March Dispatch
Upcoming events:
March 29 5-7:30pm “LGBTQ+ Night at the People’s Pantry” (Grad Center)
March 29 5-7 People’s Hearing at CUNY Law
March 30 5-6pm RAFA Zoom Happy Hour Orientation
March 31 6-9pm Cross-Campus CUNY Organizing Dinner (Grad Center)
PSC Anti-Racism Committee resignations
In mid-March, all three co-chairs of the PSC Anti-Racism Committee (ARC) resigned, as well as three other committee members. In their letters of resignation, former committee members cite systemic issues that impeded committee’s work. They write about the disproportionate representation of PSC leadership and a few chapters on the committee, roadblocks put up by PSC principal officers, and the narrow focus of campus action teams on the contract campaign despite a robust ARC plan to develop campus-specific anti-racism groups. In the words of RAFA member Ángeles Donoso Macaya, “This committee can have no weight, no validity, no substance, if decisions made collectively, tasks assigned to individual working groups, constructive feedback, you name it, are tossed aside, ignored, or conveniently reinterpreted by the PSC leadership.” Rhea Rahman pointed out the lack of support and withholding of resources by PSC leadership when faced with a vision of anti-racism that encompassed the workings of the union as well as CUNY.
At the March Delegate Assembly, PSC President James Davis expressed gratitude for the work of committee members who resigned but did not address criticisms aimed at the principal officers for undermining the work of the ARC. The ARC resignations are a troubling sign of the state of anti-racist work in our union. As all those who resigned pointed out, anti-racist union work continues at the rank-and-file and chapter level, but this work must be supported with the resources of our union and backing of our union leadership no matter how difficult, messy, and uncomfortable.
Reclaim The Commons at the Graduate Center
Since February 1, students and workers at the Graduate Center have been holding and running the vibrant Reclaim The Common space in the 8th floor dining hall. Reclaim The Commons is run by a diverse group of students, staff, and faculty with a variety of affiliations (including PSC and RAFA), and their demands can be found here. It has become a central site of organizing on the GC campus, and a site of pitched battles with management, including this recent march on the boss.
The project involves a People's Pantry that provides free food for the GC community (anyone can contribute or take items from the pantry, no questions asked), as well as a free hot beverage station. The pressure of this project on the GC management has finally resulted in initial moves to establish an official food pantry, and student and worker activists are working to make sure that this official pantry follows the principles of democracy and access embodied by the People’s Pantry. Meanwhile, the need is acute, and the People’s Pantry has become essential to the survival of many members of the GC community. You can contribute financially via venmo: @Zoe-Hu-1 or cash slipped underneath the PSC office door (6302), and of course through non-perishable food donations.
Reclaim the Commons has been holding weekly potlucks in the Dining Commons each Wednesday evening. With financial backing from the Doctoral Graduate Student Council, as well as meals cooked by the community, they have been able to provide hot meals for hundreds of people. All are invited to join us, not only students. See calendar for upcoming events. To sign up for the Reclaim the Commons email list. Follow RtC on Twitter and Instagram.
The People’s Hearing Launch and Land Day Iftar
On March 9th at the CUNY Graduate Center, a new coalition of radical CUNY and community organizations, including RAFA, came together to officially launch the People’s Hearing. The Hearing is a response to the CUNY administration’s participation in a sham City Council hearing in which right-wing groups reacted to successful Palestine liberation work at CUNY to try to force the university to adopt policies excluding Palestine from the university space. A People’s Hearing is meant to hold the university accountable to its students and workers, and to the wider community in which it is embedded.
The event was attended in person and online by close to 200 people (recording here). Speakers described CUNY’s centrality to radical NY organizing going back decades and including resistance to McCarthyism and ROTC recruitment, Puerto Rican and Black liberation struggles, anti-austerity and anti-racist protests, student strikes and campus take-overs, anti-war, Palestine liberation solidarity, abortion rights, and rank and file worker organizing to end the exploitative, multi-tier labor system at CUNY. We heard about CUNY’s ongoing entanglements with racist police and carceral state, colonialism, zionism and imperialism, including CUNY’s role in perpetuating violence and dispossession in Palestine, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. Speakers also discussed how they envisioned a true People’s University, free from systems and structures of oppression and one run by and accountable to its students, workers, and communities. Audience members shared their experiences of racism and repression at CUNY.
The next People’s Hearing event- Land Day Iftar and the first testimonial event building up to the People’s Hearing against Racism and Repression- will be held on March 29th, 5-7pm at CUNY LAW: RSVP form and submit a written testimony, form to submit further evidence; form to get involved in the organizing of the People’s Hearing, linktree.
The Fight for Trans Rights at CUNY
Last week, the Graduate Center chapter of the PSC unanimously passed a resolution affirming the chapter’s solidarity with all LGBTQ+ people, rejecting the 440+ anti-queer (mostly anti-trans) bills that have been introduced in this year’s legislative session alone across the United States, committing to fighting against homophobia and transphobia at CUNY, and pledging assistance to any students or workers fighting the anti-trans bills in other states. Graduate Center delegates hope other PSC chapters will pass mirror resolutions at their own upcoming meetings this semester.
While New York is not facing any bills like the ones being introduced in about two-thirds of the other states, that doesn’t mean queer people in New York don’t face discrimination. The Queens Public Library in Jackson Heights regularly sees far-right protests outside its doors on the days they host Drag Story Hour events. At a similar protest outside the LGBT Center on 13th Street on March 19, one member of the Proud Boys punched a counter-protester. Some demands for protecting and affirming trans students and workers at CUNY include expanding the ability to use one’s chosen name on CUNY accounts and documentation, expanding the number of gender neutral bathrooms on the campuses, creating new protections against deadnaming and misgendering, and making gender-affirming healthcare more accessible for all.
To continue discussing how to address these issues, the Reclaim the Commons coalition is hosting “LGBTQ+ Night at the People’s Pantry” on Wednesday, March 29, to commemorate Trans Day of Visibility on March 31. Everyone in the CUNY community is welcome to attend, including cis and straight allies.
March 31 Cross-Campus Organizing Dinner
RAFA invites you to a cross-campus CUNY organizing dinner at the People’s Pantry at the Graduate Center on Friday, March 31 from 6-9 pm. Our goals for the evening are:
Connect undergrads, grad students, faculty, and staff across CUNY over food and dialogue.
Plan cross-campus mobilization efforts for a large May Day action at the end of this semester.
Build a centralized communication network for radical organizing at CUNY.
Dinner will be provided. After 45 minutes of eating and socializing, we will share plans for May Day and split up by campuses/borough to discuss coordination and organizing. RSVP here
The dinner and May Day actions are tests of our ability to mobilize towards a strike to reverse decades of austerity that have plagued this university. The Taylor Law makes it illegal for NY public sector workers to go on strike, but we know that unjust laws should be broken, and there are numerous examples of employees in states with similar laws going on strike and winning. The massive strike wave at universities, hospitals, and beyond across this country over the past year has won major concessions from management. Imagine what a joint student-worker CUNY strike could achieve!
Come together with CUNY students and workers to fight for the CUNY that working-class New Yorkers deserve: a CUNY that’s free for students and that provides living wages for its employees; a fully funded CUNY with fully staffed departments and small class sizes; a CUNY with buildings that aren’t falling apart; a CUNY where administrators don’t make ten, twenty, or thirty times as much as adjunct instructors and staff members. Together, we can also tackle the myriad social injustices that we face: police brutality and racism, sexism and patriarchy, anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination, anti-immigrant violence, the rising tide of fascism. Help us create a People’s CUNY.
Organizing against racism in the Bronx
Members of RAFA and the Bronx/Hostos Action Committee participated in two events highlighting the ongoing fight against racism at CUNY. On Monday, March 13th, during a so-called “listening tour,” Wendy Hensel, Executive Vice Chancellor and University Provost (annual salary: $488,000) came to Hostos and did an awful lot of talking about how students and workers at CUNY must suffer under additional racist budget cuts. Carrying water for CUNY administration and Governor Hochul, who wants to institute a 3% tuition hike, Hensel tried to convince us that this austerity is the only way forward. Both outside and inside the assembly, CUNY workers and students challenged the austerity mindset and pushed for a fully funded, free CUNY. We met new students who are eager to join in future organizing! Anyone in the Bronx who wants to get involved, email us at hostosactioncommittee68@gmail.com.
On Thursday of that week, Kingsborough students and faculty visited Hostos to give us a first-hand account on the organizing they have been doing in response to the racist attack on a student in November. The seriousness and militancy of this student-led organizing was plain to see. They spoke of the retaliation that the administration, led by President Schrader (renamed “President Traitor”) is launching against the students and two faculty advisors - and how they are going on the offensive against these attacks! The sense of solidarity was profound and the KCC group give us encouragement and inspiration for our fight in the Bronx. We encourage anyone at CUNY to contact Common Ground at KCC and arrange for them to visit your campus. They are also raising money to help fend off the attacks from administration. If you can contribute, please do!
Accessibility at the PSC Delegate Assembly
On March 16, the PSC held its first-ever hybrid Delegate Assembly (DA) meeting. This decision, voted at the February DA, was subject to much debate. The primary stated reason for returning to in-person meetings was the value of socializing and the increased sense of camaraderie that can come from being in a room together. A primary concern about returning to in-person delegate assembly meetings was COVID safety. Members who did attend in-person reported that not everyone wore their masks consistently, and there are also concerns about whether there was adequate ventilation, given dinner was in the same space immediately before.
During the DA, attendees on Zoom faced several issues, including the PSC’s decision to not enable the Zoom chat and participants not being able to split into smaller breakout groups focused on specific organizing topics. Zoom attendees couldn’t see who was speaking at the in-person microphones, were bothered by comments made about how the in-person component was the “real” DA, and disputed the assumption that everyone who attended online must like digital participation which is ostensibly why they were all placed in the same breakout group . Members also pointed out that at times, it seemed like online votes weren’t even counted. Some had issues receiving the Zoom link.
The debate continued on the DA listserv after the meeting. One key point of disagreement is on whether the DA needs to be accessible for everyone, given that it’s a representative body in which some members already represent others. Others have argued that even though not everyone may want to be a delegate, the meetings are open to all PSC members, and all PSC members should be able to attend if they want to. Another point of disagreement is on whether in-person meetings actually do have key organizing advantages over digital ones, or if these advantages are primarily social and/or a matter of personal preference and enjoyment. Meetings intended to be open for all ought to be fully accessible for all, especially when we know that about a third of all attendees require these accommodations.
Public Sector Rank & File Organizing Across NYC
Since August 2022, a group known as Public Sector Rank & File has been meeting and plotting together to get a better sense of our shared struggles and obstacles across the city. Frequent topics of discussion include the Taylor Law and how to overturn it, as well as the scourge of austerity and the constraints of pattern bargaining enforced on us by the city and the state. Unions represented include PSC-CUNY, the MORE caucus within the UFT, nurses from NYSNA, and workers from various DC-37 locals. We have held three in-person assemblies and meet regularly over Zoom, every other Wednesday from 7-8 pm. Currently, there are talks of another in-person assembly on Sat., May 13, as well as ‘brown bag’ lunches over Zoom focusing on each respective union so we can learn about issues particular to each of us and how to support each other better. You can join our email list at bit.ly/JoinPSRF.
Right now, all eyes are on DC37. Their Tentative Agreement (the exact details of which have not been released to the membership) is currently being voted on by members, and the reform caucus DC37 Progressives has released a set of informative materials exposing problems with the proposals and encouraging a no-vote on the contract. We are linking those resources here and find inspiration in them for our own battles at CUNY!
Contract FAQ Document (google doc): bit.ly/DC37TAContractFAQ
Contract FAQ Brochure (pdf): bit.ly/DC37TAContractBrochure
Compound Wage Increase Calculator: bit.ly/DC37TAContractCalculator (view only google sheet)
For more information about PSRF, contact Boyda at johnstoneb2 [at] gmail.com.
Breaking Unjust Laws II
On February 20, RAFA got together with Member Action Coalition, our counterpart rank and file group at SUNY for a second in our town hall series on Breaking Unjust Laws. This installment focused on academic freedom and censorship (watch here) and featured a youth librarian from Michigan and a professor from a public college in Florida. Both reflected on censorship struggles in their workplace specifically as union activists. Audience members from CUNY and SUNY, as well as guests from other public sector universities across the US, discussed protecting colleagues under attack, inoculation, and what PSC and UUP can do as unions in solidarity.