New York

Workers' Voice

Marxist-Leninist Party, USA

New York Branch P.O.Box 1060 NY, NY 10116-1060

April 22, 1991

NO! to cutbacks and tuition hikes at CUNY

Governor Mario Cuomo has launched a vicious assault
on CUNY students. Cuomo is proposing a $500 per-year
tuition increase, $400 per-award Tuition Assistance Program
cut, massive faculty and staff layoffs and $92 million CUNY-
wide budget cuts. The tuition increase would come on top of
a $200-a-year rise that took effect this spring.

These measures will be devastating for a large number of
CUNY students who come from working class and poor
families and simply cannot afford a 30% tuition hike to
$1,950 a year.

Cuomo and co. say there is no money to pay for educa-
tion. But this is just not true. The government always finds
the money to bail out the S&Ls and banks or to fund
aggressive wars against Iraq and Panama or to build more
prisons and maintain the police forces. Over the years Cuomo
has been rolling back state taxes on the capitalist corpora-
tions and the wealthy. Why doesn’t he tax the rich to pay for
the budget crisis?

The truth of the matter is that the government, whether
at the federal, state or city levels, headed by either Democrats
or Republicans, serve the interests of the rich. For them, the
budget crises are addressed by placing the burden on the
backs of the working people.

CUNY students fight back!

But CUNY students are not taking these attacks lying
down. As in previous years they have responded with a series
of building takeovers and protests marches and rallies.

City College students took over the large North Academ-
ic Center on Monday, April 8th. Over the course of that week
the protests and building takeovers spread to Lehman,
Hunter, Borough of Manhattan Community College, Bronx
Community College, Kingsborough Community College,
Hostos, New York City Technical College, Brooklyn College
and La Guardia Community College. As of Friday of last
week the students were occupying buildings at 12 of the 21-
campus system.

The CUNY administration, as well as Mayor Dinkins,

Governor Cuomo, and a whole host of establishment figures,
denounce the students for supposedly disrupting the educa-
tional process with their protests and building takeovers. But
who is really disrupting the educational process? Cuomo’s
budgets cuts and tuition increases will throw scores of
students out of college, and will close the doors to education
to thousands more. A $92 million budget cut will mean
further deterioration in the quality of education. What right
does the CUNY administration have of denouncing the
students, who are fighting these cuts, of disrupting classes?

No to a crackdown on CUNY students’ protests!
For a militant struggle against cutbacks and a
tuition increase!

CUNY Chancellor W. Ann Reynolds and Board of
Trustees Chairman Joseph Murphy have called on college
presidents to enforce disciplinary procedures against the
protesting students. Already the police have been called to
evict students occupying buildings at New York Technical
College, Bronx Community, York, Baruch, and La Guardia
Community College. Moreover, there is an injunction
pending against students occupying a building at the Borough
of Manhattan Community College.

Last year John Jay College students were viciously
attacked and beaten by the police when protesting against
budget cuts. This shows that the city and state governments,
with the aid of the CUNY administration, are determined to
ram these budget cuts and tuition increases down the throats
of City University students.

This is all the more reason for the students to stand firm
in their protests. It shows that Cuomo will not listen to
reason, but that only the militant action of the students
stands a chance of turning things around. We must recall that
only after City College students chained themselves inside the
administration building two years ago, and protests and
takeovers spread to more than a dozen campuses, did
Governor Cuomo veto a proposed $200 yearly tuition
increase that had been approved by the state legislature. «=

Build the movement against cutbacks!

A movement is breaking out across the country to fight
the cutbacks against the workers and poor. State and munici-
pal workers, hospital workers, teachers, students, welfare
recipients, homeless people and the unemployed are going
into action to defend jobs and basic social programs from the
budget ax.

Solidarity

An important feature of the current protests is the
solidarity being shown among different sections of the
workers and poor.

The capitalist politicians are trying to split up the
working people, making the government employees, the
homeless, the sick and aged compete over who will get some
inadequate crumbs. In Michigan, for example, Governor
Engler has actually threatened that if his layoffs and pay
freeze for state workers is blocked, then he will drain all the
funds from the AFDC welfare.

Such high-handed blackmail cannot be tolerated. It is
imperative that the better positioned unionized workers
defend the less organized workers and poor. All working
people must stick together in a united struggle against the
entire cutback offensive.

No more cheap talk from the politicians!

It is also essential to build up this movement indepen
dent from both the Republicans and Democrats.

The Republicans are gloating over the cutbacks. And the
current crises in the states and cities has been caused, in part,
by a decade of budget cutting by the Reagan and Bush
administrations. One study indicates, for example, that direct
federal aid to local governments was cut by 52% between
1978 and 1989, plummeting from $37 billion to $18 billion.

The Democrats have gone along with Reagan and Bush
every step of the way. Indeed, the current round of federal
budget-cutting is based on the Gramm-Rudman agreement
between the two parties that there will be no raise in funding
for one social program unless funding is cut from another.

Meanwhile, in a number of cities and states it is the
Democratic Party bigshots who are directly wielding the
budget ax. Look at New York, for example, where the
presidential hopeful Mario Cuomo is heading up a program
of cutbacks for the workers and poor to protect the tax
breaks of the capitalist corporations and the wealthy.

Many of the union officials and “respectable minority
leaders stand at the front of the demonstrations and preach


faith in the Democratic Party or talk about reforming it. We
cannot agree. The Democratic Party cannot be a tool for the
working people. It is a capitalist party, just like the Republi-
cans. Our movement will become strong the quicker we do
away with any illusions in the Democrats. We need a move-
ment of the working masses, independent of the political
bibwigs and capitalist fakers.

Make the rich pay!

We must put on our banners: “Make the capitalists pay
for the budget crisis!”

Time and again we are told that there is no money to pay
for jobs and social benefits for the masses. But it is just not
true. The government always finds the money to bail out the
S&Ls and banks or to fund aggressive wars against Iraq and
Panama or to build more prisons and maintain the police
forces.

The issue is spending in whose interests — relieving the
suffering of the masses or propping up financial sharks and
U.S. imperialist spheres of interest around the world?

No cutbacks! Tax the Rich!

On March 19 20,000 people descended on Albany to
protest against statewide cutbacks in New York. Under the
slogans “No cutbacks! Tax the rich” demonstrators vented
their wrath against Cuomo’s budget, which slashes education,
health and social services to the bone, and deeper still for
cities like NYC, where bone-deep cuts are already taking
place. NYC mur:icipal workers, workers from the voluntary
hospitals, CUNY and SUNY student, and concerned people
from the communities took part. Over a hundred university
Students took part in a Sit-in in the governor’s office. Eight
of them were arrested.

In 1984 Cuomo’s keynote speech at the Democratic
convention won him fame for posturing against Reagan’s cuts
in social services. But now this apostle of liberalism is
swinging a very Republican budget axe.

The fiscal crisis in New York takes place against the
background of years of Reagan and Bush cutting domestic
expenditures and shifting the burden of everything from
welfare to highway maintainance onto the states. But this
story doesn’t begin and end at the federal level.

The federal, state and local governments serve the
interests of the rich. Indeed, another source of the current
crisis is the tax breaks that have been systematically handed
out to the capitalist corporations and the wealthy. For years
the big monopolies have been holding the state budgets for
ransom — threatening to shut down and move elsewhere if
they are not given huge tax incentives. In fact in some states,
like Massachusetts and Michigan, even in the midst of severe
fiscal crisis, the governors are planning to hand over further
tax breaks to the business people.

Some liberal Democrats are pushing for increased taxes
to “limit” the budget cuts. But they are simply joining with
the Republicans to increase taxes on the working people. A
few liberals may sugarcoat it with a slight increase on taxes
on the rich, but this turns out repeatedly to be a fraud.

The present system is in crisis. Its promise of prosperity
for all is being torn to shreds in the depressing rounds of
more cuts, more fees, and more police. We must build the
fight against cutbacks into a class struggle against the whole
rotting system. ®

Ten years ago taxes on corporations accounted for over
9% of state revenues. Today they are a little over 5%. While
reviling Reaganism in Washington, Cuomo and Co. have been
rolling back state taxes on the corporations. They did the
same for personal incomes in the higher brackets.

Cuomo’s slash-and-burn budget cutting is neither an
aberation nor a temporary necessity. It is the logical conclu-
sion to a fiscal policy of catering to the corporations and the
rich.

It is fitting that — after spending all day hiding out from
the demonstrators, Cuomo reappeared in the evening on the
platform of a conference of “business leaders”.

And where was our mayor in all this? Why, up on the
dias rubbing shoulders with Cuomo — a few hours after
having announced that the cuts planned for the city budget
were being nosed up from $3 billion to nearly $4 billion.

It seems these gentlemen know what interests they stand
for. It is going to be up to working people in New York to
stand up for their own, by buiding the mass fight against
cutbacks and layoffs. 5

“Friend of labor’ Cuomo steps up attacks

on city workers

Nationally, Mario Cuomo continues to cultivate his oh-
so-liberal image as a friend of the working class and poor.
Meanwhile at home, Cuomo has stepped up his attacks on
the working class in the service of the rich and the banks. He
has joined Mayor Dinkins’ call for the city unions to give
back health, holiday, and vacation benefits.

Fresh from his demands that state workers accept a wage
freeze and unpaid furloughs, Cuomo is demanding more
sacrifices from city workers. “The Mayor is going to come to
us for a whole lot of help,” said Cuomo, who has already cut
$600 million in state aid to the city. “There is no conceivable
way we could provide that help unless the unions make some
contributions first.” (NY Times, 3/27/91) Cuomo calls this an
issue of “fairness.”

So what kind of “help” is Cuomo promising in return for
concessions? Does he call for making the rich pay too? Does
he call for increases in the corporate tax rate? Not on your
life! According to the Times, he might sell more bonds —
which we’d have to pay off later — or part of the money-
making Battery Park City Authority. In other words, make

concessions now and, in return, we can pay for them later
too.

Cuomo presents the Democrats’ program for the reces-
sion. In good times, cut the taxes on the rich. In bad times,
eliminate basic services and demand concessions from the
working class. This is no different from the Reagan-Bush
agenda. It is the program of monopoly capitalism which both
the Democrats and Republicans serve.

The working class has no interest in this program. Nor
should we support the various “share the burden” schemes
that the union leaders float. Already, basic services in the city
and our real (inflation adjusted) wages are lower than where
they stood at the start of the 1976 fiscal crisis.

While the workers and poor never recovered, the rich
made out like bandits over the past 15 years. They wallowed
like pigs in an orgy of speculation and greed. Now that their
financial house of cards is tottering, they want us to bail them
out again. No way! No concessions! Make the rich pay for
their crisis!