NEW YORK CITY, October 16  — Fighting back against the fascist jailing of 39 young people arrested in a violent police raid on the Grant and Manhattanville public housing projects last June, over a 100 protesters, including 60 Columbia students and about 40 others, showed up at the court hearing today. There were so many, the hearing was shifted to a smaller courtroom at the last minute, just to keep them out!
The arrested youths haven’t been charged with actual crimes, only with conspiracy. Their arrests were a full-scale racist assault, as the cops swarmed the projects on 125th St, complete with helicopters, bashing down doors, trashing apartments, intimidating grandmothers and toddlers, seeking to arrest 103 indicted young people. Bail was set so high that no one was able to post it, which has meant four months in jail with no trial.
These projects house poor, black residents and provide shoddy services and almost no recreational facilities. Young people go to failing schools without after-school programs and have few job opportunities or organized activities.
Rather than providing any kind of services, or even repairing and maintaining apartments, the rulers and their NYPD spent three years planning this raid, searching cell phone data and social media to find connections between kids to present as evidence of conspiracies! At the hearing for the first 37, all were sent back to jail for another two months—and the prosecution is offering them “deals” involving twelve to fourteen year prison sentences.
A positive development is the growing unity among parents in the projects, a local church and students at nearby Columbia University. The students joined community and church members in a demonstration and press conference outside the courthouse and and inside as well. With not even enough room for all the families to sit, the students took up a vigil in the hall outside the courtroom for three hours. Both lawyers and parents came out to say thanks — the support is very important.  Hearings for another group of arrestees is next week, and we will return to support them too.
Parents and some students will also continue to gather in the local church in which we have been active for many years to build this struggle and to demand that Columbia University live up to its promise to donate $17 million for projects the community wants, in compensation for Columbia’s massive expansion into Harlem.
As we have seen in Ferguson and on Staten Island, the ruling class and their police servants are out for blood, and the degree of force and intimidation is escalating rapidly. As conditions for workers worsen and wars increase, rebellion that unifies workers, the unemployed and students is needed — and it’s beginning to grow. With communist leadership, that rebellion will lead to revolution, and to a future where the working class rules on its own behalf.