Hoisted With Their Own Petard: Minority Janitors at Columbia Sue Pro-Hamas Mob That Held Them Hostage

AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura

You gotta love it. The pro-Hamas organizers and protestors who fomented violence against Jews and commandeered Columbia University's Hamilton Hall in 2024, demanding divestment and shouting "Free Palestine," ended up traumatizing and victimizing the people of color for whom they claim they are standing up. Two minority janitors who were trapped in the building by this group, held hostage, and assaulted, are now suing the individuals involved.

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Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg dropped 31 of the 46 charges filed against these protestors, so this lawsuit is poetic justice.

The Columbia University janitors who were held hostage during the violent takeover of a campus building last spring are suing their alleged captors for battery, assault, and conspiracy to violate their civil rights, according to a copy of the suit reviewed exclusively by The Free Press.

The lawsuit was filed in federal court on Friday evening by Torridon Law and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law on behalf of Columbia janitors Mario Torres and Lester Wilson. It alleges that over 40 Columbia students and “outside agitators,” some but not all of whom were arrested by police following the takeover of Columbia’s Hamilton Hall last April 29, “terrorized” both Torres and Wilson “into the early morning of April 30th, assaulted and battered them, held them against their will, and derided them as ‘Jew-lovers’ and ‘Zionists.’ ”

Certainly flips the script on "oppressed" and "oppressor." Marxism hardest hit.

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The janitors were working the night shift as heavy cleaners. What were they cleaning? The New York Post reported that the janitors were forced to scrub the swastikas that had been spray-painted in the building. They had no idea they would encounter an even worse nightmare of being held hostage by masked agitators, who spewed obscenities and threatened them with violence:

The lawsuit describes the protesters, the majority of whom “donned masks and hoods to conceal their identities,” as “reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan.” It claims they “are part of a broad pro-Hamas, anti-Semitic network of organizations, groups, and cells that are connected through a largely untraceable underground communications system. They promote and resort to violent and illegal tactics, and are motivated by invidious discrimination against Jews and supporters of Jews.”

As reports indicated, these professionally organized protests were funded primarily by George Soros' Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR), and other left-wing concerns. If Wilson and Torres win this lawsuit, Soros and his fellow travelers can pony up money to pay for their legal fees as well as the pain and suffering they have caused them. Hopefully, they'll never have to scrub a swastika, or anything else, ever again:

“Too often, the mainstream media creates a false narrative about innocent political protesters who are simply trying to advance a peace agenda, and who are getting punished, when in fact, what we’re seeing is organized activity by groups who support the terrorist agenda of Hamas and who are engaged in outright violence,” [Ken Marcus, founder of the Brandeis Center] said. “These cases demonstrate that the campaign against campus antisemitism isn't about speech and free expression, but rather an effort to curtail the extreme violence that is unleashed at some of our most prestigious institutions when administrators look the other way.”

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Wilson and Torres have also filed a complaint against Columbia University with The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. We'll keep you posted.

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