Monday Demo Against Expansion

To Coalition to Preserve Community members and others interested: 11/24/07

ALL OUT THIS MONDAY (11/26/07) TO PROTEST THE CITY PLANNING VOTE WHICH WILL
BE HELD AT 1:00PM AT 22 READE STREET. IT WILL BE HELD IN SPECTER HALL, A SMALL
ROOM WHICH COLUMBIA ALWAYS FILLS WITH ALL ITS EMPLOYEES TO KEEP THE COMMUNITY
OUT. PLEASE COME OUT BY 11:30AM TO GET A SEAT. THE COALITION TO PRESERVE
COMMUNITY WILL HOLD A PRESS CONFERENCE AFTER THE VOTE. READ CHAIR BURDEN'S
COMMENTS BELOW, AND OUR COMMENTS AND COME OUT AND SPEAK UP.

(1) This Monday, Nov. 26th, at 1:00PM, the City Planning Commissioners will
cast their votes against the Harlem community in favor of powerful Columbia.
Even before the Final Environmental Impact Statement had been released, Chair
Amanda Burden announced the Commission's (and the Mayor's) position as she read
the Department Recommendations Opening Statement at the CPC Review Session if
the CB 9 197-a Plan and Columbia University Proposal held on11/13/07. We
have pasted in the entire statement at bottom of this E-mail, and have excerpted
and commented on some of it a directly below:

From Burden's 11/13/07 statement:
"The Commission has been guided by the principle that both should be reviewed

simultaneously and that each should be afforded equal treatment in the
process."

Coalition to Preserve Community comment:
Saying Harlem got "equal treatment" in this process is like telling us that
BP Stringer did not sell out the community when he failed to support the
Community Board's 32 to 2 vote against Columbia and cut his deal to support its
eviction plan. They are paving the way for displacement, eminent domain,
environmental hazards from the bathtub to bio-level #3 labs, and the elimination of a
diverse community.

Burden:
"It is important to note that at the end of its ULURP review period,

Community Board 9 significantly revised its plan by increasing the

community facility FAR to the same FAR as proposed by Columbia, and by

eliminating the ground floor requirement for manufacturing uses. As

discussed at our October 29 Review Session that development under the

revised 197-a plan would therefore result in an area predominantly

devoted to Columbia University. As a result, we no longer have before

us two radically different visions of land use in Manhattanville, but

instead two different visions of how Columbia can, and should grow in

Manhattanville."

Coalition to Preserve Community comment:
So even with all the compromises that CB 9 offered in the last few weeks, the
City only supports the all or nothing concept. Burden and the Commission give
lip service to the 197A Community Plan, and then think that the peasants up
in the low income, "minority" neighborhood will sit back and accept their
double talk!

Burden:
"The 197a plan, on the other hand, would not permit this concentration

of uses, missing an important opportunity to transform and activate

125th Street as a connector between the upland neighborhoods and the

waterfront and precluding the range and scale of open spaces made

possible by the Columbia plan."

Coalition to Preserve Community comment:
Well the conflicts of interest of City Planning Commissioners are clear so it
is no wonder why the Commission is handing over 17 plus acres to Columbia. We
have called for Cantor, Knuckles and Williams to recuse themselves from
voting on Manhattanville issues, but the fact is that the whole system is rigged
in favor of the real estate industry and that means Columbia. Burden literally
did not even wait for the final impact statement to be released before she
announced that the fix was in! The nerve of Burden to make claims that the
Columbia plan allows for an integration of uses. This is an all or nothing, eminent
domain driven, eviction plan which will cause massive displacement. Columbia
wants to use eminent domain against other entities besides the private property
owners so it can avoid other lengthy processes which could occur with the MTA
and other corporate owners. City Planning is not planning, it is
participating in evicting.

Burden:
"On balance, the two plans before us are very strong but as I said earlier,
differ fundamentally in their visions of how Columbia can and should grow in
Manhattanville."

Coalition to Preserve Community comment:
And the priority always is the entity with the power and the millions spent
on lobbying has certainly paid off for Columbia. At its heart this is a
decision based on race and class, and no amount of spinning by Burden, the Mayor, all
Columbia's politicians and lobbyists, or other compromisers can avoid the
ugly racism and classism behind this land grab. They all want to avoid the issue
of eminent domain, but it is not going to go away, and neither are the folks
who will be sitting in front of the bulldozers after this "equal treatment"
ULURP process reaches its conclusion.

WE KNOW MONDAY IS A WORK DAY, BUT DO YOUR BEST TO COME OUT THIS MONDAY.

The hunger strike is over, but the struggle continues

The hunger strike was a critical stage of student resistance to racist CU policies and extracted important concessions from the university administration. However, these concessions are primarily important not because the reforms themselves, but because they demonstrated the power of students united. They showed that the way to wage a sharp struggle is through unity, strength, and rising militancy.

To take on the university's anti-worker expansion into Harlem, the end of the hunger strike must signal the beginning of a qualitatively new phase of the struggle. It is time to simultaneously broaden and sharpen the attack. Most critically, now we must demonstrate not just the power of student unity, but that of worker-student unity, between Harlem's working masses and CU's student body.

The student resistance, like the most basic laws of motion, is driven forward by contradictions both external (the students vs. the university) and internal (student reformism vs. radicalism/revolutionism). The more advanced the struggle becomes, the more workers and students unite in camaraderie and action, the harsher the university will react. This is to be expected, and will be a good sign that we are finally moving forward and doing something right.

Internally, as well, the divide between reform and revolution, between the demand for superficial vs. structural change, will continue to become increasingly polarized. This, like the intensification of the external contradictions, is to be welcomed. Progress is only made through the intensification of contradiction.

The situation with the university was like a pot of water. The hunger strike provided heat, and slowly but surely, and eventually faster and more rapidly, small bubbles of resistance and struggle began to form, rising to the surface. The end of the strike leaves us open to two directions: turning off the heat, or letting it bring the water to a new qualitative form: boiling, turning it to steam.

The important thing is to rally the student body and the Harlem working class around the radical, revolutionary pole by continuing (but again, a newer, bigger way) what the hunger strikers made an truly amazing start of: Harlem/community worker-Columbia student unity.

Interesting 1957 US news documentary on China in revolution

It's not just Columbia, it's capitalism!

Now that students have won the bulk of their immediate curricular reforms, it's time to turn the tide of struggle and get it behind Harlem's working class to fight back against Columbia's racist, anti-worker expansion. We must broaden and sharpen the struggle on all fronts!

In order to do this, students must continue to get a better grasp of the nature of the expansion. This first means understanding Columbia's history of working-class displacement. Additionally, students must go into this battle with the understanding that no matter what concessions we manage to wrestle from Columbia about curriculum or expansion are at best a temporary fix, not a solution. Our struggle will be in vain if we fail to see that no reforms or concessions will fundamentally alter Columbia's racist, imperialist nature. Beyond Columbia, and US colleges in general, such reforms will not change the racist, imperialist nature of the US or the capitalist class its government and universities serve. Indeed, to give the struggle meaning, it must be always growing. Not just numerically, but in the scope of its demands, and even more importantly, the scope of its political outlook.

At the end of the day, the problem's not just Columbia, it's capitalism! Capitalism, not CU's administration, is the system that encourages, supports, allows, and legally protects Columbia's "right" to push working-class residents out of their homes and neighborhoods. Capitalism, not CU's administration, is the monstrosity that systematically devalues the lives of all workers, especially "national" or "racial" minorities. Capitalism, not CU's administration, is what makes the dollar and profits all-mighty; and capitalism, not CU's administration, is what makes one dollar or a million of them worth more than a "lowly" worker's life.

Imagine you are a doctor. An HIV-positive patient comes in with a case of pneumonia. Now, which is the real root problem--the HIV or the pneumonia? Sure, the penumonia's bad, but the HIV is what systematically disarmed the patient's immune system, opening the door to a whole host of diseases; diseases that, while normally are highly treatable, in a patient with HIV can be life-threatening. Capitalism is the disease. Columbia is merely an outgrowth of it. Poverty, unemployment, war, racism, sexism, workfare, racist cops, and Columbia's expansion effort are only the symptoms.

Of course, we want to alleviate the symptoms (in this case, displacement of 5,000 residents, mass job loss, etc.). But we won't be doing the patient much good if that's the only thing on which our efforts are focused; if we're not attacking the disease itself. The difference between HIV and capitalism is that right now, both could be prevented, but only one of them can be cured. Sure, we have to fight Columbia's expansion, even if it's only a stop-gap measure. But we need to broaden and use this reform struggle as a school for communism, to raise the political and class consciousness of students and workers. Then we can make sure the struggle doesn't end in vain, and build our strength, unity, and organization to wipe away the entire profit system.