The CUNY Rising Alliance and supporters will call on Mayor de Blasio and Gov. Cuomo to fully fund the City University of New York, which serves most of the city’s immigrant students and a half-million mostly low-income mostly black and Latino New Yorkers. 40% immigrant and 77% people of color, CUNY students are directly threatened by the racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy plans of President-elect Trump. Yet the university they depend on for a chance at the American Dream is expensive and vastly underfunded.

The Mayor and Governor should uphold their promises to protect at-risk New Yorkers by ending public disinvestment in CUNY and put the university firmly on a path to full funding.

CUNY Rising’s Student Bill of Rights and the new white paper that supports it call for $2 billion in City and State funding to support free and quality education for every CUNY student in a safe and modern learning environment.