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• Oral History Interview with Irini Neofistos

  In this interview, Irini Neofistos discussed the dynamics of the Student Liberation Action Movement's (SLAM!) role in Hunter College’s student government, which she took part in while a student at Hunter. Irini talked about her family’s radical history and the intergenerational leftist foundations of the organization. She discussed the anti-prison work that was central to her own experience in SLAM!, as well as the larger abolitionist movement that grew out of the 1990s movement and organizations such as SLAM!, Critical Resistance, and the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. Looking to many of her comrades in the organization, she discussed the paths many SLAM! organizers have taken since leaving Hunter and the ways in which they have shaped different movement spaces in the city over the past two decades.
• Oral History Interview with Sabrine Hammad

  In her interview, Sabrine Hammad discussed her political upbringing in a Palestinian nationalist household, and her relationships with her sisters who were also in the Student Liberation Action Movement (SLAM!) At Hunter College in the 1990s, where they all studied. She talked about the organizational structure of SLAM!, and in particular the work that she and Kai Lumumba-Barrow did in the office, and Kai’s cultivation of women of color leaders in the organization. She discussed solidarity work, including a delegation she took part in that went to Iraq in the early 2000s. She situated SLAM! within a constellation of people of color-led Left organizations in New York at the time, including within CUNY. Finally, she discussed her work after leaving SLAM!, including as an organizer with the CUNY Professional Staff Congress union.
• Oral History Interview with Rachel Laforest

  In this interview, Rachel Laforest discussed her foundations in the New York Left and internationalist politics. She situated the Student Liberation Action Movement (SLAM!) and student organizing at CUNY in the 1990s and early 2000s within the context of a changing city, focusing in particular on contested transformations around real estate, housing, and policing. She reflects upon organized labor and the role of unions in the Left, as well as political and ideological differences within SLAM!. She talked about the Black and Puerto Rican Studies department at Hunter, where she earned her degree, as well as Black student organizations. She highlighted the work of the High School Organizing Project, a SLAM! initiative that bridged the divide between high schools and colleges in New York.
• Oral History Interview with Orlando Green

  In this interview, Baruch College student Orlando Green discussed the afterlives of the Black power movement through various student of color formations that operated around the Student Liberation Action Movement (SLAM!), Including SOUL, FIST, STORM, and the Student Power Movement. He talked about the rise of campus policing at CUNY in the 1990s and 2000s in relation to the crackdown on protest and the targeting of student organizers such as himself. He discussed the changing political climate in New York and beyond through an analysis of electoral politics, the left, and the changing demographics and administration of CUNY.
• Oral History Interview with Jesse Ehrensaft-Hawley

  In this interview, community organizer Jesse Ehrensaft-Hawley discussed the Student Liberation Action Movement's (SLAM!) role as a movement incubator and supportive organization, particularly in relation to the work of FIERCE and other queer youth organizations. He talked about the anti-police and anti-gentrification politics of New York in the 1990s and early 2000s, as well as the resistance they faced from a variety of power brokers in the city, including the real estate industry, the New York Police Department, and wealthy White gay stakeholders in the city.
• Oral History Interview with Hank Williams

  In this interview, City College student Hank Williams discussed organizing at CUNY in the late 1990s and early 2000s, after the middle of the decade which he identified as the peak of the campus movement. He talked about the relationship between various campus organizations, including the Student Liberation Action Movement (SLAM!), which he organized with. He reflected upon the era of repression and austerity, as CUNY dismantled open admissions, and the racism that guided these policies.
• Oral History Interview with Kamau Franklin

  In this interview, Kamau Franklin discussed his experiences as an organizer with the Student Liberation Action Movement (SLAM!) and other organizations in New York in the 1990s, namely the Student Power Movement and the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. He talked about the important role Black movement elders Ashanti Alston and Kai Lumumba-Barrow played in movement parenting the young organizers in SLAM!. He also discussed the important movement work SLAM! folks did in the subsequent decades with organizations such as the Moral Mondays and Make the Road. He explained the ideological diversity of SLAM! and how it fit into the Left in New York.
• Oral History Interview with Mariano Munoz

  In this interview, Mariano Munoz discussed his time as a student organizer in the Student Liberation Action Movement (SLAM!) at Hunter College. He described the role of political education and radical study as the organization developed an internationalist politics that brought students to Chiapas and Mexico City to work with the Zapatistas and striking students at UNAM respectively. He also discussed his experience as an undocumented student and how that shaped his time as a student-organizer with Hunter College SLAM!. He talked about the protests at the 2000 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia and the dissolution of SLAM!.
• Oral History Interview with Suzy Subways

  In this interview, Suzy Subways discussed the queer and feminist politics of the Student Liberation Action Movement (SLAM!) and the larger movement in and beyond CUNY in the 1990s and early 2000s. She discussed her work with the Welfare Action Committee at Brooklyn College, where she studied, in the wake of welfare reform policies that pushed working class and poor mothers out of CUNY and universities across the nation in the middle of the 1990s. In addition to the gender politics of SLAM!, she also talked about the role of anarchism in the organization, as well as SLAM!'s ability to train students in organizing skills. One site of training and radicalization that she discussed was the High School Organizing Project, which sought to mobilize New York City high school students in defense of Open Admissions and the victories of struggles at CUNY from prior decades.
• Oral History Interview with Neha Gautam

  In this interview, Neha Gautam discussed the interconnected nature of race, class, gender, sexuality, and nation in the political structure of CUNY and New York. In particular, she focused on the ways in which it radicalized her, most notably in the wake of 9/11 with the intense policing of South Asian communities in New York. This led to her participation in the Student Liberation Action Movement (SLAM!) while a student at City College in the early 2000s. She discussed the influence of Sixties organizations such as the Young Lords on SLAM! and the mutual aid work they did such as the book exchange at the Morales-Shakur Center at City College. She talked about the personal disputes, as well as political conflicts around questions of gender and sexuality that caused tension within the organization, as well as the repression from the CUNY administration.
• Oral History Interview with Brad Sigal

  In this interview, Brad Sigal, who studied at both John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the City College of New York in the 1990s, discussed the intercampus dynamics within the Student Liberation Action Movement (SLAM!) and CUNY organizing spaces. He analyzed the impact of repression and surveillance on organizing at CUNY, and the varying levels of policing faced by organizers on different campuses. He talked about austerity, Black and Puerto Rican studies, and cuts to the Black Studies department at City College. He discussed student governance, as well as the role of Black, Dominican, and Puerto Rican student organizations in the movement at City College, and the importance of having a place to meet and organize on campus: the Morales-Shakur Center.
• Oral History Interview with Chris Gunderson

  In this interview, Christopher Gunderson (Chris Day) discussed the internal/external structure and origins of the Student Liberation Action Movement (SLAM!), as well as the ideological debates that took place within the organization in the 1990s. He talked about the role of publications and propaganda in popularizing SLAM!, as well as the role of the rapidly expanding carceral state in suppressing the Left on and off campus. Gunderson also discussed the work he did in Mexico while he was organizing with SLAM!, which included moving to Chiapas to support the building of a movement infrastructure by the Zapatistas.
• Oral History Interview with Lenina Nadal

  In this interview, Lenina Nadal discussed her experiences in the middle of the 1990s in the Coalition Against the Cuts and as an original member of the Student Liberation Action Movement (SLAM!). She highlighted the importance of SLAM! being a women of color-led organization and the ways the group practiced a feminist politics. She made clear the centrality of culture to SLAM! in her discussion of music, dance, poetry, theater, and popular education. She discussed connections between SLAM! and earlier struggles, including the Open Admissions struggle at the City University of New York and the founding of the Puerto Rican and Latino Studies department at Brooklyn College, which her parents were involved in.
• Oral History Interview with Kazembe Balagun

  In this interview, Kazembe Balagun discussed his time as a student organizer in the Student Liberation Action Movement at Hunter College. He considered SLAM!’s involvement in student government at Hunter and the possibilities and tensions it created. He also discussed his work with the Hunter Envoy newspaper and the production of radical literature, including zines and flyers, at Hunter. He clarified the importance of Hunter, SLAM!, and CUNY in the Black nationalist movement as well as the burgeoning prison abolition movement, noting that SLAM! served an important role in the planning of the Critical Resistance East Conference in 2001. He also shared insights about queer politics and identity in SLAM! and his own coming out experience in the organization.