Harlem Demonstration

"Why pay more for less" read a protest sign. As student takeovers spread to more City University of New York (CUNY) campuses, CUNY students organized marches and rallies across the city. These images show students marching to City College in Harlem, carrying signs, with community members cheering solidarity from nearby windows.

The 1991 CUNY strikes were part of the larger story of austerity measures imposed on New York City and the community efforts to resist those measures. On April 16th, students mainly from the Graduate Center Anthropology PhD program occupied the Graduate Center in solidarity with a broader 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 austerity problems being faced, and debated actions for change. Students often drew on CUNY’s history as the premier 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 Yorkers' ability to receive an education.

McCaffrey, Katherine

McCaffrey, Katherine

April 9, 1991

Mccaffrey, Katherine

Copyrighted

English

Photograph