May 4, 2012

May 2nd protest at Brooklyn College

Sign the Petition at Takebackbrooklyn.wordpress.com to demand charges be dropped for trying to meet with the Administration along with an end to Tuition Hikes and Over-securitazation of our schools.

From the video description:
On May 2nd, 2012, peaceful students and faculty experienced unnecessary brutality on the Brooklyn College campus. Brooklyn College President Karen Gould ordered for students to be violently removed by campus security from outside of her office in a main academic building; two students were wrongly arrested, spent a night in jail, and face unsubstantiated charges.

Over the next five years, students face a $1,500 tuition increase, and continuous cuts to student services and a continuation of increased securitization on CUNY Campuses-- from the NYPD systematic spying on Muslim Student Associations, to Stop and Frisk racial profiling policies on and off our campuses, to attacks by security guards on peaceful students such as during the Board of Trustees Meeting on November 21st, 2011 at Baruch College. We refuse to allow this to become the future of CUNY.

Petition: To Chancellor Goldstein, President Karen Gould of Brooklyn College and other CUNY Administration, Under your leadership, Chancellor Goldstein, students have seen our tuition dollars diverted from programs that support our needs as student to fund increased securitization of CUNY campuses.

We refuse to pay ever increasing tuition rates for decreasing student services. We refuse to watch our tuition money used to fund campus security measures that target students of color and those exercising their right to freedom of speech. We demand the repeal of NYSUNY2020 Tuition Hikes and an end to the securitization of the City University of New York.


While the video title is "Police use excessive force against peaceful student protesters at Brooklyn College" it doesn't appear that that was the case- unless there were injuries that I am not aware of. I think it's important not to overblow police violence, because when it actually happens, we end up with a "boy who cried wolf" situation.

That said, the police presence certainly escalated things from a bunch of kids sitting down in a hallway, into a frenzied mass. From a tactical standpoint, the police did a really lousy job handling this situation.

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