The MORALES / SHAKUR Community Center needs volunteers

[Jacuma]

MORALES/SHAKUR CENTER UPDATE

YOUNGBLOODS, ELDERS AND FRIENDS:

Yesterday about 80 students and several elders attended a forum on the
history of the GUILLERMO MORALES / ASSATA SHAKUR COMMUNITY AND STUDENT
CENTER at Harlem University (a/k/a CCNY) and to give students returning
to classes an overview of the controversy over the Community Center's
name. The panelists included ABIODUN OYEWOLE of the Last Poets,
Esperanza Martel, a Puerto Rican activist and former City College
faculty member who was purged for supporting student activists, and
myself.

City Council member Charles Barron has called for a press conference on
Thursday, February 8th at 1 PM outside the MORALES / SHAKUR COMMUNITY
CENTER located in room 3/201 in the North Academic Center (NAC Building)
at City College.

Council Member Barron has been outspoken in his support of the right of
community members and students to name the Community Center in honor of
GUILLERMO MORALES and ASSATA SHAKUR and he has condemned the decision by
CUNY to remove the sign bearing the name of the Community Center from
the room's entrance. Mr. Barron has called for the sign to be restored
and for CUNY to officially designate the room in honor of GUILLERMO and
ASSATA.

The controversy over the name of the Community Center erupted in
December after the New York Daily News published a prominent article and
editorial condemning the decision to name the Community Center in honor
of GUILLERMO MORALES and ASSATA SHAKUR, two former City College student
activists who live in Cuba where they have been granted political
asylum. A day after the Daily News article was published the City
College administration removed the sign bearing Guillermo and ASSATA’S
names from the entrance of the Community Center and threatened students
who work at the Community Center with disciplinary action if they
replaced the sign.

Yesterday's panel was organized by the students working at the Community
Center to introduce City College students to the history of the Center
that was founded in 1989 and the importance of the decision to name the
Center in honor of GUILLERMO and ASSATA.

I spoke on Guillermo Morales' role as one of the leaders of the historic
1969 student strike that forced CUNY to implement Open Admissions and to
establish departments and programs in ethnic studies. Esperanza spoke on
the Puerto Rican independence movement which Guillermo was a part of and
of the importance of supporting freedom fighters held as political
prisoners in the United States for participation in the movements for
Black Liberation, Puerto Rican independence and Native American
sovereignty. ABIODUN recited poetry and spoke of his experiences with
ASSATA and the importance of opposing the terrorism being perpetrated by
the U.S. government.

Students at the forum peppered the panel with questions and displayed
enthusiastic interest in supporting the ongoing work of the MORALES /
SHAKUR Community Center and defending work and the name of the Community
Center.

Yesterday's panel was ably moderated by Hank Williams, a CUNY Graduate
Student and long time activist at the Community Center and CUNY graduate
student David King.

The MORALES / SHAKUR Community Center needs volunteers to help in the
Center's projects and activities, including the campaign to save the
Community Center.

The MORALES / SHAKUR Center is located in room 3/201 in the NAC Building
at City College at 137th Street at either Convent of Amsterdam Avenues.

The phone number is 212-650-5008.

For information about the press conference contact Charles Barron's
office at 212-788-6957 or 718-649-9495.

Hands off ASSATA and GUILLERMO!
Hands off the Community Center!
Ronald B. McGuire

[nattyreb]

Socialism and Liberation - Feb, 2997 issue
http://socialismandliberation.org/mag/index.php?aid=751

Assata Shakur: a woman warrior

By Alina Serrano


In December 2006, a gain won 17 years ago by City University of New Yorks
City College students came under sudden attack. A right-wing media campaign
prompted CUNY chancellor Matthew Goldstein and the college's administration
to demand that students take down the sign above the student center. The
center had been named the Guillermo Morales/Assata Shakur Community and
Student Center in the wake of massive 1989 protests against tuition
increases.

Morales and Shakur were both City College students in the 1960s. Morales is
a Puerto Rican revolutionary and active in the Armed Forces for National
Liberation (FALN), a group fighting for Puerto Ricos independence and
liberation. Shakur was a member of the Black Panther Party and later the
Black Liberation Army. Both are currently living as political exiles in
Cuba.

The media campaign against the Morales/Shakur Center was carefully timed.
It opened up only days after New York City cops shot and killed 23-year-old
Sean Bell in a hail of 50 bullets. It was a deliberate attempt to divert
public attention from the cop murder.

But the campaign also became an opportunity for todays students to learn
about a great revolutionary Black woman hero.

Assata Shakur was born JoAnne Chesimard. She took the name Assata, meaning
she who struggles, and Shakur, meaning the thankful one. She became
politically active as a student at CUNYs Manhattan Community College and
later at City College.

She joined the Black Panther Party, where she worked with the Harlem
office. In her autobiography, she describes the challenge of doing
revolutionary work -- she set up a Saturday liberation school for young
people -- in the midst of severe police repression and the FBIs
counter-intelligence program COINTELPRO.

After she left the Panthers, she began working with the underground Black
Liberation Army. "I wasn't one who believed that we should wait until our
political struggle had reached a high point before we began to organize the
underground," she wrote.

In the course of that work, Shakur was arrested on a series of charges
ranging from robbery to attempted murder. Each time she was acquitted.
But in 1973, she was arrested in an incident on the New Jersey Turnpike in
which a cop was killed. She was shot. One of her comrades, Zayd Shakur, was
killed and the other, Sundiata Acoli, was sentenced to prison for the
confrontation. He was recently denied parole for another 20 years.

Shakur charges that she and her co-defendants "were convicted [of killing
the cop] in the news media way before our trials." During the highway
confrontation, later forensics investigation proved that she was shot in
the back while her hands were raised, and evidence showed that she did not
fire a gun.

Shakur currently lives in Cuba as an exile. In 1979, supporters helped her
to escape from prison. In 1986, she was given asylum in Cuba, where she
continues to fight for equality, freedom and revolution for the Black and
Latino masses and all the working class.

Assata Shakur is a woman warrior who has worked and sacrificed tirelessly
in the struggle. She belongs in the legacy of African American
abolitionists like Harriet Tubman, who worked to free hundreds of slaves,
and Ida B. Wells, who fought for Black people's rights and women's rights.

Throughout the history of the African American people's struggles, women
heroes have shown that the only way to a better life was to organize and
fight in a disciplined way. Shakur acted with great dignity and courage
when she stood up to federal government and state repression throughout her
trials. She would very likely not be alive and in Cuba if it were not for
the well-organized communities that respected her work.

To this day, Shakur needs the support of the progressive movement in the
United States. The right-wing campaign at City College is part of a larger,
well-organized effort to recapture her. In 2005, she was classified as a
domestic terrorist by the U.S. government and had a $1 million bounty put
on her head.

Assata has said, "All I represent is just another slave that they want to
bring back to the plantation. Well, I might be a slave, but I will go to my
grave a rebellious slave."

More information on the campaign to defend Assata Shakur can be found at
http://www.handsoffassata.org.

[Alina Serrano is a student at City College of the
City University of New York.]

Articles may be reprinted with credit to Socialism and Liberation magazine.

[DJ RBG]

MORALES/SHAKUR SIGN RESTORED
Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2007 22:51:02 -0500

This afternoon City Councilmember Charles Barron hung a sign saying "Guillermo
Morales/Assata Shakur Community And Student Center" over the entrance to Room
3-201 in the NAC Building on the City College campus.

At a press conference in front of the Morales/Shakur Center, Councilmember
Barron
was joined by Father Luis Barrios who blessed the Community Center and
rededicated the Community Center to continuing its work.

On the night of December 13th officials of CUNY and City College removed the
original sign proclaiming the name of the Community Center after the New York
Daily News published a front page article and an editorial demanding that CUNY
remove the sign, which had hung over the Community Center since 1990.

Councilmember Barron and Father Barrios both pledged to come back to City
College
to replace the sign again if the college administration removed the sign Charles
Barron hung yesterday. They were joined at the press conference by Black Studies
Professor Leonard Jeffries, former Black Studies adjunct Professor James Small,
former CCNY adjunct education Professor Jeanne Olivierre, Professor Bill Crain
and Professor Walter Daum.

Lat this evening students at the Community Center reported that additional peace
officers have been stationed near the Community Center and it appears that the
peace officers are preparing to remove the sign.

The students have asked supporters to call the Community Center at 212-650-5008
tomorrow after 10 AM for updated information.
In solidarity,

[nattyreb]

**STANDING OVATION!!** Councilman Barron (former BPP) always excites me when he is involved with any movement for justice, he is BOLD, and is willing to TEACH STRUGGLE to young folx!! In this student movement, he has taken the lead in teaching (not berating) these young folx' movement by very simply REPLACING THE SIGN. i don't know if the students had done this b4, but by him doing this, has illustrated the simple fact of saying "NO" is demonstrated by just putting up another sign! (like in Chicago, Fred Hampton, Jr., just covered the existing sign with "Fred Hampton Way" when they denied him the courtesy of renaming the street after his father).

There should be a roomful of signs at CCNY ready to replace every single day!! Then when they send the pigs round to roust the students or lock down the bldg., you have the press conferences, call to Action to free those particular students, etc., but you gotta FIGHT BACK with DEFIANCE of their b.s. practices, PARTICULARLY since they seized the time to renew their ATTACK on SIS ASSATA (those dirty bastards!!!) in their newspapers. And this is NOT a put-down of those students righteous activism!

Right on for the posting, it was very much needed!!

Originally Posted by DJ RBG

MORALES/SHAKUR SIGN RESTORED
Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2007 22:51:02 -0500

This afternoon City Councilmember Charles Barron hung a sign saying "Guillermo
Morales/Assata Shakur Community And Student Center" over the entrance to Room
3-201 in the NAC Building on the City College campus.

At a press conference in front of the Morales/Shakur Center, Councilmember
Barron
was joined by Father Luis Barrios who blessed the Community Center and
rededicated the Community Center to continuing its work.

On the night of December 13th officials of CUNY and City College removed the
original sign proclaiming the name of the Community Center after the New York
Daily News published a front page article and an editorial demanding that CUNY
remove the sign, which had hung over the Community Center since 1990.

Councilmember Barron and Father Barrios both pledged to come back to City
College
to replace the sign again if the college administration removed the sign Charles
Barron hung yesterday. They were joined at the press conference by Black Studies
Professor Leonard Jeffries, former Black Studies adjunct Professor James Small,
former CCNY adjunct education Professor Jeanne Olivierre, Professor Bill Crain
and Professor Walter Daum.

Lat this evening students at the Community Center reported that additional peace
officers have been stationed near the Community Center and it appears that the
peace officers are preparing to remove the sign.

The students have asked supporters to call the Community Center at 212-650-5008
tomorrow after 10 AM for updated information.
In solidarity,