New York Liberation School with Conor Tomás Reed

In this episode we talk with Conor Tomás Reed, an organizer and educator with a new book called New York Liberation School: Study and Movement for the People’s University, out this month with Common Notions Press. The book is a people’s history of CUNY, the City University of New York. It follows students and faculty as they created new forms of radical education, including the formation of Black, Puerto Rican, and Women's Studies at CUNY. It is also a reflection on the notion of “liberation schools” and the challenges and possibilities of engaging in radical teaching and learning within the bounds of the university. 

In our interview, we focus in particular on the years between 1969 and 1976, when CUNY saw a wave of student strikes and mobilizations, followed by administrative repression and counterinsurgency. Topics covered include the construction of “counter institutions” within and beyond the university, coalition building in movements, student writing as a form of political expression, and the possibilities for organizing in the university today.

 

Details on our book giveaway:

We will be giving away copies of Conor’s book on Twitter and Instagram. The first five followers to share our post will receive a free copy of New York Liberation School.

Check our Twitter and Instagram for details:

We are on Instagram @officehourshighered and on Twitter @officehoursed.

Episode Transcript

(00:16):
Hello and welcome to office hours.
We are your hosts,
Laura Martin and David Spataro.
Today we're talking with Conor Tomas Reed,
an organizer and educator with a new book called New York Liberation School Study and Movement for the Peebles University out this month with Common Notions Press.
The book is a Peebles History of Cuny the City University of New York.

(00:38):
It follows students and faculty as they created new forms of radical education.
It's also a reflection on the idea of liberation schools and the challenges and possibilities of engaging in radical teaching and learning within the bounds of the university.
In our interview,
we focus in particular on the years between 1969 and 1976.

(01:00):
When Cooney saw a wave of student strikes and mobilizations followed by administrative repression and counterinsurgency.
We cover topics like the construction of counter institutions within and beyond the university,
coalition building and movements.
Student writing as a form of political expression and the possibilities for organizing in the university.

(01:21):
Today,
we'd also like to announce a special book giveaway.
We will be giving away copies of Connor's book on Twitter and Instagram,
the first five followers to share our post on either platform will receive a free copy of New York Liberation School.
Follow us on those platforms.
For details.
We are on Instagram at Office Hours Higher Ed and on Twitter at Office Hours Ed.

(01:48):
If you miss the giveaway,
we'll also provide links in the show notes to common notions,
the press,
so you can purchase your own copy of the book.
Now,
let's turn to our interview with Connor.
Welcome to Office Hours.
Connor.
Can you introduce yourself and tell us why you wanted to write this book about cuny and liberation education and,

(02:14):
and we know you open the book with a wonderful personal story.
So feel free to get into that personal part as well.
Right on.
Thank you both for having me.
It's a real honor to be connecting with you both and to be supporting this project of Office Hours in its in its emergence.
Um So my name is Connor Thomas Reed.
I also go by Coco as a nickname and I come from a Puerto Rican and Irish background.

(02:39):
I am 42 years young.
I identify as pansexual gender fluid.
Welcome all pronouns and a little bit of my background.
I was born in Baltimore,
Maryland and spent several childhood years in uptown Manhattan.
Uh Both of my parents were born and raised in the Bronx.
Um I spent some time growing up in Texas into early adulthood but have resided in New York City for over half of my life.

(03:05):
And this has included 17 years in the city University of New York,
where I've been a student,
a teacher,
an archivist and organizer,
starting from my time at the City College of New York in Harlem in 2006.
And uh telling a story about the city University of New York and New York City struggles cuny is very much a family kind of institution for me in the early 19 seventies.

(03:29):
At the onset of open admissions,
my mom went to Hunter College.
My uncle,
her brother went to John Jay College.
Um organizing radicalism was in the ether.
Growing up,
my mom and dad were part of an anti nuclear arms initiative called the Plow Shares Movement with Philip and Daniel Berrigan.
They were also involved in solidarity initiatives with Central American struggles,

(03:52):
local community organizing initiatives.
And um the first time that I had set foot on the city college campus as the opening words of this book show was for a protest in particular uh protest against military recruitment on campus.
And so uh city college from the time that I first set foot on it to when I started to study there and continuing on through uh my living and organizing in New York City.

(04:20):
It has really been this incredible beacon of not just radical hope but also these incredible movement lessons that I'm hoping that this book can offer for people.
Um And just to share a little bit about uh the book's contents.
Uh New York Liberation School.
This chronicles the rise of Black Puerto Rican and women studies and social movements at City College.

(04:43):
But also uh a story of Cuny and New York City and how these institutions in the city were transformed by people working in coalition with each other.
People who many listeners may know and love people like Tony Cade Bambara,
Samuel Delaney,
David Henderson,

(05:03):
June,
Jordan,
Audrey,
Lord Guillermo Morales Adrian Rich Asada Shakur.
So it tells a story of how these people had collaborated with each other and various movements to transform the university and also the city also as an organizer in Cuny.
Um I also narrate uh kind of uh through the recurring movement waves of cuny after 9 11,

(05:28):
our responses to us empire policing COVID-19 attacks on reproductive rights,
focusing on Palestine and Puerto Rico.
And overall,
the book basically shows that the momentous struggles inside one university is a battle for control over social infrastructure.
And what it does is it tries to suggest how we can get free more broadly by looking at different institutions that we can transform and in doing so,

(05:55):
I try to pay attention to the work that people uh do to create radical new relations within existing structures,
right?
So within the same classrooms,
buildings and city that were built without these changes in mind,
but that people gathered in and work together to try to overturn and create different uh kind of horizon of possibility.
And so um that's the intention behind the book.

(06:17):
And I'm really thrilled to be connecting with you all to talk about it today.
Thank you so much for that.
That was a really great summary and kind of concise overview of,
you know,
this,
this is a really ambitious scope,
you know,
of this book.
And I guess I wanted to say um it as coming,
coming up with kind of questions and ways to focus in it,

(06:39):
it,
it was hard because you do cover.
So,
you know,
chronologically,
you cover a long history of k you know,
really starting,
you know,
you cover over a century of,
of history.
And um you know,
we,
we kind of decided to focus really on the late sixties and,
and seventies.
So,
um but your first chapter does give like a whole kind of,

(07:00):
you know,
lead up to that.
We kind of felt like the,
the student strike that happened in 1969 and the aftermath was really like the heart and soul of the book in certain ways.
Um And particularly a lot of the key figures that you just mentioned kind of circulate around and participate in that strike in its aftermath.
So I was hoping that for our listeners,

(07:22):
you could kind of just explain what this strike was that happened.
Um You know,
this series of occupations,
the formation of Harlem University and,
and what was the aftermath,
you know,
what were people striking over?
Um what were the demands and what were the outcomes?
Right on.
Thank you for that.
So I'll first start with the strike.
So uh in April to May 1969 the creation of Harlem University,

(07:46):
uh this was an initiative that was a campus takeover by Black and Puerto Rican students.
Uh They had uh fomented demands,
five demands to the administration which I'll get into in a moment.
But um there was this incredible uh kind of um creating of an alternate possibility inside the same university through the occupation of several campus buildings at City college.

(08:13):
Um The campus was suddenly opened to uh the Harlem community which had previously been excluded in a highly segregated uh college in the center of um uh a majority Black and Puerto Rican neighborhood.
There were different kinds of political education classes,
child care,

(08:33):
community meetings,
uh parents from not just Harlem but around New York City.
The Bronx Lower East Side uh supported the students in defending the gates,
bringing food.
Um There were related high school mobilizations and with the renaming of City College of New York as Harlem University,
what it did was it signaled the entire neighborhood as a kind of long time site of study that it wasn't just uh these specific buildings uh behind the gates that were being uh held and defended,

(09:05):
but uh that the entire neighborhood was in a sense a University and uh a place of,
of radical study.
And I think that uh Harlem University and this larger cuny story in the book,
they continue to be one of the most pivotal but also most under recognized forces in transforming higher education.
And a central aim of this book is to show how these people who were at the center of these struggles,

(09:29):
then radiated these lessons outward to audiences across the country,
across the hemisphere and the world.
And so this is really an invitation,
an invitation for the readers of New York Liberation School to see us to see yourselves as,
as part of the school and to be also collectively defending and transforming it alongside us.

(09:51):
So to go back a little bit um to showing uh why Harlem University was so pivotal in in this neighborhood and what it meant for the neighborhood to be seen as also this place of study.
Um wanna share a little bit about some of the freedom lineages um from the neighborhood.
So listeners may be familiar with uh the um great migration from the US South,

(10:16):
also from the Caribbean of a lot of people of African descent uh coming to and uh making community making institutions,
study groups,
political organizations in Harlem.
Um This was a kind of overlapping time period of migration from Puerto Rico as well.
And uh really uniquely the experience of Black and Puerto Rican residents uh both coming to New York City in a relatively similar time period,

(10:43):
both coming to the same neighborhoods living in the same buildings,
being in the same underfunded,
segregated classrooms.
They started to collaborate with each other.
They started to uh see the possibility of being able to make demands um to um uh try to desegregate their schools.
Um They really saw the importance of being able to reach across their particular differences,

(11:08):
including language and um and respective cultural genealogies.
But to also see all of these commonalities in them choosing to fight with each other against these power structures that,
that were I sating their,
their respective communities.
Um People may not uh know that in 1964 just after the March on Washington,

(11:30):
um there was a similar uh Black and Puerto Rican families led public education strike to try to desegregate the New York City public school system uh and led by members of the Congress of racial equality and uh Byard Ruston.
Uh there was this massive education strike and boycott and simultaneous creation of uh uh several dozen freedom schools around the entirety of New York City.

(11:58):
And we're talking several 1000 students participated in this.
Um This was this huge wave of uh showing the kind of power that people had after the March on Washington.
And uh to um just months later be able to enact this uh similar desegregation campaign during this time period.
Um from the early to the late 19 sixties,

(12:19):
though there is a shift from the language of civil rights and the demands around integration to Black power,
Puerto Rican power,
Latinx power,
uh Chicano power,
uh community control of people of their institutions.
And so um in uh the slow roll up to 1969 at City College of New York,

(12:43):
there was the formation of a program called SIK the Search for Education elevation and Knowledge program.
And this was an attempt to try to very slowly desegregate what was a majority Euro descended institution.
And uh Black and Puerto Rican students were admitted.
Um And even though they were uh a tiny amount of the college population demographically,

(13:06):
um they were um uh hugely influential in shaping the college culture.
They would invite revolutionaries to come onto campus and talk with people.
They had demonstrations.
Um They would screen films like Battle of Algiers and learn different kinds of anti colonial lessons of organizing people and uh basically creating uh wars of position.

(13:28):
And at that time,
there were also uh Italian,
Irish and Jewish and otherwise Euro descended students at city college who were involved in a lot of anti ROTC and anti war actions.
But these were not so much collaborating with each other.
There was very much a sense of,
you know,
you work on,

(13:49):
on your projects and we'll work on ours.
But over time from the mid to the late 19 sixties,
uh we saw that uh students were in these various kinds of groups on campus uh uh fashioning demands that then came to kind of create a composite of these five demands um at City College um that were presented to the campus administration and I'd like to briefly read them out.

(14:14):
So one was a school of Third World studies.
Two was a freshman orientation for Black and Puerto Rican students.
Third was that the Sikh students have a determining voice in the setting of guidelines for the Sikh program including the hiring and firing of Sikh personnel.
Four is that the racial composition of the entering freshman class be racially reflective of the high school population.

(14:39):
And fifth was that education majors,
all education majors be required to take Black and Puerto Rican history and the Spanish language.
And so um as these five demands were being presented to the administration which was uh trying to both say we hear you,
we understand your concerns and also you are taking things too fast and you're asking for too much,

(15:03):
you know,
tell me if that sounds familiar.
This was also a period of time when you know,
1968 alone,
this incredible proliferation of struggles across the continent and across the world.
You know,
we saw just 20 blocks south of City College at Columbia University.
There was the 1968 strike there from 68 to 69 at San Francisco State.

(15:29):
There was the struggle for ethnic studies and uh long time uh uh campus occupations and,
and student strikes,
Martin Luther King's assassination.
Hundreds of riots across the country in France,
Italy,
Germany,
Mexico in Puerto Rico.
There were uprisings,
there was uh anti police and anti military organizing.

(15:50):
Um So uh this was just a really pivotal time and students at City College Black and Puerto Rican students said,
we want to make sure that we're able to seize this moment and uh through being able to craft these demands together.
And then literally through the student initiative of occupying campus buildings.

(16:11):
Um what happened was the uh Q and E administration decided to um uh in a way uh kind of reconfigure the demand for uh more Black and Puerto Rican students into the university into creating what was called open admissions.
And they took the demand for Third World Studies.

(16:32):
They basically defanged it and they siloed it and put Black and Puerto Rican studies in Social sciences and Asian American and Jewish studies into humanities.
So,
in creating these ethnic studies for the first time,
they also made sure to decouple what had been a coalitional demand for Third World studies.
Um So just going into a little bit of uh some of these precursors and what happened with Harlem University.

(16:59):
But it's very much a central theme in the book.
And in particular that this was an act of uh student power that this was a student initiative that had uh took great risk.
But then also had an incredibly transformative result.
Boy my,
you know,
just my synapses are firing so many different things.
And I had been recently doing some research on the um struggle over People's Park,

(17:23):
which is also happening in April 1969.
And um U C Berkeley's demands for third world liberation um come also at at the heels of S S state.
So this is just so much going on.
I wanted to follow up with a question about these experimental models of education that were happening in different spaces you mentioned,

(17:46):
for example,
the freedom schools during the 64 student strike.
But throughout your book,
there's several different examples during the Ocean Hill Brownsville strike.
There's sort of there's setting up of counter institutions where families and educators who are critical of the strike participate in freedom schools.

(18:08):
There's mention of the Elizabeth Cleaner Street School.
So throughout this whole book,
there's all these moments um where education is happening somewhere else during a strike,
what's going on in those spaces,
what's the significance of what's going on?
What kind of different is happening in those and how do they connect together to the,

(18:28):
to the sort of ideas of the book and the organizing.
So I really love thinking about how in any kind of physical space that there is what may seem like a preordained way that we can relate to each other.
And the work that we do are literally the intention for gathering in a specific space.

(18:48):
But that also,
you know,
people aren't cogs,
uh people have uh an incredible amount of versatility and the ability to refashion their relationships with each other.
And even in going through the motions,
it's almost like uh the improvisation of a jazz song going through the motions of a scale.
There is uh a different kind of uh thinking that can be activated,

(19:09):
a different kind of melody that can be invented.
And I feel like the same thing with regard to universities and other places of formal learning,
K through 12 schools.
These are places of study with resources.
They have a specific social function that has been preordained,
but it's by no means set into stone.

(19:30):
And in fact,
when looking at the history of education struggles,
there's kind of this unique protective force field around the classroom space by the status quo that can be subverted and transformed.
I think a little bit more so in the university than in K through 12 where um at least very much so in the present,
uh there's really a um a specific demand to teach uh X Y and Z.

(19:55):
Um But I feel like in places of formal study,
there's a recurring flow of the schedule,
there's a recurring flow of who the participants are.
And I'll also add that there's a rare space of rest and reflection school can be stressful and a difficult place to be in.
But it's also a place where if it's done with this kind of laboratory intention,

(20:19):
it can be a space for people to sit and gather and talk and potentially build cohesion with each other.
And there's an example from Howard Zinn's Snick,
the new abolitionist,
where he talks about how when he was teaching at Spelman College,
he would talk with his students about the history of us empire and enslavement and the resistance to this,

(20:42):
the students would fashion all of these analyses on how to confront it in the present.
And then the whole classroom would then get up and then move to do a sit in together.
And I think that there's something really powerful about thinking that uh any time that there is a a classroom,
there is already an innate kind of cohesion that's being built and that that's something that could be pivoted towards taking different kinds of political risks with each other.

(21:06):
So when thinking about the intention of creating consciously creating counter institutions,
um the invitation in the book is to try not to take any of the ground rules of the sites of formal learning for granted or that are predetermined that schools,
universities,
they can become these convergent spaces of radical study and action.

(21:30):
And I uh borrow that term from Christina Heatherton,
whose book arise on the Mexican revolution and the Global Consequences of the Mexican Revolution really looks at what happens when people radicals come together in convergent spaces.
And also want to add that not only can universities,

(21:50):
governance and status quo be upended,
but that in particular urban communities that surround universities that they can demand and help shape how these spaces are also used in coalition with the people inside it.
And in the late 19 sixties,
there was uh someone named uh Rudy Deutscha,
who was a German student activist uh inspired by uh the writings and and movement work of Antonio Gramsci and Rudy Deutscha talked about uh the need for a quote long march through the institutions.

(22:20):
So he was saying basically that revolutionaries radicals need to embed themselves and each other in social institutions.
They need to connect it with broad cross sections of working peoples.
And they need to devise strategies for collective direct democracy and action in order to wrest concessions from the wealthy.
And ultimately that this long march to the institutions be a way out of position uh themselves through uh periods of greater intensification of struggles.

(22:50):
And so to bring it back to New York City,
this is again,
this time of community control,
right?
Ocean Hill Brownsville,
the kind of decentralization campaign of community control in this East Brooklyn neighborhood of Ocean Hill,
Brownsville.
It was an opportunity for Black and Puerto Rican parents,
students,
community members to say,

(23:11):
OK,
so you don't want to desegregate uh New York City Education System.
You're going to tell us that these uh overcrowded and under resourced schools that this is all that we have.
OK.
Then we want to run them ourselves.
We want to pick who's able to uh teach our kids there.
We want to choose what kind of curriculum that can center Black and Puerto Rican experiences,

(23:34):
histories,
cultures,
uh new ideas that are into for coming in formation through movements.
Um This was something that uh was really this incredible moment of people around communities um in particular Black and Puerto Rican Coalition saying we're going to actually think about what it means to have an institutional analysis of change.

(23:56):
I want to add that.
Um in this moment,
the United Federation of Teachers under Albert Shanker created this racist strike to be able to say,
ah community control.
This actually doesn't benefit white Jewish uh teachers and administrators who are going to try to halt this.
They went on this racist strike and there were members of the United Federation of Teachers who said,

(24:22):
well,
actually I disagree with that and they flouted the strike to,
to be able to operate um kind of autonomous classes in support of the community control demand.
And I think this is a useful moment because all too often in the present,
it's so much that people have to just motivate the ability and the practice of going out on strike of taking that kind of job action.

(24:46):
But we also need to look at what kinds of politics are animating that tactic,
right?
And so in that moment in 1968 around Ocean Hill,
Brownsville,
there was a racist strike by the U F T and then there was an anti racist counter strike by these teachers,
students and family members that created these pop up classrooms to be able to uh continue the the vision of community control.

(25:10):
I just want to offer a couple more examples.
So not only is this looking at formal sites of learning,
right?
But having a kind of radical institutional analysis to see all of the different institutions in our cities and our towns that could be collectively transformed.
So a few other examples from Puerto Rican organizations,

(25:30):
the young Lords,
which was a youth uh revolutionary group whose median age was around 17 years old.
Um They had a takeover of Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx and uh Brooklyn College,
Alum Emma Francis Snyder's film.
The takeover is an incredible recent film that should be watched that dramatizes um how they had transformed Lincoln Hospital uh in uh the young Lords taking over the People's Church in East Harlem in so-called Spanish,

(26:00):
Harlem or El Barrio uh Pedro Pietri um and a well known poet,
read his poem Puerto Rican obituary inside that occupation for the first time.
So people were also thinking about,
OK,
when you take over and you collectively run these institutions,
how were you infusing it with aesthetics,
poetics,
a different kind of vision artistry.

(26:23):
Another Puerto Rican organization called El Commit,
which was comprised of,
uh,
working class,
uh,
uh,
laborers,
construction workers.
Vietnam,
uh US war and Vietnam veterans.
They,
uh,
coordinated something called operation.
Move in and on the upper West side on Columbus Avenue in between like the seventies and the nineties in,

(26:44):
in,
uh,
the,
the streets,
70th street and 90th street.
There were all of these shuttered,
uh,
storefronts.
And,
um,
this was,
um,
in,
uh,
around the early to mid 19 seventies and el commit working with several different community groups basically uh forced open and took over uh several of these uh uh shuttered storefronts.

(27:10):
One of them was called the Elizabeth Cleaners Street School,
which was an autonomous free high school that was basically created and run by high school students.
They chose who their teachers were,
they chose what they wanted to study,
they figured out how to do the plumbing,
they figured out how to uh operate the um uh the,

(27:32):
the physical brick and mortar and,
and guts of that space.
And um two of the students were um Adrian Rich's sons.
Um There was also a kind of wave of free schools,
experimental colleges,
other kinds of freedom learning initiatives that people had gotten from the,
the long Black Black freedom struggle.
This was in New York City,

(27:53):
but also on the west coast around the US.
And um you know,
other examples in,
in New York of um in uh Harlem,
the um uh the Black Arts Repertory Theater in school.
That was created by Amiri Baraka um in Brooklyn,
uh a neighborhood center called the East and also a freedom school by another community control advocate.

(28:17):
Um named J Wei um various kinds of labor and union halls.
Uh This was very much a place not just of struggle,
but also of really focused radical learning.
And I think,
you know,
by no means,
do we want to take litmus tests?
But uh when there are moments when people are involved in social movements and they are paying very close attention to how people are learning through those struggles,

(28:42):
how people are creating uh uh arts through those struggles.
I feel like,
you know,
that's when you know,
you're kind of firing on all cylinders.
And so I think that it gives an example of both inside of formal learning spaces and also outside in community laboratory learning spaces.
Uh What kind of relationship that um that these had with each other at this period of time that very much folks in Cuny have been trying to hold up as a kind of a process that can be enacted in different places and spaces.

(29:14):
Yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you for all of those examples.
They're,
they're really inspiring and I,
yeah,
they really are David and I both have little kids.
And I was saying to him,
man,
can we like instead of sending our kids to regular school,
can we squat some building and make a school for our kids because that sounds like a way better idea.

(29:37):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um and,
and uh just to um the your,
your,
what you were just saying at the end,
I feel like is a question that comes up for me throughout the book,
I wanna come back to it,
but just this question of how much of all of the firing on all cylinders when,
when there's a movement happening,
it tends to kind of bring out the,

(29:58):
the best in people in a lot of ways that,
that the highest levels of creativity and,
and,
and um and you know,
uh creating alternatives.
Um And so some part of some of the questions that I have is,
well,
what do we do in times when we're not at that level of,
of movement building,
you know,
how much is,
is still possible anyway?
Well,

(30:18):
what about you?
I mean,
do you feel like,
because to me,
it kind of comes up with the kind of burn it all down question and the possibilities of building um you know,
kind of counter constructions uh you know,
and,
and how much of that is dependent on there being like a,
a high level of community involvement and just um radical consciousness uh kind of,

(30:44):
you know,
creating on a larger scale.
And so what do we do in moments where we're more isolated people are,
are more socially atomized and it's just not the same kind of moment historically,
you know,
what I mean?
That,
that's just a question that I have for,
for the present moment,
you know?
Well,
something that I've been thinking about a lot is that I read this incredible study of the 2020 anti police uprisings and this was put out by unity and struggle.

(31:16):
It's called big Brick energy.
I,
I read that as well.
It's incredible.
Really.
I love it.
I love it.
And,
uh,
you know,
they had quoted this uh New York Times uh piece that said that anywhere between 15 and 26 million people participated in these uprisings across uh towns and cities in the United States in 2020.

(31:39):
And actually that number 26 million is around the same amount of people who are um uh embedded in universities as students,
faculty and staff.
And I feel like there's something to be said about in moments when we may not um be seeing the entirety of uh what our political vision is,

(32:01):
but that people are in a really incredible and vast motion together that there's something about uh approaching those situations in a kind of pedagogical or learning focused way that says,
OK,
so people are in motion,
people are figuring out what to do.
Uh they are making uh very high risk kinds of uh decisions with each other.

(32:24):
Sometimes on the fly,
sometimes coming into a setting with some strategy or previous experience in mind.
And uh there's a phrase in Latin America that uh struggles our schools.
And I feel like,
um when people can,
in a sense,
similar to when a classroom,
there's like a specific kind of vision or lesson plan that then totally goes awry or when people are in a study group and then there's like,

(32:51):
you know,
kind of not derailing but pivoting of the conversation into something else entirely.
The kind of nimbleness of um people who are radical educators being able to say like,
OK,
this is not um something that is a kind of obstacle or um you know,
a challenge to learning,
but this is also part of the,

(33:11):
the dynamism of the learning process.
Um I feel like that's um a little bit of what I keep in mind when uh looking at in the present moment that um the different conditions for what the ideal kind of movements that we would envision aren't all there.
I,
I feel like it's very much so um a question of how to learn from and try to translate um past movements lessons into the present.

(33:39):
And then to also see um even from the Eruptions of Black Lives Matter from 2012 to 2016.
And then in 2020 and up to the present that there are some different ways that people have um really taken um the,
the,
the political lessons from these upheavals.

(33:59):
And then there are moments where it's like,
ok,
like,
let's remember like what what was in our movement syllabus?
Like,
what are the things that,
that we can be bringing back into motion that people may have forgotten from the last series of upheavals?
So,
um but I'm curious,
what's coming to,
to mind for y'all,
Laura and David in terms of different ways,
how to navigate a moment that may not be ideal but people are still in motion with each other.

(34:24):
What do you think,
David?
Well,
I teach in a community college that reading your book,
it brings up a lot because my college is as distant from the energy of a city as it can possibly be.
Bellevue College is just sort of this concrete slab in a little forest east of Seattle.

(34:47):
But it's so disconnected from all of the things that you,
that porousness that comes out in this book that you're in,
you're embedded in a city and the energy around you is vital.
And so part of me when I read books like this is,
is,
is just a little bit of like,
oh man,
like,

(35:09):
like I wish I taught at Seattle Central because it's in the heart of Capitol Hill and like,
it's lively or what,
whatever.
So there's a little bit of that,
but that can be,
you know,
just a little self pitying,
right?
And,
and pointless.
Um But just hearing your answer is making me think about how,
how we stay limber,
how we like how I adapt my,

(35:32):
like,
Political Science,
one oh one curriculum to include,
like we now have things about the George Floyd Brianna Taylor uprisings that are like,
I do one week around that.
And so it's sort of,
that's one thing that I carry into this moment where 2023 feels,
sort of,
this really feels pretty distant from that.
Um,

(35:52):
but how do we react in the moment when the next thing happens?
And so I,
I,
I kind of take from it something about sort of remaining resilient,
remaining flexible,
remaining limber in my teaching,
knowing that these down periods um pass and that then part of my role is to tie things together,

(36:14):
be responsive.
Um Yeah,
I don't know.
I mean,
I'm hearing in part this question of geography that when reading a book about New York City,
dense urban struggles,
it might be difficult for people to see how those lessons apply in a different kind of setting.
And perhaps uh in addition to uh encouraging folks to,

(36:37):
to gather what lessons they can from,
from this work or other kind of urban contexts that uh folks at Bellevue could also think of.
Ok.
So we're in uh this specific kind of uh milieu,
maybe what can we learn from the Zapatistas in Chiapas,
right in the La Condon Jungle.
What can we learn from the folks who were involved in the campaign to protect the Atlanta Forest from the construction of this major police training facility?

(37:08):
The stop cop city campaign and being able to see what kinds of radical pedagogy emerge,
not just in dense urban spaces,
but also areas where there's like lush greenery or,
you know,
uh mountains nearby,
being able to see any space as a,
as a kind of convergence space.
And um but that it depends on what people can,

(37:30):
can try to do that would be relevant to um to what's possible there.
Um But I'm,
I'm hearing those challenges and by no means wanting to think about writing a book about uh the histories of social movements being a kind of uh idealistic cheerleading.

(37:50):
Instead,
it's no,
no,
let's look even more closely at what kinds of conditions are,
are possible.
Um Even when we're not able to choose the conditions that we operate in.
Yeah,
I mean,
to me that,
that point about conditions is really important because I mean,
I,
I,
I do feel like,
um your,
your book is ultimately an optimistic book,

(38:12):
you know,
on a book that's kind of meant to inspire and that's something that we very much need.
Um And I think,
you know,
uh David and I as,
as critical and pessimistic as we are about higher ed today.
Um We do ultimately want to be optimistic people and people who are looking for examples in history that we can learn from,

(38:38):
you know,
um I do think that it's helpful to me to think of it as like,
well under what conditions do these kinds of liberation um schools emerge,
you know,
and um and,
and,
and feeling like,
yeah,
we can't always control our conditions.
So to me,
it's,
it's not even just looking at um building edu education models on,

(39:02):
on,
on their own,
but looking at education as part of building a social movement.
Like if we want to be able to have this,
we have to have a movement,
you know,
so we better build a movement.
Um And,
and also of course,
work on our pedagogy and all of that stuff.
But let's not forget that we can't,
we can't just transform the classroom in isolation from society.

(39:25):
We have to be transforming society and the classroom is going to,
you know,
keep,
keep up with that,
you know,
and,
and,
and transform along with that.
So I don't know.
Yeah,
I totally agree with that.
It's powerfully said I was also,
I,
I was gonna add to that you mentioned this in your introduction.
But one of the biggest just things that fired in my brain reading the book is how much geographical migration plays a role in that because you tell,

(39:55):
you tell a story of cooney and in which the earlier era of radicalism that comes in the earlier part of the 20th century has been crushed.
And the institution is a little bit more of a status quo machine.
But then these migrations from Puerto Rico,
from the US South and elsewhere.
And it had the feel to me of a book that I personally love.

(40:18):
Um uh the linebaugh and rare book,
Many headed hydra where you can trace the movement of people.
Sometimes it's through displacement,
sometimes it's through choice and agency,
the movement of radical ideas with people as they move and larger political economic changes.
So there's this materialism to it that breaks some of the overall conservatism of a period,

(40:41):
the mccarthy period and so forth.
And that speaks to,
I think a little bit of what,
what Laura is saying about.
There's conditions that we don't choose,
right?
There's,
there's things happening in my own institution that I don't choose.
And some of them are disruptive,
some of them are more like creating AAA you know,
just a continuation of the status quo.

(41:01):
So,
I mean,
if there's just,
there's a lot that we have agency over and some that we don't and uh I,
you know,
kind of taking from the book to be a,
a little bit more attentive to some of those larger scale things as well.
Yeah.
And if I can uh share a little bit in response to that,
I,
I am loving this dialogue.
Y'all are,
are such a careful and focused readers and it's just like,

(41:25):
oh,
like I really appreciate it.
And it's making me think of in,
in the first chapter considering how a lot of Eastern European Jews fleeing pilgrims uh coming to New York city,
changing the composition of New York City.
Um very much so bringing with them uh a sensibility from the countries from which they had traveled,

(41:51):
coming into this new area.
Many of them uh who were self identified,
anarchist,
socialist,
communists,
antifascists that this is uh kind of the earlier wave,
the earlier iteration of radicalism at City College.
And this is,
you know,
19 twenties and 19 thirties when uh they're shaping what's possible in this institution.

(42:13):
And so in,
you know,
telling this cuny in New York City story in looking at uh building coalitional power,
it's also being attentive to who was living here when people come to including en masse,
coming to uh shape the city in different ways.
How does that also impact the institutions that we're,
that we're in and thinking about,

(42:34):
you know,
moving from the first half of the 20th century to the 19 sixties,
uh scholars like Johanna Fernandez and Sonia Songhai,
they describe this kind of overlapping Black and Puerto Rican migration.
And um that this is um you know,
at this time,
these two groups were uttered in often in the same breath,

(42:57):
right?
Black and Puerto Rican.
And in that same breath,
there was the possibility of creating a kind of transformative relationship with each other.
And it made sense that they would work with each other to desegregate and decolonize cuny as they were teaching each other what the stakes of Black liberation and Puerto Rican independence were.
But we also see these moments um of later Jewish,

(43:20):
anti fascist and anti racist solidarity with Third World liberation struggles in the work of Adrian Rich or in the work of the John Brown anti Klan committee.
These were people who were literally renouncing racial supremacist benefits in exchange for an actual human relational.
They were taking risks with each other that also humanized themselves.

(43:43):
And so there's a way in the book that I uh spent some time reflecting on uh coalitions and also this focus of composition and uh looking at different kinds of Italian and us class composition analyses to uh in part reflect on how the city was recomposed through these Black Puerto Rican,

(44:04):
Asian American Jewish migrations.
And when you take a look at the uh literal writing,
composition of these city college students and teachers.
Uh so a focus on their brainstorming their outlining drafts,
revisions,
the circulations of their ideas.
It can actually offer us insights into how these people were recomposing themselves,

(44:25):
how they were recomposing their relationships to each other in this broader period of class rec composition.
Um you know,
during the wars after mccarthyism,
uh after there is,
you know,
a fiscal crisis when the US is defeated in Vietnam.
And so for us to be attentive to how as,
as teachers and as writers,

(44:46):
the the and as,
as students,
as learners,
how the writing process is integral to these larger forms of social and class composition too.
So I wanted to get into some of that as well.
And um you know,
a writing process can shape how we can also change off the page.
And when we read the work of others,
then uh these texts can also shift our ideas and compel us into action.

(45:10):
Yeah.
And you do a,
you do a,
a great,
I mean,
it's really,
it's so,
it's so interesting all of the archival material that you came up with and really doing close readings of so,
so many like student newspaper articles,
manifestos,
student compositions.
I love the,
the attention to that and the um the way that you talk about,

(45:33):
you know,
well,
you,
you know,
the obviously some of the people you look at are,
you know,
very famous writers,
but also just ordinary students as um people who are attempting to theorize and understand,
you know,
the struggles that they're involved in,
through,
through writing and sharing that writing with others,

(45:54):
you know?
Yeah,
I'm curious,
can I share a little bit more about the chapter on students,
please?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So um I wanted to include a chapter on the power of student writing and action because uh as a former student organizer and as someone who still considers himself to be a lifelong student and very much in close affinity with student organizing,

(46:19):
I feel like uh many youth um have long been forced into this kind of vexing position of being responsible for enacting uprisings in university school and society.
But then they're also maligned when these rebellions don't succeed.
And there are sometimes uh educators and organizers will say like and tell me if this sounds familiar,

(46:42):
we will follow,
we must follow the lead of students,
right?
But this also cuts off students from the kind of loving insight and critique from older comrades who have undergone similar actions in their youth.
So I think that we need more intergenerational strategizing.
Um But in the case of uh looking at these Q E students writing,

(47:03):
um I think there's a real dearth of analysis.
There's all too often a focus on what's happening in the classroom,
what's happening with uh writing for assignments,
writing for these uh high stakes tests.
And um instead,
what I wanted to do was to dive into this incredible immense archive of student writing at City College and in New York City high schools through their newspapers.

(47:29):
Um what kinds of debates they were having out on institutional vision movement strategy.
And I wanted to look at also the uh specifically the work of student demands as also a powerful act of composition.
And in that chapter,
I look at the diaries and memoirs of Samuel Delaney,

(47:50):
uh the great uh queer urban writer,
uh also looking at movement communiques from Asada Shakur in the Black Liberation Army,
Guillermo Morales and the Nacional a Puerto Rican Underground group,
the John Brown anti Klan Committee and looking at these writings as also forms of student composition.

(48:10):
And I think that at that time and increasingly,
and and uh also in the present,
uh student powers saw clear connections with broader social movements.
So students envisioned the world that they were inheriting uh the warfare that they were being drafted into.
Also the condescension of those in power against youth consciousness.

(48:31):
And um I'm really inspired by these youth movements in the present and many of which are,
are um actively identified as abolitionist uh focused on uh ecological change,
our gender and sexuality affirming and are often anti capitalist,
even in nascent form.
And I think in this process of uh mentorship or you could say friend tour with students that are really focusing and engaging with them and building active coalitions with them uh encouraging them along is also to establish enduring trusting bonds,

(49:07):
to be able to take risks with each other.
And um in these different periods of time,
we saw that the city college educators were able to,
because they had built this trust were able to critique these students when they misstepped,
but also to really uh champion and uh encourage and support them when they were taking these tremendous risks such as the creation of Harlem University.

(49:31):
And I'll bring in the Zapatistas again.
Uh In Chiapas,
the Zapatistas refer to their teachers as or promoters.
So thinking about,
you know,
not just being the soul bearer of knowledge or,
you know,
not even thinking in a kind of quote unquote critical pedagogy way of,
oh,
let's think of the things we need to critique and like that's the work but actually promoting and encouraging a process along that students are already engaged in.

(49:59):
Um And what I would love to see in the present is for students to um power map more intentionally,
what kind of power they do have to disrupt the status quo.
I think that includes the power to withhold tuition,
the power to hold mass walkouts and sit ins also the power to um uh look at uh the budgets of the university,

(50:23):
including the police and campus,
quote unquote security budgets to force cops and military recruiters off of their campuses,
students accrue education debt,
but then they don't have to start paying that debt until they've all dispersed from the the institution itself.
So to anticipate that um anticipate um being a part of an education debt,

(50:45):
uh abolition struggle and the work of debt collective um has really taken the lead.
Um and uh shown that when we renounce debt as a kind of uh social collaborative gesture,
then we have so much power than the people who are indebted us.
And I think also,
you know,
encouraging students in the present to think about sustaining escalation campaigns when their elders get winded.

(51:11):
So to think in a kind of kinetic level like,
OK,
there is literal energy in people's bodies that um for folks who are younger,
there is just more of it.
And so that intergenerational strategizing can also um help in,
in these ways as well.
So I wanna circle back to like how the institution at Cuny responded to these uprisings uh to Harlem University to the demands.

(51:37):
And speaking personally,
I I spent time at Cuny as a graduate student and had a mythology that you debunk that there was a demand for open admissions,
but you give us a counter reading that the demands were different and open admissions was a kind of counter insurgency.
Um So if you could just broadly give us a sense,

(52:00):
what happened,
how did the power elites of the city and the institution respond to these uprisings and what did they try to do to quell the rebellion?
So uh critically reflecting on the legacy of open admissions at Cuny was one of the several uh delicate undertakings in this book project.
People from Cuny uh impoverished students to filthy rich administrators love to sing the praises of the legacy of open admissions in desegregating our university.

(52:32):
And it's a unique thing when people with very different kinds of class positions and class interests are both extolling the virtues of a specific part of,
of our institutional history.
And so looking a little bit more deeply into this in particular through the work of people like Aa Okechukwu and Conrad Dyer,

(52:54):
I learned that the Cuny administration had intended to implement open admissions around 1975.
But because of the 1969 Harlem University takeover and the resulting wave of campus occupations across the cuny system including at Brooklyn College,
Lehman College.
The cuny administration fast forwarded this policy shift to 1970.

(53:18):
So um five years ahead just like that and the original five demands from Black and Puerto Rican City college students had.
If you all remember regarding admissions,
urged that the ethnic composition of all entering city college students reflect the Black Puerto Rican and Asian high school student populations.
And the open admissions policy changed this to mean that any graduating New York City High school student could enroll in Cuny's two and four year colleges.

(53:47):
So in a way,
it did desegregate Qni,
but it didn't satisfy this demand to prioritize increasing students of colors enrollment.
And I think that's an important piece.
And so um when I work in,
in the book with thinking about uh reform as sabotage,
and I look at how the Cuny administration,

(54:07):
the New York government refused to increase the education budget,
refuse to increase campus resources and in particular,
seek resources for these studentss of colors.
A slew of teachers were rapidly hired in what city college educators refer to as a deluge of people onto campus people being underwater.

(54:28):
Um It was a sweeping reform but it was built to overwhelm the students,
teachers and staff on the ground.
And so I reflect on this moment by um also looking comparatively across institutions across uh Cuny and New York City uh housing histories to suggest that Cuny and New York City elites turned the university into an underfunded and overcrowded gathering place in ways that are remarkably akin to how landlords created squalid living conditions in different periods of the city's history.

(55:00):
And so this is a really remarkable and also contradictory moment and in which educational insurgencies were met with policy counterinsurgencies packaged as reforms.
So at several community schools,
there was this sweeping composition,
rec composition in which a majority Irish Italian and Jewish students became a kaleidoscope of different and at times clashing identities in the same classrooms and and campus buildings.

(55:29):
When Audrey Lord taught at John Jay College in the early 19 seventies,
the police and those who were resisting policing in their neighborhoods were suddenly in her same classrooms and the ways that she navigated uh specific black lesbian feminist poetics and pedagogy building coalitions across differences,
right?
Her signature legacy,
it was forged in these early years at Cuny.

(55:52):
But there were other more amply funded QNI schools like Hunter College,
Barrot College,
where open admissions didn't really ever arrive.
And they set the stage over time up to the present for a kind of apartheid like structure of multitiered funding and prestige across the different Qni schools.
Uh We have 25 colleges in the Cuny system where uh Qni is currently championed as a beacon of desegregation and democracy,

(56:17):
despite um these inequities that are baked into our university system.
And um just to share a little bit more about the kind of timeline of Q E.
So after open admissions is implemented in 1975 years later,
Q E student composition changed so much that finally,
the student body aligned with our multi ethnic city.

(56:39):
And as Kim Phillips,
fine talks about in her book,
Fear City,
New York City was suddenly hamstrung by this imposed debt crisis.
Again,
this is around the time that the US is suffering defeat in Vietnam is suffering its own uh kind of imperial crisis that then becomes an economic crisis.
An emergency financial control board takes control of New York City's finances.

(57:04):
President Ford demands that Q and E S tuition free policy which was,
you know,
free tuition across two world wars.
A great depression that it be boli abolished in 1976.
And even though tuition fees were a drop in the bucket of what the city needed.
Um This was very much uh a kind of message that was sent um that different social institutions needed to bow down to this new uh moment which came to be called neoliberalism.

(57:34):
And we hear of how the Chicago boys including Milton Friedman imposed neoliberalism in Chile via the pinochet coup and dictatorship.
But Cuny is also a part of that story and it was really one of the first states side shock doctrine moments in which public institutional access was attacked.
So we need to be attentive to when our narratives of our beloved universities,

(57:57):
our beloved institutions become mythologized to paper over these actual conflicted examples.
And to pay attention to ways that demanding institutional change from below can at times result in unsustainable changes from above.
And on the level of a kind of escalation,
organizing campaign in the present in learning about this history,

(58:20):
I think it uh impels us to map out and prepare for moments when we can change the infrastructure of the university,
the power of relations in the university.
Um But that we also have the energy and focus to ride out a victory and to then shape it into what we actually want instead of it becoming compromised and distorted as a win.

(58:41):
And I'll just give one further example of a kind of,
you know,
reform as sabotage in the present at Cuny.
Uh Currently,
we have a cuny chancellor,
the first cuny chancellor of color who is Puerto Rican,
someone named Felix Matos Rodriguez who alongside um uh many Cuny college presidents who are of Dominican Asian um otherwise non uh euro descended uh descent.

(59:09):
And we have uh you know,
the most diverse uh leadership in Qni who is presiding over continued austerity,
continued budget cuts and tuition increases and are um really falling over themselves to cozy up with Israeli settler colonialism.
And um you know,
our,

(59:29):
you know,
pro police Mayor Eric Adams.
And so I think that there's also a way that,
you know,
the reform of representational politics um in the Q and A uh context also demands that we see that sometimes uh representation is a ruse and that it really depends on what kinds of politics people have.

(59:51):
Um not just their,
their ethnic and,
and national and um uh gender background,
but to try and figure out what their politics are.
What kind of intentions do they have in running an institution?
And in looking at these moments when Qni has become diversified at the top,
if a lot of the same policies have continued,
then that's also something that needs to be challenged.

(01:00:12):
And so being able to look at this example of counterinsurgency um through um ironically,
this moment of Qni becoming desegregated through open admissions.
It's very much so an attempt to try and think through that at any moment when there is a suspected victory to also pay attention to why that victory was allowed by people in power at a certain time.

(01:00:39):
And by no means to make an assessment that open admissions then is fraught.
And you know,
we should be condemning any time that someone brings this up as a success of cuny social movements.
But that we should also be really attentive to the complexity of what that moment was.
And at any time being able to think about having enough kind of um uh focus and energy in our organizing campaigns to anticipate what happens when we do win that it not then become distorted into something that we didn't want.

(01:01:12):
Um So wanted to share a little bit of that in the book as well.
So I was going to ask about,
well,
so what can we kind of learn from that experience?
I really,
really appreciate those insight,
insights.
It makes me think about,
I don't know if this is a little bit of a stretch,
but I,
David,
David and I talk about how um in our community colleges,
the language of,
of equity and inclusion,

(01:01:33):
diversity,
equity and inclusion is being used so much now to further these reforms,
which,
you know,
ironically,
I think have the hard the the most negative impact on um students of color and particularly like at my college,
they're implementing all these reforms to kind of eliminate or reduce a lot of classes because they want to streamline everything their argument being.

(01:02:00):
Well,
we want the most underrepresented marginalized students to actually get through and get degrees.
So we need to make the um you know,
the pathway to getting a degree really like transparent and easy.
And so,
you know,
for whatever reason,
they have this notion that that too many different classes is confusing.

(01:02:21):
And so they're actually eliminating some of the diversity of course offerings and create,
you know,
and there is,
there's I see from our administration,
this logic of um courses that don't directly lead to a career are kind of,
um,
um,
not helpful to underrepresented students in particular be,
and in,

(01:02:41):
and in fact,
they're,
they're sort of like a luxury that we can't really afford right now.
And,
and,
and basically,
um,
you know,
poor working class students of color,
um,
should really only basically be learning trades or anything that's gonna get them a professional career,
anything like literature,
history,
blah,

(01:03:01):
blah,
blah is kind of um coded as being like anti equity in a way um which obviously then creates kind of a dystopian world,
right?
Where only the most elite have access to anything that's related to just kind of critical thinking,
creative expression.

(01:03:22):
Um And so,
I don't know,
it just,
it made me think that that's what came to mind when you were talking about this idea of reform as sabotage because it's always coded in the language of equity and diversity and inclusion,
you know.
Yeah.
And I think that,
um you know,
there's a way that thank you for sharing that context about um how this kind of bullshit that that administrators are,

(01:03:45):
are trying to roll out on,
on your,
on your college setting.
I feel like these kinds of examples of militant coalitional projects and uh the kind of vision of what it would mean to be thinking about politically,
socially,
culturally transforming institutions.
When through the 19 seventies into the eighties and nineties,

(01:04:10):
there was a period of time where it was by no means uh a kind of uh ceasing of social movements,
but it was very much so the rollback of Cointelpro of uh the period of really high intensity like law and order campaigning by Reagan.

(01:04:31):
And then,
you know,
the ballooning of mass incarceration under Clinton,
you know,
the,
the US war economy of um uh the,
the presidencies afterwards.
And I feel like a lot of the legacies of these social struggles,
including struggles for ethnic and gender studies,

(01:04:51):
the struggles for open admissions,
they then become hollowed out and then converted into something that is totally different than what people had had uh initially envisioned.
And I feel like this kind of uh the language of diversity,
equity and inclusion is something that again,
people being really attentive to what's going on when the language is being used by people who have six figure salaries and that it's also very individualizing.

(01:05:21):
It's not,
how are we thinking about kind of collectives of people?
But how are we thinking about this or that individual student?
And you know,
in doing so by them,
kind of setting the terms of what's possible,
the terms of what transformative uh institutional relationships looks like.
Then that means that people are not supposed to bring up other kinds of terms like reparations,

(01:05:43):
like community control,
like abolition or even talking about the class differences uh within racialized groups.
And so I think,
you know,
as we create strategies into the future.
We need to also correct when these uh distorted citations of our movement,
elders occur in the name of justice.
And it makes me think of the river collective uh um being really on point in the present and saying the way that people will malign and misrepresent identity politics is totally different than um how we had talked about um you know,

(01:06:17):
coalitions um thinking about our identities,
not being the sole uh kind of overlapping point of uh different uh kind of identity lines.
But this kind of ven diagram of all of the different peoples who we represent and then thinking about how to build power from there.
So I think that,
you know,

(01:06:38):
in many ways,
they're way ahead um of what has become a kind of narrow form of identification that neoliberalism has kind of co-opted and shown as the only way.
Um And if I can give just one uh brief example of how D E I is sometimes used to screw people over my partner who is uh a middle school teacher um has uh in uh the context of their uh school system.

(01:07:10):
The administration said that there were different kinds of uh counselors and uh deans of student activity who were majority women of colors.
And they said because these positions do not have the potential for salary increases.
We're going to lay off these positions because we feel like women of colors should not be put into a situation where they can't get salary increases.

(01:07:39):
So we should just fire them instead.
Can you imagine?
So it's Orwellian.
So Orwellian.
So,
you know,
D E I I I by no means want to give any kind of credence to members of the far,
right,
who,
you know,
see the those three letters and then think that there is some kind of um totally other thing that's going on.

(01:08:05):
Um But I think that we also need to be able to critique it from,
from the radical left as well.
And I hope that even in future episodes that y'all can dig in a little bit more on,
on what that would look like.
Yeah.
And I,
I think there's also a lesson um from your book regarding just the,
the way that there can be a top down um process that overwhelms students and,

(01:08:27):
and educators and staff because in the case of some of these initiatives that Laura mentioned um for us in our region,
we're getting hit really hard with a national program called Guided Pathways.
And this program is,
you know,
it's doing the kind of thing where I'm working with my peers and my program to design a map through our program,

(01:08:50):
which is wonderful,
but we are,
you know,
totally revamping large scale systems across an institution that has over 10,000 students.
And it's taking away our time with our students,
it's taking away our energy,
it it's doing things that are overwhelming us at the idea that it will produce some sort of desired utopian and that it won't.

(01:09:16):
And we kind of know from the beginning that it won't in a sense,
but we're sort of drowning in its work that pulls us away from our students and our relationships in a,
in a genuine transformative way.
And that comes through a little bit in the,
in the book,
in terms of how the individuals that you focus on are dealing with.

(01:09:37):
You know,
for example,
it seemed like the C C program went from a pretty small number to just a vast number of students really quickly and how some of these individuals in the book were struggling with that.
They knowing how much the C C program,
how,
how revolutionary it was,
how transformative it was,
but then it has thousands of people in uh overnight kind of dynamics.

(01:10:00):
So,
um so I want to turn for our last question kind of to what might be sort of like the,
the big question,
the biggest question that kind of hanging over the book,
which is really this question of,
you know,
what should be done with the university.
It seems like something you're really um interested in both looking,
you know,
using history,
using these historical examples to kind of think about the current moment.

(01:10:24):
Um And you give a few historical examples where students and teachers are themselves debating this question,
you know,
what,
what you know,
should we just burn this all down?
You know.
Um and,
and Audrey Lord,
I believe you're talking to kind of being in dialogue with her students.
Well,
you know,
what do we kind of want to build here?
Right.
Uh You comment that sometimes visions for revolutionary change do not surpass the destruction of institutions to strategize counter constructions using the same physical sites.

(01:10:54):
And you know that radicals who want to jettison the university are abandoning the possibility for insurgent teaching and learning to occur within the university.
So it seems like you're trying to stake out a bit of a position here within this kind of larger conversation that's happening in like abolitionist university um kind of thinking.

(01:11:16):
Um and,
and organizing and I just want to know a little bit more about,
you know,
your,
your thoughts on this question and also particularly what these counter constructions and insurgent teaching and learning might look like in the current moment,
which as we've already talked about is not a moment that looks like 19 in a lot of ways is not 1969 maybe in some ways,

(01:11:40):
it maybe in some ways you want to draw out ways that it is.
But you know,
what does that look like today?
So I think that maybe I'll start by saying I have immense respect for and solidarity with people across the radical and revolutionary left spectrum.
And uh Miriam Kaba tells us that hope is a discipline.

(01:12:02):
I think also non sectarianism is,
is a discipline.
Yes.
Yes.
I'm glad you said that.
Uh,
and,
and,
and with that said,
uh,
I see that sometimes,
uh,
people may only go so far in envisioning the unfolding chapters of what liberation can look like.
And it's kind of like what Hannah A Rent,

(01:12:23):
uh,
once wrote about Franz Fanon Wretched of the Earth that often people don't read beyond the first chapter on violence as they're running to join the barricades to then look at all of these different complications um that,
that he further elaborates across the the chapters in,
in the book.
And so thinking about um with this invocation to burn it all down,

(01:12:46):
in particular,
in really the uh still glowing embers of the 2022 the 2020 uprisings.
Um I think we can all agree that one protest is insufficient,
one strike is insufficient,
even one riot is insufficient and that people are understandably outraged at the horrifying histories and continued practices of people in power in this country.

(01:13:10):
And that in moments of uprisings,
folks want to set the sources of violence ablaze.
Um However,
when we take a look at um when we take a moment to look past initial eruptions,
and we make sure to think about the world that we want to cos construct.
Instead,
we need to be attentive to which spaces can be hearths to help make that happen.

(01:13:34):
And y'all are probably familiar with Robin Kelly's excellent piece,
Black Study,
Black Struggle,
where he points to different projects in the past and present that sought to do that.
The crew that wrote the essay,
abolitionist University studies and Invitation.
And this is Abigail Boggs Eli Meyerhoff,
Nick Mitchell and Zach Schwartz Weinstein,

(01:13:54):
they advocate in that piece,
uh a vision of quote,
an abolition university to replace the university as we now experience it.
And so I think,
you know,
on the one side,
uh police precincts,
prisons,
detention centers,
they 100% need to be shut down and demolished.
There's absolutely no doubt or equivocation on that.

(01:14:15):
But on the other side,
social institutions like schools,
hospitals,
libraries,
community centers,
transit systems,
food systems,
distribution centers.
These are sites to collectively take over and transform even if they have um including in the case of schools been created through the vestiges of enslaved labor and stolen land from indigenous peoples.

(01:14:38):
And so I think for a beautiful elaboration on this,
folks should check out the recent book,
Everything For Everyone by Iman Abdelhadi and M E o'brien,
which is this incredible narrative that's set in the future 2052 to 2072 of the New York Commune,
that details how urban spaces can and must be collectively controlled.

(01:14:59):
And so in uh particularly in the introduction,
but in different parts of the book,
um I look at how in the university there's this unique convergence of strange bedfellows who are calling for flight pessimism,
refusal and disavowal of the university.
And I don't want to lump their distinct analysis together by making a claim.

(01:15:22):
But I see what the impact on uh leaving on renouncing the university has on radicals who are inside of it.
Students,
teachers,
staff members who say fuck all of this and who come to renounce um what is a fraught but also potentially fruitful space of mass organizing cohesion that the university does offer to revolutionary struggle.

(01:15:44):
And I think sometimes we say that the university,
sometimes we say we invoke the university,
but we're actually talking about the power elite of administrators in the university who make decisions about it.
And when we say,
you know,
we renounce or we reject the university,
what we are doing is actually lighting the masses of people,

(01:16:06):
students,
faculty,
staff,
our families surrounding neighborhoods,
the alumni who have long coc created what the university actually is.
And as we're seeing in Florida and other examples,
the Far right also has a long term plan for universities.
And ironically,
um I can't remember his name right now,

(01:16:27):
but there's someone who is at the head of the new College of Florida takeover campaign of the Far right,
who was also studying Rudy Deutscha and this vision of the long march through the institutions.
So they also have a long term plan for universities.
And um we shouldn't see these institutional spaces for them to run roughshod over society.

(01:16:51):
Um But I think that,
you know,
and part of that,
it's like trying to figure out uh what are we trying to create instead?
And I really want to lift up the work of Latin American and Iberian and comrades who have this uh phrase militant research or as Walter Rodney has also framed having groundings with people as guerilla intellectuals.

(01:17:14):
So people who are consciously rooted and um thinking about uh long time participation in university and social ecosystems.
So regularly co creating projects for research,
organizing with people both inside and outside of the university being accountable to receiving feedback from others and uh creating material that's uh accessible uh uh across our communities.

(01:17:39):
And I think there's a way that um when we're talking about how all of this relates in the present,
there is a this really uh perhaps counterintuitive um point that we have just come through this experience of uh an ongoing uh pandemic of COVID that had uh physically distanced people from each other that had taken us from these formal brick and mortar sites of learning of work for many of us.

(01:18:15):
While others were sacrificed under the altar of capitalism to continue by being quote unquote essential workers um whose labor if that had stopped,
then societies would not have been able to function.
But I think that um coming out of at least this initial uh moment of uh the COVID pandemic people have a different relationship to the status quo.

(01:18:40):
There were uh things that were previously unthinkable that we were told would never be on the table.
Things such as um you know,
literally funds that would just be given to people,
the uh pausing on rent collection,
people not being uh executed in,
in prisons.

(01:19:00):
Um The um vast amount of mutual aid organizing and rent strikes that were happening.
Um Again,
this incredible sweeping uh movement that saw 15 to 26 million people in the streets saying abolish the police.
And I think that um that is uh a kind of collective planetary existential experience.

(01:19:26):
That is something that we have um in,
in this specific way,
never encountered before and particularly people who are rooted in institutions as radicals trying to figure out how to work with those who are like them,
but also those who are adjacent to but not identical to their politics.
That there's something that is really,

(01:19:47):
really exciting about this moment that people are able to take that experience of the pandemic,
that experience of challenging the status quo.
And now that we're all coming back into the same classrooms,
these same workspaces um seeing each other in person um to really hold on that there was something that had changed in terms of human consciousness collectively.

(01:20:12):
And if we're able to take all of these organizing lessons from different periods of time,
from different places in the US,
the hemisphere.
Around the world and to really try and figure out what can we do to um come up with a different kind of system,
a different kind of set of social relations than what capitalism is providing.

(01:20:32):
Um You know,
this is not just a matter of life and death,
this is um you know,
something that if we can draw together all of the possibility of what uh of,
of what humanity can do.
In contrast to a way of thinking that um is only benefiting a relatively few amount of parasites at the expense of the many,

(01:20:54):
I think that the the space of critical thinking and reflection inside universities and that kind of cohesion being recomposed into people,
becoming collective fighting forces to be able to collectively take over these institutions.
This is something that won't happen in a day or week or even a year.
Um But I think this is a vision that we can be using in our lifetimes.

(01:21:18):
And I would love for people to have more of these conversations about what we can do within our lifetime,
to be able to um undo uh the system of capitalism and to create an entirely different set of social relations that is free and that is equitable.
And I feel like uh universities are a crucial space in,
in being able to do that work.

(01:21:39):
Thanks for that answer and just want to pick up on a couple of things that I heard and and yeah,
you know,
differentiating between cultural institutions that,
you know,
don't have anything to save and our social institutions which have carceral qualities but have plenty for us to not only save but to win.

(01:22:05):
Um So with that,
I,
I think probably it would be great to just finish up the episode.
And thank you so much for this wonderful book.
Um This book includes a lot of lessons and this interview has my mind going all over many directions pedagogically geographically,

(01:22:31):
um reaffirming a sense of why I want to be doing the things that I want to do.
And so I really wanna thank you for that.
Yeah,
I love,
I,
I love your um I love your sense of possibility about this moment and thinking about some of the ways that the pandemic might have given us some opportunities and some new ways of um kind of thinking about what's possible.

(01:22:57):
Yeah,
I,
I really appreciate that.
Thanks again for your time,
Connor.
Is there anything that you love us to promote as uh as we put together this episode and put info in the show notes?
Yes.
Uh So people who would like to read New York Liberation School can currently preorder it on the Common Notions website and the books will be available in May for people to receive and there's going to be a series of uh events,

(01:23:26):
book,
tour interviews,
uh different reviews that will be rolling out through the summer.
Into August when there will be a renewed launch as people come back from a summer experience into into university spaces.
And so New York Liberation School will be available during that time.

(01:23:47):
You can find on the Common notions website,
common notions dot org.
You can also follow New York Liberation School.
Uh All one word all spelled out on Instagram and there's also a Facebook page and I would be remiss not to also mention the incredible work that is happening in the city University of New York.

(01:24:09):
At this moment,
I want to give some shout outs to people in rank and file action who are doing the important work of bringing together the the initiatives of Q E organizing from below and to the left of our union leadership and the professional staff Congress rank and file action is a fighting force of labor militancy in New York that is very much akin to a lot of the labor struggles that are happening across the country and beyond and we are preparing the capacity to strike.

(01:24:45):
Uh So I'm really heartened to be involved in those efforts.
Also want to name different groups like Qni for abortion rights who are continuing to organize um after the dissolution of Federal Protections on abortion access,
want to name the work of the People's hearing on racism and repression at QNI,

(01:25:07):
which is currently going around the University college by college to document the racism against Black Latinx Asian Pacific Islander,
also Middle Eastern and in particular Palestinian students.
And as our university administrators,
again,
the most diverse university administration that we've ever had um is um really doing very little to target uh the racism that is in our city and uh in our university,

(01:25:38):
uh the people's hearing folks are,
are doing a lot of great work to challenge that.
And uh at the Cuny Graduate Center where I'm just ending a one year postdoctoral fellowship.
There's this campaign that uh this spring uh had emerged where uh students,
faculty and staff created uh an autonomous people's pantry and have been challenging the administration to reopen the cafeteria that had been closed since the start of the pandemic.

(01:26:09):
And through the work of transforming the dining commons area,
we had um I just heard the news that the cafeteria will reopen in the fall of 2023 a permanent food pantry will be available for people in the building.
And um so thinking about uh gathering spaces like cafeterias that are able to be activated in different ways for study groups,

(01:26:35):
for broad public assemblies,
for uh events,
film screenings,
uh the people's pantry and reclaim the Commons campaign has shown a lot in terms of what's possible.
And I also just want to give a shout out that Q E is a part of a larger organizing ecosystem in New York City and people are revving up for May Day,

(01:26:55):
they'll probably pass by the time this episode goes live,
but I'm really heartened to uh be a part of a larger ecosystem of struggle in the city.
And that the work that y'all are doing in Seattle is very much a part of that too.
And so we're reaching towards y'all and,
and feeling y'all reach back as,
as we continue to move together.

(01:27:16):
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