Petraeus, Pathways, Jobs — Same Enemy, Same Fight

NEW YORK CITY, September 30 — Nearly 400 workers and students rallied in front of the Board of Trustees meeting at Baruch College today. We attacked our local enemy, the trustees who are responsible for hiring general David Petraeus, raising students’ tuition, decreasing services on campus, and forcing professors and staff to work to petty wages and under fascistic control of their departments and curriculum.
The Professional Staff Congress (PSC) union for the workers of the City University of New York (CUNY) had called a protest, demanding the trustees respond to the no-confidence in Pathways and the workers’ lack of a contract for the past three years. Pathways is the racist common core of this public university system that went into effect this semester. It is an assembly-line style curriculum that limits what professors can teach, lowers the standards for these working-class students, saves the administration loads of money. Pathways is a crisis-ridden curriculum for a system in crisis.
Over 60 protesters were inside the trustees meeting, calling them out on their anti-worker agenda. They chanted, “A good contract makes a good education.” The Trustees are bankers, former counterintelligence FBI agents, former presidents of multinational corporations, members of the ruling-class think tanks such as Council on Foreign Relations, corporate lawyers, politicians who control labor forces, and more minions who have international ties for the U.S. imperialists.
Meanwhile, protesters picketed outside, drawing attention from passers-by and other students getting out of class. We need to make the connection that these local bosses are tools for imperialism. Our decision on uniting with our professors and attacking the trustees while still having some forces hound Dead Squad Petraeus at the Honors College was a step in that direction.
We also need to struggle for our friends to see the limits of unions as the negotiator of exploitation. They chanted,

Who’s got the power? We Got the Power!
What kind of power? Union Power!

Some student PL’ers tried to change the chant to “workers power!” but without much success. Our professors and staff need more than just a good contract. We need political control of our own labor. For that we need to build a communist movement. Progressive Labor Party is doing just that. We have a long way to go in building a worker-student alliance that even machine guns can’t break.

See Petraeus Run

It was announced this afternoon that CUNY has just moved war criminal Petraeus’s seminar from the Macaulay Honors College building to 555 W 57 St, a location with increased security. The new location provides underground garages so racist Petraeus can arrive and leave without being detected.
As CHALLENGE reported (10/2), militant students with faculty support, confronted war criminal and former CIA Director Petraeus in the street every Monday, charging him with genocide.  On the evening of last Tuesday, September 17, NYPD attacked and brutalized six students, who have come to be known as the CUNY 6 (see box on the left).
We were not intimidated by this attack!  The following Monday, over 150 students and workers came out! The cops sealed off the entire residential block from vehicular traffic. NYPD brought out their most muscular cops, lined them up directly in front of the protestors. The thugs were ready to go, with their packets of plastic handcuffs hanging off their waists. Not counting the cops waiting at the street corners, inside the building, and around the block, there were 30 thugs in blue failing miserably to intimidate us.
Shortly after 5 PM, a line of cops pressed up against the pen and contained all the demonstrators — we were not “arrested” but we were in a “frozen zone.”  Leaving his class early, bloody racist Petraeus came out and stepped into an SUV coming down the block going the wrong way on the a one-way street. Students led a march out of the pens and off to Columbus Circle, chanting:

1,2,3,4 — Defeat U.S. Imperialist War!
5,6,7,8 — Petraeus Out, We Can’t Wait!

Slowly but surely, a working relationship is being developed between students and professors and staff.  PL’ers at CUNY have developed concrete plans to build an anti-imperialist movement through film showings and teach-ins on campuses throughout the city. They will build local campaigns on their campuses through their mass organizations.