On Thursday October 7th, 2010, students, educators, workers, and activists
from community organizations across New York City will rally
at 4pm outside the Harlem State Office Building at Adam Clayton
Powell, Jr. Blvd and 125th street before marching across Harlem,
finally ending at City College New York (CCNY).
Other events will include rallies, teach-ins, sit-ins and other actions
at CUNY and SUNY schools across the city and
state. Students at Brooklyn College, Queens College, Hunter College,
CCNY, Lehman and Hostos College have plans earlier in the day before converging
at the Harlem State Office Building at 4pm.
The plans in New York are connected to the October 7th National Day of
Action to Defend Public Education, the continuation of the national movement
that began on March 4th 2010.
Since 2008 the cuts to public higher education include $400 million from
SUNY and $200 million from CUNY. Over the past six years, tuition
has increased 46% at SUNY and 44% at CUNY as vital services, like childcare
at Hunter College, are cut or scaled back.
Millions have been cut from k-12. The state of New York recently
passed measures that will double the cap of charter schools in the state and
tie teacher pay to student performance on high stakes standardized
tests. These changes were keeping in line with the Race to the Top,
a nearly $5 billion fund set aside by the federal government and dangled in
front of strapped state governments as a prize for the states that launch the
most vicious attacks against public education and teachers.
In Harlem, the attack on public education and the community as a whole is
much more acute. The charterization movement has threatened public schools
in Harlem by moving charter schools into the same building as public schools
and pushing the public schools and the children that attend them out of their
space. This occurs at the same time as the expansion of Columbia
University and the takeover of the community by rich
developers. Harlem is a center where the crisis, the massive
unemployment that has been a devastating effect of it, homelessness, the
attacks on the public sector and the criminalization of young people who are
denied an equal quality education and the closing of hospitals all
converge.
Join us as we stand in solidarity with the community of Harlem, march
against racism, the attacks on the community and the people of New
York. We demand an immediate halt and reversal to all tuition
hikes, budget cuts, lay-offs, privatizations and closures of public
schools, will call for jobs, free health care for all students, the
cancellation of student debt, free public education for all from kindergarten
to college, the elimination of systems of racism in the public school system,
and equal pay for equal work, as well as job security, for all
faculty and teachers.
Endorsers:
Bail Out the People Movement
Black New Yorkers for Educational Excellence (BNYEE)
Councilman Charles Barron
Coalition for Public Education / Coalicion por la Educacion Publica
Coalition to Save Harlem
December 12th Movement
East Village Community School – Parents Association, New York, NY
Fight Imperialism Stand Together
Harlem Tenants Council
Committee to End Abusive Policing in Our Communities (CEAPOC)
Iglesia San Romero
Independent Commission On Public Education (ICOPE)
International Action Center
International Socialist Organization
Labor-Community Forum of the South Bronx Community Congress
May 1st Coalition for Worker & Immigrant Rights-NYC
National Black Education Agenda (NBEA)
New York City Labor Against the War
Roots Revisited
Socialist Alternative
STAND (Queens College)
Students for Educational Rights (CCNY)
Take Back our Transit System
Ya Ya Network
Workers World Party
