New York Call to Action OCT 7: Defend Public Education

(Part of the National Day of Action to Defend Public
Education)

4 p.m. rally at the Harlem State office building,
163 W 125th St **just east of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.
Blvd. (Seventh Avenue)

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

*For more information go to:

http://www.march4ny.wordpress.com
http://www.defendeducation.org
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=535767918#!/event.php?eid=116869771699508
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=535767918#!/group.php?gid=244000051960