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March 2010 LETTER TO
THE HUNTER ENVOY To the Editor, Hunter Envoy March 12, 2010 The Hunter Internationalist Club is writing
this
letter to address your coverage of the March 4 student walkout and
protest
against tuition hikes, budget cuts and the assault on public education (The Envoy, March 9-23). At the rally, Hunter Internationalist Club
and Class
Struggle Education Workers (CSEW) speakers launched the chant “Students
and
workers: shut the city down,” which was enthusiastically chanted by the
protesters. We also called for “No Tuition, Open Admissions” and
“Students Ally
with Labor,” which can be seen in signs in your page 2 photo and
cartoon. We want to object to your sensationalist and
inaccurate claim that the March 4 protest “turned into a violent rally
outside
Hunter College.” This is wrong. The rally was not
“violent,” and to spin it that way is scare-mongering. The real
violence is what is being done to our right to education by the powers
that be,
backed up by a massive police occupation of Hunter. A pretext
for direct police intervention in the
March 4 rally was provided by the actions of a small group of supposed
“anarchists,” who assaulted and threatened activists involved with
organizing
the protest (including the vice president of our club). These
provocations are
the opposite of any real radicalism
(including the views of sincere albeit mistaken anarchists), and were
eagerly
seized on by the Hunter administration as an excuse to ramp up
repression. When the provocation and police intervention
opened up
a dangerous vacuum at the rally, which could have broken down in chaos,
we
worked with CSEW activists, the chairwoman of Hunter’s faculty union
chapter
and others to help keep things going and maintain the focus on the
struggle for
“No tuition hike, no budget cuts, no layoffs.” It’s also not a question of the “Hunter
community”
versus “outsiders,” as some are trying to pitch it. What’s going on
here, as
students and faculty quoted in your articles commented, is that the
Hunter
administration and NYPD tried to turn the campus into a “police state”
with an
“iron fist” on March 4. The Hunter chapter chair of the faculty union
(Professional Staff Congress) denounced this police occupation at the
rally,
and an adjunct activist from CSEW pointed out that the campus looked
like a
“correctional facility” that day. Your own coverage note that many students and
faculty
were outraged at people being denied entry to campus for hours
afterwards if
they could not show Hunter ID. Any and all amplification was forbidden
by the
cops and administration, with a student activist immediately threatened
with
potential arrest as soon as he tried to use a bullhorn outside Hunter
West. We pointed out in a leaflet we put out this
week (“Lockdown
U.? No Police State at Hunter!”) that this is the latest escalation in
the
drive to turn Hunter into a little sealed-off “national security
state.” The
administration and campus “security” have been increasingly aggressive
over the
past period, arresting Hunter student Agustín Castro at last
December’s protest
in defense of the Childhood Learning Center (the charges were dismissed
by the
judge) and having campus police try to block cafeteria workers from
using the
elevator to deliver a petition since they supposedly “are not Hunter
employees.”
The installation of turnstiles by campus
authorities
is a key part of their plan to “control access.” We say the response to
March 4
should be a struggle to: Stop the
turnstiles – cops off campus. Otherwise, welcome to “Turnstile World”! And now the NYPD is arresting people for the
“crime”
of possessing markers. This was reportedly one of the charges used
against
people arrested on March 4. Are Envoy
readers aware of this? We demand that all the charges be dropped now. The real story is that the government (from
the White
House to Albany to City Hall), ruling-class parties (Democrats and
Republicans)
and CUNY administration are attempting to drive large numbers of
students out
of public education; that tuition hikes and budget cuts amount to an
attempted
“race and class purge” against black, Latino, immigrant and other
working-class
students; and that the Hunter administration tramples the most basic
rights of
us all. The same kind of
blue wall of police intimidation that we faced at Hunter on March 4 was
what
met more than 2,000 students, parents and teachers when they spoke out
loudly
on January 26 against the racist closing of 19 more NYC schools; when
MTA
“security” manhandled a young African American woman student when she
spoke up
against the plan to stop student Metrocards; and when racial profiling,
stop-and-frisks and worse are the daily treatment received by countless
students in this city (more than half a million “random” stops last
year, over
80 percent against blacks and Latinos), many of whom live in fear that
they
could be the next Amadou Diallo. To defeat the
attacks on public education it is necessary to go well beyond the
current
framework, linking up with and helping unchain the power
of New York’s multiracial working class. This is above all a
political question, calling for a thoroughgoing break with the
Democratic
Party, which from President Obama and Congress to Governor Paterson and
the
state legislature is leading the war on public education and the
colonial
occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan and now Haiti. In California, they
jacked up college tuition by one-third. In New York, the governor and
CUNY
administration want to raise tuition by up to 10 percent a
year, while cutting back TAP. The rulers of this country are going
after teachers with a vengeance, resegregating schools, and making
college
unaffordable for poor, working-class and many middle-class students and
families. CUNY and the New York City Department of Education are run by
people
who have made a career out of privatizing (and trying to make a profit
off)
public education. Here at Hunter, March 4 shows the need to demand:
“Abolish
the Board of Trustees,” replacing it with representatives
democratically
elected by students, faculty and campus workers. Sincerely, Kirstine Jungkurth,
President
To contact the CUNY Internationalist Clubs, send e-mail to: cunyinternationalists@gmail.com To contact the Internationalist Group and the League for the Fourth International, send e-mail to: internationalistgroup@msn.com |