This is a true story that Pulitzer Prize winning propaganda outlets for the Democrat Party (i.e., The New York Times, The Washington Post, etc.) will not touch with a ten-foot pole.
http://twitchy.com/grateful-calvin/2024/05/07/swarmed-by-an-angry-mob-janitor-at-columbia-university-speaks-out-to-the-free-press-n2395974
The pro-Hamas protests at college campuses have shown us some true ugliness over the past several weeks. Harassment of and violence against Jewish students, vile antisemitism in general, hatred of America, and destruction of property are just a few of the lowlights. (And yes, we are not calling them anything BUT 'pro-Hamas protests' from now on, because they have nothing to do with helping the Palestinian people.)
With apologies to UCLA, which actually had students wearing bracelets to determine which parts of campus they were allowed to be on, there's probably no better exemplar of awfulness with these protests than Columbia University. At this bastion of Ivy League academic integrity, all of that violence and harassment culminated in the protestors taking over Hamilton Hall, barricading themselves inside, then laughably demanding that the school feed them. Thankfully, this did not go on for too long before police came in and arrested many of them.
But the protesters weren't the only ones in Hamilton Hall the night it was taken over. University staff members were there too. And we're not talking about privileged professors who were (and are) in collusion with the hateful, overprivileged students and outside agitators. We're talking about the custodial and maintenance staff, who were terrorized and held hostage by the same people they clean up after every day.
One of those people was Mario Torres, a 45-year-old custodian who has worked at Columbia for five years. The image of Torres fighting back against a NON-student who was assaulting him went viral on social media, with good reason. It is emblematic of who these protesters are, and it couldn't be more damning.
Yesterday, Torres sat down with Francesca Block of The Free Press for his first media interview after the ordeal. And if you think the photo was bad, wait'll you hear what Torres had to say.
Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) ~ Exclusive: Columbia Custodian Trapped by ‘Angry Mob’ Speaks Out
@FrancescaABlock scoops in @TheFP:
http://www.thefp.com/p/exclusive-columbia-custodian-trapped
Block begins by describing just who is pictured in that viral photograph:
As the mob invaded Hamilton Hall in the early hours of April 30, a facilities worker was photographed pushing a demonstrator against a wall.
Later, it emerged that the protester was a 40-year-old trust fund kid named James Carlson, who owns a townhouse in Brooklyn worth $2.3 million. The man who tried to hold him back was Mario Torres, 45, who has worked at Columbia — where the average janitor makes less than $19 an hour — for five years.
Let that sink in for a minute. This 40-year-old multi-millionaire, non-student, trust-fund-baby is attacking a college custodian who makes $19 per hour. This is the professional agitator who is being referred to:
#msg-1242074
James Carlson is a trust fund baby who lives in a multimillion-dollar home. Torres is your average blue-collar worker trying to protect himself and his workplace.
Like we said: emblematic.
(The good news is that Carlson has been charged with five felonies. The bad news is that it is in New York City, where he'll probably get off with a slap on the wrist.)
'We don’t expect to go to work and get swarmed by an angry mob with rope and duct tape and masks and gloves,' [Torres] said.
'They came from both sides of the staircases. They came through the elevators and they were just rushing. It was just like, they had a plan.' Mario said protesters with zip ties, duct tape, and masks 'just multiplied and multiplied.'
At one point, he remembers 'looking up and I noticed the cameras are covered.' It made him think: 'This was definitely planned.'
'Like they had a plan.' Imagine that.
Of course it was planned ... it was organized and choreographed with big bucks from statist billionaires like George Soros and Bill Gates. And if the low-paid maintenance workers became collateral damage - OH WELL!
Torres went on to describe how he immediately just started thinking about his family and how he was ever going to get out of the building safely. And then he laid into Columbia itself:
Torres has not been to campus since the incident. He says he does not feel safe. 'When it comes to the public safety, the workers’ safety, people don’t feel comfortable walking through a mob to punch in to get into campus. That’s crazy,' he said.
He added that he’s worried Columbia might take disciplinary action against him for speaking out. He worries about losing a job he loves. He worries about supporting his young family.
'Is Columbia going to retaliate and find a reason to fire me? Is someone going to come after me? So I’m taking a big risk doing this, but I think that they failed. They failed us. And I think that’s the bigger story. They failed us. They should have done more to protect us, and they didn’t.'
We don't know if any attorneys have reached out to Torres, but we're thinking he's got a pretty rock-solid civil suit against Columbia. We hope he does sue them and take them to the cleaners. Because they were derelict and complicit in the uprising.
We do know, thanks to Bari Weiss, that there is a GoFundMe to help Torres.
Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) ~ There is a GoFundMe to help Mario Torres get the legal support he needs:
http://www.gofundme.com/f/heroic-janitor-fights-off-encampment
Bett (@FuossLC) ~ Story worth reading because corp news won't let this out.
This is an important point. We love The Free Press, not because they are conservative, but because they embrace all viewpoints, including stories that the corporate media will try to bury. You will not see Mario Torres interviewed on 60 Minutes. He won't be on The View or CNN or MSNBC. They want to pretend he doesn't exist. So we thank Block and Weiss' publication for making sure we all know that he does exist.
Yep, Democrat assholes pummeling the regular working-class guy just trying to do his job because they think they are privileged and have the moral authority to step on anyone who gets in their way.
Yehuda Teitelbaum (@chalavyishmael) ~ Wow. Good on him for speaking out. Columbia is falling their students, their faculty, and even their janitorial staff. Despicable.
Yehuda Teitelbaum (@chalavyishmael) ~ [i]Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. I can't stop thinking about this speech by Justice Scalia. Please watch.
“The one message I want to convey today is that you will have missed the most frightening aspect of it all, if you do not appreciate that it happened in one of the most educated, most progressive, most cultured countries in the world.”
📽️ Via @JCNSeverino
Video ~ http://twitter.com/i/status/1787577210594820160
TheSK (@TheSK2023) ~ Mario is very brave sharing his story of what happened that evening.
Torres is brave. And the protesters and university are cowards.
We still can't get over the identities of the two people in the viral video.
Shaun Maguire (@shaunmmaguire) ~ What a paragraph!
Eric Owens (@ericowensdc) ~ This millionaire trustafarian douchebag Columbia protester (who reportedly owns a $2 million townhouse) got into a serious physical fight with a janitor, who was doing his janitor job and making about $20 per hour.
That's really helping the oppressed. Amirite?
If the corporate media ever DID cover this story, it would end the mythology around these protests in an instant. That is why they don't.
AG (@AGHamilton29) ~ On one side you had a criminal mob led by a 40 year old entitled white trust fund brat playing activist and on the other you had a Hispanic working class facilities worker who was attacked while trying to do his job.
Says a lot about those who decided the former are the heroes in this story. And who demanded that Columbia not do anything about the mob.
Steven Keith (@keith44beat) ~ Once they show up with “zip ties, duct tape, and masks” we should stop calling them “protesters.”
'Domestic terrorists' has a nice ring to it. Or even simply 'criminals.'
Damsel in Dissent (@starboard_light) ~ He’s just a peasant to them.
He's worse than that in their eyes. He's nothing to them.
People really need to go back and study more about the Red Guard in China's Cultural Revolution.
Monica Osborne (@DrMonicaOsborne) ~ This is not a movement that cares about people of color or the working class.
They only care about themselves. Does that sound familiar to a lot of other woke activists?
They're Democrats.
Blue Shift Blog (@BlueShiftBlog) ~ The janitor met the school's product. The administration has allowed this culture of hate to flourish while they pat themselves on the back for being "anti-hate."
Anti-hate? Anti-racism? Antifa? They all mean the exact opposite.
Random Swervy (@RandomSwervy) ~ Do they understand how hard men like him work? What his job means to him? As a provider for his family, and now what, he can't? This infuriates me.
We should ALL be infuriated.
Scott Feely (@SfgRaiders1) ~ Most people do not know what happened there that night!
Most people don't know because Columbia, the New York government, and the media do not WANT them to know.
It's why independent media might be the most important estate in American society right now. Elon Musk's Twitter, Bari Weiss' The Free Press, journalists on Substack, and -- if we may be so bold -- Twitchy and our Townhall family of publications as well.
Mario Torres' nightmare at Columbia University is a story that needs to be told and needs to be heard. The Washington Post and The New York Times won't do it, so we're glad you can hear it here.
The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted. ~ D.H. Lawrence
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