TALK

Dior Vargas, a Latina feminist mental health activist, is out to break stigmas.

Stemming from the lack of media representation of POC (people of color) and mental illness, Vargas' photo project changes the representation within this narrative and realizes it for so many people in our community. The project, hosted on Vargas’s website, is still accepting submissions.

Wednesday, October 22nd, 2014

Columbia's expansion into West Harlem has set off a speculative rise in property values that threatens many of the over 30,000 lower-income people of color living between 122nd and 135th street with displacement from their homes and neighborhoods. In this overview, the Coalition Against Gentrification (CAGe) offers a window into the history of Columbia's Manhattanville annexation, and begins to analyze the role of the University in future transformations of the area. According to the document's introduction, the comprehensive guide "is designed to help the reader grasp the complex changes underway in West Harlem." We have included a few select passages after the jump, but be sure to read and download the document in its entirety here.   Stay tuned to TALK Magazine for more updates on CAGe's incredible work, and on other events happening during today's National Day of Protest Against Police Brutality.  

Wednesday, October 8th, 2014

The Columbia Prison Divest campaign released a third letter addressed to President Bollinger commenting on their frustration with the established University processes for divestment requests, and the necessity for a meeting with the University President - which, despite being one of the campaign's initial requests, has still yet to be met.

After organizing a demonstration on Low with much media attention, the Columbia Prison Divest campaign - a committee of the group Students Against Mass Incarceration - reached out to President Bollinger once again requesting a meeting. As frustrations with the "diligent" University processes mount (including unfulfilled promises on behalf of the ACSRI [Advisory Committee on Socially Responsible Investing] and changes in the structure of the ACSRI that have produced unsteady lines of communication with the campaign), CPD expressed that a meeting with President Bollinger is necessary for them to ensure accountability to the matter on behalf of the administration. 

While the Columbia Prison Divest campaign is committed to working with the ACSRI and engaging in the university’s formal process, we are also determined to seek recognition from our President, who we see as our representative within this institution...Speaking directly to you is particularly important in order for us to ensure accountability in our process with the ACSRI, given their failure to follow through and communicate their lack of leadership to us in a prompt and respectful way. 

The students expect to hear back from the President within the next two weeks. Read the full letter after the jump! And be sure to check back with TALK for more updates on the Columbia Prison Divest campaign. 

The actress and UN Women Goodwill Ambassador spoke passionately about feminism, sexism and equality at the United Nations

Welcome new students and welcome back old friends,

It has been an intense and emotional summer for many of us. The killings of Eric Garner & Michael Brown gained national media attention and the military occupation & killing of Palestinians in Gaza escalated. We are in a moment of heightened awareness of the realities of police violence and the criminalization of Black and Brown communities around the world. 

Many of you may have attended rallies in support of the people of Ferguson, many of you read articles or engaged in social media conversations about how Black Lives Matter, and many of you may have been organizing around the very same issues in your own backyards.

We return to school in the wake of tragedy but also on the heels of the anniversary of the 1964 Freedom Summer Project. Hundreds of college students mostly from the North (including some from Columbia) travelled to the heart of the Jim Crow South to fight for racial justice and support community-based Freedom Schools and Citizenship Schools. This history of student activism speaks to the role of students at elite institutions like this one in organizing, not only around issues that are limited to our campuses, but also around the larger social violences that we are all implicated in. Many of us are Black, many of us come from low-income backgrounds, many of us are students of color, many of us queer, and many come from immigrant families. All Columbia students have the experience of being “protected” by campus security to varying degrees. We also have a range of experiences being targeted by the same systems of policing which enforce borders between who is considered threatening and who is not. And regardless of our experiences or identities, we are all implicated in the systems of mass incarceration and policing (Note: the over $10 million Columbia has invested in the private prison industry.)

Last summer may have been a national moment of mourning and of disillusionment with the racism that exists in our criminal injustice system following the acquittal of George Zimmerman. And this past summer seemed to be a summer of people being fed up, one of coming together, acknowledging collective trauma, and organizing without backing down. So, Students Against Mass Incarceration (SAMI) and the Columbia Prison Divest (CPD) campaign are inviting you to join us this semester and onward in working to dismantle an oppressive global system of borders, police and prisons that is based on hierarchies of whose lives are valued.

Since our inception in 2012, SAMI has engaged in political education work using a Black student lens, partnered with community-based organizations with similar visions, and grown as a national organization on college campuses around the country. As an effort to locate Columbia students in the system of mass incarceration, the CPD campaign launched last semester with the specific goal of getting Columbia to divest its holdings in private prison companies.The campaign is an initiative of SAMI but has also been supported by a host of other student organizations including Lucha, the Coalition Against Gentrification, and Students for Justice in Palestine. SAMI and the CPD campaign are separate in structure and leadership but we work together very closely as we do with other groups of student activists. We are as deeply committed to collaboration as we are to holding this institution accountable in meaningful and lasting ways.

Join us as we learn together, as we build communities that resist the norms upheld by Columbia’s white supremacist history and culture (i.e. the Core), as we organize to pressure Columbia to divest from prisons and work to hold it accountable for the violence & displacement caused by its expansion into & gentrification of Manhattanville. We hope to see you at one of our upcoming events.

In Solidarity, Students Against Mass Incarceration & the Columbia Prison Divest campaign

On June 5th, Columbia students received an email from Vice President for Public Safety James F. McShane, informing us of the arrest and indictment of 100 “suspected gang members” in West Harlem in “one of the largest gang arrests in New York City history”. McShane argued that these mass arrests, which involved years of surveillance and militarized police tactics including helicopter patrolling, are parts of the process to “make our city and community safer”. Further, McShane stated that "Following these arrests, we are actively supporting an enhanced police presence in West Harlem and increasing our public safety personnel and patrols in and around Columbia buildings in Manhattanville. We will continue to do everything possible to keep making our campus community even safer."  On behalf of Coalition Against Gentrification (CAGe) and Columbia Prison Divest (CPD), we want to express our deep disagreement with the forms in which McShane, and by extension, Columbia, are responding to the raid and the idea of “safety” that they are promoting.

Firstly, we object to the tone in which McShane wrote to the Columbia community regarding what is fundamentally a tragic and violent series of events in the housing units closest to Columbia University. The violence that has taken place in the past years in Manhattanville and Grant Houses has taken a deep toll on a community which Columbia University, despite being only a few blocks away, does not know or understand, making it highly inappropriate for Columbia to judge what safety for these communities means.  Not only this but it is clear that the university is not actually concerned with the safety of community members, as McShane goes on to emphasize his commitment to “keep making our campus community even safer.”

Even more disturbing is the idea that this arrest makes Columbia students “safer”, for two reasons: Firstly, it creates an idea that the main source of insecurity at Columbia comes from the “outside”, an outside depicted in racialized terms that reinforce the projection of danger on poor communities of color. In fact, the majority of acts of victimization of Columbia students come from within Columbia’s gates, as evidenced by the statistics around sexual violence, and the violence that the administration itself enacts by failing to take this violence seriously. Secondly, it creates a zero-sum idea of community, in which Columbia students are safe at the expense of the community around us. We believe that the application of militarized and systemic violence on the West Harlem community does not make Columbia students safer, and that the rhetoric that says it does instrumentalizes the concept of “our campus community’s safety” and underlying racist fear to justify violence imposed on others.  

Underlying this mutually exclusive rhetoric around Columbia students’ safety is the very logic behind gentrification, to which we profoundly object. This logic is based on the premise that the well-being of a neighborhood is incompatible with the people who originally live there, particularly poor people of color. For that reason, the “cleaning-up” of a neighborhood, in which “safety” is a central component, consists of criminalizing the original inhabitants and dispossessing them of their housing, jobs and rights.

Hence, the people of West Harlem are being dispossessed over and over. Under Columbia's expansion, the University began to buy up apartment buildings in the area, displacing the first wave of residents before the speculative frenzy to follow. Since 2004, real wages have fallen, domestic rents have risen, and ground rents for local businesses have grown dramatically in expectation of a new influx of more expensive stores.  As thousands are being displaced, and stores are succumbing to rents that appropriate up to 95% of monthly revenues, many more local youths find themselves out of work (unemployment amongst people of color below 30 in Manhattanville is hovering around 70%).  This has culminated in an extremely difficult situation for young people. For the last decade leaders in West Harlem from Grant Houses, Manhattanville Houses, Coalition to Preserve Community, and The Mirabal Sisters have advocated for policy reforms to improve these conditions.

Rather than address the structural problems that it has a part in creating, Columbia's response has been to support the increased police militarization of the area, delineated in McShane's letter, a police presence that has proven to be racist and to deepen the inequalities of race and class in the neighborhood and city.

As students, we object to the use of a dishonest representation of "our safety" as a tool to perpetuate violence on West Harlem residents. We do not feel safer when our university is inflicting violence on the community around us. Instead, we call on Columbia to cease justifying its violence and expansion with our safety. If Columbia is serious about decreasing violence then it must stop supporting and contributing to increased policing, cease its own violent practice of expansion and attend in meaningful ways to the real causes of violence within the Columbia community.  We demand that Columbia fulfill the promises it has made in its community plan and organize its relationship to the West Harlem community around principles of support for the community’s health, independence, and well-being instead of favoring actions that increase violence and poverty.

-Coalition Against Gentrification and Columbia Prison Divest

Tomorrow TALK  will be tabling at the Brooklyn Zine Fest hosted by the Brooklyn Historical Society from 11am-6pm!

"The Brooklyn Zine Fest is a yearly exposition of self-published magazines in the greatest borough in the greatest city in the world.  Expanding to two days, BZF 2014 will be held on Saturday, April 26th and Sunday, April 27th, 2014 (from 11am to 6pm both days) at Brooklyn Historical Society at 128 Pierrepont Street (corner of Clinton St.) in Brooklyn Heights.  This third annual event will showcase approximately 150 writers, artists, and publishers from New York City and beyond over two days."

FB event for Sat. 4/26

Last night, TALKmag attended the Barnard-Columbia Take Back the Night march, speakout, and rally at Barnard College. Morgaine Gooding-Silverwood delivered the speech this year and, following in our tradition of publishing the TBTN speeches, we've reproduced her entire speech for those of you who missed it! What better way to report on the event, we think, than letting those who attended and spoke, to speak for themselves: 

TW: Sexual Assault

First of all, I want to thank the organizers for extending me this honor, and thank you to everyone here, students, administrators, survivors, allies, family and friends. I also want to acknowledge those who couldn’t make it tonight. Your existence is revolutionary. Thank you for refusing to crumble or disappear in the wake of unspeakable trauma.

I can’t begin to explain what it means to be standing here tonight. After all, it was here, three years ago, at the post-march speak-out, where as a first-year I first openly discussed my own sexual assault.

Talking about my attack was terrifying. There was no script, just a microphone, a makeshift wall for anonymity, and my memories—memories that I had avoided revisiting for years out of both fear and guilt. Guilt because I felt that my trauma was invalid, since I had been drunk, flirtatious, and was able to escape my attacker before his nonconsensual groping of my upper body lead any lower.

Early this morning, Columbia Prison Divest distributed this press release in regard to their "Week of Engagement"

Tuesday, April 15th, 2014

We, Columbia Prison Divest, have organized a number of activities and events on Columbia’s campus during the week of April 14th–18th, titled “People, Prisons & Profit: Where do we fit in?” The purpose of this Week of Engagement is to continue the ongoing campus-wide conversation about what divestment from the private prison industry would look like and why it is important, in a way that is accessible to as many community members as possible. We are also organizing to reiterate our previously voiced demands, including a long-awaited meeting with Columbia University President Lee Bollinger.

We have created this Week of Engagement to demonstrate that members of the Columbia community will not support an industry that profits off of the commodification of human bodies and the destruction of vulnerable, marginalized communities. But our work is not occurring in isolation on Columbia’s campus alone. We are also organizing in solidarity with the actions of divestment campaigns at several campuses across the nation, including the University of Central Florida and schools in the University of California system. We position ourselves within a growing anti-mass incarceration student movement that works to hold ourselves and our schools accountable to investment practices that are just and humane.

Columbia Prison Divest’s Week of Engagement will consist of events, performances, discussions, and interactive activities across campus in collaboration with a number of Columbia student groups, including Students Against Mass Incarceration (SAMI), AlterNATIVE Education, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), cIRCa, Radical College Undergraduates Not Tolerating Sexism (Radical C.U.N.T.S.), LUCHA, Columbia Prison Reform & Education Project (PREP), Freedom School, Original Green (O.G.), and Potluck House.

Our schedule consists of the following:

On Monday April 14th, CPD will be tabling and flyering in Lerner and on the sundial, and will also host a teach-in on Education as it pertains to the prison industrial complex at the Malcolm X Lounge from 6-8pm with PREP and AlterNATIVE.

On Tuesday April 15th, CPD will be tabling again, and will also be hosting a film screening from 7-10 pm in 409 Barnard Hall with a discussion facilitated by neuroscientist and Columbia professor Dr. Carl Hart.

On Wednesday April 16th, CPD will be featuring student art, music, and spoken word performances at the sundial with cIRCa, and will also be facilitating a conversation about criminalization from 7-9pm in the Malcolm X Lounge with LUCHA and SAMI.

On Thursday April 17th, CPD will have an interactive display on the Low Steps during the day, and will also host both a teach-in with SJP on Low Steps at 3pm. In the afternoon, we will co-host discussion on sexual violence, punishment, and healing with Radical C.U.N.T.S. from 5-7pm in the Malcolm X Lounge, before participating in and supporting Take Back the Night’s annual march and speak-out.

On Friday April 18th, CPD will close the week on Ancel Plaza (in front of East Campus) from 2-5pm with a speak-out/cypher, and then finally end the week with a kickback co-sponsored by the IRC’s Original Green committee at Potluck House (606 w. 114th St.) at 7pm.

This Thursday, April 14th, Take Back the Night is having their annual march and speak out to end sexual violence and rape culture. The rally starts at 7:45pm right outside of Barnard Hall and will last until 10pm. The guest speaker will be Morgaine Gooding-Silverwood, a Columbia University student and activist.

The Speak Out is after the rally at 10pm in the Event Oval in the Diana Center (LL1). This is a safe space for the students and community to anonymously share their stories. 

For more information, check out the FaceBook event: http://tinyurl.com/TBTN2014

See you all there!!!

TALKITES!

Add this to your calendars!!! On April 16 the BCRW will host Historical Perspectives on Domestic Worker Organizing, featuring Elizabeth Quay Hutchison and Premilla Nadasen. They will look at the changing labor relations of domestic service over the course of the 20th century.

President Bollinger Responds to Prison Divest

President Bollinger responds to Columbia students' question about Columbia's investment and complicity in the prison industrial complex, 

On Tuesday, April 1st, 2014, Columbia students pushed the panel and audience at an event held in Low Library to consider the university's role in ending the legacy of slavery in the United States. The event - Ebony & Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America's Universities - was meant to explore "the history of slavery in New York City, the intersections of slavery and Columbia University, and issues of race at Universities in the 20th century", according to an email sent out to the Columbia community.

After an address by MIT Professor Craig S. Wilder (author of the book which the event was named after) and remarks from Columbia's own Eric Foner, Ansley T. Erickson, and Karl Jacoby, the event featured an audience question-and-answer session which Columbia student activists took advantage of. Upon informing the panel and audience that Columbia reported having $8 million invested in the nation's largest private prison company, student activists asked the panel to reflect on the connections between Columbia's investment in the prison industrial complex now, and their former investment in the institution of American slavery (a recording of this question can be viewed here). Professor Craig S. WIlder responded by saying:

Mass incarceration is one of the critical issues - generational issues - effecting our nation, and I am fully in favor of ...divestment from private prison corporations...

After the panel took another audience member's question, another Columbia student (as seen in the video above) asked Bollinger - who was also in attendance - to respond directly. Professor Foner responded first, invoking the history of the student movements that forced Columbia to divest from companies who did business in South Africa, and stated:

That was the result of a very long and large student movement on this campus...I do think history shows that eventually they will respond to a large scale movement of one kind or another

Foner went on to state that he did not believe "running into the office and presenting the investments is going to win", but he encouraged students to put more "nonviolent" pressure on the issue.

After Foner's response, Bollinger - who spoke on his dedication to affirmative action in his opening welcome and introductory remarks for the event - responded directly: 

You really have the opportunity to make your case in this process...I am thrilled that you have raised a number of questions that make people like me feel uncomfortable. These are hard problems. They're difficult, and you want to come and make your case as strongly as you can, and we'll try to be as fair and judicious and yet passionate about this as well. 

From C-SJP's facebook group: 

Columbia LionPAC released a statement earlier today in response to C-SJP and other students' allegations of discrimination. 

LionPAC strongly believes in freedom of speech and respects that SJP has the right to freedom of speech and the right to demonstrate and advocate their political viewpoint on college walk, or through posters on campus. We respect that SJP followed the proper protocols to book the banner space, and we recognize their respect for the policy. We believe that the banner space is not appropriate for any political message, by any student group. The hanging of a banner on Barnard Hall advocating a specific political message gives the impression that Barnard as a school publicly endorses the banner’s message. In this case, SJP’s banner depicts a map of Israel as one unified State for Palestine. It is a completely green map with no internal boarders, annihilating the existence of any Jewish state or the possibility of a two-state solution. The location of the banner makes it appear as if Barnard as a school is publicly endorsing SJP’s message that Israel as a Jewish state does not have the right to exist. The banner was not taken down in order to suppress a particular political viewpoint, but rather to ensure that people feel comfortable walking into Barnard Campus and do not feel as is Barnard is endorsing SJP’s message.