Support CUNY Student Strikes!

“No Budget Cuts! No Tuition Hikes!” This 1991 flyer promoted a City University of New York (CUNY) wide rally on April 12th at City College of New York (CCNY). Chronicling April 8th’s CCNY and Borough of Manhattan student takeovers; and April 9th’s Hunter, Lehman and Bronx Community College subsequent takeovers, the flyer stated that the rally had been called by 19 constituent CUNY schools in support of student strikes.

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

April 1991

English

Copyrighted

McCaffrey, Katherine

Poster / Flier / Leaflet