Dear Graduate Center Colleagues –
On April 1st, Andrew Cuomo, Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Carl Heastie will emerge from a backroom in Albany, and CUNY will have a budget for the next year. We have nine days left to intervene in this process.
The recent email from the top officers of the union admonishing some 7k or Strike activists was, in our view, a distraction from the task at hand. If a statement on 7KoS was necessary for legal reasons, the tone and timing of the email were not.
We cannot let the tone, timing, or our own frustrations divert our attention from what is most important at this critical juncture. Right now, we need to organize, organize, organize.There’s a Grade In at Cuomo’s office on March 29th, organized by rank and file activists from SUNY-UUP. This action complements other grade ins across our university, where adjuncts are making their unpaid and undervalued labor visible to the CUNY community. There’s a PSC-wide action on April 11thwhich will undoubtedly be both a response to the April 1st budget, and a push to legislators for more adjunct money before the legislative cycle ends in June. And, every single person reading this email can take 2 minutes to call Brad Hoylman (212-633-8052), the state senator whose district includes the Graduate Center: tell him about 7k, tell him how the decline in state funding for CUNY affects you and your students, and ask him to tell Andrea Stewart-Cousins that his constituents will be irate if she emerges on April 1st without full funding for our system.
In our chapter we have seen first-hand how the fight for 7k is galvanizing our members, transforming them into activists, and thereby making our union stronger. If you’re connected to the fight through the Committee for Adjuncts and Part-timers at PSC Central, through the GC Chapter, or through 7KoS, we want and welcome your power and energy. Because of the enormity of our collective struggle and the callous intransigence of our foes, the only way we will win is by supporting one another and by working together.
Solidarity and power,
Luke Elliott-Negri, PSC-GC Chapter Chair
Maya Harakawa, PSC-GC Chapter Vice-Chair
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