Hip-Hop Star Macklemore on New Film “The Encampments” & Why He Speaks Out Against Israel’s War on Gaza

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

The Trump administration is escalating its crackdown on international students. On Thursday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the State Department’s role in the arrest of Tufts University Ph.D. student Rumeysa Ozturk, who seized on Tuesday by a group of masked federal agents on the streets of Somerville as she was walking to dinner. A year ago, Ozturk had co-written a piece in the student newspaper criticizing Tufts’ response to Palestinian solidarity protests on campus. She’s now jailed in Louisiana. Massachusetts Democratic Congressmember Ayanna Pressley denounced Ozturk’s abduction, saying she was, quote, “kidnapped in plain sight.” Pressley wrote, quote, “She’s a peaceful protestor, grad student, & my constituent who has a right to free speech & due process. Now she’s a political prisoner. Free her now,” the congressmember wrote.

Marco Rubio was questioned about Ozturk’s abduction on Thursday.

HÜMEYRA PAMUK: Mr. Secretary, a Turkish student in Boston was detained and handcuffed on the street by plainclothes agents. A year ago, she wrote an opinion piece about the Gaza war. Could you help us understand what the specific action she took led to her visa being revoked?

SECRETARY OF STATE MARCO RUBIO: Yeah, well —

HÜMEYRA PAMUK: And what was your State Department’s role in that process? Can I —

SECRETARY OF STATE MARCO RUBIO: Well, we revoked her visa. It’s an F-1 visa, I believe. … I think it’s crazy — I think it’s stupid for any country in the world to welcome people into their country that are going to go to your universities as visitors — they’re visitors — and say, “I’m going to your universities to start a riot. I’m going to your universities to take over a library and harass people.” I don’t care what movement you’re involved in. Why would any country in the world allow people to come and disrupt? We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree, not to become a social activist that tears up our university campuses. And if we’ve given you a visa and then you decide to do that, we’re going to take it away.

AMY GOODMAN: This week, thousands of students and faculty and community members in Somerville, Massachusetts, have gathered to protest her abduction. Secretary of State Marco Rubio went on to say the State Department has revoked more than 300 student visas across the country.

Nearly three weeks ago, unidentified federal agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of the Gaza solidarity encampments at Columbia University. He was also a negotiator with the university. He was a permanent legal resident and a green card holder. He’s now being held in an ICE jail in Jena, Louisiana. Khalil is featured prominently in a new documentary called The Encampments. It’s an inside look at Columbia University Gaza solidarity encampment and the nationwide student uprising against U.S. support for Israel’s war on Gaza. This is the film’s trailer.

SEN. TOM COTTON: We’re here to discuss the little Gazas that have risen up on campuses across America.

MAYOR ERIC ADAMS: There is a movement to radicalize young people.

BRIAN KILMEADE: Can you believe they are chanting about the infitada [sic] in New York City?

DONALD TRUMP: I really believe they are brainwashed.

SUEDA POLAT: There was a very concerted effort by the media to portray things a certain way and refuse to discuss Gaza. Columbia is materially invested in the genocide in Gaza. We don’t want our money to go towards Palestinian death.

MAHMOUD KHALIL: I was born and raised in a Palestinian refugee camp, and the university was cracking down on Palestinian activism on campus.

GRANT MINER: It’s completely farcical to imply that in any way, like, Jewish people were being persecuted.

SARAH BORUS: I have never felt more proud to be Jewish than when I was pushing our university to divest from genocide.

MAHMOUD KHALIL: They would just criminalize anyone who would participate in a protest. That was the moment where students were like, “We need to do something more.”

PROTESTER 1: Letting me on the lawn!

MAHMOUD KHALIL: The university would say, “Oh, you’re overestimating your power.” I remember, like, telling them, “There are 60 universities setting up encampments across the United States.”

PROTESTER 2: We’ve got Yale holding it down right now, all live.

JAMAL JOSEPH: In ’68, the students at Columbia took over the campus, mainly in protest of the war in Vietnam. Columbia talks about how it was OK then, but not OK now.

MAYA ABDALLAH: Bravery is very contagious. We kind of watched Columbia in awe, and we knew we were next.

PROTESTER 3: The only weapon they have is fear. And when we call their bluff, they have nothing!

AMY GOODMAN: The trailer for The Encampments, a new documentary produced by Watermelon Pictures and BreakThrough News. Later in the show, we’ll be joined by two protest leaders at Columbia. One of them was just expelled by Columbia, a fifth-year grad student. We’ll also be joined by the film’s producer.

But first, we turn to the four-time Grammy-winning musician Macklemore, who served as the film’s executive producer. In May of last year, Macklemore released the song “Hind’s Hall,” inspired by the pro-Palestinian student protesters at Columbia University who occupied a campus building and gave it that name in honor of the [5-year-old] Palestinian child Hind Rajab. She was killed by Israeli forces in Gaza in January of 2024 in a car alongside of her family members. Prior to her death, Hind was on the phone for hours with emergency workers, pleading for help, pleading for them to come and save her. Macklemore announced all proceeds from the song would be donated to the U.N.’s Palestine relief agency, or UNRWA. In September, Macklemore released a sequel to the song, “Hind’s Hall 2,” with help from the Gazan rapper MC Abdul, a teenager, and Palestinian American singer Anees.

I spoke to Macklemore on Thursday and asked him about how he became involved in The Encampments documentary.

MACKLEMORE: Alana Hadid had reached out to me. I had seen her in San Francisco at Palestinian Day back in the fall, and she mentioned the film then. And I watched it and was blown away. What BTN was able to capture, I think, was a moment in American history that will be — that we will come back to, time and time again, when we look at resistance movements.

What the students did at Columbia University was deeply inspiring to me, on really every level. But it came at this point in the genocide in Gaza that I think a lot of us were feeling a certain fatigue around. What can we do, our voices? This isn’t working. And what the students did by peacefully protesting and advocating for Palestinian life and demanding that their university disclose information about the investments that they were making, their ties to the genocide that was underway, and coming together and rallying for humanity in that moment was one that rekindled a flame, I think, in all of us, and definitely in myself, of the students are always at the forefront of resistance movements. If you look at American history, the students are always those that are willing to risk, you know, being demerited, being — facing deportation, as we see with Mahmoud, and really spearheading what was to come, which was getting millions Americans back out into the streets and demanding for a permanent end to this genocide.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, the film is coming out, and now the people who are featured in the film are speaking alongside it: Grant Miner, who’s just been expelled from Columbia, a graduate student there; Sueda Polat, who, alongside Mahmoud Khalil, negotiated with the Columbia administration. I mean, originally, Mahmoud Khalil and the others were going to be live at the Q&As after the film, coming out this weekend. Now he can’t be reached. He’s in ICE jail in Louisiana. And you have this latest news of Rumeysa Ozturk, the Turkish graduate student at Tufts that is kidnapped off the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts, as she’s ending her daily fast, as she’s going to iftar with her friends, and she’s taken by six masked ICE agents. Can you talk about the latest news, as your songs come out and The Encampments, the documentary, is being released?

MACKLEMORE: I don’t know if I exactly have words for what’s happening. I think that we are under the utmost threat that we have — that we have seen as Americans using our voice. Our First Amendment is completely being stripped away from us in real time, in a way that is scary, in a way that is instilling fear, or as it attempts to instill fear. And you see real-life, very serious consequences to those advocating for peace. You see it with Mahmoud. You see it at Tufts yesterday. You know, we’ve been seeing it the last couple weeks. And people are scared, people that have been very at the forefront, and not even at the forefront, of this movement, that are being targeted right now and risking deportation.

And I think what it’s serving for me in this moment is this rally cry, right? Because if they’re coming for Mahmoud — and Mahmoud, as you see in The Encampments film, is just this very diplomatic, coming-from-the-heart Palestinian refugee from Syria, you know, university student at Columbia, super educated, super tapped in and a leader. And he is a — he is a threat. They are trying to use Mahmoud and everyone else that’s been abducted the last couple weeks as examples of this is what happens when you go against — when you go against our country. This is what happens when you go against genocide. This is what happens when you criticize Israel. And the narrative that is being spun around this being hateful or a form of terrorism or antisemitic is the furthest thing from the truth. These are human beings that are advocating for Palestinian life, that are leaders, that are brave, that are willing to risk their own freedom for the liberation of the Palestinian people. And we, as those in community, this is a call to all of us to step up in this moment, to realize that our First Amendment is being compromised and that we must come to the forefront and ensure that this stops.

AMY GOODMAN: Macklemore, I was wondering if you can share with people your own journey. Born Ben Haggerty, you’re now a four-time Grammy Award-winning rapper. And if you can talk about what changed you and if you were afraid to speak out and what it meant for you?

MACKLEMORE: I was on the road in the States on tour when October 7th happened. And the nature of being on the road is that you have a lot of time in the day. You know, I work for an hour and a half at night doing a show. And as video started to come out of Gaza — and to be honest, like, I, of course, knew about Palestine and knew about Israel. I knew there was a, quote-unquote, “conflict.” I didn’t know about the 70 — at the time, 75 years of oppression. I didn’t know about the Nakba. I didn’t know what Zionism meant. I didn’t know about the apartheid state and the system that is Israel. I did not know about the open-air prison that was Gaza. I did not know. And I started to learn. And once I started to learn, in conjunction with the videos that were coming out of Palestine, something happened in me. There was an awakening and a remembering of what actually matters in this world.

And I think that there was that first couple weeks of, like, “How am I watching this, and no one else — how are we all watching this, and no one in the music industry is saying anything? I feel crazy.” And I wanted to say something, but I would have conversations with friends, and they’d be like, “Yeah, dude, if you say that, you’re going to get canceled. If you say anything around Palestine, they’ll come for you. They’ll cancel you.” And at a certain point, I remember I saw a fellow artist and friend, Kehlani, and she had said something. And someone told me she was going hard for Palestine. And I went to her Instagram page, and I saw that. And as it says in the film, bravery is contagious. And I saw Kehlani, and I was like, “OK, that’s all I needed, was one other person stepping up and saying, ‘This is wrong.’” And it gave me kind of that push to make a first statement. And I haven’t really turned back since.

I believe it’s my moral obligation, not just as an artist, not as someone with a platform or four-time Grammy — like, all that is just labels. What this really comes down to is humans, human beings, humanity advocating for the most marginalized. When we strip all of it away, when we take away what — you know, what’s at stake here, what — you know, I just — I’m done. I’m done playing the game of capitalism and “let me walk the straight and narrow so I don’t offend this person and that person.” And that was an unlearning. You know, that was an unlearning for me to be like, “You know what? I am not tied to any record label. I don’t care about a brand deal. I don’t care. I’ve been so lucky in my career that I’m financially stable enough that I don’t have anything to risk that’s going to actually jeopardize, like, putting food on my table. I need to step up in this moment right now.” And I felt called. I felt called by my ancestors. I felt called from those who came before. I felt called by all the people that have put their freedom on the line for the freedom of all of us. And I’m not going to stop.

AMY GOODMAN: The film, among others, features Grant Miner, who’s what? A fifth-, sixth-year graduate student at Columbia, who is a Jewish American, now expelled. So, were you afraid of being, as you were talking about, being called antisemitism, when so many of the activists around the country who are fighting for Palestine are Jewish?

MACKLEMORE: Of course. Of course I was afraid of it. But you realize this has never been about Jewish people. This is — at the very root, at the core of this resistance movement, is beautiful Jewish people in solidarity with Palestinians. As Mahmoud says in the film, Palestinian liberation is Jewish liberation. Jewish liberation is Palestinian liberation. They are not separate. But this term “antisemitic” is being used in this way to instill fear, to create division, to continue the absolute genocide that is taking place in Gaza, to center that fear and use it as a mechanism in which to silence the people.

And what we have seen is education is the greatest tool. It’s the greatest tool in this moment. The young people — at a certain point, we know what it is. We see it. Young people are educated. They know the difference between Judaism and Zionism. They are not — they are not linked. Zionism is a political ideology. It has nothing to do with the Torah. We know this. But the way that it is being spun in the media as anything but a movement of love and of solidarity is completely false. So, shoutout to Grant. Shoutout to all — to JVP, to IfNotNow, to Israelism, the film. There’s so many Jewish people right now in our country stepping up and dispelling this insane notion of antisemitism. They’re actually showing the beauty of collective liberation.

AMY GOODMAN: Macklemore, can you talk about the making of “Hind’s Hall” and “Hind’s Hall 2”? Start with “Hind’s Hall” and why [Hind Rajab], her story, the [5-year-old girl], touched you so much. It became basically an anthem of the encampment movement across the country.

MACKLEMORE: I hear the 911 tape of Hind, and I hear my own 6-year-old daughter. You know, I have a 6-year-old. She just turned 7. Hind didn’t get to turn 7. I hear her crying out. I cannot help but imagine my own 6-year-old. And it makes me emotional even just saying it. I can’t imagine my 6-year-old making that 911 call and pleading for someone to please come and save her, and the way that her life was ended by IDF bullets, you know, over a hundred of them. I can’t make sense of that. I can’t make sense of that world.

And really, the song came from a place of — I was writing. I was just — I had no other way to process this. You know, writing has always been a means of me trying to process this world and get deeper into my own truth and this human experience. And I was so moved by what the students at Columbia were doing. I was so moved by — by their bravery and taking over Hamilton Hall, you know, being reminded of resistance movements of the past, of seeing that the students have never been wrong. They have always been on the right side of history. And look at what they’re doing again. Look at what they are doing again. They are leading not only our country, but showing the rest of the world what it looks like to risk, to risk all — you know, again, they paid — who knows how much money they paid to go to college there at Columbia University? They are uprooting this notion of “I need to protect myself,” and they stepped in. And I think that it came in a time where we were all feeling that fatigue, and Columbia reminded us of what is possible.

And it spread. It spread to universities all across the country. That news got back to those kids in Gaza. They saw, “You know what? Although the U.S. is literally bombing us, Israel is literally killing us, there are people out there that know that our lives are worth the exact same as anyone else in this world.” Those kids in Gaza felt seen.

And the students at Columbia reminded me of what it means to show up. And I remember I came home one day, I went to yoga, and I left yoga, and my heart was feeling open, and I heard this sample by Fairuz that my friend Tamara had played me. And it came on in the car, and it was divine timing. I came right down here to this chair that I’m in, and that song wrote itself. You know, I believe that songs that come from source write themselves. I was just — I happened to have the pen in my hand at that moment.

AMY GOODMAN: Could you share a few lines with us of “Hind’s Hall”?

MACKLEMORE: [rapping] The people, they won’t leave
What is threatenin’ about divesting and wantin’ peace?
The problem isn’t the protests, it’s what they’re protesting
It goes against what our country is funding
Block the barricade until Palestine is free
Block the barricade until Palestine is free
When I was seven, I learned a lesson from Cube and Eazy-E
What was it again? Oh yeah, F— the police.

AMY GOODMAN: And then, “Hind’s Hall 2,” you made that with the help of a Gazan teenager, a rapper named MC Abdul, and the Palestinian American singer Anees. Can you talk about them?

MACKLEMORE: I wanted to continue, you know, continue. I think it was important for me to give Palestinian artists a voice, that was maybe a voice through my platform. Obviously, both those artists have amazing platforms and voices, but I think that my demographic is different. And I wanted to ensure that, like, everyone was able to come and lend their perspective on what’s going on right now, and have it be as heard by as many people as possible.

Anees and I had been going back and forth, and we had kind of both talked about, like, “Yo, we got to do something. We got to say something. You know, we got to make a song.” And it was the perfect opportunity. And right after “Hind’s Hall” came out — it was probably within a couple days — I was in New Zealand. And I hit Anees, and I was like, “Bro, we got to do — we got to do a remix to this.” And I started making the beat. We started sending things back and forth. And slowly, you know, in the next four months, the song was made.

My guy Ghazi from Empire Records put me in touch with MC Abdul, 15 years old, you know, from Palestine, who’s just a phenomenal MC, phenomenal person. And yeah, he sent his verse in. And just the imagery — you know, he’s able to tell a story that I’m not able to tell. He’s able to tell us a very personal story about, you know, losing family, about getting out, about the Palestinian struggle from the perspective of a Palestinian that’s from Palestine. And that voice needs to be heard.

So, to me, it’s just, we are storytellers. We are — art is the greatest form of resistance, or a form of resistance. And “Hind’s Hall 2” was birthed out of that resistance and coming from a place of “We are going to tell our story and not have it be told by anybody else.”

AMY GOODMAN: Macklemore, what do you hope will happen with the film The Encampments, that’s just opening today in different theaters, from Los Angeles to New York?

MACKLEMORE: I hope it wakes up people’s hearts. I hope it reminds people, it serves as a deep reminder, that we are all connected, that it dispels any notion of division, and yet what it actually shows is true solidarity. I hope that it rewrites this history. I think this history — the truth will be our history, as much as it’s attempted to be censored right now. But I think that it will remind people, again, that the students are never wrong. It rekindles bravery. It rekindles courage. And it’s a call to action. We need to get mobilized, organized, And we are in urgent, dire times that require us as human beings coming together and fighting against fascism, fighting against genocide, and the only way to do that is by opening up the heart and realizing that collective liberation is the only solution.

AMY GOODMAN: Four-time Grammy-winning musician Macklemore. He’s the executive producer of the new documentary The Encampments, which is opening in the next week in New York, in Los Angeles and beyond. Coming up, we speak to two Columbia graduate students, one who’s just been expelled, as well as the producer of The Encampments. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Hind’s Hall 2” by Macklemore, featuring Anees and the teen MC Abdul and Amer Zahr.