TODAY: New York Call to Action OCT 7 - Defend Public Education

New York Call to Action OCT  7

Defend Public Education

(Part of the National Day of Action to Defend Public Education)

4 p.m. rally at the Harlem State office building,
163 W 125th St just east of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Blvd. (Seventh Avenue)

On Thursday October 7^th, 2010, students, educators, workers, and activists from community organizations across New York City will rally at 4pm outside the Harlem State Office Building at Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Blvd and 125^th street before marching across Harlem, finally ending at City College New York (CCNY).

Other events will include rallies, teach-ins, sit-ins and other actions at CUNY and SUNY schools across the city and state.  Students at Brooklyn College, Queens College, Hunter College, CCNY, Lehman and Hostos College have plans earlier in the day before converging at the Harlem State Office Building at 4pm.

The plans in New York are connected to the October 7^th National Day of Action to Defend Public Education, the continuation of the national movement that began on March 4^th 2010.

Since 2008 the cuts to public higher education include $400 million from SUNY and $200 million from CUNY.  Over the past six years, tuition has increased 46% at SUNY and 44% at CUNY as vital services, like childcare at Hunter College, are cut or scaled back.

Millions have been cut from k-12.  The state of New York recently passed measures that will double the cap of charter schools in the state and tie teacher pay to student performance on high stakes standardized tests.  These changes were keeping in line with the Race to the Top, a nearly $5 billion fund set aside by the federal government and dangled in front of strapped state governments as a prize for the states that launch the most vicious attacks against public education and teachers.

In Harlem, the attack on public education and the community as a whole is much more acute. The charterization movement has threatened public schools in Harlem by moving charter schools into the same building as public schools and pushing the public schools and the children that attend them out of their space.  This occurs at the same time as the expansion of Columbia University and the takeover of the community by rich developers.  Harlem is a center where the crisis, the massive unemployment that has been a devastating effect of it, homelessness, the attacks on the public sector and the criminalization of young people who are denied an equal quality education and the closing of hospitals all converge.

Join us as we stand in solidarity with the community of Harlem, march against racism, the attacks on the community and the people of New York.  We demand an immediate halt and reversal to all tuition hikes, budget cuts, lay-offs, privatizations and closures of public schools, will call for jobs, free health care for all students, the cancellation of student debt, free public education for all from kindergarten to college, the elimination of systems of racism in the public school system, and equal pay for equal work, as well as job security, for all faculty and teachers.

Endorsers:

Bail Out the People Movement
Black New Yorkers for Educational Excellence (BNYEE)
Councilman Charles Barron
Coalition for Public Education / Coalicion por la Educacion Publica
Coalition to Save Harlem
December 12^th Movement

East Village Community School – Parents Association, New York, NY
Fight Imperialism Stand Together
Harlem Tenants Council
Committee to End Abusive Policing in Our Communities (CEAPOC)
Iglesia San Romero
Independent Commission On Public Education (ICOPE)
International Action Center
International Socialist Organization
Labor-Community Forum of the South Bronx Community Congress
May 1st Coalition for Worker & Immigrant Rights-NYC
National Black Education Agenda (NBEA)
New York City Labor Against the War
Roots Revisited

Socialist Alternative
STAND (Queens College)
Students for Educational Rights (CCNY)
Take Back our Transit System
Ya Ya Network

Workers World Party

For more information go to:

www.march4ny.wordpress.com
www.defendeducation.org

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=535767918#!/event.php?eid=116869771699508
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=535767918#!/group.php?gid=244000051960

Sisters and Brothers

Please Join CPE-CEP's Harlem Chapter and

Support Public Schools and Public Housing in Harlem!!!

Support Community Control of our Institutions!!!

Strike a Blow Against Racism and Class Oppression!!!

Join us as we March from PS 123 

to the St. Nicholas Houses and then 

to the Adam Clayton Powell Junior State Office Building 

where we will join 

the National Day of Action to Defend Public Education!!!

Meet at PS123 

(301 West 140th Street, New York, NY  10030)

3:00pm

For more information please contact 

Vicente Montero at vmms033@aol.com 

or 

Ernestine Agustus at queenteenie45@aol.com 

or (646) 262-9052.

Thank you,