When: Tuesday, December 15th, at 12 p.m.
Where: Hunter College, 68 Street and Lexington Ave. (take 6 train to 68 Street-Hunter College)
The City University of New York is set to invite another enemy of our people into the university. Not happy with inviting war criminal David Petraeus to teach a class in Macauley Honors College, and having let chief imperialist Barack Obama into Lehman College, the CUNY administration now plans to let Police Commissioner Bill Bratton walk inside our school as a guest of honor for the Responsible 100 Gala. Bill Bratton is the main proponent of broken windows policing which encourages the police to harass our people for petty violations. It is this policy which claimed the life of Eric Garner when David Pantaleo, working under Bratton’s directives, choke Garner to death. Bratton has the blood of our people in his hands.
NYPD displacing homeless men on 125th Lexington Avenue.
During this gala, they will be discussing and celebrating the City & State reports of 2015: including top trends, top-profile honorees, highlights from the entire year, and op-eds from leaders for business and government interests. It is an insult for the working class students who attend CUNY that ruling class would be talking about their accomplishments while their communities are being terrorized by the armed thugs of the state that Bratton commands.
The NYPD regularly stop and frisks, racially profiles, detains, and murders the oppressed communities of NYC. The police are never held accountable when they commit these crimes and they are brought to light in the media. Not only do these injustices occur in our communities, they also take place on our CUNY campuses. There are various accounts of the NYPD infiltrating Muslim student organizations, and arresting students on campus without charges.
In this courtroom sketch, defendants Noelle Velentzas, center left and Asia Siddiqui, center right, appear in federal court with their attorneys, Thursday, April 2, 2015, in New York. The two women were arrested Thursday on charges they plotted to wage violent jihad by building a homemade bomb and using it for a Boston Marathon-type terror attack. (AP Photo/Jane Rosenberg)
Bill Bratton, the head of this domestic army of +30,000 police terrorists, serves the interests of the bourgeoisie and their imperialist interests against the interests of working class people. He oversees everything that goes on in the NYPD: from their task force divisions, to the tactics they use to break down protests, infiltrate our campuses, and occupy our neighborhoods. Bill Bratton is an enemy of the people!
Proof of the broad reach of this police state is the way it operates in our university. CUNY security is armed by 100,000 bullets, 4,000 of which are hollow point bullets, as found by a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in the 90s. In a recent FOIA request filed this year, it was discovered that from 2002 to 2015, the number of firearms possessed by CUNY Public Safety has almost quadrupled from 26 in 2002 to 95 in 2015. Public Safety cited a “Public Safety Exception” when the FOIA requested to see what exact kind of weaponry CUNY possesses, saying it would endanger the lives of individual Public Safety officers. What is CUNY hiding?
The NYPD is not the only repressive apparatus who is targeting the people. There is no way an undercover police officer can infiltrate the Brooklyn College Muslim space for over a year without it partnering with CUNY. In 1992, CUNY administration signed a memorandum of understanding with the NYPD, saying in non-emergency situations, the NYPD has to request permission by the College president to operate on CUNY campuses. This means that when undercover police officers infiltrate Muslim Student Associations to surveil and entrap Muslim students, as they did in Baruch, John Jay, Hunter, Brooklyn, Kingsborough and other colleges, they had explicit approval and assistance from the CUNY administration. This means CUNY has a partnership with the NYPD and allows them to bring firearms on campus, harass students, as well as infiltrate our organizing spaces. The students of the Islamic Student Organization of Brooklyn College deserve a safe space without the NYPD infiltrating them for intel.
We must gather and show our absolute condemnation for CUNY to invite such an enemy of the people as Bill Bratton inside our university. We must stand with the communities that daily experience the violence of the NYPD’s murderous rule. We call on all students, professors and community members to this rally so that we can together condemn the many ways CUNY condones and promotes the oppression of our people.
Bill Bratton out of CUNY!
Down with the terrorist police state!
Fist Up! Fight Back!
Revolutionary Student Coordinating Committee 