Diablo Valley College Professor Albert Ponce has come under fire after a video of him telling students that its acceptable to violate U.S. laws circulated around the internet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t32xwMTDx9A

A fall lecture from Diablo Valley College Professor has garnered recent attention after it was revealed that it contained controversial content that justified the violation of U.S. laws.

“And that’s the beauty of the law,” Professor Albert Ponce says in the video . “If you can write it, you can convince all others to follow it, just like all of us do today — when we shouldn’t. Many of the laws existing, we should be violating those laws.” Ponce was speaking about the United States’ history of slavery but it remains unclear what current laws he was advocating should be broken today.

With the image of President Trump, Jeff Sessions, and a portrait of Andrew Jackson on the screen behind him, Ponce accused Trump and Sessions of fitting the mold of American “white supremacists” who have held the office before him. “It is fitting that a white supremacist of old and a white supremacist of today exist and sit — they’re smiling — in the White House,” he said.

“Abolition means we must destroy it, not reform it,” Ponce said during the lecture, adding that America must abolish “white democracy.” “No voting’s going to help. No writing your congressperson. We need to smash white supremacy at every institutional level in this country, beginning at the local space, at the state, at the federal system, and build something new. And that’s frightening. Because we don’t know what is to come.”

“There will be repression,” Ponce added, seemingly justifying political violence. “Yes, that always happens. But those who are willing, not only to take a knee, that’s just the beginning, that’s just a symbolic, peaceful gesture. It’s going to take a lot more work.”

Diablo Valley College is the former home of Professor Eric Clanton, who was arrested in May 2017 for attacking a pro-Trump activist with a bike lock.