Harlem workers, college students march against Columbia's racist expansion

(Pictured: Students speak out against Columbia's racist expansion and core curriculum in front of university president Lee Bollinger's residence.) 11/10/07 -- "Harlem: not for sale! Hunger strikers: not for sale! Our homes: not for sale! Our jobs: not for sale!" These were a few of the chants that filled the air as a multiracial crowd of 250 angry community members, students, faculty, and organizers marched on Columbia's main campus and Lee Bollinger's house.

By 12:30 in the afternoon, a throng of protesters had gathered on the steps to Low Library. One speaker after another, ranging from community organizers to student hunger strikers, spoke out in rage and indignation at Columbia's racist effort to expand northward into Harlem, displacing 5,000 black, Latin, and white working-class residents. Students in particular were also protesting Columbia's Eurocentric core curriculum and demanding more ethnic studies programs. The speeches were in English and Spanish, and a palpable energy filled the crowd.

After rallying for perhaps 30 minutes, everyone marched from the Columbia campus over to the house of its president, Lee Bollinger, to the rhythm of a radical marching band from Brooklyn. Unfortunately it was reported that Bollinger was not home, but the crowd rallied for another 30 minute in front of his residence and heard the demands of community members not to be displaced or to have a hazardous biological agent research facility near their homes. More student organizers and hunger strikers raised their voices on the megaphone about Columbia's broader place within a long history of brutal American imperialism and exploitation, even drawing connections to the manifest destiny policy responsible for the displacement and genocide of millions of American Indians. One pointed out it was the very nature of the profit system that made Columbia not give a rat's ass about workers and students.

PLP members and friends took part in the march, made several new contacts from Columbia, Hunter, and City College, and distributed every single copy of Challenge/Desafio we had with us. Unfortunately, we had a limited supply to begin with and did not anticipate the large size of the demonstration, so this only amounted to 50 copies. However, black and Latin workers eagerly grabbed copies out of our hands faster than we could keep up. Some other marchers remarked they had not seen PL in 40 years. One said "Hey, is that Challenge? Give me a copy!" and went on to explain that PL was one of the first political groups he had ever become involved with when, in 1968, he was a Columbia student taking part in the big strike.

We also helped distribute leaflets from various community organizers PL Columbia students have begun working with, that pointed out the utterly racist nature of Columbia's actions and of its very nature as an institution.

There will be another mass protest on December 1st, and we have been busy working with other student organizers on campus as well to provide support to the hunger strikers. We are also struggling to raise these issues in the graduate schools, which for the most part are less involved or aware of a lot of the issues surrounding the hunger strike than the undergraduate students. There is a lot of work to be done, and a long road ahead regardless of the final outcome of the hunger strike itself.

We are dedicated to supporting the masses of students and community members in their demands, and to struggling with them in a comradely fashion over the internal contradictions between reform and revolution--and the necessity of the latter. The students at Columbia are doing big and bold things worthy of much praise, especially the hunger strikers who are putting their health, wellbeing, and lives on the line. But students in PL must help forge and understanding amongst the broader student body that without this developing movement receiving leadership from the multiracial masses of workers in Harlem--and not vice-versa--student activists will ultimately set themselves up for failure.

The fate of the student demands and the Harlem community are bound up together, but only when the student body unites behind Harlem's working class, rather than in front of it, will victory in the immediate struggle be a possibility. And more importantly, only when the students of the world unite behind the workers and soldiers of the world can we smash this whole brutal racist profit system and replace it with one where we give according to our commitment, and receive according to our need: the bright future of communism!