Comey Faces Protestors at Howard

The news service Reuters is reporting that protesters at Howard University chanted and booed on Friday, Sept. 22, through James Comey’s first public address since he testified to Congress about his firing by U.S. President Donald Trump, challenging the former FBI director with a taste of the “real world” he was trying to describe to them. Students protesting the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s treatment of Black activists began chanting the civil rights song “We Shall Not Be Moved” as Comey stood at the podium, waiting out the demonstrators during a video about the historically Black university in Washington, D.C. The chants continued, intensifying and sometimes subsiding, as Comey began his address, which focused on how he believed college campuses were very much a part of what he called the “real world.” Comey did not ignore the shouts. “The rest of the real world is a place where it’s hard sometimes to find people who will listen with an attitude that they might actually be convinced of something,” he told them. “Instead, what happens in most of the real world – and about four rows in this auditorium – is that people don’t listen at all.” The protesters included HUResist, a Howard student social justice group that criticized Comey’s FBI for its treatment of Black Lives Matter activists. “Get out James Comey, you ain’t my homie!” students chanted before his address. “We will not let the voice and opinions of white supremacy live on this campus,” HUResist said on Twitter.