CUNY Adjunct Project in Action

Jamila Hammami, Co-Organizer for External & Labor Relations

On May 6th, 2020, Jamila Hammami, Co-Organizer for External & Labor Relations, on ART • WORK • PLACE: EMERGENCY SESSIONS II, VERA LIST CENTER FOR ART AND POLITICS from Vera List Center

An online emergency forum focusing on the impact of the current crisis on universities, debt organizing, and sharing resources, information, and ideas for solidarity, support, coalition forming, and strategies for going forward. The first hour of the online forum will feature five speakers on these issues; in the second hour, they will be joined by additional participants for breakout Q&A sessions. Hannah Appel, David Xu Borgonjon, Sami Disu, Jamila Hammami, Nicholas Mirzoef, Yuh-Line Niou, Sandy Nurse, Dean Spade, Naomi Zewde; chaired by Nikki Columbus.

Organized by Nikki Columbus and Michelle Millar Fisher, in collaboration with the Ph.D. Program in Art History (The Graduate Center, CUNY), The James Gallery/Center for the Humanities (The Graduate Center, CUNY), and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics (The New School), where it is sponsored in part by the Helen Shapiro Lectureship.

Welcome to FINALS WEEK at Revolutions per Minute. Inspired by the developing tuition strike at Columbia-Barnard and other actions around the country, we’re focusing on workers and students organizing on campus. Our live guest, David Duhalde, will speak on the history of the Young Democratic Socialists of America, DSA’s campus-oriented arm and a crucial part of our diverse socialist movement. We also hear from Michele of CUNY Adjuncts on their struggle against austerity and for a human-centered approach to graduate labor. Finally, farmers’ protests have made global headlines as millions of workers fight back against neoliberalism in India. We’ll end our show tonight with a brief interview with Jagpreet of Queens DSA on these massive protests and the governmental policies that provoked them.

To learn more about the Columbia-Barnard tuition strike, visit linktr.ee/columbiaydsa. Tired of austerity measures like those that threaten CUNY adjuncts? Tax the rich! This week, NYC-DSA, NYCC, Empire State Indivisible, and DSA chapters around NYS are throwing down to protect our communities from budget cuts. As part of their Tax The Rich week of action, their campaign is calling people across New York state to pressure Albany to Tax the Rich to fund our future. NY is facing a budget deficit of over 50 billion and we need Albany to act in the new year to pass over 50 billion in new taxes on the rich to save our state from catastrophe. Go to taxtherichnys.com to get involved.

Leanne Fann, Co-Organizer for Advocacy and Education

On April 15th, 2021, Leanne Fann, Co-Organizer for Advocacy and Education, presented our research on CUNY’s debt and its impact on students and workers.

The unveiling of CUNY’s institutional debt is the first step of grappling with its social and racial ramifications as we build an alternative vision of a People’s Budget and a People’s CUNY. The video of the event is available here (below). Here is an amazing jamboard with everyone’s visioning around people’s budget and what else we need to know. Here is our collection of 10 CUNY budget facts. Here’s a Nation article, featuring Zoe Hu, a CUNY English Ph.D. student, explaining how schools across America are subject to the debt regime. The presentation, budget facts, article, and jamboard are receipts and confirmation of what we already know from our lived experience of racist austerity.

The only way we can change this institutional logic is by building relationships across campuses and titles to fight for true democratic control of our public university system. Please use these to start conversations with your colleagues and community so we can take back control of our campuses.