Water Justice Phone Call

If you want to stop Hydrofracking, you can join this phone blitz. This bill will give us another 6 months to build the movement.

Action:

Tuesday 11/23 (and everyday until the Assembly passes the bill), please call and ask the Speaker, influential members of the Assembly and the Governor to attend the Special Session in Albany and “bring the Sweeney hydraulic fracturing moratorium bill A11443B to the Assembly floor for a vote and pass the bill!”

Essential calls: (If the phone lines get flooded, send an email or fax!)

• Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver 518-455-3791, or, 212-312-1420 or mailto: Speaker@assembly.state.ny.us
FAX HIM @ 518-455-5459

• Assemblyman Herman Farrell (Chair of Ways & Means Committee)
518-455-5491, or, 212-234-1430, or, 212-568-2828 or mailto: FarrelH@assembly.state.ny.us

• Your Assemblyperson!
Find Them Here

• Governor David Paterson
518-474-8390 or email Paterson here

Students Disrupt CUNY Board of Trustees Meeting

The CUNY Board of Trustees held a public meeting at Baruch College on 24th Street to vote on certain items such as raising Tuition. What began as a modest protest of twenty five people in front of the campus, escalated into a disruption of the meeting, police force to remove the students, and a rally of up to fifty people in the lobby, held back by police, but witnessed by many curious students.

Unlike a similar protest at a previous public hearing with the Board of Trustees, this protest caught the attention of students that were unaware that tuition was on the verge of going up 5 to 7%. Of course these increments often don't seem like much to the average student, but to others they are yet another addition to their own stuggle, and the protesters made it very clear that tuition has already gone up 44% since 2003.

Adjunct professors and professors fought as well. With the movement came Hunter, Lehman, La Guardia, and other schools. Alumni attended as well.

RALLY OUTSIDE THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES TOMORROW!

Tuition has gone up 44% since 2003.
Now the CUNY Administration is doing it to us again with a proposed
5% tuition increase for Spring 2011, and 2% tuition increase for Fall 2011

Rally outside the CUNY Board of Trustees meeting
Monday, November 22, 3:30 pm

Meet in the GC lobby on Monday at 2:45pm to walk to the rally together.

Rally location and details:
Baruch College, 55 Lexington Avenue (corner of 24th Street), Vertical Campus.
We will rally outside from 3:30 to 4:00, then go into the Board meeting,
which starts at 4:30 and is in room 14-220 of Baruch's Vertical Campus.

For more info, contact TheAdjunctProject@gmail.com

Raucous at CUNY Budget Hearing

Students brought noise to a public hearing with the board of trustees of CUNY on CUNY's budget and tuition today. Many of the testifiers were faculty, many of who supported the proposed 5% tuition hike for the sake of the quality of the education. Testifiers could hardly take this stance without much vocal opposition, such as chanting during the hearing in the filled room of some seventy people.

Patrick Krug, chairperson of NYPIRG and student at BC, won over the support of the vocal crowd by opposing the tuition hike, but also fought to keep TAP and PELL (financial aid) as well, which he said are unlikely to remain secure.

A representative of the Internationalist Club went further to demand no tuition at all and an abolition of the Board of Trustees.

Chancellor Goldstein, who has been a very controversial figure amongst student activists in the Education Movement, left the hearing before all the students could be allowed in, which was towards the end of the hearing. The students pointed this out to the board as the meeting ended in a vocal attack from students at the board, which generally left without comment.

Protest for Schools

From a March 4 NY email:

*** Please forward widely ***
47 Schools Slated for Potential Closure - Its time to stand up to the attack on public education

Protest Michael Bloomberg and Joel Klein`s puppet school board, the Panel for Educational Policy. This administration has overseen the school-closing assault and promoted other attacks on our public school system, including:

. Increasing the number of charter schools colocated with our public schools, causing increased overcrowding.
. Cutting school budgets while NOT providing the support schools need to help students.
. Promoting the use of standardized testing as the only method of evaluating students progress and teachers effectiveness.
. Threatening to publish teachers test scores, despite scandals exposing the tests as inaccurate and flawed.
. Increasing the number of quality teachers in the excessed ATR pool who are denied seniority rights.

Tired of the education deform onslaught against parents, students and teachers?

Make your voices heard! Join the Real Reformers. Protest the Panel for Education Policy. This will be the first of an ongoing series of actions to protest the disastrous educational policies that are trying to dismantle public education

Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Meet at 5:30pm
Brooklyn Technical High School
29 Fort Greene [Place] Brooklyn, NY 11217
[G train to Fulton (at So. Portland Av.); C to Lafayette Av. (at So. Portland Av.); Q, R or weekday B to Dekalb Av. (at Flatbush Av. Extension); 2, 3, 4, 5 to Nevins St. (nr. Fulton St.); D, N to Pacific St./Atlantic-Pacific (on 4th Av.); LIRR to Atlantic Ctr./Flatbush Av.; map: http://bit.ly/cInRhJ -t.]

Sponsored by the Grassroots Education Movement - http:// grassrootseducationmovement.blogspot.com

Come help plan our action -
Join our Schools Organizing Committee at the Skylight Diner on Thursday, Nov 11th at 5:00pm, 34th and 9th avenue.

Save CUNY... InYourClass.com

There will be a public hearing for CUNY on Monday, November 15th in which students are welcome to come, testify, listen, meet people. A obvious hot item on the calendar is the CUNY budget and any student can testify to their own situation or their general view of affordable education, et cetera. Anyone that wants to testify must call before 4:30 tomorrow to be on the list of speakers.
See the Face Book event here.

Also, a product of the CUNY Institute for Virtual Enterprise, InYourClass.com is a social network for CUNY students launched by City College Students last year. Check out this promotional video they have recently created.