Guest lecturer at UCLA leads students in 'Free Palestine' chant at mandatory lecture

In a mandatory course on "structural racism" for first-year medical students at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) at the end of March, students were forced to attend a class in which a guest lecturer, who has called Hamas’s October 7 attacks “justice,” led students in a “Free Palestine” chant.  

The lecturer, Lisa "Tiny" Gray-Garcia, also asked students to join in what she described as a "non-secular prayer" to "the ancestors," instructing everyone to get on their knees and touch the floor—"mama earth," as she described it—with their fists. The lecture was mandatory for all medical students. 

Gray-Garcia, a local activist who had been invited to speak about "Housing (In)Justice," continued to thank native tribes for preserving "what the settlers call LA," according to audio published on YouTube, and to remind students of the city’s "herstory."

She then called on the students to shout “Land Back.” In the YouTube video, a chorus repeating these words can be heard. 

Gray- Garcia also included a blessing for "black," "brown," and "houseless people" who die because of the "crapatalist lie" of "private property." 

“Mama Earth was never meant to be bought or sold or pimped or played,” Gray-Garcia told the students. 

Gray-Garcia later referred to modern medicine as "white science" in her lecture.

Lisa "Tiny" Gray-Garcia's background

Gray-Garcia, dubbed “PovertySkola,” is a formerly unhoused, incarcerated, revolutionary journalist, lecturer, poet, visionary, teacher and single mama, and the co-founder of POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE/PoorNewsNetwork, she describes herself on her own website.

On November 1, 2023, Gray-Garcia posted on X, formerly Twitter, “When u resist after decades of relentless poLicing, killing & terrorizing, that’s not ‘terrorism’ that’s justice."

In 2018, Gray-Garcia posted on X, “Israel is Amerikkklan.”

The US Department of Education is currently investigating UCLA for the antisemitism on its campus, including an incident in which students bludgeoned a piñata with a photo of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s face. "Beat that f—ing Jew," one student allegedly shouted, the Washington Free Beacon reported. In a separate incident, UCLA rescheduled an event with former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni online due to threats of protests.