The New York Post reports:
City College officials have taken back a controversial student center named for two infamous killer activists at their uptown campus, prompting hundreds of students to storm the building Monday afternoon.
Shouting, “We’re not leaving until they give it back!” the students amassed at the North Academic Center at 136th Street and Convent Avenue, where up until midnight Saturday, the Morales/Shakur Center had been on the third floor since 1990.
“The Morales/Shakur Center has been under siege by the CUNY administration for 25 years, and they unexpectedly seized it Saturday night without consulting with anyone who participates in the center,’’ said Taf Sourov, 18, a sophomore at CCNY who was one of the protest’s organizers.
“We said that we would mobilize to defend our community space, and we did, and we brought out hundreds and hundreds of people.
“We had to infiltrate our own school building and occupy the rotunda for a while and raise people’s morale, setting the atmosphere for further organizing,’’ Sourov said. “The real question is, what’s going to happen next?”
The protestors stayed for a little over an hour and vowed to return in the evening.
The students were given the space as part of a settlement after a protest over a tuition hike in 1989, according to media reports. They promptly named it after Puerto Rican-nationalist bomber Willie Morales and Black Liberation Army member Joanne Chesimard, aka Assata Shakur, who killed a New Jersey state trooper in 1973 — creating outcry from cops and other groups.
To see footage of the protest, click below.
