NEW YORK CITY, October 30 — The Morales-Shakur Center at City College of New York (CCNY) was where students hung out, studied, and organized. Its door was painted red with a black fist. Above the couches, the words “this space was won thru struggle” was painted in red. On Sunday Oct. 20, the week of midterms, students came to school to find this center closed. Hundreds of students and community members rallied that Monday, followed by another protest on Thursday, leading to the sudden suspension of two student leaders on Oct. 28. PLP and friends participated in this struggle, and are building ties with these protesters.
While PLP forces continue to participate in this struggle at CCNY, we are stepping up our anti-war efforts at other CUNY campuses as well. Today, PLP students and friends occupied the lobby at Hunter college in solidarity with the struggle to seize the Morales-Shakur center. Wanted posters of Petraeus were hung and many were invited to our upcoming college conference. But we must step up our fight.
Students vs. Campus KKKops
The center was a result of student protests and building occupation over the first rounds of tuition increases in 1989. It is named after the Armed Forces of National Liberation member Guillermo Morales, and Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army member Assata Shakur. For over two decades, the Morales-Shakur center has been a space for women and gay-lesbian fighters, and community and student organizing.
The administration, under the guise of “expansion,” shut down the center, its building, and the library. The campus kkkops also locked down $1,000 worth of student belongings. At the first protest, Oct. 21, hundreds of students, faculty and the community denounced the administration’s fascistic seizure of their center. The fire alarm was pulled. Hundreds more students joined.
We then marched to the building entrance. Although the campus police tried to keep us out, we marched through the corridors, chanting loudly, to a second-floor rotunda, where students confronted campus cops and administrators, militantly demanding the return of the Morales-Shakur center.
Three days later, Oct. 24, 200 protested at the Administration building. Despite the lineup of cops, students linked arms and sat down, blocking the entrance. We surged onto Convent Ave, attempting to enter the large North Academic Center (NAC) building. Holding our college ID, we went from door-to-door attempting to get in. Campus security scrambled to keep the doors closed. Students were arrested, including an alumnus, and one was pepper sprayed. The cops shut down the entire building, prohibiting anyone from entering or leaving.
On Monday morning, Oct. 28, two of the main student leaders were stopped by security. Their IDs were confiscated; they were given letters of suspension and were immediately kicked off campus. Despite this attack, 60 people rallied at noon and then marched off campus to meet their banned student leaders.
Velvet Glove of Democracy Comes Off
What we’re seeing at CUNY is the removal of the velvet glove of “democracy” to reveal an iron fist of fascism. The administration is retaliating for protests against the ROTC and appointment of CIA and military general David Petraeus as a warrior professor. The bosses are trying to build a base among working-class youth for their future wars in the Middle East.
While many students expressed anti-imperialist sentiments, pushing out ROTC at CCNY was not mentioned. PLP urged students to fight ROTC in connection with the Morales-Shakur fight. During the Vietnam War, the U.S. military slaughtered three million workers. The majority of the U.S. officers in charge of this genocide were graduates of ROTC training centers.
The anti-Petraeus demonstrations are an embarrassment to the university, which has reacted in fury. Campus and NYPD cops beat and arrested six students at an anti-Petraeus protest on September 17. Now they stole the Morales-Shakur center. On Nov. 25, the Board of Trustees will vote to implement a new policy to restrict campus protests. Anyone who doesn’t follow the new restrictions will be punished. Surely, the past few months of protests have scared the CUNY bosses. This counterattack is a sign that we must be hitting them where it hurts. The ruling class understands the potential power of a worker-student alliance very well, perhaps more than the current student and faculty body realizes.
We live in a period in which the U.S. ruling class is fighting to maintain itself as the world’s dominant imperialist power. According to the NY Times, the U.S. plans 100 military missions in Africa in the next 12 months. Troops and naval battalions are moving into Asia to confront China. To do so, the rulers need a tight discipline over their institutions. To solve its deep economic crisis, it must implement more laws attacking workers’ wages, healthcare, and education. It is preparing the population for permanent war and sacrifice for their imperialist needs. And that is what we are experiencing at CUNY — the fascistization of the university. But workers and students are fed up. We will demonstrate at the November 25 Board of Trustees meeting, continuing our protests at CCNY and building an anti-imperialist movement on college campuses.  
Our most immediate task is inviting our new friends to the PLP International College Conference on November 8 and 9 to assess the strengths and weaknesses of our campus struggles, and to build for a communist revolution. The only way to purge war criminals like Petraeus, the racist police who murder our black youth like Ramarley Graham, Shantel Davis, and Kyam Livingston, and the daily exploitation under capitalism, is to fight for a workers’ world: communism.