Items

• Source magazine interview with SLAM! Members

  This article published in The Source, a national hip-hop magazine, is about SLAM! and includes quotes from SLAM! members: Rachel Laforest, Kai Barrow and Peter Chung. They discuss SLAM! realtions with other activist groups protesting against the Republican National Committee in Philadelphia that year: "We were able to inject the issues that affect people of color into predominantly white organizations that never really did work with racial justice. Now, we have environmental groups discussing these issues," explains SLAM's Peter Chung.
• Spheric: Ground Zero

  This issue of Spheric, a Hunter College newspaper produced by activists from the CUNY Coalition, covers efforts organized by the Students Liberation Action Movement (SLAM!) to protest New York Governor George Pataki's plan to decrease state funding to CUNY. Additional articles cover such topics as: a CCNY student's lengthy suspension, the increased security presence on campuses, and a student's history of CUNY.
• SLAM! Herstory Project

  A multimedia oral history archive about the Student Liberation Action Movement (SLAM!, 1996-2007) and the CUNY Coalition (1995) at the City University of New York.
• SLAM! Programs Brochure

  This 5-page brochure includes a brief overview of SLAM's history up to the 1999-2000 school year, SLAM!'s 10-point program, and details on three campaigns SLAM! was organizing that year: the High School Organizing Committee, which worked with high school students to demand the return of remedial classes at CUNY's senior colleges; the Prison Project, which mobilized youth to protest prison expansion and defend political prisoners; and the CUNY Legal Defense Project, which supported litigation by attorneys for CUNY students' civil liberties and rights and the defense of arrested activists. This brochure encourages people to get involved with these programs/campaigns.
• Open Admissions Fact Sheet

  This trifold pamphlet created by SLAM! debunks myths about remedial classes at CUNY's senior colleges and puts forward arguments for keeping CUNY's open admissions program. It educated students about the history and importance of open admissions at the time that the policy was being reversed by the Board of Trustees and SLAM! was fighting to preserve it.
• MUMIA - Youth Rising Summer 2000

  Mumia Youth Rising was produced by SLAM! High School Organizing Program, an initiative that offered workshops to public school students in which they addressed racism, prison justice and activism. This publication contains student produced articles about Mumia Abu Jamal and Amadou Diallo as well as opinion pieces that feature student voices.
• Slam! High School Organizing Program: Youth Rising

  This publication was created by SLAM! to showcase poetry by the high school students in the SLAM! High School Organizing Program's creative writing workshop. The students learned poetry writing skills and discussed issues of police abuse, racial profiling, and violence in their communities, then wrote poems about the subject.
• Director of Security's Resignation Letter, York College

  York College Director of Security Winston A. Burrows' resignation letter explains that he is resigning after 17 years of service at York because he cannot become a party to the City University Director of Public Safety's plan to deny students their constitutional right to free speech. The letter details the CUNY chancellor's efforts to prevent students from bringing in the speaker of their choice on Black Solidarity Day.
• Spheric: Red, White and Blues

  This issue of Spheric, a Hunter College newspaper produced by activists from the CUNY Coalition, includes a "special bulletin" that details proposed CUNY budget cuts and tuition increases as well as the efforts undertaken by the Students Liberation Action Movement (SLAM!) to oppose the plans. Other student contributions to the paper include lengthy opinion pieces, poetry, and satire.
• Spheric: Election Special

  This special edition of Spheric, a Hunter College newspaper produced by activists from the CUNY Coalition, includes several articles covering the 1996 U.S. presidential election alongside critiques of the nation's political system. It also features student-submitted poetry, artwork, book reviews, and other articles focused on social justice.
• "Move the Crowd"

  This November 2000 feature article in The Source, the leading national hip-hop magazine at the time, covers SLAM!'s participation in organizing protests against the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia that year. The protests focused on mass imprisonment, the death penalty, and police brutality.
• SLAM! the Tuition Hike Flier

  Students posted this flier in the hallways of their CUNY campuses across the city, as part of efforts to build and maintain SLAM! chapters at other campuses in addition to Hunter College.
• SLAM! Student Meeting Flier

  This flier was created by Brooklyn College SLAM! members to promote a meeting on campus to organize protests against a CUNY tuition hike in the spring semester of 1997.
• SLAM! Structure

  This flier explains the structure of city-wide SLAM!, which was designed to ensure representation of actual organizing by students on their campuses. This was an effort to build a grassroots coalition that would bypass some of the problems the CUNY Coalition had in 1995 with multiple newspaper-pushing party organizations that weren't doing organizing work on any campus.
• Do You and Your Friends Want to Go to College?

  This flier was created by SLAM!'s High School Organizing Committee in 1999 to attempt to recruit high school students to organize to save open admissions at CUNY. Members of the committee passed out these fliers in the morning before school outside Manhattan high schools and asked high school students about their concerns related to access to CUNY.
• SLAM! business card

  This business card was created to promote SLAM! and make sure people had the phone number and address. It featured a well-designed colorful graphic, a Frederick Douglass quote, and a tagline sharing SLAM!'s mission, "To serve the people."
• SLAM! Program Working Document

  SLAM!'s 10-Point Program outlines the organization's vision for transformation of the university and society, from access for all to free quality higher education to democratic governance by students, workers and faculty; education for liberation; campus security under democratic control; and a new society that would be truly democratic and meet the basic needs of all people.
• "Bad Man Badillo: Butcher of CUNY"

  This article by SLAM! member Sandra Barros for the Hunter Envoy investigates the role of CUNY Board of Trustees Vice Chair Herman Badillo in the plan to end open admissions at CUNY. This issue of the Envoy also includes an article about Hunter's childcare center, an interview with mayoral candidate Ruth Messinger, and an editorial about the mayoral election by SLAM! member Jed Brandt.
• "SLAM! Street Fair"

  This article in the Hunter College Envoy covers the street fair organized by SLAM! in the fall semester of 2000. Featuring performances by members of clubs from diverse cultures along with informational tables offering resources, the street fair was one way that SLAM! sought to serve the student body while in office as student government.
• "CUNY Task Force Chief Accused of 'Ethnic Cleansing'"

  This New York Post article reports on a City Council Committee on Higher Education hearing at which council members remarked on the racism inherent in the effort of Mayor Giuliani's task force on CUNY to end open admissions.
• Save Open Admissions Teach-in - Cultural Festival

  This flier by Brooklyn College SLAM! members promoted an event on campus celebrating the diversity of the student body with a cultural festival and teach-in about open admissions. The event was planned to mobilize and educate students on campus and to draw students for a rally later that afternoon outside the Board of Trustees meeting at which a major decision on open admissions would be made.
• "Citibank: The Pawnbroker"

  This article in the Spheric newspaper from Hunter College investigates the potential exploitation of students and campuses by the proposed CUNY Card. Citibank would get fees from students as part of this proposed ID card that would also be an ATM card, and CUNY would pay for the production and administration of the cards.
• "Students Rally Against the Cuts"

  This front page article in the Hunter College Envoy covers a march and rally organized by SLAM! on March 21, 1996 against that year's proposed budget cuts to CUNY. The paper estimates about 800 Hunter students, faculty and staff attended.
• Voice of the Voiceless, April 20, 1998

  In this issue of the BMCC student newspaper, Voice of the Voiceless, the topic of Open Admissions is given full focus with more than twenty articles contributed on the subject from students across the CUNY system. The topic was given special consideration in this April 20, 1998 edition of the paper as CUNY’s Board of Trustees was scheduled to decide on the future of Open Admissions in a vote on April 27th. In January, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani had issued an indictment of the system's effectiveness in his State of the City Address, calling open enrollment "a mistake [that] should be changed." Many of the students' submissions in this paper are directed at Giuliani's criticisms.Additional articles found in this paper also cover the “freshman admissions requirements” across CUNY’s senior colleges, as well as a breakdown of the use of “student activity fees” at BMCC.