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GC Students Take on RNC
GC Students discuss possibilities for mobilization against the RNC.
By Agnieszka Kajrukszto and Shawn Ewald
On the 11th of February a group of students gathered in the Sociology Department to talk about their plans for the upcoming Republican National Convention. Participants came from a diverse range of departments, student organizations, and political beliefs. Yet, all were interested in the common agenda of finding ways to effectively resist the Republicans as a united Graduate Center community.
Over the past few months, the Graduate Center and the larger CUNY community have engaged in a variety of struggles and campaigns, such as expressing outrage over tuition hikes and attempting to rescue CUNY’s historic mission of open admissions, in addition to protesting against war at home and abroad. CUNY student anti-war activism and organizing resulted in the creation of the ‘GC No War’ web site and a network of students, faculty, and staff. Many of us are rethinking our role in the anti-war movement and the direction that we would like to see the movement take. Organizing around the upcoming Republican National Convention presents an opportunity for us to come together once again and direct our organizing efforts towards blocking a warmongering president and a party that serves military and corporate elites from appropriating the image of post 9/11 New York City.
For the first time in its 150-year history, the Republican National Committee has selected New York as the official site of their annual convention, to be held from August 29 through September 2 of 2004. The timing of the Republican National Convention, and the planned incorporation of Ground Zero into the RNC festivities have sparked outrage from various organizations consisting of survivors and families of the victims of 9/11.
In light of the poor economy, the federal funds for New York that have never materialized, firehouse closings, and reductions in city services, many average New Yorkers are also critical of the RNC. CUNY students should be equally critical in light of the treatment they have been getting. The CUNY Colleges are increasingly out of reach for working class, immigrant and poor students—the very constituencies that CUNY is supposed to serve. Despite tuition hikes, often disguised as special fees and security measures that are making our campuses look and feel like prisons, CUNY students have been finding ways to resist and have their voices heard.How to Get Involved
There are many ways to get involved in the organizing against the RNC. Two web sites have become the main online sources of information, RNC Not Welcome (rncnotwelcome.org) and Counter-Convention (counterconvention.org). Monthly meetings of a semi-formal organizing group calling itself the No RNC Clearinghouse have been bringing together dozens of activists, including members of community-based organizations, to network and help spread the workload. There are other meetings happening in Brooklyn and Harlem for the purpose of planning the Poor Peoples’ March that is scheduled to happen on August 30th, the opening day of the RNC—among the groups sponsoring that march is the New York City AIDS Housing Network (nycahn.org). United for Peace and Justice (unitedforpeace.org) is planning a march and rally on August 29th billed as “The World Says No to the Bush Agenda.” Some groups are interested in planning decentralized direct actions during the RNC; the RNC Not Welcome web site offers a great deal of information regarding direct action tactics and ideas, including a “Direct Action Handbook.”
The outreach working group of the No RNC Clearinghouse (nycsummer.org) is also launching a calendar that will list events for the 100 days leading up to the convention. The outreach working group says the calendar will also be a way to invite people and groups to take action throughout the summer. Also, coordinated press coverage will help to connect these disparate events into a single, sustained message to Bush and the Republicans: “Your policies are bad for our city and we are going to put an end to them.”
We still have several months before the RNC comes to town. However, many people in the New York activist community feel that it’s never too early to get involved and start planning. There are many groups across various campuses that will be mobilizing over the coming months and it is time for us at the Graduate Center to do the same. Don’t let Republicans use New York City as a dramatic backdrop for a massive Bush photo-op—join the effort to block the RNC.