Student Activists Under Attack at CCNY for Honoring Black and Puerto Rican Liberation Heroes

Here's another article about this, from Workers World newspaper:

http://www.workers.org/2006/us/ccny-1228/

CCNY activists defend Assata Shakur and Guillermo Morales
Published Dec 21, 2006 10:22 PM

On Dec. 12, the New York Daily News printed a front-page attack on a community and student center named in honor of Puerto Rican freedom fighter Guillermo Morales and former Black Panther Assata Shakur. This center is located on the campus of City College of New York, also affectionately known as Harlem University.

“Disgrace” was the front-page headline; the page 3 article managed, in just a few lines, to call Assata a “terrorist and cop killer.”

A slam was also sent Fidel Castro’s way, since Cuba has provided political exile for Assata after she escaped from a New Jersey prison in 1979. Assata had been falsely accused and then found guilty of murder of a white New Jersey state trooper in 1973 by an all-white jury.

Morales was a member of the Armed Forces for the Liberation of Puerto Rico (FALN) and was also granted political exile in Cuba.

It was no surprise that this attack on Assata and Guillermo came on the heels of a brutal killing by police of an unarmed Black man, Sean Bell, along with the wounding of his unarmed friends, Trent Benefield and Joseph Guzman.

The full-page Daily News article went on to quote New York Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch on how “disgusting it was to honor a person whose life’s goal was to kill people.” Imagine that? Nowhere did the article point out that the center was a lighting rod for student political and social activism nor the community’s historical recognition of the center’s work. Somehow they neglected to talk about the evidence of Assata’s innocence and the FBI’s campaign against the Black Panther Party under COINTELPRO.

The outcome of the Daily News article was the removal of the center’s 17-year-old sign with the pictures of Shakur and Morales. An emergency community/student meeting was called on Dec. 15 at the North Academic Center (NAC) of City College to address the attacks by the Daily News and police on the center.

The students and faculty see this as a long-range plan by the administration not just to remove names. The organizers pointed out the battles won in the 1960s and 1970s are being overturned. Educational gentrification and ethnic cleansing was happening right in the open.

We crossed Amsterdam Avenue onto a campus that seemed not to show any signs of an event. Blue police uniforms were scurrying about and the police carts seemed strategically placed in front of a building. A lone student stood in the dark as we neared the NAC building. There were no visible signs for directions, only a student wearing a SLAM button. Very quietly, the student told us the community and students were locked out of the room and they had to resort to Underground Railroad techniques to get the community to the meeting. Many community people were actually turned away by the police.

Why would a public institution put their campus on a lockdown to prevent a community meeting? Why would students be locked out of their own center, a center whose mission is to serve as a student community room?

The meeting took place in a classroom offered by a long-time revered champion of educational and social justice, Dr. Leonard Jefferies. He opened his classroom to ensure the meeting could take place. The room was filled with students, faculty, former students and many other organizations and activists. The agenda was well organized and facilitated by members of the center, the Student Liberation Action Movement (SLAM) and Students for Educational Rights (SER). The most impacting moments came from faculty and former students who gave a crash course in the history of CCNY, which was once known as Free Academy.

The time line was plotted by Rodolfo Leyton, a volunteer at the center, and Ydanis Rodríguez of the Dominicans 2000. As described, the policies and practices at City College were changed only after many Black and Puerto Rican students waged a victorious fight for free higher education in the late 1960s. The previous white-elite-male domination of CCNY was fought physically by a handful of Black and Brown students. SLAM members who work out of the Shakur/Morales Community Center explained what was won after the 1989 student hunger strike and takeover of City College.

Bill McGuire, an alumnus and lawyer representing students of SLAM, spoke of the case being prepared. He vowed to also bring charges against the intimidating tactics by the administration. The committed faculty promised to stand with each other and the students. Students involved in the struggle vowed to organize, educate and have actions of protest. The immediate action would include putting the center’s sign back up, even though it received a memo from City College Vice President Ramona Brown threatening college disciplinary action.

Joy Simmons, spokesperson for City Council Member Charles Barron, stated Mr. Barron’s support and pledge to put the sign back. Community leaders and activists in attendance promised grass-roots pressure as well.

The meeting ended with a determined chant, “Hands off Assata and Morales!” No amount of media spin would cause the community to forget the FBI’s COINTELPRO.

On Dec. 20, there will be a gathering at the NAC Plaza, which is across from the Administration Building. There will then be a march to deliver a statement of demands to President Gregory Williams of CCNY. For more information, contact the Morales/Shakur Community & Student Center at 212-650-5008. E-mail: harlemslam@gmail.com.

—Agnes Johnson
International Action Center volunteer member

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Thurs. February 15, 2007 7AM
Ronald B. McGuire, Esq.
Attorney for:
Guillermo Morales/Assata Shakur Community and Student Center
at Harlem University (formerly The City College of New York)
Room NAC 3/201
212-650-5008

CCNY Threatens Students After Sign Honoring Guillermo Morales and Assata Shakur is Restore

The sign bearing the name of the "Guillermo Morales/Assata Shakur Community and Student Center" is once again on display at City College and CCNY administrators are nonplussed.

A memorandum from a CCNY administrator threatened disciplinary action against students and student organizations working at the Community Center after a February 8th press conference at City College where City Councilman Charles Barron hung a replica of the original sign over the entrance of the Morales/Shakur Community Center outside room 3/201 in the CCNY North Academic Center (NAC Building). The original sign bearing the name of the Morales/Shakur Community Center had hung over the doorway since 1990 when City College students dedicated the Community Center in honor of Morales and Shakur, two former City College students activists who participated in the movements for Puerto Rican independence and Black Liberation in the 1960's and 1970's.

On December 12, 2006, City University of New York (CUNY) Chancellor Matthew Goldstein ordered City College President Gregory Williams to remove the original sign after the New York Daily News published a front page story and an editorial demanding that the sign be removed.

Shortly after 11 PM on the night of February 8th the CCNY Director and Deputy Director leading a squad of CUNY Peace Officers ordered three students who were in the Community Center to leave the NAC Building and by 1 AM the sign Councilman Barron hung earlier in the day had been removed.

On Tuesday morning, February 13th, another replica of the sign naming the Community Center was hanging over the doorway of 3/201. That night, as CUNY security officers apparently preparing to remove the newest sign looked on in surprise, the students themselves removed the sign before they closed the Community Center for the night.

Yesterday morning the students arrived to find that the wall outside the Community Center had been greased, apparently to prevent the students from re-attaching the sign. Several CUNY Peace Officers were stationed near the entrance of the Community Center to prevent students or supporters from hanging the sign.

However, several students and community supporters volunteered to stand outside room 3/201 to hold the sign, enabling passers-by the see the name of the Morales/Shakur Community Center without actually attaching the sign to the wall. CUNY has maintained that the sign violates a CUNY policy which requires approval of the CUNY Board of Trustees before any building or room may be designated in honor of any person or entity.

However, the students point out that CUNY permits students and faculty to hang signs unofficially naming rooms and other spaces without trustee approval. Ronald B. McGuire, an attorney representing the Board of Governors of the Community Center said, "Only the Board of Trustees can officially name a room. However, CUNY cannot prohibit students or community members from unofficially designating a room by whatever name they wish. In fact that are dozens of examples of rooms at City College and other CUNY colleges where rooms have signs unofficially designating or naming the rooms." In response to a recent Freedom of Information Law request, McGuire reported that CUNY was able to provide documentation of Board of Trustee approval for designations of only 2 out of 24 rooms or facilities bearing signs designating the facilities in honor of various individuals or entities.

McGuire added "CUNY has placed the Community Center under a virtual siege with Peace Officers standing outside the door and even greasing the wall to prevent the students from replacing their sign. This has nothing to do with a policy on signage. This is an blatant attempt to prevent the students from naming their Community Center in honor of Guillermo Morales and Assata Shakur."

McGuire disagreed with the claim by CCNY President Gregory Williams that the College was unaware that there was a Community Center on Campus named after Assata Shakur and Guillermo Morales. "The college and administration have known that the Community Center was named in honor of Guillermo Morales and Assata Shakur for 17 years. In fact , the students have sent numerous memorandums to President Williams and other City College presidents under the name of the Morales/Shakur Community Center. The CUNY Chancellor and the City College President knew about the name of the Community Center because in 1998 they were sued after students working at the Community Center discovered that City College security officers were conducting video surveillance the Community Center."

McGuire was referring to Sigal vs. Moses, 98 Civ. 3940 (SDNY)(TPG), a lawsuit filed by students working at the Community Center which is still pending in the Southern District of New York where Judge Thomas P. Griesa has ordered a hearing to commence on February 26th.

For further information contact the Morales/Shakur Community Center at 212-650-5008.

Another Workers World article:

CUNY students fight to keep Shakur-Morales center

By Brenda Ryan
New York
Published Feb 18, 2007 6:01 PM

For about 10 hours a sign honoring Puerto Rican freedom fighter Guillermo Morales and former Black Panther Assata Shakur once again hung over a student center at City College of New York.

City Council member Charles Barron replaced the sign at a Feb. 8 press conference at the Guillermo Morales/Assata Shakur Community and Student Center. In December the university had sent a crew to take the sign down in the middle of the night in reaction to a campaign against the center and the revolutionaries it is named after.

After Barron replaced the sign, university authorities again had it taken away during the night. This time school security guards removed the students in the center first. “Myself and two other students in the building were escorted out just after 11 o’clock,” said Lydia Shestopalova, an activist with the center. She saw no other students being escorted from the building. Students are permitted to remain in the building after 11:00 p.m. once they sign in, so the action of the security guards was stunning.

The sign had hung at the center since the group was founded in 1989 during a struggle over budget cuts. Students had taken over administration buildings and school officials gave them the room to end the takeover. The students named the center after Morales and Shakur, former CCNY students. Morales, one of the leaders of the open admissions strike of 1969, helped integrate the school system. The name was fitting as the center is devoted to social justice.

“It was a violation of our rights and our very being to question our right to have the sign up,” Shestopalova said.

The attack on the center began after a CUNY student wrote a letter to The Daily News denouncing the center for taking the name of Assata Shakur. The Daily News followed the letter up on Dec. 12 with a front-page headline “Disgrace” and an article calling Assata “a terrorist and cop killer.”

Instead of standing up for the students and against the absurd and racist media attacks, the university joined the campaign. Two days after the news article ran, it took the sign down. The center says Acting Vice President of Student Affairs Ramona Brown threatened to suspend or expel students if they replaced the sign. City Council member Barron did so on their behalf.

The students are now battling the university in court. A federal judge denied their request for a temporary restraining order and has yet to rule on the university’s motion to dismiss the students’ complaint.

Meanwhile, members of the center are building community support. “The sign represents what the students that founded it were fighting for,” Shestopalova said. “Social justice and freedom for all, particularly the most oppressed in the city and the world.”
Articles copyright 1995-2007 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
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