NEW YORK CITY, August 23 — Chanting “Jobs center is a phony, all their talk is baloney,” comrades and friends joined once again with community forces to picket Columbia University’s (CU) bogus Employment Information Center. The struggle against Columbia’s racist takeover of the surrounding Harlem community sharpened both in militancy and political understanding with demands that the University immediately hire 2,000 Harlem residents to replace the jobs destroyed by expansion.
Other demands include not building the planned Level 3 biohazard lab right under 125th St. and maintaining affordable neighborhood housing. PLP’s base has grown enough to start new chants that expand the politics of this struggle: “ExxonMobil, Columbia U, took Iraq and Harlem too,” and “Racist Bollinger you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.” (Bollinger is Columbia’s president.)
In conversations and at meetings since May Day, we have been struggling against liberal ideas within the community coalition that has fought CU for years. After betrayals by the local politicians and the courts, many now see that building a movement from the bottom up is what is needed. Party members are also emphasizing that CU is run by a board composed of 75% ruling-class bankers whose wars for oil and gas are murdering thousands worldwide and lead to the racist cuts and unemployment here that hasten sickness and death for our sisters and brothers in Harlem.
We are planning to step up the attack on CU on September 24 by marching from the Employment Center, through the neighboring housing project, to the campus and to Bollinger’s mansion, which cost $23 million to renovate. We will end with a picnic in Morningside Park to commemorate the victory of students, workers and community residents against Columbia’s plan to build a gym there in 1968.
Making CHALLENGE sales a central part of expanding this struggle will help us win workers and students to the vital strategic goal of communist revolution.