0:03

We're learning new details about

0:05

the outside agitators. They call

0:08

them professional agitators. Now

0:10

the NYPD is Counterterrorism Unit looking

0:12

into the involvement of outside agitators

0:14

and professional protesters. Outside agitators.

0:16

Those two words, we've been hearing

0:19

them a lot the last few

0:21

weeks as protests against Israel's war

0:23

in Gaza have spread across college

0:26

campuses nationwide. We will not

0:28

stop, we will not rest this goal.

0:32

Police have arrested more than 2,100 people

0:35

during pro-Palestinian protests. And

0:41

in New York City, where protests at Columbia

0:43

University have been in the spotlight, dozens

0:45

upon dozens of protesters have been arrested.

0:48

You have been warned as per City College to

0:50

leave the campus. If you refuse to leave, you

0:52

may be placed under arrest. There

0:56

is a movement to radicalize young

0:58

people, and I'm not

1:00

going to wait until it's done and all

1:03

of a sudden acknowledge the existence of it. That's

1:06

New York City Mayor Eric

1:08

Adams. He says, quote, outside

1:10

agitators infiltrated pro-Palestinian demonstrations at

1:12

Columbia University. Here's Mayor Adams

1:14

again at a press conference

1:17

last week. Outside agitators

1:20

were on their grounds training

1:22

and really co-opting this movement.

1:26

Adams says these outside agitators are

1:28

the reason why police have been

1:31

present. New York City officials

1:33

say nearly half of the 282 people

1:35

arrested at pro-Palestinian protests on two

1:38

campuses this past week are

1:40

not currently affiliated with either

1:42

school. But this

1:44

narrative of outside

1:46

agitators co-opting protests,

1:49

it's actually not new. outside

2:01

agitators. That was used in 2020 after

2:03

the police killings of George

2:06

Floyd and Breonna Taylor. But

2:08

police say small bands of

2:10

so-called professional agitators are hijacking

2:12

peaceful demonstrations. The phrase

2:15

outside agitators was also used even further

2:17

back during the 2014 protests

2:19

in Ferguson, Missouri, after the killing

2:21

of 18-year-old Michael Brown. Even

2:27

Martin Luther King Jr. was labeled

2:30

as an outside agitator during the civil

2:32

rights movement because of his involvement in

2:34

protests outside of his home state of

2:36

Georgia. He wrote about this

2:38

in his 1963 letter from Birmingham jail.

2:41

I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta

2:44

and not be concerned about

2:46

what happens in Birmingham. Injustice

2:50

anywhere is

2:52

a threat to justice everywhere. King

2:56

goes on to say, quote, Never again

2:58

can we afford to live with the

3:01

narrow provincial outside agitator idea.

3:03

Anyone who lives inside

3:05

the United States can never

3:07

be considered an outsider. Consider

3:14

this. The term outside agitator

3:16

has been used throughout history.

3:19

Well, who are these so-called

3:21

outside agitators and what purpose

3:23

does it serve to label

3:25

them in that way? Don't

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your first month. It's

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considered this from NPR. The term

4:49

outside agitator has staying power.

4:52

It has been used against

4:54

protesters throughout history, from the

4:56

civil rights movement to the

4:58

anti-Vietnam war protests to

5:00

now, during the pro-Palestinian demonstrations

5:03

on college campuses. It

5:05

was also used to describe some of

5:07

the people who protested the killing of

5:09

Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri back in

5:11

2014. Justin Hansford is one

5:14

of those people. He's also a law

5:16

professor and director of the Thurgood Marshall

5:18

Civil Rights Center at Howard University. I spoke

5:21

with him about this

5:24

outside agitator narrative. So

5:27

I just want to start by defining what a

5:29

so-called outside agitator is. Like when

5:31

we hear people such as New

5:33

York City Mayor Eric Adams saying

5:35

that outside agitators are the reason

5:37

why there's such a heavy police

5:39

presence, who is

5:41

Adams talking about? Who are these

5:44

outside agitators? The first thing

5:46

I would say is it's

5:48

not always clear who is being discussed.

5:50

Probably when an

5:54

outside agitator is being described,

5:57

it's a bad person, right? It's not a

5:59

person. person that is

6:01

seen to be a legitimate

6:04

part of the group of protesters.

6:06

So in this case, probably not

6:08

a student, not

6:11

someone who legitimately shares the

6:13

goals of the students. So, you

6:15

know, they are illegitimate and

6:18

there are people who are seen as

6:21

nefarious Lee trying to rouse

6:24

the students to create harm. And so

6:27

they're seen as being manipulative. They have

6:29

a number of negative characteristics and

6:31

they're more sophisticated than the outsiders

6:34

in the sense that they are infiltrating and causing

6:37

this havoc. Yeah. And the

6:40

thing is this phrase, outside agitators,

6:42

it's not brand new, right? Like

6:44

we've heard this phrase used to describe people

6:47

at protests throughout history as recently as

6:49

the demonstrations against police brutality in 2020

6:52

during the Ferguson, Missouri

6:54

protests in 2014, which I

6:56

understand you participated in, right? And it

6:58

was also a phrase that came up

7:00

during the civil rights movement. Can

7:03

you tell me more about that, about the evolution,

7:05

the development of this phrase as it's popped up

7:07

in history? And all of those three

7:10

examples that you used, the

7:12

phrase represented people

7:14

who had those characteristics. They were

7:17

bad. They were more

7:19

sophisticated in a lot of ways,

7:21

at least in the view of the public

7:25

than the actual protesters themselves. And there

7:27

was a racial aspect to it as

7:29

well in that in all

7:31

of those situations, these outside agitators were seen

7:34

to be not black. In all of those

7:36

situations though, you see the same narrative

7:39

unfolding. And what, of

7:41

course, the goal of that is

7:44

ultimately in the end to

7:47

justify more aggressive policing

7:49

and more aggressive intervention on

7:52

the grounds that it's not

7:54

really an issue of the

7:57

actual, in those three cases,

8:00

African-American civil rights protesters who

8:02

needed to be controlled, which needed to

8:04

control the outside agitators

8:06

at all costs. Say

8:08

more about that because I

8:10

want to understand the motivations

8:12

behind choosing to employ a

8:15

phrase like outside agitators. When

8:17

we hear that phrase, what do you think

8:20

is the intent ultimately

8:23

behind using that phrase? Well,

8:25

choosing to employ a phrase like

8:27

outside agitator, it

8:29

plays a political role

8:32

in setting the stage for the

8:34

use of more harsh

8:37

force by

8:39

the police because

8:42

from a political perspective, all of

8:44

the other groups that we mentioned,

8:46

whether it's civil rights protesters or

8:49

student protesters speaking

8:52

out against war, all of

8:54

those groups have large constituencies that

8:57

sympathize with them, so it becomes a

9:00

political risk to

9:02

be seen as cracking down really harshly on

9:05

folks who are sympathetic. But

9:07

if you can make it seem

9:09

like the crackdown is really directed

9:12

towards these nefarious

9:14

outside agitators, it

9:16

then goes over more smoothly politically. So

9:19

I think at the end of the day, the

9:22

use of these narratives to justify

9:24

power is

9:27

a core part of how politics works. I think that's

9:29

something a lot of folks may

9:31

not have a natural understanding of.

9:34

This idea of mobilizing narratives

9:38

to justify policy is

9:40

something that has a long history in

9:42

American politics. Well, Martin Luther

9:44

King Jr. during the civil rights

9:47

movement was labeled as an

9:49

outside agitator. What

9:51

was the purpose behind labeling him

9:53

that way? Dr. King,

9:56

as you know, during the civil rights movement, marched

9:59

in a number of locations. locations throughout the

10:01

South. That question about

10:03

Dr. King really gets to this really strong

10:05

point. How do you

10:07

determine who is an insider

10:09

for the purpose of labeling them an outside

10:11

Ash painter? I guarantee you that most of

10:14

the black folks in Birmingham or Memphis did

10:16

not see Dr. King as an outsider, who was

10:19

part of the civil rights community, African

10:21

American preacher. But

10:24

that ability of the authorities

10:26

to be the ones to determine the

10:28

criteria of who's an outsider or an

10:31

insider really gets to the

10:33

farce of this phrase outside Ash

10:35

painter because I think

10:37

history has shown that very few of

10:40

the civil rights activists at that time

10:42

saw Dr. King as an outside Ash

10:44

painter coming into their community. You

10:46

know, they, they had the right

10:48

to determine who was an outsider or an

10:51

insider, not the police, not the governor or

10:53

the media. And that's something that we

10:55

should keep in mind today as well. Well,

10:57

how much truth is there

10:59

to the idea that outside

11:01

agitators, so-called outside agitators are

11:04

present at these protests that we're

11:06

seeing unfold across college campuses right now?

11:08

Are they out there? There

11:10

is some truth to the presence

11:12

of outside agitation. Of

11:14

course, it's not exactly the way

11:17

it's being described. And I

11:19

spent some time at some of

11:22

these camps. And what I've seen

11:24

is that when outside agitation happens,

11:26

it usually happens in this case

11:28

from people who support the

11:30

war in Gaza, usually the outside

11:32

agitation that takes place happens

11:36

on the initiative of the political opponents

11:38

of the protesters. So it's usually not

11:41

a third party that

11:43

does the outside agitation. It's

11:46

usually a group that wants to undermine

11:48

the protests themselves, usually the

11:50

protesters opponents. So how

11:53

should city and state leaders talk about

11:55

this idea of other people being present

11:57

at a protest that maybe are not

11:59

not sympathizing with the

12:02

exact same message that is at the

12:04

heart of the protest. How should officials

12:06

talk about that idea without perpetuating the

12:08

idea of the boogeyman narrative? The

12:11

way that I think officials should talk about

12:13

it involves explaining

12:15

that some of the

12:17

opponents of the

12:19

protesters are

12:21

engaged in agitation.

12:25

That would explain the fact that something

12:27

is happening called a heckler's veto.

12:30

This is a term that we use to

12:33

describe a situation where people are coming

12:35

together to make their voice heard. Then

12:38

you have essentially a heckler who

12:40

comes and changes the nature of the

12:42

situation from peaceful or

12:44

positive to antagonistic. And

12:47

then if he gets so antagonistic that there's

12:49

risk of violence, then the whole

12:51

thing has to be broken up. So it would

12:54

be a more accurate way to describe the situation

12:57

to make it clear that these

12:59

outside agitators are

13:02

the political opponents of

13:04

the protesters. Right

13:06

now what is happening is you're painting

13:08

them as this mysterious, nefarious third party

13:11

group that is out to

13:13

the fulfillment of violence. Number

13:15

one, that's inaccurate. But number

13:17

two, what that does, it undermines and

13:20

delegitimizes the legitimate speech

13:22

of the students. And I think

13:24

that's deeply unfair. It goes against

13:26

our constitutional principles of speech. That

13:31

was Howard Law professor Justin

13:33

Hansford. And

13:35

just a reminder that you can enjoy the

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