Labor's Gotta Play Hardball to Win!

NYC Higher Education Unions Rally Against Attacks on Universities, Immigrants

Hunter Internationalist:
“We Are All Under Attack!”

Starting on Day One, the second Trump administration issued a raft of executive orders to carry out “the largest deportation” of immigrants “in U.S. history.” By early March, it expanded this to target universities, seeking to terrorize and silence student activists and all those who speak out against the U.S./Israeli genocide of the Palestinians. The arrest of Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil, who was picked up for being a principal spokesman and negotiator for last year’s Gaza solidarity encampments, sent shock waves around the country. Hundreds protested in lower Manhattan, and in Portland, Oregon construction unions demanded that Khalil be freed.¹

A couple of weeks later, Rümeysa Öztürk, an international student from Turkey, was abducted by six masked plainclothes agents of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). A surveillance video shows her screaming “What is going on? while a bystander is heard asking, “Is this a kidnapping?” and “Why are you hiding your faces?” Öztürk was bundled into an unmarked black SUV and driven off to be quickly transported to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) deportation facility in Louisiana, 1,500 miles away. The searing video of this “snatch and grab” operation, viewed by millions, recalls scenes from a military dictatorship.  

The seizure of Khalil came a day after the administration canceled $400 million in federal funding to Columbia University, demanding that it intensify repression of student protests it falsely claimed were antisemitic, and that the school’s Middle East studies program be purged. The Columbia University capitulated and agreed to Trump’s terms, but Washington said it was not enough, forced out the university president and threatened billions in further cuts. Then by early April, federal authorities began canceling international students’ visas over any protest activity, any brush with the law or for no known reason. Universities were in an uproar.

While Columbia was the staging ground, the campaign of intimidation extended to the City University of New York (CUNY), the largest urban public university in the country, and to other universities nationwide. On April 9, the CUNY administration announced that 17 international students had had their visas revoked. In response, the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), representing 30,000 faculty and staff at CUNY, called an emergency demonstration for the morning of April 11 at Foley Square in Lower Manhattan opposite the Federal Building which houses the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and I.C.E.

The immediate action by the CUNY faculty/staff union was vital, particularly after Columbia’s capitulation. The PSC flier for the protest denounced the “escalating attacks on immigrants and our democratic rights,” and demanded “No Deportations! Restore Their Visas NOW!” At the rally, PSC president James Davis highlighted that PSC has established an Immigrant Solidarity Working Group and urged other unions to do likewise. Over 60 protesters came out on short notice, many mobilized by the CUNY Internationalist Clubs, whose flier noted that CUNY students are children of the multinational, multiracial working class” whose enormous potential power must be brought into the fight to stop deportations and defend immigrants and international students.” 

On the following Thursday, April 17, a rally of several hundred was held, again at Foley Square, by a number of NYC-area university faculty and staff unions. That protest was part of a National Day of Action organized by the Coalition for Action in Higher Education together with the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), which included events at more than 100 locations. The NYC “Rally for the Right to Learn: Hands Off Higher Ed! Hands Off Our Students!” brought out faculty from several local AAUP chapters (NYU, New School, Columbia, Rutgers) and the PSC, as well as United Auto Workers (UAW) locals representing student workers at several area campuses.

Grant Miner, the president of Student Workers of Columbia, UAW Local 2710, spoke at the rally, saying At Columbia University, we received a $400 million ransom note with a whole set of demands like ‘put this department under academic receivership,’ ‘expel these students” (The Indypendent, 18 April). Miner was expelled, and thus fired, in retaliation for participating in the protest movement against the genocide in Gaza. He noted that he and 21 other students were expelled, suspended or had their degrees revoked all on the same day, which was also the day that Columbia received the Trump administration letter cutting funds and the day before Mahmoud Khalil was arrested.

At the rally, a large contingent of activists from the Hunter College Committee to Defend Immigrants (HCDI)¹ stood alongside healthcare workers, teachers and Teamsters, supporters of the Labor Committee to Defend Immigrants, which was established to bring to bear the power of organized labor to fight attacks on fellow workers. The following is a speech by Chantal of the CUNY Internationalist Clubs and HCDI, which received an enthusiastic reception from the crowd. A video of her speech can be seen here.

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Rally MC: You all know, when it comes to radical organizing, when it comes to powerful standing up for what’s right, you all know how our colleagues at Hunter College get down. I want to bring to you Chantal Rios, a student at Hunter College and a member of the CUNY Internationalist Clubs.

Chantal: We are all under attack.

Did you hear me? We are all under attack.

Higher education across the city, across the country, is under attack.

The basic rights of immigrants, both documented and undocumented, are under attack.

The rights of trans people, of workers and of us all, are under attack.

We at the City University of New York are in large part the children of this city’s multinational, multi-ethnic working class. Just last week, 17 of our fellow CUNY students had their visas revoked. And as a student at CUNY’s Hunter College, as the child of working-class immigrants, as the friend of, the student of, the teacher of immigrants, these moves by the Trump administration have set a level of fear in me for my whole family, for my friends, and for our communities. But we are not going to let fear paralyze us.

At Columbia, there was Mahmoud Khalil. At Tufts University, there was Rümeysa Öztürk. Students snatched from their homes and off the streets by DHS and I.C.E. for expressing their right to protest the genocidal war in Gaza.

This kind of oppression is directly connected to the war on Gaza and how students who protested in defense of the Palestinian people were slandered as being antisemitic. And Democratic Party politicians actively promoted this, as did many of our university administrations.

And this is now used by actual antisemites and anti-immigrant racists to fuel the current administration’s escalated attack on the universities to attack academic freedom, and to attack free speech. These are active attempts to scare us, to paralyze us.

So while this administration of right-wing racism and reaction is mobilizing to scare us, will you give into their scare tactics? (Crowd shouts “No!”)

Will we give into their scare tactics?  (Crowd shouts “No!”)

That’s right. We have to mobilize to fight back. What we need to do as students is unite with labor. And for labor to use its enormous potential power in the struggle to defend immigrants and to stop the raids, to stop the deportations, to stop the kidnappings of our students.

In this city, nothing, nothing moves without the working class. This city would not function without immigrant labor. I’m talking restaurants, construction, hospitals, maintenance, transportation. We need to bring that power out now in the streets and in the workplaces.

Even one walkout by workers against the attacks on immigrants would electrify students and workers across this country.

All right, this is a power that doesn’t look to the very people bowing down to these racist and reactionary measures, but on the contrary, fights against them.

Together with us, students, the power of labor must be used to stop the deportations. Like that of Kilmar Abrego García, who is a union member. We demand, that he be brought back and freed now.

And we demand that Mahmoud Khalil be freed now.

And we demand that Rümeysa Öztürk be freed now, and anyone targeted by DHS and I.C.E.

A couple weeks ago, there was a mobilization of students, faculty and staff that stopped the DHS Customs and Border Patrol attempts to recruit at one of our CUNY colleges.

CUNY has made history in many struggles, and together with you all, at Columbia, at NYU, we will continue to.

At Hunter College, we’ve established the Hunter Committee to Defend Immigrants. Committees like these to defend immigrants have been established at John Jay and as D.O.E. [New York City Department of Education] public schools through the work of our committee, but also through the Labor Committee to Defend Immigrants.

That being said, I want to urge everyone here – all right? – everyone here to start up a committee of your own, at your schools or your workplace, independent of the administration and the bosses and instead oriented towards the very real power of labor.

I want to end with a chant that we do in all of our protests.

ICE out of our schools! ICE out of New York!

ICE out of our schools! ICE out of New York!

ICE out of our schools! ICE out of New York!

Thank you.

To contact the Internationalist Group and the League for the Fourth International, send e-mail to: internationalistgroup@msn.com

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