The Struggle Continues

Promoting solidarity and coalition building across CUNY campuses, this flyer called on students at Bronx Community College, Lehman College, and Hostos Community College to join a May 2, 1991 rally at Hostos Community College in the Bronx followed by a march to City College in Harlem. The flyer featured two figures with open mouths and called for "No" tuition increases, budget cuts, financial aid reductions, or faculty/staff layoffs.

The 1991 CUNY strikes were part of a larger story of austerity imposed on New York City and the community efforts to resist it. At the intersection of political activism and anthropology, on April 16th, students mainly from the Graduate Center Anthropology department occupied the Graduate Center in solidarity with undergraduate mobilization across CUNY against the threat of steep tuition hikes, massive budget cuts, and faculty layoffs. What began as a one-day strike turned into a ten-day take-over in which students and faculty practiced forms of participatory democracy, discussed the root causes of the problems being faced, and debated actions for change. Students often drew on CUNY’s history as the first urban, public institution of higher education in the United States to argue that education was a right and that the proposed measures threatened working-class New Yorker’s ability to receive an education.

McCaffrey, Katherine

May 1991 (Circa)

English

Copyrighted

McCaffrey, Katherine