Oral History Interview with Brad Sigal

In this interview, Brad Sigal, who studied at both John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the City College of New York in the 1990s, discussed the intercampus dynamics within the Student Liberation Action Movement (SLAM!) and CUNY organizing spaces. He analyzed the impact of repression and surveillance on organizing at CUNY, and the varying levels of policing faced by organizers on different campuses. He talked about austerity, Black and Puerto Rican studies, and cuts to the Black Studies department at City College. He discussed student governance, as well as the role of Black, Dominican, and Puerto Rican student organizations in the movement at City College, and the importance of having a place to meet and organize on campus: the Morales-Shakur Center.

The Student Liberation Action Movement (SLAM!) was a CUNY student-led organization active in the 1990s and 2000s with branches at a number of campuses including Hunter College and City College. Emerging from the broad movement to resist state and city budget cuts to CUNY, and in particular out of the CUNY Coalition Against the Cuts, SLAM! was a dynamic organization engaged in radical work on and off campus. SLAM!'s political ideology was expansive, encompassing feminism, communism, anarchism, internationalism, queer liberation, Black power, and prison-industrial complex abolitionism.

Okechukwu, Amaka

Okechukwu, Amaka

July 24, 2019

English

Copyrighted

Okechukwu, Amaka

Okechukwu, Amaka

Sigal, Brad

Brad Sigal

Q: [00:00:00] --entails. You’re the first person that I’ve talked formally from CCNY/SLAM! So I’m looking forward to --
BRAD SIGAL: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) -- put that in your email. Cool.
Q: Yeah. I’m looking forward to hearing, you know, your feedback about that. Do you have any questions before we begin?
BRAD SIGAL: I mean, I think I have a pretty good idea. You sent the basic kind of questions you wanted to ask about and maybe when we’re done I can ask some more questions, just about, you know, who you’ve talked to so far and you know, stuff like that.
Q: Okay, cool, yeah. We can talk about that, certainly.
BRAD SIGAL: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)
Q: I’m sorry?
BRAD SIGAL: We can do it after. Just (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) --
Q: Yeah, that works. Okay, so I guess just basically, I have, you know, most interviews have been around an hour to two hours. It’s really up to you, (laughs) how long you want to, you know, do this for. Any questions I ask you can skip. Some people are really sensitive about like not wanting to go on tangents and ramble. I’m really not sensitive to that all. I think some of the best stuff comes out of (laughs) possible tangents and rambling, so don’t feel like you need to, you know, censor yourself when it comes to that.

The questions, most of the questions are really just to get you to, you know, to talk and to kind of remember that period. So you know, feel free to, you know, that’s what you do. Some people ramble and I’m completely fine with that. And, yeah. So okay, so we can begin. So the first few questions are just really basic identification questions. So can you just -- oh, and before we begin, sorry.
BRAD SIGAL: Can I ask one?
Q: Sure.
BRAD SIGAL: Can I ask one thing before we start? Sure. Just curious if you like, I assume you probably talked with Suzy from the SLAM! Oral Herstory Project.
Q: Yeah.
BRAD SIGAL: Because she interviewed me about this stuff last year and -- yeah, I was just curious if you guys were sharing resources or in touch with each other.
Q: Yeah. I’m in touch with Suzy. We actually last year went to, you know, there’s the archive at NYU of like all these boxes and stuff, the SLAM! stuff. So we went to the archive and went through some stuff and we’ve talked a number of times. I’m formally going to interview her in a few weeks, but I have not seen the interview that she has done of you. She’s posted a lot of the, you know, interviews and articles and things like that on the SLAM! Herstory Page, but your interview’s not posted there. So I have not seen her interview yet, or heard it.
BRAD SIGAL: If you want, I can forward to you, if that’s something you would want.
Q: Oh, yeah.
BRAD SIGAL: Because I have the file. I can (inaudible) email.
Q: That would be really helpful, actually, if you have it.
BRAD SIGAL: Cool. I will do that then and would you prefer written version or the sound file?
Q: The written is fine, if it’s fully transcribed, that’s fine.
BRAD SIGAL: Yeah. I can give you the most updated one. Sure, all right, cool. Because I’ll probably say a lot of the same things. I’ll just try to be more, you know, not ramble as much as I did in that, (laughs) while talking to you.
Q: Okay, all right, cool. Well, thank you for that. Okay, can you, do I have consent to audio record this interview?
BRAD SIGAL: Sure.
Q: Okay, thank you. Okay. So can you just state your full name?
BRAD SIGAL: Sure. My name is Brad Sigal, S-I-G-A-L.
Q: Okay. And your age.
BRAD SIGAL: Forty-four.
Q: And how do you racially identify?
BRAD SIGAL: I’m white.
Q: And how do you identify your gender?
BRAD SIGAL: Male.
Q: And how do you identify your sexual orientation?
BRAD SIGAL: I’m straight.
Q: And are you married or do you have children?
BRAD SIGAL: I have a daughter and I am, I was married, I’m not currently married.
Q: Okay. All right. So where were you born and raised?
BRAD SIGAL: I was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. And lived here until I was 10 and then I moved to a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia. And then from there I lived in several different places before I ended up in New York. And I moved to New York in ’95, ’96.
Q: Okay. In terms of the neighborhoods that you grew up in, so I guess, I mean, you can answer this whichever way that you want, since you’ve lived in multiple places, but how would you [00:05:00] describe the neighborhood or the communities that you grew up in, in regards to you know, race, class, culturally, like the political identification. Like how would you describe the communities in which you grew up?
BRAD SIGAL: Yeah. So the community that I grew up in Minneapolis as far as 10, was called St. Louis Park and that’s an inner ring suburb of Minneapolis and I grew up there in the ’70s at a time when, you know, it was right on the heels of the first sort of big wave of white flight of white people within Minneapolis for those inner ring suburbs. St. Louis Park was and still to some degree is known as a largely Jewish community and pretty liberal, politically. Minneapolis in general is very, tends to be very liberal and the Jewish community, on everything except for the issue of Israel and Palestine tends to be very liberal, too.

So I grew up in St. Louis Park at a time when -- it was a pretty liberal Jewish community at the time when -- like a number in my second grade class, the first black kid in my class was in second grade and that was when some black families first started moving out to the suburbs, out of Minneapolis and so, you know, obviously in second grade, I didn’t have a great analysis of what was going on or anything, but I can look back now, you know, and see that I was sort of a product of the first wave of white flight and then into the inner ring suburbs and then the first wave of black families moving into those neighborhoods, or trying to and trying to move out there.

And then from that I moved, when I was 10 I moved, like I said, a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia to live with my dad and that was, had a pretty big impact on me because again, at the time I didn’t really have a political understanding of it, but I look back now and can analyze it and the neighborhood that I lived there was a northern suburb of Atlanta and it was very, right on the borderline of like suburban sprawl with like crazy Right Wing new money Republicans and, and then like old rural white sort of racist people, you know, and kids who were the Hank Williams (inaudible) certs and you know, so it was like a really, I can look at it now and see like it was a really sort of toxic mix and it’s also like, you know, the bible belt -- so the area is very religi-, conservative religious and so I have specific memories of like moving there and the kids who lived next door, like one family the kids were like, they’d never seen a Jewish person before and one of them literally was like, oh, I got your (inaudible) horns, you know.

And so a 10-year-old kid who grew up in this sort of liberal Jewish neighborhood and I’m somewhere where these like really conservative people are like, you know, you’re weird and then the other next door neighbor, the kids (inaudible) he was like, oh yeah, “My mom says we have to be nice to you because you’re going to burn in hell forever,” because you know, I don’t believe in Jesus. You know? So having to sort of come to terms with that stuff at, you know, age 10, 11 and figure out what all of that means and then --

And also a couple of years ago a friend of mine told me about a book which is a great book about, it’s called White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism. And what it does is it goes like block-by-block through the struggle for desegregation in Atlanta, as the Civil Rights Movement sort of moved forward in the ’60s and then the white resistance to that, which started out literally as the Klan and the Nazis organizing the White Resistance to it and then as they sort lost block-by-block and tried to change their strategies and you know, became more and more sophisticated, it became what is now Newt Gingrich and Bob Barr and all of these, you know, major Conservative politicians who shape politics in this country -- you know and so --

Kind of plopped down into Cobb County in 1980 when there was a major battle over whether the public subway and train system, MARTA was going to be able to come into Cobb County or [00:10:00] not and you know, at the time, obviously again, I’m a 10-year-old kid. I wasn’t reading the news and knowing all this stuff. But you know, I (inaudible) still get to sort of break it down and I can, when I read it I was like, yeah, now I actually remember some of this stuff. Like the Cobb County politicians were making like, not even like coded racist arguments, just straight up like, you know, we don’t want black people coming out here. They’re going to come and steal all our stuff and you know, it was like straight up, you know.

So I got sort of plopped down in that after having been brought up in a much more liberal environment and all of that stuff’s floating around and I have to think that that sort of contrast played a role in me feeling like something wasn’t quite right, you know, and in that situation I was living and then society in general, you know, particularly around race and definitely class, too, you know what I mean? There was definitely a class difference between the neighborhood where I lived in St. Louis Park and then living a much more wealthy suburb in Atlanta and class -- just both the race and class contrast in Atlanta versus the suburbs of Atlanta, where it was very on the surface and obvious and you know.

As I became a teenager, that you know, feeling something wasn’t quite right -- led me into getting involved in -- being a (inaudible) punk rock music scene and entered that, you know, just sort of general rebellion against like something that’s not right, you know and then I became more focused politically through some of the punk bands at that time -- they were the most popular bands in the ’80s that I got into were very sort of Left Wing politically and -- so that really helped politicize me and -- it was also, you know, and then that pretty quickly turned me onto movements that were going on at the time I was in high school around like the anti-Apartheid Movement, you know and solidarity with the movement in South Africa and then also the, in solidarity with the Central American Liberation Movement and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the FMLN in El Salvador and --

You know, so those kinds of things, you know, seeing there the contrast as like I was able, started going to punk shows in Atlanta and just seeing that’s a vast difference in terms of poverty and how racialized the class differences were as well. It’s like -- and then being involved in the anti-Apartheid Movement, you can’t really help but you’re willing to look at it and you know, (inaudible) you can’t help but see how deeply racist and oppressive the society is, you know and I -- for whatever reason, was committed to getting deeper and deeper involved in that and trying to do something to change it.

So yeah. But I continued being involved in the punk scene and -- that was one of -- then when I graduated high school I wanted to go to college but I didn’t really know where but I knew I was interest in politics in a big sense and I was very into the punk scene and Washington, D.C. had one of the best punk scenes in the country at the time, especially for the bands I was into, so with that combination of reasons I went to college in D.C. and that got me further involved, both in the music scene and in political activism, through, you know, in the student movement in D.C. at the time, which again, I was involved in the anti-Apartheid Movement, which was still going on.

It was sort of the tail end of the upsurge on campuses around divestment. But that was still going on when I got there and then followed (inaudible) Central America and then, you know, just labor movements and just sort of got involved in everything and you know, went to an event and etc. As I deepened my understanding in politics around that stuff, so -- got more and more involved and active when I was in college and then -- I don’t know, do you want me to keep going? I guess (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) --
Q: I have one que- -- no, you’re good. This is wonderful. I have a question, though. I guess one question -- were in, like were you a musician when you were involved in the punk scene? Were you mostly audience member or were you part of the bands? That’s one question and the second was, were you raised in a political household at all? Were your parents political? Like I mean, was mostly your politicization happening outside of your house? Or, yeah, those are my two questions.
BRAD SIGAL: Actually I think I’ll do the second one first. The short answer is no. I mean, I’m not, definitely not like a red diaper baby or you know, someone whose parents were activists in any way at all. My parents were liberal and you know, politically liberal and [00:15:00] you know, politics were certainly a conversation. It wasn’t like a totally non-political household, you know, but no, not at all involved in any active way. So you know, I do have -- and one of my earliest memories was, you know, I was born in 1969 and so the Vietnam War went on until 1975, right, so I guess I was very young still when that ended, but I swear that one of my earliest memories is like sitting with my dad listening to the radio about, you know, and some had came on the radio and he made some comment along the lines of like, never trust anything that the military says. They’re always lying. You know, and just -- because they would do the death counts every night and -- from Vietnam on the news and every night they -- every day they killed so many people and victory was right around the corner and you know, it was always lies.

Victory never came. You know, so it’s little things like that, certainly influenced me, I think, but definitely is not, I wasn’t like brought to protests when I was a kid or anything like that.
Q: Mm-hmm.
BRAD SIGAL: I think that part of it was like, you know, hearing ideas and ideals and then seeing them not put in practice and then trying to make good on those. You know and I’ve talked to other people in my family who had a similar sort of experience of like -- you know, when we were talking, everything was supposed to be fair and everyone’s supposed to be treated equally, but then, you know, it just was obviously not that way. So I felt like I had to do something about it. Yeah. That question -- can you remind me what the first question was?
Q: I was just wondering if, you know, you were talking about how you were really involved in the punk scene. Were you like part of the -- were you part of any bands? Or were you just more as like an audience member participate, that type of thing?
BRAD SIGAL: I played bass guitar and I dabbled a little bit. I had, you know, was in a few bands but you know, played in the basement. Basically it never really got to the point of like you know, putting out records or anything. But that was one thing that I was attracted to in the punk scene was that it took -- (inaudible) where everyone is encouraged to be in a band, you know, make music, make, you know, some contribution and not just be an observer -- there’s no such thing as an observer. Everyone needs to do something. But the main thing I did was I published a zine, a punk fan zine, starting when I was in high school and then for the first couple years of college, until I mainly stopped being active in the punk scene and just that deeply immersed more in just political activism, outside of the music scene.
But yeah, doing that zine was definitely my main contribution, where I was just sort of putting it all together myself and write stuff, interview bands and then go to shows and sell it and (inaudible) by mail with people from other cities and stuff. That’s fine. I mean, contribution (inaudible).
Q: Okay. What was the process of you getting to New York? Right? So you went from Atlanta to, what, D.C. What was the process of you getting to New York?
BRAD SIGAL: I graduated from college in 1992 and had been involved in student activism mainly, but -- and wanted to continue being active and so I -- and my politics were becoming more defined. You know and I had started reading Marx and was like, you know, very attracted to Marxism and was -- and in the punk scene anarchism is really more of the common -- both politics and the default politics of the punk scene -- in most situations, and so I’d been sort of around anarchism but you know, and attracted to it on some level, but have always felt like, well, it’s like how are they going to make a whole society run, you know, if there’s not some sort of structure? (laughs) Just those kind of basic questions always bugged me and so I was very attracted to Marxism.

In college I majored in sociology, so that (inaudible) read some stuff by Marx in depth and some other sort of Marxist and other Leninist analyses and just -- and so you know, and then I graduated from college. I was (inaudible) other questions of like how to do continue to be active after college? (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)
Q: Where did you go to college?
BRAD SIGAL: In D.C., I went to George Washington University. And then, you know, just wanting to figure out those questions now and so I decided, you know, I want to be in an [00:20:00] organization of some sort, you know, that I could continue to be active in. So I was involved in several different projects. But looking -- also thinking about the time period on the sort of the -- we’re pulling back to the big picture of like what was going on in the world, you know. I think ‘92 is not really time that many people were coming to the conclusion that Marxism is the way (laughter) to be and you know, it was like right after the collapse of the Soviet Union, right after sort of the counter revolutions throughout Eastern Europe.
You know, there was Tiananmen in China, which turned a lot of people off to socialism in China, whereas with (inaudible) China had been sort of the beacon of, you know, revolutionary hope and now I have a different assessment of what was going on in China than I did at that time. But you know, at the time it was just like, on, that’s not really (inaudible), you know. But, despite all of that, my own experience and sort of trying to figure out, find something that can explain what’s going on in the world. But (inaudible) towards Marxism, but like most organizations, most Marxism organizations at that time were sort of in (inaudible) and not really in a position where they were like -- we’ll actively send new people in and stuff.

They were either falling apart or you know, sort of bad shape. So there wasn’t really a clear organization to join that was like, you know, in like the 1930s it would have been like, oh yeah, I’ll join the Communist Party. You know, there’s hundreds of thousands of members and everyone’s going to join, you know. And then in the ’60s there were multiple organizations, but there were, you know, a lot of organizations that were strong and -- whereas in 1992 it was like, you know, (laughs) it’s like showing up at the aftermath of a shipwreck, you know.
Q: (laughs) Yeah.
BRAD SIGAL: And wanting to find something that will sail. But -- so again, that’s sort of a long ways to say that it was hard to find a good organization. But I did end up having some people who went into Love & Rage which is an anarchist group that -- I don’t know if you talked with Chris Gunderson, the chairman of our party or (inaudible) Love & Rage, too. (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)
Q: I’m familiar with Love & Rage, yeah.
BRAD SIGAL: Okay. So I was attracted to Love & Rage and to international socialist organization -- I knew people in that as well and -- but for a while -- while accomplishing (inaudible) I ended up deciding to join Love & Rage at that time. I was in D.C. and stayed back there for a little while, but the Love & Rage put out their newspaper in New York and needed people to help on that and -- I had experience doing newspapers and liked to write and wanted to acknowledge. The idea of moving to New York was appealing, so I decided to move to New York to mainly help work on the Love & Rage newspaper, like at the end of 1995 and so that was sort of in the midst of the CUNY movement of 1995, that a few people in Love & Rage had been involved in and then right when I got to New York was at the time that they were, that those folks from Love & Rage were trying to encourage basically everyone within Love & Rage to get involved in the CUNY Movement.

So I got to New York and I was like, that sounds good to me. You know, (laughter) I’ve done student activism. I agree with not wanting to be stuck in the little anarchist area on the Lower East Side with, you know -- I guess it’s not there anymore. It’s out in Brooklyn now, but you know, (inaudible) word is that you know, I want to just not be part of that, you know, but I was doing work at CUNY seemed to me to make sense and so I decided to apply at John Jay at first, to do like a master’s program on criminal justice. Because at that time I was mainly also doing political prisoner support work and prisoner, prison solidarity stuff and so it was sort of like, well, mainly I don’t really want to go back to school, but I’ll do it to do organizing, you know, because I like to organize.

And this is like -- I can invest in criminal justice and write papers about how prisons need to be abolished. Sounds good to me, you know. So that was when I started getting involved in SLAM. When I moved to New York I started going (inaudible) Citywide -- Citywide SLAM meetings and then also -- I guess at that time -- it was right when it was becoming SLAM! it was still like --
Q: Like the CUNY Coalition?
BRAD SIGAL: The CUNY Coalition, yeah, exactly and was in the process of, you know, deciding where it would be and then the -- there was a lot of, you know, [00:25:00] in the process of trying to figure out where to go, it was like, well, I could go to Hunter. There’s a lot of action there. You know, that’s sort of the main center of action was or I could go to, you know, somewhere else and -- the people who I worked closely with at Hunter encouraged me to go somewhere else. They’re like, well, we have enough people here.

Like it would be good to go to another campus where there’s not as many people hooked into SLAM! and you know, build SLAM! there. I was like, all right. So I went to John Jay in ’96 and -- but was also at that time, like before I started at John Jay I was going up to City College, just going to meetings there to support -- because there was an attack at City College at that time on Black Studies and on activists there who were involved in the upsurge in ’95. There had been a mass arrest of hunger strikers and in the NAC Building and there had been a -- a couple of other incidents where David Suker was sort of singled out and there was a discipline protest going on where he was in danger of being disciplined, suspended, expelled, whatever.

I don’t remember the exact details but I went up to meetings around that. You know, and then there was a big protest to defend Black Studies, defend David Suker, etc. So I was doing that but then decided, you know, enrolled in school at John Jay and -- with the intent of building SLAM! there. So that’s what I tried to do.
Q: Okay. So you --
BRAD SIGAL: For the (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) --
Q: So you were at John Jay when you -- so when did, at what point did you go to City College? Or did you go to City College?
BRAD SIGAL: In a sense I did, yeah. So I was at John Jay for one school year, ’96 and then -- very quickly discovered that it was not going to be very easy to build SLAM! at John Jay. And you know, in some ways John Jay is similar to most other CUNY schools, but the big difference is that it’s a cop school. (laughs) You know, (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) program where -- and so that -- and particularly being in a master’s program there, like I was in class literally with cops who were, you know, getting, trying to get their degree so (inaudible). And so that’s certainly not the most productive environment to be organized a radical Left Wing student movement that’s fighting against police brutality and stuff. (laughter) But you know, I wasn’t mainly concerned with organizing grad students. I was mainly trying to work with undergrads, undergraduate students and -- But even there, you know, it very quickly became clear that, at least at that particular historical moment, like people who --

A lot of astute people there wanted to have careers in the criminal justice system when they graduate. That’s why they go to John Jay, you know and so like there’s just this dynamic where people who want to work in the criminal justice system (inaudible) -- and the particular ones who then get involved in like student government and student activities, seem to really, really be into like rules and enforcing them and like -- very arbitrarily and bizarrely, in this like way that literally I spent an entire school year trying to get SLAM! registered as an official student group so that I could have the ability to legally put up flyers and reserve rooms and having meetings.

Like just the most basic level of like, you know, function of student activism -- it took an entire school year to get accomplished -- going up against the sort of bureaucratic, you know, minded student government folks and then also administrators who -- and I think this is kind of interesting, when looking at it historically is that, you know, I got pulled into a meeting with, and I don’t remember the names at this point, but the administrator who was in charge of Student Activities, you know, apparently didn’t know who I was but knew I was trying to start SLAM! and he was like, you know, you should really know that this is a group that’s -- they may seem like they’re doing good things, but these SLAM! people, they’re a bunch of like, you know, Communists and anarchists and they’re really not good people.

(laughter) You really kind of like don’t want to be associated with that. (laughter) You know, literally -- I was one of those crazy, you know, Communist anarchists, you know, people and I knew exactly what I was doing, but -- but if you think about that, like it shows a number of things. One, that’s like on an extremely wide level, administrators were setting up the base and coordinating them and that sort of strategy to try to slash this and prevent it from spreading. And that they were willing to do it through sort of outright intimidation of people who would otherwise have genuinely been interested in doing it. And then you know, kind of prevent people from starting SLAM! groups and also working with people in student governments and other student clubs, to try to turn them against people doing SLAM! by spreading rumors and [00:30:00] you know, and that kind of stuff.

There was repression against -- I think it was the Political Science Club or I forget the name of the group, but it was the group that was closest to doing some kind of activism at John Jay that year and the one who’s leading it was like, you know, just stepping barely outside the bounds of the most, you know, benign activity, was suddenly threatened with all kinds of disciplinary stuff and was kicked out of the club. You know, it was like, pretty heavy stuff, you know.

And so as a result of all that, you know, my goal was not to spend an entire school year, you know, enmeshed in bureaucratic hassles. You know, my goal is to organize with students, you know, and try to fight was happening at CUNY. So I ended up deciding, as well as the fact that, you know, at that point Hunter was obviously a main center of activity, but City College was the other main center of activity and it made more sense to be there and I wanted to be there and I could take cooler classes. I could, you know, be part of the mix of what was going on there and --

So after a year I transferred to City College and got into the History Program there. And filled in, you know, with the (inaudible) and got heavily involved with everything there. And so I guess that’s where it starts a new, next chapter of that story -- of starting SLAM! at City College.
Q: So before we get to that, can you basically describe what you remember the political climate being in New York at the time, when you first get to New York and you’re, you know, you’re involved somewhat in the CUNY Coalition and you know, you’re deciding to go to City College. Anyway, during this period, how do you, like what do you remember about the political climate in New York?
BRAD SIGAL: It was Guiliani time. Right? So Guiliani had been elected mayor like a year, a year and a half or something before I got there. And what that meant, one thing that that meant was that the police had a free rein to just go bananas and sort of terrorize black, Puerto Rican, Latino, other communities of color in New York and did so. So that was, you know, there was -- some of the first protests I went to in New York were around police brutality. There -- was Anthony Baez, there was Abner Louima. I could just sort of name other names, but you know, those were kind of the things that were happening, you know, like within the year or two when I moved to New York. So that was a huge thing.

Another thing that Guiliani meant was, you know, and Pataki was governor and the combination of the two of them -- for CUNY meant serious attacks on both an economic level as well as a racist level and so those and obviously those two are interrelated. And so you know, that came very, very hard, in terms of the attacks on CUNY, started in ’95 and then deepening in ’96, ’97, ’98 and on through 2000, when I was there. Yeah. So that was --

And I would say that’s the political climate in New York, definitely, sort of the economic austerity stuff and -- their specific plan for CUNY being the sort of combination of those things, where it was to finish off the last vestiges of open admissions and using all the sort of code words and buzz words about, you know, excellence and standards and blah-blah-blah, you know.

The same things that they started saying early in the ’70s and weren’t able to get there, but they kept pushing and pushing and pushing and by the mid ’90s they were able to knock down the, you know, not entirely, but basically knock down the structural victories from open admissions in 1969 that had opened it up to the black and Latino and Asian and other students Muslim and Arab students and working class students and poor students of all nationalities. So yeah, that was the battle when we were there, right, was to -- you know, there was -- always a budget fight, right. Like how much money is going, is CUNY going to get and is that adequate?

And so there was sort of a purely economic aspect of what was going on and that was what like NYPIRG, for example, focused, tried to focus specifically and that, you know, and not talk about race or nationality or like how that played into [00:35:00] these attacks. You know, they were just trying to campaign around getting a bigger budget for CUNY, you know, on the city level, at the state level and, you know, that’s not a bad thing -- it’s a good thing but, you know, completely misses the -- what was actually going on. You know, it’s not like they just wanted to cut the budget for no good reason.

You know, they wanted to cut the budget as part of an ongoing program to roll back open admissions and other victories, the early victories of the Black Liberation Movement and the Puerto Rican Movement in the 1960s, you know. That’s what was happening. And so we were trying to fight back against that.
Q: Okay. So what was the process of setting up SLAM! at City College? I mean who, you know, who were some other folks that were, that you remember being part of that process and you know, what were some of the kind of initial responses? I know that City College was also very bustling at that time and just in terms of political activity, so you know, what do you remember about just the process of establishing City College or the City College Chapter of SLAM!?
BRAD SIGAL: So I guess I’ll step back in time a little bit, just to say that when the CUNY Coalition CUNY-wide was -- when it became SLAM! -- it was actually David Suker from City College who proposed the name SLAM! and there was crew from City College that would come to all those, that was still coming to the meetings at that point and they were part of that process. So there were people from City College who were not, at least nominally, part of SLAM! before I got there. But (inaudible) what that meant and you know, on the ground at City College was very different than what it meant at Hunter, for example, whereas at Hunter SLAM! became sort of the organizational expression of the movement there and took over student government and organized all the protests.

You know, it basically became -- yeah. SLAM! was where it was happening. At City College that’s not what happened. You know, I guess I used the metaphor a little while ago about like showing up after a shipwreck and so I sort of feel like when I got to City College that was what I felt like there, too, you know, because I started there in ’97 and -- there were several student organizations that existed. You know, City College in some ways was the exact opposite of John Jay on one level. It’s like at --

Whereas at John Jay it was impossible to even function as a student organization, at City College like there, you know, particularly David Suker and [Edonis Oregas?] and (inaudible) and several other people who had been there for a while and sort of -- had mastered the system there. Had -- well, there were several student organizations that were, that listed, you know, the main forum that things had taken, starting in ’95 was the CCNY Coalition, which was sort of the chapter version of the CUNY Coalition. So that was, that was the main organizational forum there and whereas at Hunter, that sort of morphed into SLAM! At City College it just stayed the CCNY Coalition. But there was also, you know again --

At City College there -- since 1969, (inaudible) the victories of 1969 of the student strike at City, that started at City College, like -- and then there was the takeover, the (inaudible) takeovers in ’89 and ’91. There was like -- there were (inaudible) who had led those, that were still around, both like you know, the 1969 wave of folks that were, you know, some of the former professors in Black Studies, most particularly Leonard Jeffries, James Small -- has retired but was still sort of around.

But the black studies department had been completely under attack for, at that point, you know, I got there in ’97 and going back at least to 1991 and I’m sure well before that, like have come under, you know, Leonard Jeffries was under attack, you know, sharply from like (inaudible) ’91 on, as an effort, you know, to roll back the political power of the Black Studies Department and (inaudible) a radical black voices at City College and that was sort of (inaudible) -- whereas my understanding is going back, you know, after the (inaudible) in 1969, activism at City College was like, you know, there was -- the Black Student Union -- I assume that maybe it was called something else at that point.

But there was [00:40:00] an organ-, you know, a black student organization, there was a Puerto Rican student organization, there was later a Dominican student organization and like there was The Paper (inaudible) -- there was a black student newspaper on campus and -- the Ethnic Studies Departments were sort of the -- all of those institutions were the center of the student movement there, you know, that defended the gains from the one in 1969 with Open Admissions and fought back against the attacks on that.

So like when the building takeovers happened in 1989 against almost -- Cuomo’s tuition increase and cuts, it was literally like the black student organization, the Puerto Rican student organization, the (inaudible) -- you know, like that’s who led the takeovers back to [my grade?]. But by the time I got there -- The Paper, which was the black student newspaper, was coming out at the most once a semester. It was almost nonexistent. There was no, almost no visible organized black student organization. I mean, there was an organization, but it didn’t, you know, do any protests.

You know, it didn’t do any visible activities beyond my memory or, you know, some cultural activities. But bare-, you know, barely. It was -- there had just been this relentless attack, you know, for a launch -- year after year after year and -- in ’95 was when the president of City College, Yolanda Moses succeeded in pushing through the -- the most serious cuts to Black Studies and -- you know, so again, I get there and like that’s already happened. Right? And then the -- in terms of like Latino students -- it’s largely Dominican at that point. There are still Puerto Rican students, but there’s not a strong Puerto Rican student-run organization.

You know, Edonis and the (inaudible) Dominican Youth Unions and then later Dominicans 2000, like that was the strongest presence on campus of, you know, like the (inaudible) Nationality Student Group and where it’s like in ’89 and ’91, you know, Edonis was a leader in preparing student strikes and stuff and then in ’95 Edonis and David and others led the hunger strike. By ’97, it’s like David Suker was again facing more disciplinary stuff. You know, Edonis was close to graduating and was leaving the free university program that they needed administrative cooperation from to continue doing it. You know, to bring in hundreds of mostly Dominican high school students every weekend to campus to, you know, work with them to do activities and organize them and you know, help people get into college and stuff.

You know, it was just an alley there for them to seek counsel, right? And there was -- I don’t mean to personalize it to him, but just sort of symbolically, right, you know, [Mark Torres?] who had helped, who was a Puerto Rican student leader in the ’89-’91 period, wasn’t, he was around, but he was working at Harlem Hospital and he had come around once in a while, but you know, there was no strong Puerto Rican student movement. (inaudible) I feel like I’ve been going on for a long time, but just sort of --
Q: No, no, you’re good.
BRAD SIGAL: -- a mixture of painting the picture of the fact that -- when I lived there in ’97, all of those sort of colorful institutions that had been the backbone of the student movement since the ’70s were dramatically weakened. The City College Coalition, which was formed in ’95 out at Rutgers -- which was based on City College, you know, and they’re sort of the most common reaction was the hunger strike and (inaudible) that where President Moses ordered in the police to do a mass arrest.

And that sort of, you know -- People were wiped out. You know, there’s like -- how many times can you keep coming back when you know you’re going to keep getting smacked down, you know, and so -- I get there all ready to (laughs) go, where everyone else has been like, you know, pummeled for -- and you think from a year to, to two decades, you know, and so -- it was -- and then you had sort of the layers of student organizations, but (inaudible) different upsurge of the City College Coalition in the ’95 upsurge, there were still Students for Education Rights, which emerged out of the ’89 and ’91 episodes and was -- housed in the Morales/Shakur Center, which I’m sure you’ve followed the attacks on that over the last year. And --

That was Students for Education Rights, which hates us at City College now, but that was sort of the Dominican students were largely leading that and -- at the time I got there and [00:45:00] you know, there were several cultural organizations that, you know, people who were activists helped to organize and lead and helped other people form. I think like -- there was somebody like David Suker was like the master of this stuff. Like he did so much behind the scenes work, like helping all the groups get their paperwork in and navigate the bureaucracy to get the money and so like, (inaudible) they had a hip hop Club, there’s also Mambo Club, you know, on and on and on.

You know, it just -- so there was sort of like a whole slew of stuff going on, but in terms of like extensive political activism, there was a shrinking pool of people holding together several organizations that, you know, became more and more sort of merged over time. Because there were just less and less people to hold them together. But -- so all of that is to say --

So I got there and all those other groups already existed and I was like -- wanted to build SLAM! there. And then looking at, again, comparing to Hunter, Hunter ran a full slate to the student government and took over the whole thing.

At City College there were already a few people that were in both the Graduate Student Council and the Day Student Government, who were, it came out of this sort of upsurge, including David Suker and Edonis and sort of over time the three of us were all grad students at that point -- became sort of the, we all worked closely together on -- we all got on the Graduate Student Council and they’re all on all the committees to appropriate funding, to trying to fight for funding for activism. They’re all sort of helping all these other groups to just (inaudible) -- then we pulled the other slates for the student government and you know, worked with undergrads to do that and -- but we never had a situation at City College where the, where we, while I was there where, as a whole, we put together a whole SLAM! slate to take over student government. So I got SLAM! registered as one of a bunch of different (inaudible) -- back to the student organizations. So we did activities there.

Like showing videos about [Asatta?] or show, you know, (inaudible) speakers, a bunch of different things and -- did some things to build sort of an independent SLAM! identity, but it was, in practice, much more sort of -- mashed into all those other organizational forums that were already there. But I mean --
Q: Oh, wow. So then -- how would you -- so then how would you describe it structurally? I mean, if it was -- it seemed like you guys were doing a lot of like, like you were saying, political education stuff. Right? So you know, speakers, events, those sort of things. And you, you know, as you mentioned, yourself, David Suker, [Edonis Rodriguez?], in terms of like leadership. Structurally, how would you describe SLAM! at City College, you know, while you were there? Like what was the structure? Were there like weekly meetings? How many people typically showed up? Like what were the kind of main -- how was it organized?
BRAD SIGAL: So -- I’m pretty sure they had weekly meetings. I’m trying to remember. I think there was like coalition meetings that would pop around, you know, whatever the hot issue at the time was, which there were lots of and those were, there were always weekly meetings of something going on. And then -- so I don’t remember if every semester we would have like weekly SLAM! meetings with it. When I was there like I, I saw my role as trying to, you know, by that time most of the (inaudible) people who had gone to the Citywide (inaudible) who had meetings had sort of retreated and stopped doing that. So I was really trying to play a role in keeping that, that relationship there.

Where like -- if we called for a student-wide protest at the Board of Trustees meeting, but you know, I would try to get other people from City College to be part of that and to mobilize for that and stuff. And just be hooked into that because, again, as people were sort of like reeling from repression and in some cases moving onto (inaudible) trying to get jobs, etc. -- like you know, people just -- it was harder and harder to get people from City College to also participate continue light stuff as well as stuff, just at City College.

But you know, there were also dynamics that came into play that, you know, at Hunter, you know, SLAM! was overwhelmingly women and you know, not all, obviously, but a large number of the people and a large, most of the leaders were women and they had a conscious, ideological sort of commitment to that, being a principle, you know.

At City College -- there was a very male-dominated back to the scene at the time I was there. Overwhelmingly [00:50:00] and you know, I saw that problem. I, you know, wanted to try to do something about it, but again, you know, I’m a guy, right, so -- and I’m sort of walking into a new situation and trying to figure out all the dynamics and you know, I think we tried to start addressing that and changing that (inaudible) culture at City College, but certainly did not accomplish that while I was there.

And I left City College and left New York in 2000 and after that, that’s when (inaudible) Hank Williams, who basically after that, took up SLAM! at City College and built it into a much more vibrant, large, invulnerable more activist organization at City College, when you know, all those other sort of organizational forms ran their course, right, like they were able to build up SLAM! as a whole new, like just as it was dying out at Hunter, it was sort of being reborn at City College.

And Hank is definitely the first person I would talk to about that period, because he was largely the, not the only person obviously, but a big person behind that and they also, at that point, I think, had a lot more success at shifting the gender dynamics at City College as well and bring forward a lot of women into their staff and opening up that space for that to happen.

And so again, that was after my time. So one other piece, just to -- because it would be definitely a big hole in that top (inaudible). One of the biggest things that we did at City College was we started a newspaper there called The Messenger, which was largely, you know, inspired by the fact that, one, like I had experienced a new thick of stuff. Like I had moved to New York to work on Love & Rage, so I already had access to equipment and you know, knew how to do it and knew where we could get stuff printed and etc., etc.

And then at Hunter, there was The Spheric, which was an alternative newspaper that [Chad and Kazembe] and others have worked on. And then starting in like ’95 and then basically all of them moved over to this, to their ongoing, essentially took and again, not to say that it was totally run by SLAM!, but essentially Envoy was largely run by SLAM! for the next several years. And so inspired by that, you know, we started our newspaper at City College called The Messenger and that really was an essential piece of what we did at the time I was there.

And I was editor of it. It started out as a Graduate Student Council, because there was, you know, we found something in the Constitution that said there was supposed to be a graduate student newsletter and that it didn’t exist and we’re like, oh, well, let’s do it. You know, there’s a budget for it, or there’s supposed to be, so -- we ended up naming me editor and a couple other people to work on it and started publishing it and then very quickly came into conflict with the person who at the time was the chair of the Graduate Student Council.

And that was another thing at City College, because we were never able to completely run a full slate and take over the student government there. The student government stuff was just mired in the most sort of petty and asinine conflicts constantly that were just, you know, looking back on it, totally insane. But it was like meeting after meeting, that’s like, you know, the chair, as a council, trying to impeach us and us kind of organized to support activism. That’s why we were there. You know, it’s like we didn’t care about the student government more than, other than using the platform and the resources to build the movement to defend Open Admissions and (inaudible) you know, some other people sort of get in those positions, like student government positions and think they’re the king of the world, you know and want to lord it over everyone and, you know, why I hold onto that power and so there were just these constant battles.

So she started insisting that she had to be able to see -- once she saw that we were putting out a sort of sharp newspaper that was really good and powerful, in the sense of like being able to spread a message to thousands of people, she demanded editorial control (laughs) and that was not what we wanted and so -- there’s a longer story and there’s a series of events that lead to the shutdown of the student government, etc., etc. and repression and our counter lawsuit and all of that, a lot of that revolved around The Messenger newspaper and we ended [00:55:00] up, out of all of that, I don’t know of what you’ve heard of any of those stories.
Q: Yeah, I mean, can you speak more to that? I’ve heard that, you know, when talking with other people, that you know, and I’ve heard about the shutdown, but I’ve heard that, you know, City College experienced way more repression -- (laughs) in terms of the administration than Hunter ever did. So can you, I guess, speak to that generally, but you know, you can speak to the series of events, I guess, that led up to that shutdown.
BRAD SIGAL: Yeah. So -- certainly in this (inaudible) I agree with really wholeheartedly. I think that -- Hunter, not to say that there wasn’t repression at Hunter, because there definitely was, at different points and absolutely surveillance and that sort of repression was always there at Hunter. But at City College it was just qualitatively different and I think the reason for that is because City College is in the center of Harlem and -- surrounded by black community and you know, at that point, then increasingly the Latin American community.

But we were trying to open City College up to and the administration was trying to close City College off from (laughs) -- and so it was sort of like, you know, in the middle of this massive contradiction that, that they’re trying to resolve in one way and you want to resolve in a different way and -- because of that -- the struggles when I was at City College -- like the first semester I was there, there was a -- President Moses opposed to arm the campus security guards. And so there was a series of -- there were protests and then there was like a -- a campus meeting that, you know, again, like just as a testimony to the historic center of the movements there --

You could like call a coalitional meeting and demand that the president of the college show up and defend herself at these meeting and she cared, you know. And everyone would get up and like yell at her and say how awful this proposal is and after that she withdrew the proposals at that point, at the (inaudible) -- but you know, there was literally, proposals like that and like literally building, you know, barriers and fences to physically make that distinction between the community and the college.

That kind of stuff was going on. Then another big trouble in my first or second semester there was around the student cards, the I.D. cards where they were trying campus-by-campus to implement genuine I.D. cards that would be like you’d have the magnetic stripe, you know, it had data in it that was being sponsored by Citi-, I think it was Citibank. But exactly at that time was like in a controversy about redlining and you know, racism -- and there (inaudible) in sense of housing and so we were able to raise a struggle and actually stop the CUNY card at that point at City College because you know, in large to the, you know, systems are obvious.

Why should City College be having all of these students, a large majority of whom are oppressed nationality and brought color, over to this thing that’s, you know, racistly and redlining and destroy people’s neighborhoods -- it’s like -- so we were able to stop it. And I would guess it’s there now probably -- I don’t even know if it -- but that was another big struggle going on.

And so yeah, in that context there was repression, but there was also a natural movement still that could fight and actually win some concrete victories like that, that the -- you know, I guess I made reference to the repression going back to, you know, starting in the ’70s and then particularly starting in the early ’90s, against Black Studies Department and that bastion of sort of continual activism and leadership in the movement.

That repression was very sharp and was largely successful at not entirely dismantling, but certainly dramatically weakening Black Studies and weakening it as a sort of center, a structural center, instructional/cultural center for that oppositional activity to what was going on, you know, to the agenda of the powers that be.

You know, and not to overstate that, you know, because for example, you know, we would ask Leonard Jeffries to speak, you know, anytime I would ask him to speak in some part of Open Admissions or at events we were doing, you know, he was always there, he would always do it, he was always on point, you know. You know, and Professor Small, as I mentioned before, would always come. You know, so it’s not like those people weren’t there, but institutionally, the power had been dramatically weakened. [01:00:00] And the repression had taken its toll. You know, on the ability of -- of students and faculty to really organize and lead the fight back. And so you know --

The repression then -- out of the building takeovers in ’89 and ’91, there was the creation of the Safe Team, the CUNY Security Force. It was a direct response to those student movements that did those takeovers on the campus around CUNY and then the individual college presidents refused to repress them because, you know, they were able to make that call and they could say, no, we don’t want our campus security to repress them. These are our students and they’re right. There shouldn’t be (inaudible) (laughs). But that wasn’t going to work anymore, but you know, I’m trying to look at the agenda, while we’re turning up in admissions and -- we’re (inaudible) CUNY so -- that’s one of the Citywide (inaudible) to be able to intervene when there were student protests or things like that and when --

Like in ’95 when the was the hunger strike at City College -- it wasn’t even like a building takeover, you know, like what happened in ’89 and ’91, there was just people standing on the back building, going on a hunger strike to dramatize the cuts that were happening and -- you know, at that point it was not left up, my understanding is that somethings were left up to the individual college presidents, but it was not entirely up to them anymore. So that CUNY Security Force could act independently of the (inaudible) City College president. And so, you know --

Certainly the president -- President Moses made the, made a lot of calls herself that were bad, in my opinion, that were, you know, sort of repressed activism at City College. But there was also sort of the Citywide motion that was pressing down against that stuff and putting pressure on individual college presidents to repress. And so the sort of mass arrest in ’95 and then the ongoing disciplinary stuff against David Suker -- were things that were going on. And then with the, you know, as I mentioned before, some of us were on the student government, but you didn’t control the whole thing and we were embroiled in these ongoing, petty controversies and battles there, where people are constantly attacking us.

So we decided to, you know, as had been done in previous years, ran a slate to try to -- take a role in student government and it wasn’t, again, it wasn’t the same as Hunter, where like SLAM! was the slate. It was a broader array of forces and more of us are coalitioning a united fronting kind of thing and -- and then grabbing whoever we could to fill in, you know, whatever sheets she couldn’t fill with people who were leaders in the movement and, you know, we ran our slate. Now I’m trying to get the timeline right. I may be getting the timeline wrong, but we actually ran the slate and we won. We swept the (inaudible) of student council and we won -- our sister slate on the undergraduates had won most of the seats.

But that was more mixed. And then -- that was when the chair of the Graduate Student Council, along with the -- there’s the USS -- University Student Senate which is the CUNY wide student government body. And the person who was the -- I guess president, I don’t know what his title was, but the leader of that was this guy who was from the City College Graduate Student (inaudible) Student Council and so we, we defeated him and we defeated the chair of the council and we swept the whole thing.

And so then those folks immediately filed complaints and you know, official complaints, but the body of the (inaudible) complaints about the election and the administration was more than happy to share those complaints and to act on them and so they -- their complaints was that The Messenger newspaper had, was -- biased the election because, according to them, it was biased in favor of our slate and therefore the election should be nullified and -- it’s -- the later lawsuit about it, which we ended up winning 10 years later -- (laughs) literally 10 years later -- but -- you know, because it was just insane.

One, students’ papers endorse candidates in student elections all the time and it’s a constitutional right, it’s been proven over and over again in the courts. But two, we didn’t even [01:05:00] endorse candidates. You know, be conscious of the fact that I worked on the newspaper and I was a candidate and asked a couple other people, (inaudible) candidates -- we did not endorse candidates. We printed statements from every candidate, you know, people running against us. But we were the only slate, we were the only full slate running, so we ran a picture of our slate together and we ran pictures of the other individual candidates. But they argued --

And it just doesn’t make any sense, because it’s wrong that we got more space and therefore it was biased towards us and -- there were more candidates on our slate than other -- you know, it’s just like ridiculous. And then we asked the person that wasn’t running to write the editorial about the elections and the editorial actually attacked the people on our slate, you know, and it was very unbiased, but President Moses went ahead and nullified the election and shut down the student government and therefore it took away, that was when we lost all the equipment that we’d been able to buy to the student government to publish the newspaper.

Got locked out of our offices and had to then run the student newspaper sort of off of my laptop, you know, out of the Morales-Shakur Center -- the rest of the time I was there. So that was going on and then the -- initials were in, mixing up the timing probably, the timeline is that then there was the -- the surveillance at, around the Morales-Shakur Center where, you know, one of the campus janitor that knew David Suker came up to him one day and said, you know, hey, look at that, see that smoke detector (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) under the Morales-Shakur Center? There’s a hidden surveillance camera in there.
And David’s like, oh, come on. You know, that’s crazy. But -- it was like, “No, I swear. I clean all the offices and they moved the professor out of the office next door and they moved all the surveillance camera equipment in there and that’s the -- I saw it myself, you know. And this is where the camera is,” so we were able to get access to that room and went in and took the (inaudible) because we were sure that they would take it away if we -- if they found out we knew it was there. Then we took down the camera. They didn’t know who it belonged to, you know. It could have been Campus Administration, it could have been, you know, the NYPD, it could have been the FBI and we didn’t know, (laughs) you know. So who do we give it back to? You know, we didn’t know. So --

You know, luckily at that point my view and the view of other leaders in the movement was that when there’s repression you have to publicly denounce it and publicly push back. Because they were trying to use it to do the opposite, right, they’re trying to silence (inaudible) -- get you to stop doing what you’re doing and so we called a press conference down at City Hall and we (inaudible) about the incident and (inaudible) reporters up to campus to see it and security cameras and then the press conference -- (inaudible) a couple days later and denounced it and -- and then Campus Security said, oh yeah, it’s ours, you know and -- so there was a lawsuit around that as well. But later the two lawsuits on the student newspaper thing and the surveillance camera thing got merged and then later separated again. That’s no longer (inaudible) legalistic story, but --

But yeah, that’s just another example of the kind of very sharp repression at City College was that there -- you know, the Campus Security was putting us under video surveillance (laughs) and you know, they claimed that it was because there had been computer thefts -- not even from that office, in other offices on the floor of the NAC Building, which may or may not have been true. But they certainly didn’t think, you know, they didn’t claim it was people in the Morales-Shakur Center that were doing it and there were no computers stolen out of there.

And then finally when we did the lawsuit and then as Director of Campus Security at the time had to do an affidavit about why he did it. One of the reasons he said was because they wanted to keep an eye on us to make sure we weren’t planning any protest to disrupt commencement or disrupt anything. So again, like even, even in the midst of like the student movement being on the decline and sort of (inaudible) small, structural departments and organizations that had pledged to, you know, since the ’70s being weakened, they still, you know, just kept coming harder and harder to try to break down anyone who was going to resist the attacks on Open Admission.
Q: Uh-huh. You mentioned earlier that when you got to City College there was kind of these, you know, some organizations that were present, but some were kind of fledgling. No one was really doing direct action kind of stuff. It was some cultural stuff, but not a lot of direction action. While, you know, you guys were at [01:10:00] City College, I mean, did you have, what was the relationships like between SLAM! and other student organizations? And I guess also just community organizations -- would you say that, you know, CCNY SLAM! had strong relationships with community organizations? And do they have strong relationships with student organizations as well?
BRAD SIGAL: Uh-huh. So I think we had very good relations with student organizations and we started to develop good relations with community organizations as well while I was there and I imagine that grew after I left as well. And so the student organizations as I think that I started to talk about before, like -- yeah, I mentioned David Suker specifically, who helped a lot of other organizations take, you know, take (inaudible) register every semester and fill out the forms for how to get funding and all that kind of stuff and you know, I started a place on [bat-roll?] too, and sort of action, you know, just taking to myself, individually, as one of the people who was most identified with SLAM! at that point at City College.

It’s like -- I had a lot of very good relations with people from other organizations for that kind of stuff and then I also -- in addition to doing, to working, to starting The Messenger, I was also helping on the CCNY paper, the student newspaper at the time, which was also very weak and needed help desperately and so I was actually doing the layout for the -- I’m sorry, the campus newspaper as well, (laughs) for a lot of that time and writing some articles and so, you know, I had good relations with the folks who worked in the campus as well as -- you know, people from other student organizations. It wasn’t, you know, formally positive (inaudible) because as I was talking about before, they were contacts with -- I know the people in student government who, in my opinion, were, you know, not interested in using student government to -- like for CUNY students and for community to defend Open Admissions and (inaudible) at CUNY but seemed to want to just be in the student government to have something on their résumé or to, you know, have control over a budget of $29,000 or whatever it was, you know, and then be able to -- you no longer decide who gets that money. You know, those --

That kind of stuff and so it was like -- there were definitely people that didn’t like us. Certainly the chairs of the Graduate Student Council became more and more hostile over time. But it would sort of go back and forth. Right? There was an ever-changing sort of -- alliances and then breaking those alliances and then rebuilding those alliances and then breaking it. You know and it was just hard to tell what principles were guiding, you know, some of the folks who were, you know, causing problems for the groups trying to do activism, you know.

And again, you know, thinking about the repression, you know, at the time there was Bob [Maguire?], who’s the lawyer who did a lot to help us through that last year to defend us, but also more broadly, a lot of other folks facing repression at CUNY and continues to do so. You know, she also came to City College in the ’60s and was expelled during the open admissions strike and the aftermath of that and he was always very sharp in posing the question of repression at City College, specifically that like -- absolutely there are people there who are, you know, trying to disrupt activism and stuff and you know, obviously without --

You know, I think you can’t, certainly can’t say someone’s paid by the police or someone’s a cop or this or that, unless you have proof of that and you know, it’s very disruptive to movements to say that and without proof and you just have to (inaudible) your behavior and certainly I don’t know what was motivating some of the, some of the people who were trying to make it hard for people to do work to defend CUNY, but you know, I can’t really figure out why they were doing that, but whatever the reasons were, there were people who just consistently tried to constantly undermine the work that, you know, people who (inaudible) completely honest and you know, I mean, their whole lives into the movement to defend CUNY -- there were people who were just kind of constantly trying to undermine that work. And you know, whoever it was that people were, you know, attempting to do that or whether it was that people just had their, you know, a different opinion about the (inaudible) -- this wasn’t the way to go about things, you know.

I don’t know and nobody knows until they do the, you know, get access to the government files or whatever, but you know, at the end of the day it matters, but it doesn’t matter in the sense that, you know, it’s the movement. The movement has to be strong enough to weather that kind of stuff [01:15:00] or else it’s going to, you know, kind of make it full and by the time I got there the movement was, you know, we were able to fight off some of their repression, but not all of it. And so -- we publicly opposed and publicly resisted it, but they also made it very hard for us to get new people involved. You know?
Q: Mm-hmm. Well, so then, in terms of getting new people involved, like how, how would you describe the demographics of City College, you know, SLAM!? So I don’t know, you know, if -- I mean, like you said you were having kind of weekly meetings and that sort of thing and of course, you know, I guess a larger mobilizations and events and you know, things like that, but in terms of kind of core, you know, membership of SLAM!, how would, you know, demographically like how would you describe it?
BRAD SIGAL: I’m just trying to remember who the, you know, some of the core people were. It was definitely whiter than City College as a whole, no doubt. You know, just starting with me being a central person in it. You know, and David Suker, who’s also white was not -- he was, he had an ambiguous relationship to [Paul?] -- he was sort of part of it, but sort of, you know, its biggest critic and always, you know, sort of criticizing at that point. You know, he’s gone through different phases, you know, in how he thinks about that stuff, I think, but -- you know, at that point had a lot of criticisms, but it was part of it, you know. There was another, Matt Wallace, who’s also white, was another person who was centrally involved in The Messenger newspaper -- less so SLAM!, as SLAM! but definitely with The Messenger.

But you know, there were -- several Dominican students who were writing for and helping distribute The Messenger and working on that and working on SLAM!. I guess I’m sort of thinking, you know, in my head right now of The Messenger as sort of a SLAM!, but a central of SLAM! project essentially -- that’s (inaudible) at City College.

There were a few black students, African American students that wrote for The Messenger and helped on it, but definitely less than, you know, unfortunately for the student body. So yeah, it was, at that point SLAM! was whiter then than was -- more -- I’m trying to think of the gender dynamics, but you know, there were more guys involved, but that started changing, too, definitely after I left that began like a SLAM! was reborn there and The Messenger as well. You know, it was more, a lot more women writing and starting playing big roles. Yeah. I don’t know if that’s helpful.
Q: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that’s cool. I mean, I’m going to email, talk to Hank soon. I mean, me and Hank know each other just through involvement in different organizations and stuff and I’ve talked to him at length about the stuff before, but you know, sometimes, probably next week I’m going to interview him, so I’m sure he can speak more to kind of, you know, SLAM!, the second wave, I guess at City College.
BRAD SIGAL: Okay. The (inaudible) quit when I was there, Hank was in another organization. Like he was the one that, a member of SLAM! and again, there was this whole milieu where everyone was sort of, had, went to everything, you know, and there was a blending of lines between who’s in what, but like he was definitely in a different organization up until I left. But then he got involved after I left in The Messenger and it became clear, like he was going to be able to -- was interested in and was going to be the person who would take The Messenger on and run with it and -- you know, I think from that point when he sort of took leadership of that and then they decided to rebuild SLAM! up, you know, again, as a much broader group, as the other groups had dissipated. I think both, my sense is that both SLAM! and The Messenger became much more multi-national, much more people of color-led.

And again, not entirely, like Bob Wallace, you know, was one of the key writers and leaders of it all the way through and -- you know, some other SLAM! City College -- sorry, at Hunter were, you know, there were some like folks in the mix always, but -- as one (inaudible) a much larger mix, whereas when I started SLAM! at City College, it was like me and a very small number of other people and then a number of other people on the periphery that were sort of part of all the things and [01:20:00] most hadn’t sort of drawn in with like, yeah, SLAM! is my identity, you know? And that happened more later.
Q: How would you describe, you know, the ideology of SLAM! at CCNY? Was it -- I guess I’m wondering, is it, would you just say -- do you guys pretty much understand why this -- SLAM! at Hunter did? Or was it, you know, just kind of generally left? Or did you guys take a stricter line there? I mean, how ideologically would you describe SLAM! at City College?
BRAD SIGAL: I think overall very similar, but with some real differences. And again, it depends on their point in time as to what the differences are and how other, how much that matters. And also SLAM! At Hunter had a lot of different voices and politics in the mix so -- it’s sort of hard to say like, you know -- that there was one ideology at Hunter when there were definitely more than one. But having said all that, you know, at Hunter, like coming out of the movement in 1995 took a couple of very sharp positions, but were very controversial.

And the people that coalesced into SLAM! took positions specifically on like not being a platform for Democratic Party politicians or for, you know, unions that were kind tied into those party politics and being very sharp on that and like you know, when the other guys protest, making decisions to not let those people speak. You know, like (inaudible) up being in the movement and stuff like that, who wanted to come in and play a role in helping to, you know, putting it charitably, helping to lead things or putting it uncharitably, trying to take over and steer in a different direction, you know, taking a less radical direction, this new movement.

So Hunter folks definitely took a pretty sharp line on that stuff overall. At City College, when I was there, we had a little bit different approach on that stuff and again, I (inaudible) overall, it was very similar and there was much more in common and then they meet different (inaudible) -- you know? Like we both saw the need for an independent student movement that was to be led by students and we saw the central struggle as the struggle, defend Open Admissions and had that analysis of -- race -- race, nationality and class -- and we find that, you know, this isn’t just an economic struggle and it’s not just a racial justice struggle. It’s like this is an intertwined struggle for, you know, for all of that as a play.

And you know, it sort of differentiated it from the liberal or forces like, as I mentioned before, NYPIRG just wanted to talk about economics versus -- and also from more cultural national forces that would want to more emphasize the race or nationality side of things. SLAM! had a more analysis that, you know, tried to tie all that together. And also at Hunter was very much led by women and informed by feminism. So all of that I think were united on and that’s a whole lot, you know.

We wanted to build a radical student movement that had those analyses and it was open to -- it was radical enough to matter, but open enough to, you know, attract new students that weren’t sure yet whether they thought they were a Communist or an anarchist or just a -- the progressive, you know, just wanted to be involved in saving CUNY you know. So we were trying to do a lot of that balancing.

But to go back to the time, just as one example, I guess is that at City College we were grappling with and in the context of the constitutional weakening of Black Studies and, in the context of the attacks on Black Studies and on black students and the faculty. Like what -- and the lack or organized black student organizations at that time, you know, what can we do to try to change that? And one, again, there was this one example -- we were trying to invite Al Sharpton to come and speak and so SLAM! (inaudible) played a key role in that (inaudible) so other people that (inaudible) you know, SLAM! was sort of identified with that, this big event we did on campus, featuring Al Sharpton, who you know, was different at that point than what he is now. You know, he was a much more radical [01:25:00] figure. You know, at that point he was already starting his journey into the sort of mainstream of the Democratic Party, but had not gotten there yet, you know.

And I think it was (inaudible), at that time he was the most radical, nationally known black leader in the country, probably. And certainly the most rad-, you know, within New York. The most progressive -- black leader who we could get to come speak at CUNY about, at City College about Open Admissions and the importance for getting involved in the struggle. And so we invited him to speak and we did a panel with him and with Leonard Jeffries and several other people and it was, I think it was one of the best events that we did when I was there and it brought out more black students than any other event we did and --

You know, Al Sharpton gave a great talk that tied it all together and encouraged students to get involved and I thought that was great, you know. But as folks at -- some of the people that I talked to most, anyway, at Hunter were much more critical of like, why would you give a platform to someone like Al Sharpton? He’s an opportunist, a misleader or etc., etc. And similar to what the, with Professor Jeffries, you know, again, you know, I wasn’t able to talk to every single person at Hunter, so certainly this analysis wasn’t shared by maybe any more than one person, but you know, people were attacked with criticisms of Professor Jeffries.

You know, obviously supported -- defending him against the attacks from the administration and stuff, but -- were more critical of his politics and critical of giving him a platform. But at City College that was never an approach. You know, it was, of course, Professor Jeffries was part of the movement. Of course, we want Al Sharpton to come and speak. You know, we want to build the broadest united front we can, of people who were willing to defend CUNY and if we organized the event and Al Sharpton was willing to come and speak to a couple hundred students into the room that wouldn’t have otherwise come, then that’s great. You know, so that’s just one example and I don’t want to overblow it, but it sort of came to mind as a different approach, because you know, they didn’t really do -- at least not during the time I was there, that, at Hunter -- sort of bringing the politicians to speak.

Some of the community relations, you know, there was a little bit of it, with The Messenger we starting doing a feature when we would highlight, like different community business or restaurant or institution, you know, like each issue or, you know, and that’s a small thing but it was like one little thing that we did and then we -- we also started to -- there was a struggle, a little bit of a struggle at Harlem Hospital while I was there. Mark Torres, who had been a leader in the City College movement in the ’89 to ’91 period was playing a role in that and so you know, they worked with him and went over there to support a couple protests that they did there and started to build relations with some other groups.

And so again, my perspective may be different than other people’s, just because I, as someone who didn’t grow up in New York and came from out of town and didn’t already have a lot of connections, like I was sort of learning as I went, you know, into the community forces and relationships. But I guess the biggest thing, which I mentioned before, was the pre-university program that the Dominican Youth came into on campus and (inaudible) Edonis played a leading role in. But that was like, you know, the large-scale, ongoing relationship with mostly Dominican high school students at several high schools (inaudible) -- you know, it was an entirely student-run thing and you know, so that was -- that was great and you know, and they would do things that were not specifically political. Obviously most of it was that. Right?

Just sort of working with people on their homework on English and on all kinds of stuff like that. But also when it was appropriate, you know, we’d bring in people to protest, who wanted to go and we kept people involved in the movement and stuff. Because (inaudible) down to (inaudible) solely for a protest for Mumia Abu-Jamal at some point and got several people, several Dominican students came for that, you know, who were involved in the pre-university program. So yeah, we always tried to build those relationships and those are some examples, I guess.
Q: Okay. Are there any significant, like actions or events -- that we haven’t talked about thus far that you think were like important to your time at [01:30:00] City College?
BRAD SIGAL: I’m sure there are, but nothing’s coming to mind right away. I mean, I mentioned some of the big things when I was there, in terms of the -- several around whether the security guards should be armed, the struggle around CUNY Card, the struggle around -- you know, The Messenger -- each issue of The Messenger that came out was progressively sort of a -- caused more and more ripples, you know, as their articles, you know, calling out different administrators for their behavior and stuff like that and so a lot of little things around that.

But the big things around The Messenger being the election issue that got -- responsible for them disquali-, disqualifying the elections and shutting down the newspaper, administrative government and shutting down the student government and calling new elections. And then the surveillance stuff around them, around the Morales-Shakur Center. Because basically they moved -- after the student government election was nullified and we moved out, basically all the student groups at that point moved -- some first moved (inaudible) -- this person’s office who let us use, stayed there for a little while and then all of us ended up moving up to the Morales-Shakur Center.

(inaudible) in there. But you know, we did -- we always tried to do, every semester, some protests around opening the shifts and (inaudible) [budget cuts?] a bunch of cops fulltime campus and continue our stuff, so we would always meet on campus and you know, take a group of people down to the Board of Trustees or City Hall (inaudible) in, with (inaudible) and (inaudible) one protest we did on campus, where we did a -- we created like a -- what would you call it? Like a puppet of, a full-size puppet of Pataki and set it up in front of the NAC Building and let people throw tomatoes at it, (laughter) you know. Random stuff like that.
Q: Right. Did the, (inaudible) excuse me, do you remember -- so after Open Admissions ended, how did the work, I guess, or the focus shift at, you know City College SLAM!? I mean, was it, prior to Open Admissions ending was Open Admissions a primary kind of -- issue that you guys were organizing around? Or, so then did the work shift? Or, you know, can you just speak to kind of post-Open Admissions, you know, what SLAM! was involved in at City College.
BRAD SIGAL: Yeah. We continued with the best of the main sort of center of the struggle is that -- we needed to stop the effects of this and so push for the day when we can, you know, roll it back entirely to Open Admissions, you know. And we were on the defensive because they, they were winning at that point, in terms of, you know -- ending Open Admissions but we put up a lot of resistance and continued to try to resist, you know, every step of the way at City College. You know, when -- just trying to remember like -- one of the key issues was like whether there would continue to be remedial classes in the senior colleges and the four-year colleges or not.

I mean, you know, so there was ongoing struggle around like, oh, are they going to close, you know, the Tutoring Centers, this and that and -- you know, so just (inaudible) around that kind of stuff. And yeah, just trying to stop the transformation of CUNY into -- other than what it was.
Q: Do you remember if -- and this may or may not be connected to Open Admissions, but the, basically the perception of City College students, you think that that changed about SLAM!? You know, like what was the perception that kind of the average person in the student body had about SLAM! and did that shift after Open Admissions ended?
BRAD SIGAL: That’s a good question. I mean, I think during the time I was there, The Messenger was certainly the public face of stuff, much more than SLAM! was. But it certainly, you know, print flyers with SLAM!’s name on them for that stuff. But almost everything was cosponsored with a, you know, who bunch of different groups and -- so I would probably say that while I was there, certainly the people who were active knew what SLAM! was but if you just were to stop and ask random students, probably the majority of them wouldn’t have known it or would just have a vague sense of it, [01:35:00] you know. And so I don’t know that that would have changed at all, or in after. (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)
Q: I just asked because -- just to explain my questioning, the, you know, I’ve talked to some people -- who are members of Hunter SLAM! and a lot of them think that it changed after Open Admissions, in terms of the Hunter student body. They felt as if, and part of this is because you, you know, these are some people that were there longer after the end of Open Admissions than you were, but you know, some people speak to the fact that they felt that student body began to change a bit and you know, the targets, you know, the new target population, in terms who CUNY wanted to have at Hunter, had started to really enter the doors of Hunter and those people were less sympathetic to, you know SLAM!, you know, as an organization that was over student funds and you know, whatever else. And so that’s of course, different, you know at Hunter, but I was wondering if there may have been any sort of kind of parallels with City College. You know, I know it was a different, you know, different institution, different, you know, issues, I think to some extent. (clears throat)
BRAD SIGAL: Yeah, I mean, when I would talk to people, you know, after I left, you know, they would say things like, oh yeah, you would recognize this or that. The student body’s changing and you know, there might be this and that change and I remember they were talking about building dorms at, down by, you know, I lived in an apartment two blocks off campus, they were going to build dorms a couple blocks just where I lived. I was like, I can’t even imagine them building dorms there. That’s wild. But -- I assume they’re (inaudible), but maybe not, but you know, that kind of stuff just seems like a huge transformation and I haven’t been on campus for several years now, but --

You know, when I was there, you know, in terms of what I saw, you know, just one day being there, it didn’t seem to have changed a ton. But -- certainly from the people who are there still as students or as adjuncts, professors that I would talk to, like it seems like, yeah, there was that changing composition of the student body was definitely happening at City College, too, although probably true -- a little differently or to a different, different than Hunter, for sure. Or more slowly than Hunter, for sure. But there’s also just the, the reality of the location of where Hunter is and where City College is. (right) You know. A lot easier to attract, you know, students from Long Island or from, you know, Upstate New York to go there, the college on the Upper East Side than to go to the college on 135th Street in Harlem. And so you know, that’s why they’re able to do the transformation much more quickly, I think, at Hunter. Yeah, certainly happened at City College, too. (inaudible)
Q: Right. So you left in 2000?
BRAD SIGAL: Yep.
Q: Okay. Was that just because you graduated? Or were there other -- factors, I guess, involved in that?
BRAD SIGAL: Well, actually I didn’t graduate. I ended up moving to Minnesota. I was going back and forth to El Salvador for about, during like 1999 and 2000. And then after that moving to Minnesota, back to Minnesota, (inaudible) which is where I live now, where I was from originally, in 2000. So. And I didn’t graduate at that time, but I was just a couple classes away from graduating, so in 2009 I actually took the last class I needed here at the University of Minnesota, where I work and was able to finish my degree at City College that way, which was sort finding out it’s never really --

(inaudible) -- mess up the beginning of your life, started going to CUNY to do organizing mainly and a lot less so to -- for academic aspirations. But since I was so close to finishing it and I was able to take the last two classes I needed here, I just did and actually got my master’s in history in City College in 2009.
Q: Okay. I guess after, you know, you left SLAM!, I mean, can you describe some of the, you know, movement work that you’ve been involved in post-SLAM!?
BRAD SIGAL: Sure. When I left SLAM!, you know, I mentioned that I was actually in El Salvador on and off for like a year, a year and a half and then -- during that time I was in, I was doing some El Salvador solidarity work with the, with the -- left in El Salvador and -- but then when I moved to Minnesota [01:40:00] I got involved in -- at a (inaudible) anti-war community, you know, fighting against war, against U.S. imperialism. And very quickly I got a job with (inaudible) at the University of Minnesota, which is where I still work there -- I’ve worked there (inaudible) I mean in the union and got involved in my union and elected to, as kind of a slate to leadership in the union and we -- went on strike twice during the 2000s, in 2003 and 2007, so I was part of the union leadership during that time and I’m still active, I’m still in the union, but not in a leadership position now.

And I’ve been doing, since 2006, I’ve been very active in the (inaudible) movement here, since the -- starting the upsurge in 2006 that happened and our response to the census on our bill, which sort of criminalized a lot of (inaudible) immigrants and people who help them. There was an upsurge here, as well as around the country around that and we started an immigrants’ rights group out of that upsurge in ’07.

After that, then that thing, against deportations and for legalization, (inaudible) back into immigrants -- that’s been a very (inaudible) part of what I’ve been involved in and -- as well as the union, union struggle and I’m still involved in the Socialist Movement, so. I’ve stayed very active and I think that’s something that I think is you know, a whole lot of people find it hard to be active after they finish school and it was something that I was always committed to finding a way to do, you know. To not just sort of get a job and -- and not continue to fight and -- I’ve done my best to try to do that.
Q: (laughs) What lessons or what did you take, you know, from your tenure in SLAM!? Like what -- what do you think you took most from that period? Or what did you learn most from that period?
BRAD SIGAL: I think that, you know, I had done student organizing before, before doing work with SLAM! at CUNY and you know, but -- there was a strike, oh yeah, student organizing, I can do that. But when that -- doing organizing at CUNY is not typical student organizing -- it’s much more like you’re organizing, it’s like working-class organizing. (laughs) You watch people who are very much in the working class and the lower sectors of the working class and come out of those -- those sectors, say, and overwhelmingly and it was also, you know, having lived in D.C., certainly and then -- Atlanta and D.C.

You know, I definitely had become committed to their -- and interest in just sort of an overall, progressive, a radical view of things to having anti-racism being a central piece of my politics and so I tried to be in this world and definitely CUNY was a place that was more, was made very real, that you can build a movement in this society that’s led by, across nationalities students and students of color that, that is multi-national and includes everybody who wants to fight and challenge the power structures in the society and --

So that, you know, being part of that at CUNY was hugely influential on me, you know, just in terms of like how I look at the way, how I look at building movements, you know, in terms of building, you know, supporting the right to self-determination and supporting like for example, if black students or latino students organized independently, being very supportive of that, while also seeing the need for and what can be done by building multi-national organizations that unite students around a radical vision of something new. Or fighting to stop, you know, things from being rolled back, that it, you know, it can be done and it, it can be amazing and that that’s what I want to do with my life, you know.
Q: Yeah. Okay. Is there anything else that you, you know, think that is important to mention or emphasize? I don’t really have any more questions for you.
BRAD SIGAL: I can’t think of anything else [01:45:00] off-hand. I’m sure I’ll think of all kinds of things after we hang up, but -- (laughter) yeah.
Q: Okay. Well, thank you very much. This was a really informative interview. And it’s been really helpful. So now I have a better understanding, so when I talk to some other folks who were at City College. So thank you. Do you have any questions for me, or? Yeah.
BRAD SIGAL: Just I guess, you know, you mention Hank, that you’re going to talk to him. That’s definitely good and -- if you get a chance to talk to David Suker, he was definitely central in that time period and the people are talking to and (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) --
Q: Yeah, I’ll probably talk to him, I think Friday or some-, yeah, I’ll talk to him soon.
BRAD SIGAL: Okay. But you know, again, he (inaudible) by like 1998, you know, because he had a (inaudible) a daughter at that point and needed to make money and so, yeah, so he’ll have much more to say about like the ’95 to ’98 period and -- (clears throat) and then Hank will have more, much more to say from 2000 on. Yeah, if you could get an interview with Edonis, but I think he’d have a lot to say, certainly about the movement overall, in terms of SLAM! specifically, you know, he would certainly have some things to say and -- but you know, he wasn’t primarily identified with SLAM!, he had his own organization, but you know, that he was building, but certainly knew, knew very well, the folks from SLAM!, from Hunter and obviously worked very closely with me and others at City College. (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)
Q: Yeah, I contacted him. One of his staff members responded back to me, so hopefully, (laughs) hopefully the email will eventually get to him. His staff member has intersected it. But yeah, I contacted him as well.
BRAD SIGAL: Cool. Well, that seems like you’re on the right track then, for sure, for City College and I’m sure Hank will tell you other people you need to talk to, from post-2000 era.
Q: Okay. All right.
BRAD SIGAL: Yeah. So you said you’re working on a dissertation, it’s about the struggle (inaudible) -- and from the action from the ’90s?
Q: Yeah.
BRAD SIGAL: Be sure (inaudible) about the Bay Area stuff, from Berkeley -- (inaudible) I imagine you talked to some folks from out there, around that struggle, or (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) --
Q: Yeah, it’s actu-, right.
BRAD SIGAL: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) and sort of that stuff?
Q: Yeah. So I mean as, you know, it’s actually been a lot more difficult to get in contact (laughs) with folks from the Bay Area. So I’ve talked to some people -- I am trying to, because you know the things is, you know, similar to what you were saying in regards to SLAM! at City College in terms of, you know, there’s a whole bunch of different folks and there are some folks that were officially part of the organization and other people that were part of other organizations and kind of did stuff with them. It seemed to be a lot more nebulous (laughs) over there on the West Coast, in terms of pinning people down. But I am trying to get in contact with folks who were involved with STORM -- there were also specific student organizations at Berkeley, who I’ve talked to some people from those organizations.

And then you know, I mean there’s just, you know, I’ve been dealing both with SLAM! people as well as folks on the West Coast, just scheduling stuff. So I’ve been in contact with a lot of folks; I just haven’t been able to sit down with a lot of them and have the interview. But yeah, I’m still in the process of trying to, you know, get more interviews from folks in the Bay Area.
BRAD SIGAL: Cool. I imagine, you know -- so you haven’t talked to Harmony Goldberg, I imagine? She’d be on your list.
Q: Yeah. I’ll talk to Harmony. I’ll talk to Harmony. We haven’t done a formal knowledge yet, but you know, I mean she, I don’t know if you still keep in contact with her, but she’s going through a lot of stuff right now, so I’m just, you know, I have to --
BRAD SIGAL: Yeah. Now probably wouldn’t be a good time.
Q: Yeah. I’m not going to contact her right now. I’m going to wait a while before I ask her because, you know, just out of respect for what’s going on with her family. But I have, we’ve had previous conversations, though. I kind of have like a pre-mini interview, (laughs) to just kind of get some details down. So I, you know, I’m definitely in contact with Harmony.
BRAD SIGAL: Like me and a couple other people, well, me and one other person from SLAM! went out to the Bay Area in ’96, I think, or maybe it was ’97 and got to meet with a bunch of those and get to know a lot of those folks and that also had a big influence politically on some us, too. So, you know, those relationships with them. I imagine it would be difficult at this point to get an interview with Van Jones, but, about this stuff, but -- (laughter) he would certainly be someone you would know and who was involved in the stuff out there, but [01:50:00] -- you may have to talk to others -- (laughs) at this --
Q: I mean, I’m pretty persistent, so hopefully I’ll be able to get through to Van Jones. Hopefully I can, you know, see if we have more people in -- more people in common than I think. I’m from Oakland, so hopefully (laughs) I can find somebody to, you know, track him down so I can get in contact with Van Jones. But, yeah.
BRAD SIGAL: That would be great, yeah. I’d try, you know, I don’t know him. (inaudible) it’s just that he’s probably is not eager to talk about his more revolutionary past. Caused him enough problems already with where he’s trying to go in the world, but -- but maybe. It would be worth trying. (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)
Q: Yeah. I’m going to try. It’s always worth a try. I mean, you know, I can always, you know, make him anonymous or something, so it’s -- (laughs) I’ll figure it out.
BRAD SIGAL: But definitely, yeah. I mean, if you’re already in touch with Harmony, she’ll obviously know other people, that were more on the ground at Berkeley at that time, for sure.
Q: Okay.
BRAD SIGAL: (inaudible) -- if she’s cool, so -- yeah, cool, sounds great.
Q: All right, well --
BRAD SIGAL: (inaudible) Let me know if things come together. I’m very interested in seeing where things go. And also earlier, one last thing is that -- I tend to be a pack rat and so I save everything and I do have a ton of stuff, you know, from -- the CUNY about that time, from Hunter and City College mainly and all the Citywide stuff, but -- enough -- some of what Hunter folks gave to the NYU Library at, you know, I don’t know how much overlap there is (inaudible) to what I have and what they gave them.
Q: Right. I mean, it’s mostly Hunter’s stuff.
BRAD SIGAL: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) Yeah, so I’m sure I have a lot that they don’t have, but of course, it’s just in my basement and not neatly scanned or (laughter) (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) -- if you do want to look at stuff, you know, you know the kinds of stuff you’re interested in and I could certainly go through and at some point, you know, scan in some stuff and (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) to your (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) --
Q: That would be really helpful. I’ll -- you know, I’ll be thinking about what specifically, you know, I would ask you for, but I’ll be thinking about that. I definitely, I got the, I know that you had -- Suzy had uploaded like the -- you have this big PDF with all of your articles and stuff from The Messenger, so I did get that. I do have that.
BRAD SIGAL: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) Cool.
Q: So yeah, so I do have some stuff and that’s actually really helpful.
BRAD SIGAL: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) Yeah. The formatting on that is not ideal, but hopefully it’s better than nothing, for sure.
Q: Yeah. No. It’s actually very helpful. So -- but yeah, I’ll contact you if, you know, if I, you know, run across anything and if you have the interview that, you know, like you just mentioned, the interview that Susie, that you did with Susie, the transcribed version, so you can send that to me whenever. I’d appreciate that. Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you so much for your interview.
BRAD SIGAL: Yeah. Thanks for your interest in -- I think it’s great that you’re trying to get this stuff out there, you know. (inaudible)-ing it and write about it and -- excellent.
Q: Great. All right. Well, have a good evening.
BRAD SIGAL: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) -- and let me know -- that stuff after publishing thing or even --
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