CUNY

DIGITALHISTORYARCHIVE

A project produced by the Alliance for Puerto Rican Education and Empowerment, APREE.

Interview with Carlos “Alejandro” Alejandro
Interviewed by Pam Sporn and Tami Gold

October 19, 2012

Brooklyn, NY

[Start of recorded material at 00:00]

Carlos Alejandro

As I was driving from my home here, took me about an hour. And in that
hour, I was revisiting the emotions and the images of things that I
experienced at Brooklyn College. There was a lot of joy, but there was a
lot of suffering as well, a lot of sacrifice that took place. So as I got closer
and closer to Brooklyn College, I felt myself, tearful, I felt anxiety. And I
was kind of struck by my awareness that so many years have gone by and
that during those years I maintain the insights and the wisdom and
understanding that I gained at Brooklyn College throughout my life.

The way in which we sought unity irrespective of people's religion,
culture, ethnicity and race. There was a social justice struggle, we would
say Blacks and Puerto Ricans at that particular time, but it also included
Jews, it included Muslims it also included Whites who were joining us,
because they saw that it was a just struggle. That principle that everyone
has the right to sit at the table, carried me throughout my whole life. In my
work in corrections, I've worked at Rikers Island where inmates had
different kinds of conflicts and I was brought in really because I was able
to deal with White inmates, Black inmates, Latino inmates and Asian
inmates. And I attribute it to my experience at Brooklyn College.

We worked with different ethnic groups in a very intentional way. We
spoke of the Third World Federation's, we talked about multi-cultural or
multi-ethnic multi-national groups and associations, so the spirit that we
had at Brooklyn College that was formed here was one that would look


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beyond a person's ethnicity, race and we will see brothers and sisters in
one another. It's a stark difference from what we see now, taking place in
this country. We intentionally broke walls down. We didn't build them up
in Brooklyn College. We were tearing them down and we did it
intentionally and we did it unapologetically.

You say it’s different from now. In what respect?

Well, now you see in the country that there's these divisions. You see the
Trump and you see the Trump supporters. Basically flaming, inflaming
racial tensions in this country. Three months ago, a White man on a train
was picking on a Mexican and the Mexican would not speak to him. And
then he looked at me and he said, "well, you're probably from the same
country", as I was, he pointed to me and then he told me to go back to
where I come from, he said "why don't you go back to where you come
from?" he said to me, and based on the spirit of Brooklyn College I say,
well, this is the response. I said, "Why don't you go back to where you
come from?" That was my response. My ancestors were here before
Columbus even arrived. You see what I'm saying? Before Columbus
arrived, we were here. So we are the ones who actually uniquely qualify to
tell someone to "go back to where you come from". The Europeans and
the ones who came in and invaded and then created so much pain and
suffering in this part of the world that we are continuing to feel now, at
this time in this day.

So let's revisit that period at Brooklyn College that was so meaningful for
your life and brought so much emotion back, I want to hear about the
power of it and the sacrifice and the whole story from your perspective.

So, tell me when you arrived at Brooklyn College, but first if you could
tell me a little bit about your family background where you grew up when
your family came from Puerto Rico and what neighborhood you lived in.

My family immigrated in the 1950s, the early 1950s from Puerto Rico. I
like to say that I was born and raised in the "ghetto," in the projects. And
there's something about owning and claiming to come from the projects,
well every time I say it reminds me that I overcame. That I was able to
persevere that there was a resiliency that's established when one suffers
poverty and oppression. So in my coming to Brooklyn College, I came to
a college where I knew the Black and Puerto Rican community was
involved in struggle. Many people who went to Brooklyn College, went to
Brooklyn College because we went to learn and get an education, but also
to contribute to the struggle of the Puerto Rican and the Black community
inside of New York City. So we came in intentionally.


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[00:05:00]

Icame from Stuyvesant High School, where I was maybe one of three
Puerto Rican students in the whole school, and then maybe 5, 10 African
Americans in the school. We ran in coming from the projects going to
Stuyvesant High School at the age of 14, thereabouts I ran into a wall of
racism, and it forced us to kind of make meaning, how do we understand,
how am I to understand what's going on? So we became politicized. The
term was to become politicized, or to use Paulo Freire “concientizacién ",
we were made conscious of what was happening, why we were poor, why
some of us did not have enough to eat on a daily basis, or we were
wearing hand me downs because there was not enough to go around. The
ability to analyze began in Stuyvesant High School and going to Brooklyn
College, I had entered already with that understanding that there is
oppression, that there is class differences, that there is racism that's
embedded in the society. And when entering Brooklyn College, I found
many people who were feeling the same way. The beauty and the power of
it, is that crossed racial, ethnic and religious lines. That's the beauty. I
would add to that gender, age, that there were persons who, you know,
older persons involved in the struggle as well as younger persons. I
remember a woman, Dojia Beatriz, who was working on her bachelor's,
she had a heart condition and she was in her mid 70s. And she would join
us in the protest around the right to select the chairperson in Puerto Rican
Studies, what we would call at the time, the right to self determination.
She would march and then she would get winded, and then we would have
to sit her down, make sure that we took care of her. So this struggle in
Brooklyn College was just not young students who were struggling, it was
led by young students, but there were different age groups that were
involved in it, and there was also the community because in some of the
photos that I brought in, all of those people included members of the
community, persons who were outraged at some of the attacks that we
were facing at Brooklyn College at the time.

To step back to your time in high school when you became politicized,
what do you attribute that to in addition to being one of the very few
Puerto Rican students?

There was a music concert at Stuyvesant High School one evening, and
the few Puerto Rican and Black students, we decided that we would do
African drumming, Afro Cuban drumming. And there were African
American, young women who were the dancers. During the break at night,
we sat across Stuyvesant high school across the street talking. And as
we're sitting there, a group of white men came by and they say, "your
fucking animals, you belong in the zoo. All niggers belong in the zoo.”
Right, Stuyvesant high school, during the break, intermission and you had
all of these White liberals, middle class because Stuyvesant was middle
class, so we had all of them outside, watching us fight off a group of


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racists. Young people, we were 14/15 years old having to fight only
because of the color of our skin and because we were celebrating our
culture. A plus thing, a positive thing that came out of this is that the
White liberals were not passive and they took a stand and they supported
us, and again, they did this with courage and they denounced what had
happened in the community. So in entering Brooklyn College, I went to
Brooklyn College at 17.

So when I went to Brooklyn College, I was already "concientizado", I was
already aware that there were things that were not right. Brooklyn College
gave us, gave me and others, a context in which we could fight for our
community.

What had you heard about the struggle that happened at Brooklyn College
before you got there? Because the earlier interviews we did, there was no
Puerto Rican Institute, there was no Puerto Rican Alliance when those
earlier students got there and they struggled to create that. So what did you
hear about what this movement was about at Brooklyn College?

[00:09:27]

What I had heard, we had heard of the Brooklyn College 19, the BC19.
We would say these are some badass people. They were arrested at night.
Many of them because they were activists in Brooklyn College. So what
they did for me, I'll speak just personally, what they did for me is that they
filled me with pride and with courage. They said, "cofio!" Like our
community has the courage. We have the courage to stand up. In Puerto
Rico recently when people protest that the governor there was a slogan a
saying that said, you know, "quitaron tanto, que nos quitaron el miedo."
They took so much away from us that we've lost our fear, they took our
fear away. Poverty takes fear away from people and when we entered
Brooklyn College those of us with the potential to learn, many of us were
the first ones in our family, the first generation to go to college. My father
went to second grade school. My mother graduated from sixth grade
elementary school. So we were the first persons. We were emboldened by
the fact that we can learn that we can fight and for the dignity of our
people. We were chased out of neighborhoods. We were told like
Stuyvesant high school, especially, the Blacks and Puerto Ricans, they're
too angry to learn, they're too angry to learn they can't, they're too militant.
I remember I was on the football team, made it to the football team, and
then was dismissed from the football team because I was one of the
radicals at Stuyvesant High School. Everything that we do when we
struggle against injustice comes with a price comes with a cost. Every
student that's ever participated in any struggle, particularly Brooklyn
College and the Puerto Rican Studies Department and the Black Studies
Department have sacrificed. Some of us were delayed in our graduation,
some people didn't continue education, many did. Many did. But it came


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at a cost. I think that we didn't pay enough attention to the spiritual, the
emotional and the physical toll that this was taking on us. Later we
learned, I learned later that that was one of the pieces that was missing.

So tell me about that struggle, the BC 44. When you arrived, what were
the issues? What were the issues around CUNY, what were the issues
around the world at that time? And what was, what were you guys doing
right at Brooklyn College?

We were fighting for open admissions, we were making sure that the
doors also would remain open to our community.

What was open admissions about?

Open admissions was that anyone in the city, right from my recollection,
that has a high school diploma or a GED can go, tuition free, can attend
college for reduced costs, for my understanding. From my recollection,
I'm in my 60s so you have to bear with me here. So we were fighting to
make sure that the university that Brooklyn College was kept open. When
L arrived at Brooklyn College, there were 32,000 students. By the time I
graduated and left, it was down to 19,000, maybe 20,000 students over so
many years. So there was a cod. And recently basically, it's a Black and
Puerto Rican, at that time, it was Black and Latinos, and it's many other
groups. But we were the ones who were, who would suffer the
consequences, we were the ones who were, enter college and not have the
resources that we would need. So Puerto Rican studies was absolutely
important in all of this. The professor's made it possible, they modeled for
see just by existing. Just by someone like Antonio Nadal and Milga
existing, just by working, they model that you can get this that you can
arrive that you can struggle that you can overcome. Again, most of us
came from working class community and we had poor communities where
the message was different. The message was, you're never going to get
anywhere the message is you're too angry, you know, or you're too leftist
or you're too whatever. Yet we go to Brooklyn College and then we see
how education transformed not just individuals but transformed.
communities as a whole.

So you were fighting for breaking open access to public education for all
kinds of people who have been denied that access and specifically what
was the, what was your first involvement with the Puerto Rican Alliance
when you arrived at Brooklyn College?

Ihave an image of how we met. I knew of older members of the Puerto
Rican Alliance because I knew people from Brooklyn College before I got
here. Before I got to Brooklyn College. How did I...


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How did you become involved with the, originally with the Puerto Rican
Alliance?

There was a confrontation in President Kneller’s office. And I had just
gotten in from Stuyvesant I was 17 years old and there was some protest
around something, around Puerto Rican studies. We went into Kneller's
office, and we took over the office not, we didn’t hold it but we disrupted
and we were there. And I found people, when I went, I found people of
like mind and like spirit.

[00:15:01]

Again, persons who gave a different image, Blacks and Puerto Rican
whose image was a positive image, men and women, young men and
women who would struggle who were into education, but also, if
necessary, also physically defending the rights of the Puerto Rican and the
Black community. And that's something that was really unique because in
the photographs that I brought in, you see men and women, young men
and women protesting and also fighting side by side against police
because we were on numerous occasions attacked by riot police. There
were incidents on this campus of extreme violence against students.

Can you tell me about some of that?

Yeah, one, well there were several, several incidents, but one major event
was on May 3rd 1978, May 3rd 1978. We took over Whitehead Hall. We
were protesting attacks on the department but other things on campus
because this was a third, we would call it a "third world liberation" from
names like that. So we had taken it over and we were holding it. President
Kneller gave the go ahead to police, to come in. And we had secured the
building when they broke into the building. There were fights that broke
on inside the building. If you see the photographs, windows were broken,
people were jumping out of the second floor, out of second floor windows
or landings in order to escape the police attack. They beat people
mercilessly throughout the campus. Persons who had been involved in the
protests as well as persons who had not been involved. So there was
actually there was an atmosphere of terror on the campus. And it
challenged all of us in many different, it challenged our parents, it
challenged our families cause all of us had families in one way or another.
So it challenged and you kept saying, “what's going on this campus, what's
happening here?" So the campus was polarized, and that's not counting the
minor skirmishes that we would have throughout the year with student
government who would refuse to give us money to go to, something
defending equal rights for everyone. They would not, they didn't want to
give us money, so there was a protest. So there was skirmishes all the time
at Brooklyn College and in that struggle, solidarity was forged among
people from diverse backgrounds. It was the most beautiful thing that you


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can, that anyone can possibly see. The greatest testament of what was
accomplished in Brooklyn College is that we saw beyond the narrowness
of just one ethnic group and another. We saw everyone as a village, we
formed the village where people who speak Chinese, they can speak
English, Spanish, persons from different communities, but we will one in
the struggle we were one people saying that enough is enough. And we're
not going to turn around. "Nos han quitaron tanto que nos quitaron el
miedo." That's really what was driving us at that time and I think it's
something that should continue to drive people in education. We are living
in difficult times, the importance of education is always there. It's even
more so now. Because we need to deconstruct some of these ideas, some
of the internalized racist ideas that we hold, some of the perceptions that
we have accepted in a non critical way we need to actively deconstruct
that and that has to be done in education. That's where it takes place in
education as you struggle for that education.

I would like to hear the details of what was that BC 44 and the whole
struggle for the self determination.

The Brooklyn College 44. These were three professors and 41 students
were arrested after we had occupied, if I remember correctly, it was the
Admissions Office or Registrars Office. It was the Registrars Office that
we held. We were we were demanding the right to select the Chairperson
of our choice, the right to choose. We likened it to decolonization, you
know the right to determine our future, and that means that we wanted
someone who really represented what we felt this department needed and
the vision of the department. So they tried to impose, the institution tried
to impose someone on us. And we decided to take over the office. It was a
powerful experience because as we were lining up, and the police made a
count of the number, said that there's 44 of us, they said there is 44 of
them. And then someone said "Brooklyn College 44". And then a
journalist, student journalist named Willie, I think it's Rodriguez says
"we'll come back to give you more". So it was the "Brooklyn College 44,
we'll come back to give you more."

[00:20:04]

And that's the spirit that we when they brought the paddy wagons, the
tension was high, we had support outside and in the courts. They tried to
separate the teachers, the professors and say that they were going to hold
them to another, you know hold to a higher accountability. They were
going to be sentence on a higher than us and then we insisted that we be
treated the same so we were all sentence whatever I can't even remember
what it was. But we were all sentenced the same. That struggle at
Brooklyn College, the BC 44, The Brooklyn College 44, ignited
something in other city universities, in other the campuses. We found
Hunter College, who has a strong history of struggle were also rising up


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Pam Sporn

and some of us would go to these other colleges and help them. We had
the Puerto Rican Alliance was not just in Brooklyn College. There were
similar organizations throughout CUNY. I remember going, there's one in
the Bronx, I can't remember the name, the name of that college in the
Bronx. But it was a City University, my brother, one of my brothers went
to that one and he was involved over there.

So the Puerto Rican struggle, that's always taking place along with the
African American, the Black community. It was jumping off all over and
we were very much aware of what was happening in Vietnam because a
lot of this was informed by the fact that many of our young people had
been sent to Vietnam. We were aware of that, we were aware of the
colonial situation in Puerto Rico and we, our position was that we had to
integrate these, we had to connect them, they were not disconnected, that
the oppression that we were experiencing in a university setting is
connected to the fact that so many of us were not only sent to Vietnam, we
were sent to those places, those, the front lines were many of us died,
many more of our youth died than others, than other groups. So the, we
were mindful of that some of us had been at Wall Street, where
construction workers, I forget what it's called, it a major confrontation
with construction workers who marched on Wall Street saying "love it or
leave it", while we were marching protesting the war in Vietnam. And it
was a major major conflict where the police actually stepped aside and let
the construction workers who were marching in formation attack anti war
demonstrators. So all of this was in the mix, all of this. The political
prisoners, you have Lolita Lebron and the others that were in jail because
they had attacked Blair House and Congress and this was something that
at age 15 we were hearing about, I was hearing about it. Wait a second we
have people, Albizu Campos, Don Pedro Albizu Campos. We've had these
people, role models that stood and they fought. Albizu Campos, I think he
had two PhDs, was a lawyer, spoke seven languages. An excellent role
model for a Black Puerto Rican growing up in the projects in college. So
my love for languages was actually born out of my following Albizu
Campos' life. I say, my God, he came from poverty, he comes, came from
dirt poor, he was dirt poor, didn't have shoes as a little boy. And he
accomplished something, that is the spirit of the Puerto Rican people.
That's the spirit that we actually embraced at Brooklyn College and in the
Puerto Rican Studies Department, which was also as a whole very much
pro independence. Okay, the Puerto Rican always has been.

Were you learning about Don Albizu Campos and Lolita Lebron at
Stuyvesant High School?

No.

Or in your elementary school?


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Nowhere. No.

...The awareness actually comes from the older, we would call them the
older brothers and sisters who started to educate us. I remember that I was
working out, we had a community center in Bedford Stuyvesant, some of
us would workout in this community center. I was 14 years old and an
older African American man, older by three years, three or four years. He
tells me he says, "Charlie, you’s a Black man little brother." And I
remember I waved " J ain't Black man, I'm Puerto Rican. And then he said,
"that's just when I said, you is a Black man." Now this man with those
words, planted a seed that took me to Africa. That took me to a place
where I began to look at and consciously understand that as a Puerto
Rican, I am a Black man. That my ancestors come from Africa. That I
look this color not because I am from India, but because I am African, I'm
Taino Indian, and I have Spanish blood. That is what's happening.

[00:25:01]

So this one brother, it's amazing how experiences, just connection. So I
found him very, I said this guy really, and then I went to my house I said
mommy, are we Black? Where are we? Where are we from? Is that...so I
started to talk to her about it and then it opened up a whole new avenue,
area of study and research that empowered me, that empowered me so I
can say I'm Afro-Boricua when say I’m Afro-Boricua, that's who I am, in
my birth certificates for my son and daughter, that's what's there. They are
Black.

What did you mother say when you said "mommy what are we?"

My mother said, hay gente negra, because my grandfather was Black, and
then she started to tell me about Loiza Aldea, which is where my family is
from. And she would say, "and your great grandfather used to speak
Spanish, but with an African intonation." I said, "Mommy?" She said, "si,"
[mimicks african intonation] she would say like that. That's how he would
speak. So and then another grandfather would play Baquiné, which is
played when an infant dies and that tradition comes from Ghana from the
Ashanti, that's where that comes from. So el Baquiné comes from Africa.
So it took me to a place where I fully began the journey of embracing the
Africaness in me up to the point that in 2005, I fly to Nigeria to Africa,
and I initiate as a priest in African traditional religion, in the indigenous
religion of the Yoruba people. And part of the root of that came from how
I was raised. That awareness that something has been taken away from my
people, something, something powerful. There's a reason why they went to
Africa and then said that your God is not the right God, follow our God.
And our God, according to them, you have to turn the other cheek, and he
has blue eyes and blonde hair. So again, entering into this whole thing


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with the Afro- with the Blackness that I found in Brooklyn College, that
awareness allowed me to do that deconstructing like just kind of take this
say, Why do I look the way that Iam? Why do we feel the way that we
feel and many in Brooklyn College were going through that. That whole
thing of becoming aware.

I was going to ask if this particular awareness that you had that, I don’t
know if all the Puerto Rican students had, opened up more means of
communication between the, or more unity between the Puerto Rican
Alliance and the Black Student Organization. What was that relationship
like?

What was our relationship with the Puerto Rican and the Black
community?

Black students at Brooklyn College.

Me personally or? In general, it was a positive one because we came from
the same place. We suffered the same things. In fact, some of us in
Bedford Stuyvesant had fought against police in protest in the community,
prior to going to Brooklyn College. The thing I think is important to
understand is what took place in college, in Brooklyn College reflected
what was happening in our communities at the time. There was no such
thing as our entering Brooklyn College campus and leaving all of who we
were at the door. It didn't happen. We were reminded actually, every day
that we were in Brooklyn College, that we were different. That we were
other.

How so? How were you reminded that you were other?

I took a creative writing course. And I wrote a poem, and part of it said,
"afraid to walk the streets at night, afraid to walk the streets on the night
that John Wayne is resurrected inside the sick minds of racist police who
moonlight as drunken cross burners." That was the phrase and then there
was more before and after. And the professor looked at this and said, this
is trash. He said, this is not poetry. This is propaganda. This is....

An interesting thing had happened is that I had a friend who worked at the
Puerto Rican Forum, the National Puerto Rican Forum, they were
involved in different kinds of things. And she took my poem to someone
from there. And the man looked at, I wish I could remember his name, but
he wrote something in there and actually, the binder that I brought in with
the photographs he had given to me, got sent to me so that I can keep all of
my other poems. So he was outraged that this professor had done that and
was actually empowering me to move forward. So now they're called
aggressions, micro aggressions, aggressions. This is what goes on a very


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subtle kind of level, where someone is not allowed to be all of who they
are. Figures its a creative writing class, where everyone else can creatively
express themselves, unless you came with a different worldview, unless
you were informed differently.

[00:30:21]
So, how did this experience relate to your commitment to defending this
Puerto Rican Studies Department?

I felt and I actually (...) that I still feel that the Puerto Rican Studies
Department at that time was actually holding back an assault against our
people. It was an assault, that is an attack on our culture, on our history, on
our spiritualities that includes Santeria, Espiritismo, all of these things. So
there was an assault, when you walk into that matrix of the Puerto Rican
Studies Department, you were free to speak of Shango and Obatala. You
were free to speak of Yemaya that we went to this place and we saw this
African manifestation of something spiritual. We hear, the African poets
from Puerto Rico, [quotes poem]. In Brooklyn College, this is who we are.
So if you're receiving that light on a daily basis, when you're there, when
you walk into the darkness, you have something, you have it. The
darkness cannot overcome the light that's been placed. Once you know
who you are, once you've been set free, the mind is free, then the heart can
also feel freely. And that's what took place. That's how I would say.

Can you go back? Do you remember, what were the differences
between the two candidates for the Chair Puerto Rican Studies that, there
was the People's Choice, and then the one that the university was trying to
impose? What was different about them?

I think, you know, people might say that they had different skill sets,
qualifications, I think, essentially, is that Maria Sanchez was our choice.
That she had already demonstrated to us who she was and where her heart
was, and this other person was being imposed. Now, when you come from
a colony, where colonialism has been imposed, it's enough it’s enough to
say, ‘fuck you, no. we're not going to take it.’ Right, ‘that’s enough.’

What did Maria Sanchez have that you all...

There was somethi-, you know, the, it's just a feeling because I'm trying to,
the feelings, she had a very strong maternal instinct and this was a
matriarch I would remember her as the matriarch that...

Oh my god, during, during one of the, we were going to be arrested in BC
44, we knew was going to happen. And there was a mixup with my
clothing. And I don't know how she was where I was we were, and she
ironed my pants. She ironed the pants that I was going to wear. Okay,


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that's my recollection. I just can't remember where exactly a lot of us lived
around Brooklyn College, like I lived at Newkirk Avenue and then others
were on East 21st. But the thing is she had a strong maternal instinct, there
was something about her. And this is a factor, you know, because Puerto
Ricans, we are relational people we, affective you know, we hug we kiss,
you know, so we have someone leading a Puerto Rican Studies
Department that consistently had inappropriate affects, its not going to go
over very well with us. I think she was the person for the job. She was
uniquely qualified to do that job and she was able to deal with all the
diversity among the Puerto Rican community because it's not like we're
not diverse. There are differences in terms of political organization. At
that time, we had different independentistas who had different ways of
looking at things. We didn't always get along and then that played itself
out in the Puerto Rican Studies Department as well.

Can you comment about the leadership of women in the Puerto
Rican Studies program, Department? Was it significant?

The image that I have, I would actually mention, Milga. Milga Nadal. And
Milga, I first remember seeing her on a video. At the Puerto Rican, this... I
was there at that, it was the Puerto Rican Day Parade, where the Young
Lords had said, we meet you at the front of the parade. In other words, the
police no longer marching in front it’s the Puerto Rican community at the
front of the parade.

[00:34:57]

So again, we're there so we're there, Tony was there, Tony Nadal. I didn’t
know them at the time. And there was a big, big fighting that that took
place and in one of the videos, you see Milga charging at a cop she was
just, so you keep that in your mind, in terms of her spirit, so this is a
woman then who could model because it's not like everyone saw her right,
but that models the kind of strength and resilience that you need right in
this struggle. In the struggle of the Puerto Rican people you cannot, we
could have never had it without the women. Many times the women were
the ones who were leading. And this we see this in churches we see it in
many places right the Pastor may be a male but the women are the one
who made it. And in Brooklyn College and in the Puerto Rican Studies
Department, we were intentional about deconstructing machismo, we did
utilize criticism and self criticism, when we felt that something was not
right, something was not going well. So we would say that if a woman can
fight for liberation and justice, that a man can also cry, so it was almost
like a humanizing of both. Does that make sense?

Yeah, where does that come from in a society that is machista? Not just
Puetro Rican but our United States, the world. Where did that come from


Carlos Alejandro

Pam Sporn

Carlos Alejandro

that you are intentional about deconstructing male chauvinism,
deconstructing machismo?

That came through education, political education, in concientizacion, that
we began to see in the real, Lolita Lebron led, led the attack on the
Congress. It was Lolita Lebron was the leader. It's going back and then
kind of paying attention to how our history was told to us. The my mother,
was not a passive woman. She was 4 foot 10, he was a strong woman. So
my image of a Puerto Rican woman is a woman who stands up and if she
has to fight, she will fight. When I went to Brooklyn College I saw, I mean
and machismo was an issue, but it was an issue that there was a foundation
to fight against it because the main thing that we were focusing on was
liberation of our people, the freeing of our minds transformation in
whatever form that would take. So it was people coming in and educating
and this was happening in political organizations, like the Young Lords, it
was happening in the Black Panther Party, it was happening all over.
There was in a paying of, the paying of attention to the roles that people
have been typecast, that a woman can't fight, you know. They shouldn't be
fighting, yet we look at the Kurds and the women in the Kurds are
amazing. And when I went to Nicaragua during the Civil War there, and I
saw women with AK-47s fighting for their liberation, right, so if you think
that life takes us on that journey, where you say, look, this is not right.
This is not the way that it should go. And we were able to work that out in
Brooklyn College I think successfully. If you look at it over an extended
period of time, and I'm sure there were ebbs and flows in this, but
anything that led to oppression we confronted. There were images, there's
perceptions of gays and lesbians that people would have at different
points. Yet, the gay and lesbian community at Brooklyn College was, were
in the struggle. So there was an organic way to deal with people's
prejudice and ideas because we were struggling together. When you
struggle side by side with someone, you change each other, it's impossible
not to be transformed by others who are involved in a struggle with you.
You learn, you learn about yourself, you get, if you're open enough, you
get to see the world through their eyes, that's the blessing of Brooklyn
College, that so many people were able to speak, they were able to, you
know, we created a context where people would speak unapologetically,
that means that people would say things that normally they wouldn't say
and they would say because they wanted to give a gift so that we can
change, so that we can grow.

What has been the... what did you major in by the way?

Thad a duel a major Political Science and Puerto Rican studies, minored in
history and English.


Pam Sporn

Carlos Alejandro

Tami Gold

And what has been the lasting impact on your life of being involved in the
Puerto Studies Department and the struggle to defend it?

What is the impact that it has had on me? (background question).

[00:39:40]

The impact has been everywhere that I have gone in terms of my work,
I'm involved in ministry. So as a Chaplain at Rikers Island, New York
City Department of Corrections, I worked at the Central Punitive
Segregation unit and at the Tombs, where racial tension and conflict, the
system needs a certain level of tension. So inmate on inmate tension, so
that the inmates do not unite to fight over food, like quality of food, or to
fight the system to say respect our women, our wives when they come in
to visit us, things like that. It gave me a strong sense of justice, a strong
sense of justice. So for example, when a Latino inmate would come into
jail, and they were vulnerable, I had relationships with different ethnic
groups and I would say not this one. Not this one, this person is not
shouldn't be here. I'd say, "cover him watch his back." It allowed me to
learn how to defuse how do you defuse the situation when you have
African Americans and Latinos about to take each other out? My heart is
both Black and Puerto Rican. So when they placed me in that jail at Rikers
Island, they placed the right person because I related well to the African
American community as well as to the Puerto Rican community and was
able to bring reconciliation and kind of diffuse potential violence, which
would go really bad at Rikers Island. In my field as a Chaplain and as a
trainer of Chaplains, culture and race is also an issue. I am one of maybe
10 Latinos in the country that are certified to train other Chaplains. It's a
disgrace in terms of the numbers. Brooklyn College gave me the wisdom,
the knowledge and the understanding to address injustice anywhere that I
go. So if I sit at a table, and I see that there's 10 White people at this table,
this this ministry, professional Chaplains and Counselors, and I'm the only
man of color I say, well, what's wrong with this picture? And why are we
not reaching out to these different communities, to bring in Imams to bring
in persons from diverse religious and cultural traditions and actually I'm
known for it, that's what I do in the world, that's how I am. I've been
recruited to serve on the Board of a hospital in Florida. And they are
looking specifically at how to deal with race and culture because this
particular group had been all White all of the years and the community
now is demanding something else. All of that for me as I was driving, I
said comes from Brooklyn College. This is where we saw it, this is where
we saw the, I saw the importance of being able to defend the right of
everybody to sit at the table. Essentially, that's what we're talking about.
Do we have the right to sit at anyone's table at any time as an equal, and
we're still struggling with that in this country.

Were you arrested at Brooklyn College?


Carlos Alejandro

Pam Sporn

Carlos Alejandro

I was arrested twice in Brooklyn College as part of the BC 44 and I was
beaten and arrested in January 12, 1978 with a professor and another
student, I required 20 stitches to close the wound to my head. We were
beaten, we were stomped and the head of security at Brooklyn College at
the time, as I was handcuffed behind my back on the ground, he came and
kicked me in my chest. So I've had two experiences. The BBC 44 was
handled well. This other one is where security called the police. So what,
it's important to understand is that, that spring, that winter/spring, January
12, 1978, a professor, myself and another student are beaten and arrested
by police, brutally beaten by police. A few months later, in May 3rd 1978,
you see the photographs of the police riot that took place at Brooklyn
College. So that whole semester was marked by a lot of a struggle
intensity and violence, violence against the Black and the Puerto Rican
community on the campus.

What were those about? We know that we see the BC 44 had to do with
fighting for the right to choose who you you wanted to be the chair of the
Puerto Rican Studies Department. What was the backstory? What was the
struggle with that in 1978?

The backstory is we again, we were still struggling to keep Open
Admissions at Brooklyn College. They were instituting, I think they were
called retention exams or something like, that if you had to pass an exam.
But the, so Brooklyn College the struggle never ceased. It's like they, I
have a flyer there where it tells you almost month by month, what was
going, how it was there, the pacing. So if there's a meeting in the Student
Government, something might erupt there because there was a backlash
about the Black and Puerto Rican protest.

[00:45:00]

Anything can, from classrooms students having like this one woman and
she was Puerto Rican who had trouble in the dance department because
her body didn't fit the European model and they would say there was
something wrong with her dancing. Similar to someone in the news
recently, a young woman who was on a swimming team, and was
disqualified because the bathing suit showed too much of her rear. But it
was a cultural thing because she was larger because she was a person of
color. So it was the same thing this that this young woman was a dancer at
the Dance Department of Brooklyn College, faced discrimination in
classroom, one of the professors because she wasn't able to do something
with her body. These were micro aggressions and they were happening all
the time, it really was happening in class. Now, that doesn't mean every
class, every professor was that way. We had outstanding professors there.
It made it possible for us to struggle, the fact that there were other people
involved.


Tami Gold

Carlos Alejandro

Another question, I came out of the same time, were you scared? I used to
get scared during some demonstrations that resulted in police violence.
When we (...) hospital, I could just remember. Having kids with me,
having to hide behind subway entrances. Were you ever scared because
you've been beaten, you’d arrested? How did you react emotionally during
this time?

That's a great question. In terms of my emotional what the impact that it
had emotionally is that it took a toll. Self care, we were not speaking of
self care at the time. You know, what do you do for fun if...it was not
about that. The curious thing in responding to this is that I was injured, it
was January, where I was injured by police requiring 20 stitches. A few
months later in May I'm in that building in Whitehead hall in that takeover
jumping out of the building out of the second floor landing with others. I
questioned myself, as I was driving in, how could I have done that I was
blown away as, I couldn't have been, I couldn't have been in that building
doing that at the time because I had just been injured. Right, and you
know, the only thing that came from me is that it was the trauma. I think I
was traumatized. It was a trauma. The driveness that you're, you know,
you have to keep pushing you keep pushing no matter what. Is fear in the
mix? Absolutely, positively fear is in the mix. The thing is that in order to
have courage, you must feel fear. Right? Without fear, how can you be
courageous? So the fear actually served as a catalyst as something that
moved me and I'm sure it moved other people towards taking something
that looked really courageous. But it came understanding that everything
comes at a price. Everything comes at a price. When I see young people
struggling now like involved in social justice struggles, I pray for their self
care, because they can survive it physically, but my concern is can they
survive it spiritually and emotionally. And it seems to me that is this day
and age, I'm seeing the Black Lives Matters movement, they have
Chaplains, they have people who are addressing the spiritual care needs of
activists. Activists always want to serve other people. We don't do well
with self care. And I think it's a mistake. It's a mistake for us not to care
for our mental health, our emotional and our physical health. It's a
mistake. All of us were afraid. All of us were afraid because we knew that
someone can get hurt and hurt really badly. Some received death threats
from other people. It was one of the more difficult times. When you're
trying to get to class, and you have to watch your back to make sure that
no one is going to harm you. I remember speaking to a professor, Political
Science professor who wanted to talk to me after the class. And as he's
talking to me, he notices that I keep, because it was change of class, he's
notices that I that I'm kind of aware of what's behind me, he said, I'm
talking to you and you're not even listening to me! I said, I am listening to
you. I'm watching my back. I can't talk to you here. Can we go someplace
else? So it was there fear. Yes, there was fear. You know, when you go to


Tami Gold

Carlos Alejandro

a demonstration all of us I remember the women would take off their
earrings. In that photograph there, there's a young woman who had been
beaten by police, but she went back to protest wearing a helmet. So fear.
Yeah, I think that at Brooklyn College we became intimate friends with
fear and we learned that fear is not power. That fear is an impulse, that
something, an energy that can lead you to do something courageous and
righteous.

[00:50:03]
...S0 you, you took over the building and tell us a actual story of how did
it operate inside?

When we went into the building, the first thing we had to do was clear
people from the building. That means students and/or professors and we
had to encourage them to leave the building we take, and we did it
basically, I would use the term professionally. We worked professionally.
There was more resistance in the, in the history department,
understandably so because these were the World War II veterans and
Korean War veterans. So you would understand, ‘what are you guys
doing?’ We said, this is what we're doing, so we escorted them out, we
they locked their offices, blah, blah, blah.

Inside, we had I would say between 25 maybe 30 people occupying the
building and we divide it up to close the doors. We used belts, we use
sticks in between the doorknobs in order to keep the police from getting to
us. To return to the theme of fear, we did notice when they, we did, you
know our security people noticed that the police had broken into the
building. So at one point they were chasing us while we were in the
building. And as we went from one area to another, that's when we took
off belts and tied doors and put chairs up to slow them down. In the album
that I brought, right next to Whitehead Hall, there's a, connecting to the
library, there's a landing on the second floor. And you'll see men and
women about maybe 10, at the moment men and women, looking over. It
was their only way out of the building. And at one point the, in order to
get because the police were under them right underneath them, in this
glass window, this window and the window had to be broken in order to
get the cops away. So someone broke the window reached over shattered
the window and then the cops had to retreat. As the police retreated the
persons were able to jump off the, off the roof. And there’s photographs of
that, so all of this affects how someone views the world right? It impacts
how you see law enforcement how you see justice, and if anything, it
created more activists. It was an outrage. It was an absolute outrage to see
what they were doing. And the, yeah fear, we were afraid, but we went
anyway. "Nos quitaron tanto que nos quitaron el medio." That's what it
was. We're gonna do it anyway. And we did it and I feel proud of my
people. I feel proud of the Black and the Puerto Rican community, that we


Tami Gold

Carlos Alejandro

Pam Sporn

Carlos Alejandro

Pam sPorn

have the courage at the time and still do. Now with others to turn things
around. We don't have to accept things. That's what we learned at
Brooklyn College. We don't have to accept something because they say
this is the way that it is. Where I work, things come up too that deal with
race and culture and I operate in the same way. The fact that they say it
has to be this way does not mean that we accept it, that we have an
obligation an ethical and a moral obligation to stand against injustice. I run
into people from Brooklyn College periodically. And it seems to be that
almost everyone is involved in something that empowers other people that
they take a stand against, injustice. It doesn't matter where they are. It
could be the MTA. It can be in the Board of ED. Law enforcement,
Corrections. It was a formation that has impacted me for my whole life.

When did you find out in your soul, in your guts that you were Puerto
Rican?

When this guy, I don't know if I told you that, Marty was a member of the
Black Panther Party, when he said, "You is a Black man little brother." I
realized that I was Black man, is that was the question? When did I
realized that I was Black?

When I realized that it was Puerto Rican was when that man said to me,
"you're a Black man, little brother". I said, "get outta here im Puerto
Rican." He said, "you is Black man." what he set in motion was a search
for me to understand what went into being Puerto Rican. That's why I
attribute it to him. So if I am Black, that means that when my friends when
I was younger, that the friends would say that they're going down south
for vacation that I come south from the south, too but its from really south
in another country. So it helped me to celebrate the African-ness that, the
blood that flows through my veins, that I was able to embrace it and do it
boldly. And the term here is unapologetically. Because sometimes we half
step when we do things. This brother shared a powerful lesson for me.
And it opened up a whole world so then I learned about the Caciques
about Tainos and about all of these things in a more richer way. I come to
Brooklyn College and there's a whole department dedicated to the
education of the Puerto Rican people and Puerto Rican history, culture,
etc.

[00:55:12]
Ihave Question about the faculty members, the professors, the three
professors who were arrested with the students who were they?

Tony Nadal, Antonio Nadal. Sonia Nieto, and I can't remember the third
person.

Where they all Puerto Rican?


Carlos Alejandro
Pam Sporn

Carlos Alejandro

Pam Sporn

Carlos Alejandro

Tami Gold

Carlos Alejandro

Oh, no, no, no. Sonia was Espanola.
Oh, okay. And the third was Latina or Latino?

There would be a Latino, it would have been someone in the department
(background audio).

Do you have thoughts about the impact that the struggle at Brooklyn
College had on CUNY as a whole?

I'm not sure I can explore that with any, because it's just been a lifetime
since I've been here and I haven't followed that. I would imagine because
we did go to other, to help in the protest that the impact is similar to what
we've done because they were just as active as we were, they were just as
active.

You talk about self care, and about there were some, losses? No,
sacrifices, what do you mean by that? Was anyone hurt? Did anyone
suffer physically? Did anyone have, just the whole 9 yards.

Imagine, the way that I can answer that in terms of the impact around
suffering in the struggle, like the impact that it had. It's a very important
thing because we're called to sacrifice I mean, we struggled. Right? So we
were involved in struggle, and it began to take a toll in this way if you're
not sleeping, well, right. Simple thing. If you're always in meetings, plus
you're working and going to school, your energy is depleted. I would say
that there was problems with some people with alcohol, precisely because
of the lack of self care, the taking the time out. The hypertension, you
name it. I would say that we suffered because of the lack of the spiritual
emotional care that we all needed. It's always good to, it feels good to
struggle. But life can’t just be struggling. You can't just be involved in the
movement to change things, it has to be balanced. We have to celebrate
life while we're fighting to change it and I found with myself that one of
the things that I did not do well, as an activist was to take care of myself. I
stopped working out, I stopped doing a lot of things because I was fully
immersed in struggling against injustice. My greatest concern now as a
man in my 60s and as a grandfather is that the young people, like my
granddaughters when they struggle and my daughter when she did, is that
they take care of themselves. That the fact is we're not being called to be,
climb up on a cross and be crucified. We're called to struggle and survive
the struggle. And that means that we have to survive it physically well, but
also emotionally and psychologically, we have to. That's the value of it.
We've lost, people they drop out of school, were never able to regroup.
Some persons, for example, received so many low grades that they were


not able to return. I was on an extended program because I started in '72,
and didn't graduate officially until 1980. Right? Now, was I taking classes
all that time? Absolutely not. But still, I feel that I lost a few years and
actually, not really that long ago, I was asking myself, did I make a
mistake when I struggled at Brooklyn College? What could I have done
differently? I could have completed two or three PhDs by, with all that I
had done in Brooklyn College, and I wrestled with myself, I wrestled, I
challenged myself to look at this. And what I came up with is that the
education that I received in the struggle is so valuable is worth anything
that I might have received, formerly, academically. And that truth has
guided me and continues to guide me because I've completed two Masters
since then, and I'm completing a doctorate as we speak. So the thing of
education once it's inside of you, it'll stay there. I would encourage those
who are involved in social justice struggles, take care of yourselves, take
care of your family, reach out to each other. Right? We're called to sacrif-
to protest- yes to protest. Sometimes you can get hurt, you get arrested all
of that. But it's over the long run. It's over the long haul, that if you want
to struggle for the rest of your life in a competent, effective way, self-care
has to be taken. It has to be, we have to know how to pray if you're so
inclined. We have to know how to have recreation, how to have fun. I
don't remember going to a ball game when I was at Brooklyn College. I
wrestled at Brooklyn College and then stop wrestling when I got more
involved in politics. So I think it's a mistake that we make if we don't tell
other generation, the next generations, maintain that balance so that your
whole life is one of struggling for justice in an authentic way.

[End of recorded material at 00:50:10]