Defend Anti-Petraeus Protesters!-New York City
(Young Spartacus pages)
On September 17, the cops brutally attacked a demonstration at the
City University of New York (CUNY) against the appointment of war criminal David
Petraeus as visiting professor. Six black and Latino protesters were arrested,
detained overnight, and slapped with a range of trumped-up charges including
“riot.” The delegate assembly of the Professional Staff Congress, a union
representing CUNY faculty and staff, passed a September 19 resolution denouncing
the cop repression and calling for the charges against the protesters to be
dropped. Students, faculty and campus workers must defend the CUNY 6, and all
those who oppose the crimes of U.S. imperialism, against bourgeois state
repression. Drop all charges against the CUNY 6!
The demonstration, called by the Ad Hoc Committee Against the
Militarization of CUNY, was held outside a fund-raiser attended by the former
CIA director General Petraeus at CUNY’s Macaulay Honors College. Videos filmed
on the scene show an NYPD supervisor grabbing a protester and slamming him into
a parked car as two other officers pile on top and other cops swarm the street,
chasing protesters. Another video shows police holding down and repeatedly
kidney punching another protester.
The media has gone on a violence-baiting smear campaign against the
CUNY protesters and in defense of this war criminal. In an ominous statement
released on September 20, CUNY’s interim chancellor William P. Kelly issued a
thinly veiled endorsement of the police repression and an implicit threat
against the protesters, vowing to put a stop to so-called “obstruction” and
“harassment” of Petraeus. CUNY: Hands off faculty and student protesters!
No reprisals!
Outrageously, the press and CUNY administration have invoked the
notion that Petraeus’s right to free speech as a professor has been violated.
But this is not a question of “academic freedom” for some bourgeois ideologue.
We want students, teachers and workers to drive Petraeus off campus through
protest and exposure—not for his political views, but for his
deeds in overseeing torture and mass murder in Iraq, Afghanistan, Latin
America and elsewhere. We are also in favor of protests aimed at shutting down
the Reserve Officers Training Corps (see “ROTC Off Campus!” WV No. 1029,
6 September).
While the Spartacus Youth Club defends these protesters, we also
maintain our criticisms of the politics of the Ad Hoc Committee, as expressed in
our press and at the multiple CUNY protests in which we have participated. This
group, led by the fake-Trotskyist Internationalist Group (IG) and the Maoist
Revolutionary Student Coordinating Committee (RSCC), is an opportunist bloc that
does not mention—let alone oppose—the current ruling party of imperialist war,
namely the Democrats, in any of its published statements. While the RSCC claims
to be anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist, it offers no opposition to the
Democratic Party anywhere in its Points of Unity, Platform or published
articles. The IG is only too happy to ditch its paper opposition to the
Democrats for the sake of joint statements of unity with liberals and
reformists.
For Marxists, the starting point for a program to defeat U.S.
imperialism is opposition to the capitalist ruling class and its parties. As a
speaker for the SYC stated in his speech during the Ad Hoc Committee’s September
3 protest, “The Democrats are simply the other party of racism and war. We say
break with the Democrats! No support to Obama. We need a workers party that
fights for socialist revolution!”
The next court hearing is scheduled for October 17 at the New York
Criminal Court, 100 Centre Street, time to be announced. Protest letters can be
sent to Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr., One Hogan Place, New
York, NY 10013. We reprint below the SYC’s September 21 protest letter to the
Manhattan D.A. We note that the last name of one of the arrested protesters,
Rafael Peña, was misspelled in the court record and thus also in our protest
letter.
* * *
The New York Spartacus Youth Club (SYC) denounces the police
assault on those protesting ex-CIA head General David Petraeus outside CUNY
Macaulay Honors College on September 17th. Six protesters, Jose Disla, Denise
Ford, Rafael Pena, Luis Henriquez, Agustin Castro and Angelica Hernandez, were
arrested. We demand that all charges be dropped immediately!
During the protest, the NYPD viciously punched and slammed
protesters to the pavement. One was held down by officers and repeatedly
pummeled.
The context for this police attack was several recent protests
against Petraeus teaching at Macaulay Honors College and against the Reserve
Officers Training Corps (ROTC) returning to CUNY campuses. For voicing their
opposition, the six protesters face trumped up charges, including riot in the
second degree, obstruction of governmental administration and resisting arrest,
among others. The SYC stands in solidarity with the CUNY 6. We demand that all
charges be dropped!
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