Sign on to co-sponsor the People's Hearing on Racism and Repression. The launch event will be held on March 9th, 2023 at 6-8:30 pm, in the Proshansky auditorium at the Graduate Center.

The idea for the People's Hearing comes out of organizing that took place in our CUNY community in the summer of 2022 in response to the CUNY administration’s participation in a sham hearing organized by the New York City Council’s higher education committee. The hearing was the result of pressure by right-wing groups who made it clear that their aim was to force CUNY to adopt policies that would in effect erase any mention of Palestine from the university space in direct response to successful Palestine liberation organizing across the university. The administration’s decision to participate in this hearing in the face of anti-Palestinian racism, anti-Blackness, Islamophobia and other forms of systemic racism and racialized violence on our campuses is a testament to how the administration has often been the agent of such forms of violent racism via being an outright source or through selective silence. As such, we felt strongly that what was needed was in fact a different hearing - a People’s Hearing - to hold the university accountable to its students, staff and faculty, and to the wider community in which it is embedded. 

Through the launch event on March 9th we aim to build towards a People’s Hearing against Racism and Repression by building networks between the different struggles for social justice already taking place across CUNY and NYC more broadly to increase our collective power. This is an opportunity for us all to come together to discuss current and future organizing that addresses racism, austerity, gentrification, academic freedom attacks, surveillance, and policing within CUNY, as well as ways of building solidarity with Palestine, Puerto Rico, Philippines, Haiti and other struggles for liberation, abolition, reparations and decolonization/landback. We aim to shed light on the persistent ways that CUNY is actively engaged in perpetuating institutionalized racism and other forms of discrimination such as transphobia, sexism, ableism, as well as colonialism/imperialism. We want to reclaim our rights as people of this city as well as full members of the CUNY community. 

Please fill out the form if your organization would like to be part of this exciting project. We envision co-sponsorship to include support in promoting and attending People's Hearing events (e.g. the launch event on March 9th, 2023) although it could also entail more substantive engagement if of interest. We look forward to building on past successes and working together to achieve a truly transformed and People's CUNY and a People's New York!