, but but
she was for the most part defenselessand being attacked for what we could tell

(18:29):
This homeless woman who was attacking herdid not have a weapon, and it
was The video goes on a longtime. No one is trying to intervene.
It says, not only is theresomething wrong as far as violence in
our society, there is something wrongwith us as a society. We are
bereaft of honor and dignity. Iwould hope that if I were in close

(18:55):
proximity, I would have attempted todo something, guide in between them,
pull the homeless woman off, thebus driver, something. But we are
now as a society, a bunchof voyeurs. We're a bunch of onlookers.
We're a bunch of people who aresight seeing and just kind of gliding

(19:18):
through life, looking at the carwreck, the proverbial car wreck as we
drive down the freeway. How didwe get here? I honestly don't know.
The easy thing to say is,oh, just blame it on the
internet. Oh just blame it ongen z Oh, just blame it on
you know, the failings of theDemocrats. That's the easy, that's real
easy. The more difficult conversation isto look inward and say, hey,

(19:44):
why did nobody help? Why isit when we see these videos time and
time again nobody ever helps? Itseems like, and this may be anecdotal,
but it seems like every time Isee these video of these fights in
which you have a civil servant gettingattacked, there are people watching, maybe

(20:07):
cheering on, definitely have their phonesout, but not really doing a damn
thing. And I don't need someoneto go Bernard gets if you get that
reference, I know Mark Ronald does. I don't need you to do that.
But there should be something inside ofyou which says I need to do

(20:30):
something. Throw a rock, youknow, try to pull them off something.
Because for me, and if Iwere to envision myself in that situation,
that bus driver again, I takeeverything very personally in nature. That
bus driver is my friend, thatbus driver is my colleague, that bus

(20:53):
driver is a relative. That busdriver is probably one degree of separation from
me. If it's not someone Iknow, it's someone who knows someone I
know how did we get here.We didn't get here overnight, but I
damn sure know we've been here whereverhere is for a really long time.

(21:18):
And everyone that I've seen talk aboutthis story, everyone that I've heard discussed
this story has run. And Idon't say this as a criticism. I
say it as just something that I'maware of that I noticed something that I
saw. Everyone said basically the samething. LA's going to hell. No,

(21:42):
La has been hell for a while. But we're all citizens. It's
not just over there we are.Are we citizens? Are we active participants
in the society? Are we watchinga video game? Are we on the
outside looking in? Or are welooking at fellow citizens as extensions of ourselves.

(22:06):
It was the bus driver today,Tomorrow it could be someone you know,
someone you love. Maybe the busdriver is someone you know and someone
you love. It shouldn't have toget that personal before we realize we have
a collective responsibility for the fate ofthis city, not just law enforcement.

(22:27):
That's their job. Again, I'mnot saying go Bernard gets we don't need
a whole Howard Beach situation. AndI'm not even saying, like the marine
who was on the train. I'mnot saying go out and kill someone.
I am not saying that. Iam saying there are things that we can
do with what we have right wherewe are to at least let our fellow

(22:51):
citizens know that we care about oneanother. If we don't care about one
another, then how the hell isthis supposed to get any better? Buy
it. We cannot get a differentpolitician which is gonna make it right.
You can elect all the Republicans youwant. That's not going to change what
happened on that bus. If noneof us care enough about each other to

(23:12):
help one another in the time ofneed, we can get We can hire
more police. We could have policeon every single corner. We could turn
this into a police state that doesn'taddress the problems inside of us, that
does not address the issue of usbeing bereft of dignity and honor. I

(23:33):
mean, the whole idea of agood Samaritan doesn't even exist anymore. For
the most part, we're too busypulling out our phones. We're not calling
nine to one one, We're notintervening on a very basic level. How
long did that video go? AndI don't know who was videotaping that I
don't know. I don't know.It could have been someone's grandmother who physically

(23:55):
could not have intervened, But Ididn't see anyone coming from the weak from
the wings. Sit in the middleof the street, broad daylight. A
bunch of people were watching out offrame. I don't know this for a
fact, but I'm pretty sure I'mright. A bunch of people were watching
and thinking, let me get videoof this so I can go viral.

(24:17):
Be damned someone's safety. Let meget something so I can sell it to
some news outlet and get paid.Let me do this so I personally can
benefit. While this bus driver,who happened to be a woman, I'm
not saying that she was incapable ofdefending herself. In fact, she was

(24:37):
kicking some ass. Let me beclear, she was throwing as best she
could. But this bus driver wasall alone in that moment, and there's
no reason in the world that sheshould have been. It's later with mo
Kelly can if I am six fortyWe're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
In fact, I have more Iwant to say about this when we come

(24:59):
back, and I was I loveto get the thoughts of some of the
other men in the studio because wehave these conversations off air, but I
think we need to have it onair when we come back. You're listening
to Later with Moe Kelly on demandfrom KFI AM six forty, a show
programming note. La County Supervisor CatherineBarker, who we spoke about last week,

(25:21):
how she gave her public concern aboutthe Metro and how she felt that
it was unsafe to ride by herself. Well, Supervisor Barker will be joining
in the program Wednesday evening. Shewill be calling in. Just got word
that she has been confirmed for Wednesday. But it also kind of runs parallel
to this conversation. Before the break, I was talking about the La Dash

(25:45):
bus fight between the bus driver andthis reported to be homeless woman and this
clear video which was shown and thenI put it. It was on Fox
LA. I reposted it on threadsif you haven't seen it, to give
some context to what I'm talking about. There were two conversations to have,

(26:07):
just to quickly recap. There's aeasy conversation, Oh my gosh, how
horrible is LA. We need todo something to protect our civil servants public
servants. Yes, I agree,with all that. That's easy, you
know, that's just pointing and saysee, look at that, it's dangerous.
That's an easy one. The moredifficult conversation, I think is looking
at our collective societal responsibility. Noone tried to help, no one tried

(26:33):
to intervene, There were no weaponsinvolved. It was clear that this was
just a homeless woman who could havebeen taken down by somebody, pushed away
something, but instead, and Iwas making the argument that we are a
society that is bereft of dignity andhonor. We've lost it, we've given
it away, but we don't haveit anymore. I think we are a

(26:56):
society of onlookers. We are spectatorsin like a video game where NPC's nonplayer
characters in a video game, wedon't serve any real purpose in the welfare
of our fellow man and woman.I thought that this deserved a larger discussion,
and I think we as men,men in the studio, may look

(27:18):
at this a little bit differently thanwomen. Now, yes, I'm actually
playing the gender card right here towalla sharp your first up, what did
you think when you saw this video? One? The video bothered me because
it wasn't video from the dash bus. It was video that someone took out
their camera and they filmed this.Now, I will say this, I

(27:41):
have ridden the dash bus and rightnear where I live there as a dash
bus stop and I see the individualsthat are primarily riding the dash bus.
They are primarily older Angelinos and theyare primarily women that I see riding.
I rarely see young men or menriding the dash so I wonder who is

(28:03):
taking the video. I had totake that into consideration because I'm thinking to
myself, last time I was onthe dash I may have been the only
guy on the dash two. Thething that I noticed, and this stood
out to me because of all thereporting, was the barrier that was between
the driver and the attacker. Andthat is the exact same barrier that they

(28:26):
are talking about releasing on Metro orinstalling on Metro. And I said,
that barrier did nothing to protect thatdriver. Is that what Metro drivers can
expect if that's the only protection theycan get. But like you, if
I had seen me Tawhila was ridingthat I would have grabbed that woman and
gotten her off the bus. I'mnot gonna sit there and let someone going

(28:49):
off, because you can see thealtercation. You can see how the driver
did nothing to provoke that that wasuncalled for. That woman had gloves on
hands, that's about it. Sheeasily could have been taken off of that
bus. Mark Runner, you're up. Well, you can't look at something
like this without thinking about the KittyGenevi's case. And anybody of a certain

(29:14):
age was haunted by this when theywere kids, and it was before my
time. It was from the midsixties, but it's the famous, almost
an urban legend where a woman inNew York was raped and killed while people
in the surrounding apartments looked on anddidn't do anything and didn't call for help.
Now, in the intervening decades,some facts have come up that have
come into dispute, but that stilldoesn't alter what that says about people and

(29:37):
our responsibility to each other, andhow absolutely horrifying it is when we don't
do anything when we I mean,you know now that we all have Instagram
on our phone. Even animals helpeach other when they're in trouble, and
so when people don't rise to theoccasion like this, it is just the
lowest, most disgusted thing imaginable,And I don't know how you could look

(30:03):
yourself in the mirror for the restof your life. If you were right
there in that situation and you didn'tsay anything or raise a finger while somebody
was being hurt like that, itwould have been different if someone said something,
tried something, anything, tried todiffuse the situation, something, and
we got absolutely nothing. And runningthe technical aspect of the show today is

(30:26):
Tony Santino, who was in forStepan. Tony, I am curious about
your thoughts as well. I gotthoughts. Well. The thing I wonder
about it is they shot that fromthe outside right, you know, so
was that person on the bus seeingsomething going on and then kept recording once
they got it, they got clearof it, you know, That's what

(30:47):
I felt like to me. Butwhat I keeps sticking in my head though,
is like there was that New Yorksubway guy who you know, killed
that olmost guy because he was holdinghim down, right. You know,
it's like when you're trying to holdsomeone down, something bad happens, it's
now you're blamed, and you knowit's or something that happens to you now,
and it's like I don't know.I don't know the right answer.

(31:08):
Do you do you think that's apart of the calculation. People don't want
to get involved because they're afraid theymight get sued or hurt themselves. I
can understand if you're worried about yourphysical being. I understand that. But
in this situation, maybe I'm I'massessing a threat a little quicker than the
average person. Yes is yeah,it's a homeless lady. It's like,

(31:30):
yeah, come on, come on, now, as far as assailants go,
you've got a good shot against certainYeah, he probably hasn't eaten it
a while. No, she's notgonna have a lot of stamina. Now
Here's now here's the thing. Andand to Tony's point, because this woman

(31:51):
obviously looked out of her mind,you and I mo Mark, Tony,
we may approach this differently because ofour backgrounds, and that a side.
The average person, who may nothave the wherewithal to react quickly if a
weapon is produced, may look atthat and say, this lady is obviously
out of her mind. I don'tknow what she may pull out of her

(32:13):
pants, be at a straight edgerazor, a knife, anything, And
then they're thinking about their own ownsafety. So I do not advocate for
anyone to jump in. I havean issue with someone standing by filming it
just for to me social media,because that was they weren't filming that so
it could go on Fox local news. They were filming that so they could

(32:35):
post it somewhere. I don't likethat part about our society. I don't
like that spectator part. If youhave enough wherewithal to pull out a phone
and record it, you have enoughto at least stand in and say,
hey, hey, enough, stopthat. I'm telling the police. Anything
we did heed that. No onesaid doll nine one. One saw none
of that, heard none of that. I just saw two people scrapping,

(32:57):
and I'm glad the bus driver wasnot seriously hurt. But I am sure
that we are seriously deficient as asociety in caring for one another. It
doesn't matter if you can if you'reconcerned about crime, but you won't help
your fellow man or woman. Itdoesn't matter if you think crime needs to
go down and we can hire morelaw enforcement. If you don't actually care

(33:19):
about one another. We can't policeourselves out of this. We have to
take some ownership and responsibility for ourown damn community. It's Later with mo
Kelly can if I AM six fortyLife Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You're
listening to Later with Mo Kelly ondemand from KFI AM six forty