CUNY Student Liberation Action Movement
United Front Builds then Shuts Down Bridges
by Suzy Subways
On Apr. 25 a diverse group of activists successfully shut down four major New York City bridges. Traffic was blocked, during rush hour, from 15 minutes to an hour at each location. The locations were divided between 4 groups: ACT-UP and neighborhood groups protesting Medicaid Cuts and hospital closings; CUNY (City University of New York) students and public school teachers protesting budget cuts in public education; and groups opposed to police brutality and racist and homophobic violence (including the Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence, the Congress for Puerto Rican Rights, and families of those killed by police). 185 people were arrested.
Afterword to "After Winter Must Come Spring"
This afterword to After Winter Must Come Spring: A Self-Critical Evaluation of the Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation by the Fire by Night Organizing Committee was unfortunately not included in one of the two versions of the document that have appeared in print. It appears here in it's original version.
Afterword
Students Fight Educational Apartheid
By Suzy Subways
On January 14, New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani attacked the City University of New York’s open admissions policy in his State of the City address, claiming that the University has no “standards.” Within weeks, several CUNY Trustees and college presidents made proposals to limit remedial education and impose stricter entrance requirements on students at CUNY’s 17 colleges. These proposals sparked a series of student and faculty protests, but barely three months passed before the Trustees voted on May 26 to end all remedial classes at the senior colleges.
CUNY’s open admissions policy was won by radical Black and Latino students in 1969, with a long struggle culminating in a student strike at City College that had tremendous support from the surrounding Harlem community. At the time, the student body of City College was 94% white; it was called the “pearl of Harlem.” To open the door to higher education to all New Yorkers, the open admissions policy guaranteed a place at CUNY for everyone who has graduated from high school or earned a G.E.D. Now the majority of CUNY students are people of color and many are single mothers, immigrants, and poor people.
