What's affecting me right now? What affects my pocket? What affects my, like, social status?
We're going to start with, like, the local demands, and then once we get those, we're going to move on to, like, our second tier demands,
or do we start with, like, free CUNY and then, like, get as much as we can?
No tuition hikes, cut from the top, you know, chop from the top here, and then the top's free CUNY. This is also vision.
For the bigger issues is, like, free CUNY, we want the support of all the other campuses behind us.
That was City College in 1969, when Black and Latino students went on strike for Black and Latino studies,
and this then actually morphed into a city-wide struggle that brought in students and labor that won open admissions.
Here's what we find wrong, here's what we want. I mean, it's just a clarifying thing, so, like, there's no confusion about where we stand.
It would be good to just go for the gold and say we want free tuition, something that all the schools can agree on, okay, for the most ultimate goal.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't win it now. I'm sorry, I'm not saying that we shouldn't fight that struggle now.
I'm just saying that we should also be fighting smaller struggles, and that's how we're going to be winning people to our college.
So the purpose of the GA and a proposal for what we could use this General Assembly for,
that's a little bit of background. It appeared that the best use of a General Assembly would be to plan for an action.
I'm not necessarily for deciding one concrete thing right now, but for proposing to the rest of CUNY that we focus on direct actions that involve us
or disrupting what the regular occurrence is here.
A big scandal, which has broken out, Associated Press has exposed the police spying on Muslim students and Muslim clubs,
and I think we need to demand that the 100 administration say exactly what their participation has or has not been in this.
There is campus security in this group right now. There's at least one individual here.
I don't know how many more individuals, but there is at least one. So I think that when we come up with proposals, we should keep that in mind.
Nobody should be discussing things that they don't want the police to hear in public.
So I know that Shane had made a proposal to the Facilitation Committee before we began about what happened last week in terms of the security not letting us in.
Clearly, our academic freedom was denied, as well as our rightful access to our campus facilities.
I urge you, Chancellor, to address this egregious violation of your students' rights. Students that pay your salary.
Students that are upset with many issues regarding their education and subsequent livelihood.
This happening is only a microcosm of an awakening that is occurring around the world.
Can we open it up just for Christina and the folks that just came from the Hunter G.A. can be in the circle?
I was looking up how to get somewhere in the city and I looked up the MTA homepage and lo and behold, one of the board of trustee members, CUNY, Mr. Loda, is now the head of the MTA.
So it just makes me feel like, wow, these certain trustee members that are appointed by the mayor and the governor are put in charge of not just CUNY, but of so many different kinds of institutions in the city that control us.
Well, the mayor thinks that a good manager can manage anything, so it doesn't matter if you manage buses or schools, it's all the same thing, right?
We also have to think about the corporatization and the privatization of CUNY education and how that's actually affecting what kinds of classes are being taught.
It encourages private-public partnerships and that's what frightens me.
And at the same time, they're getting rid of requirements to graduate, which sounds good, but a lot of these requirements are like pluralism and diversity.
It's going to set it up as a more vocational institution where it's just like, here, just learn how to be a worker and then leave.
Just like you to say, hey, nobody can stop you from creating learning opportunities that you really want and if you're clever and you find faculty allies and so on, it's not as easy now as it was.
You can actually find your way to worm it into the curriculum and they don't have to dictate to you what you're going to learn.
You can become at least a partner and if you got it really together, a leader.
70% of professors in CUNY are adjuncts, so that right there tells you that our education is basically going to be under attack when you stop providing these people with health care because they're going to do something else.
We also need to think about people who are not registered, students who can't afford it and are no longer affiliated with the campus, adjuncts who no longer are teaching and got cut, like how are they going to get involved?
Is there room for dialogue with the clubs? Are there some clubs that you can speak to? Because if a few of the clubs start moving and saying some things down these lines, then we're dealing with the real structure of how the students are actually organized.
Occupy Wall Street seems like it's a place where all these disparate movements that have gone on for the last few years, anti-foreclosure, tax reform, tuition reform, student debt, they all are suddenly getting a lot more attention and connect.
Occupy Wall Street is like dealing with the root of the problem, but as students there are things affecting us now that I think we should get together and focus on.
We are in total support in Occupy Wall Street, we're there all the time, we show it support, but at the same time it's a movement that could basically be connected once the demands are there.
I think about it as like a rather tall giant that you're trying to get rid of, right? While one group is attacking the legs of the giant, the foundation of it, you definitely would want somebody hitting the chest, and if this movement is hitting the chest, well that's a good idea.
So it's like focus on your own movement, but make sure that you realize that you're all sharing the same goal.
On the higher level of being there at Occupy Wall Street of tying this fight into that one, keeping in mind that our students are often working class, students of color who are facing a lot more obstacles than just their courses, to make sure to create space for those students for whom OWS can be alienated.
We have a window, an opening, general politicization, radicalization, American politics, so we need to act, we need to organize towards that goal, but in order to do that it seems like we have to have a certain set of goals and sort of reasons for doing so.
We can send them a petition, then we can go to their office, then we can count them with calls, then we can disrupt the meeting.
One resource that we need in New York is time, so it suggests a week-long student walkout or something.
So what I think we can try and do is figure out basically varying levels of intensity of participation.
My fear is that adjuncts as well as students might meet some consequences that are arbitrary, but they will do anything.
So I don't want to get expelled. I don't want an adjunct to get fired.
I'm from CUNY School of Law. We do stand in solidarity. We're not only Occupy Wall Street, but within the CUNY movement at large.
We've recently formed a committee to see how we can plug into the movement.
And also to encourage people that are not, because I have a child that will be going to college soon.
So this does concern me also, and just to get everyone plugged in.
Issues that we're facing are on the state level, and I'd really like to reach out to SUNY as well.
Reach out to other parts of New York City that are being subjected to repression of different types.
For example, the transit workers who expressed dismay that their buses were being used to shuttle the people arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge.
I just wanted to highlight for everyone how incredibly powerful you all individually are,
and how much more power you wield together when we act in concert.
And that is so important, and I don't want anybody to lose sight of that.
And I just really thank you so much for coming.
