Cindy Luk and the Charles B. Wang Community Health Center asks for our support!

Her email:

Hey guys!

I volunteer at the Charles B. Wang Community Health Center in Chinatown as part of the literacy team. We're a student-led group that promotes early childhood development in New York City's Chinatown through literacy events, book distributions, and book clubs. Our work is especially important because the parents generally are not financially well off and speak very little English so we try to alleviate the disadvantages these children face.

GOOD NEWS! We just found out that our team was selected as one of the 10 finalists from over 100 project submissions in a contest called “Power in Numbers” sponsored by Mountain Dew. The contest awards $10,000 grants to student-led projects that give back to the community.

WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT! The team with the most votes will be awarded $10,000 for their cause. You can vote by going to www.energizeyourcommunity.com or checking out our facebook event at http://www.facebook.com/inbox/?ref=mb#/event.php?eid=86448250733&ref=mf.. You may vote once a day until Wednesday, April 29th at 2:59 EST. It takes less than a minute and can really make a difference.

We are seeking 10,000 votes. That’s one dollar for every vote if you do the math. Statistics have demonstrated that children from low-income, vulnerable population families can hear as many as 20 million fewer words than their more affluent peers before the age of 4. Please help us as we work to bridge this gap.

Thanks for your support and REMEMBER TO VOTE!

Thanks,
Cindy

From Christina Chen:

Hey everybody,

I have a friend who is organizing a walkout at CUNY Hunter on March
5th to protest tuition hikes, faculty layoffs, department downsizing,
the lack of a transparent admissions process, Hunter's relationship to
NYC communities, and more. Apparently BMCC is holding a rally on the
same time, and both schools are planning feeder marches to a CUNY-wide
demonstration that will take place at 4 pm that same day. I was
wondering if people are interested in participating in both events.
There is an educational at Hunter that's taking place *today* from 1-3
pm at Hunter HW 405 that will highlight longstanding CUNY student
efforts to promote a more "accountable, accessible, and democratic
CUNY".

My friend would like Columbia folks to get involved. I haven't really
had a discussion with her as to what this entails beyond attending
their events; however, I'd like to hear what folks think about
supporting the CUNY movement. I realize that we should probably
conduct convos about the politics of allying ourselves as students of
a private institution, with students within our city's public
university system; at the same time, however, I recognize that (obvi!)
these problems also not isolated to the CUNY's. Our circumstances are
not completely analogous, but I'm wagering that there is much to be
learned in how CUNY students are organizing around these issues.
They've been planning events / teach-in's all year which are
culminating into these end of the year actions... these folks have
been framing this as a student movement and I'd like to talk about our
place in all of this.

So, I'd appreciate 1) feedback, and 2) anybody who's interested in
participating in the rallys/ march to email me! And feel free to
forward this to other listerves I keep forgetting board aliases-
speak's is so easy to remember lol!

Love
Christina

Community members and students gather on Low Steps to show solidarity with banners, posters, flyers, and speeches.

An ostentatiously large placard with a banner of the Community Principles Initiative was up on Low Plaza today...


Some questions: who created the CPI? Was it brought about by recent incidents of hate, or rather upsets with so-called community principles (i.e. Minutemen and "academic freedom")? Hate is still occurring on a near daily basis, and a sign of mainstream solidarity from those who can't see the problems is truly insufficient. I can't help but say that this statement from "the community" really cannot do much to change any kind of campus climate if it's unbacked by any meaningful kind of reform.

Our chair remarked that there were few other student of color groups at this board today. If any of us want real change, I think we can see why.

Among the signatures on the board, there were those from student governing boards, deans and public safety, student groups, fraternities/sororities; so along with our omnipresent chair, I signed the thing also... (And in retrospect, the regret I'm feeling for having lent support to something so ultimately inconsequential is pretty enormous.)

If you really want to see change on this campus, support the ad hoc coalition and see that these demands are met. Read about them here. They cover four areas of necessary change: Administrative Reform, Ethnic Studies, the Manhattanville Expansion, and the Core Curriculum. Take a real stand.

Who would have the audacity to hang a noose over a professor's door? How did this violent symbold make a cameo on our campus? It's not so far fetched if you consider Columbia University's plan to displace 500 black and Latino people from their homes in West Harlem. The university denies resources to programs such as Ethnic Studies that teach the histories of the very people who will lose their homes. What kind of place facilitates a lynch symbol? Columbia University does.

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Last week, SPEaK met to discuss the Manhattanville expansion issue as tied to Ethnic Studies and the recent hate crimes on campus. After hours of brutal planning, a "Workshop on Campus Climate" became a reality:

A workshop this Wednesday, October 17th @ 9pm in the Bway Sky Lounge to address the how-tos of resolving the issues concerning marginalized students on this campus. The workshop is designed to help move a critical mass of concerned students towards praxis by rethinking the interconnectedness of our struggles. (trans: get our behinds educated and organized)

- We hear the meetings yesterday with PrezBo and the deans went strangely. Evidently, there is administration tension, added to the fact that PrezBo cannot do anything but spew the same old sh**. Just rumors.

- Today, October 11th, is also National Coming Out Day. Columbia Queer Alliance and Queer Awareness Month is hosting an event titled, "Coming Out Against Hate: One Columbia - United", a Q&A with administrators about the recent hate events on campus. The event will feature deans Austen Quigley and Chris Colombo, and will take place at noon in Roone Arledge Hall. Please attend and support your/our friends and allies.

- Also, tonight get dinner from 6:00 to 7:30pm in the newly inaugurated safe space: Earl Hall. Also a QuAM/CQA event, "United Against Hate" will focus on a broad range of hate-based attacks and bigotry at Columbia. Join the common meal and restore a feeling of community. (Might be the closest thing we come to one for a while... I don't know.)

- If you've been keeping up with the 114th St. police brutality incident on Sept 14th, stay tuned. We're meeting on Monday with administrators of multicultural affairs, student activities, and public safety. They seem to want to connect this to a larger trend with NYPD insensitivity, but we'll do our best to make them see the importance of this one case. We'll have more news soon, and are certainly not letting this go anytime soon. (Do we say this too much? Administrative red tape is a pain in the ass.)

To the Barnard Community -

By now most of you may have already heard of an appalling racial incident that occurred at Teachers College yesterday. I am forwarding the message that went out from President Susan Fuhrman to the TC Community. We at Barnard share the shock and outrage that friends and colleagues at Teachers College must be feeling.

We may find it unbelievable that such a thing could have occurred within an academic community like ours. As we reflect on the impact of hateful acts such as this, we need also to be aware of the unintended hurts that may pass beneath our notice. We must be mindful of all of the small violences we may inflict upon one another in the course of daily life. We must, of course, reject and condemn overt and senseless acts of bigotry, but it is only when we are able to confront as well our less obvious aggressions that we will begin to change the fabric of our community.

Judith Shapiro

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PrezBo, where is your public e-mail?