From Day One

This video honoring SLAM was put together by the SLAM X Media Committee (Lenina, Eddy, Nas and Bravo) for SLAM’s 10th anniversary in March 2006. Directed by Eddy Nelson Rivera.

Read Full Post »

informal discussion by a few SLAM and SLAM fam on our organizing history

These audio recordings (click on the links below) are from a panel at the CUNY Social Forum, held at City College October 17 to 19, 2008. The panel was an informally organized discussion by some former SLAM members and SLAM fam, along with activists attending the workshop.

How this panel came to be – John Kim (1 minute, 53 seconds)

Suzy Subways, journalist and AIDS activist in Philadelphia, was in Brooklyn College SLAM, worked with High School Organizing Program (5 minutes, 22 seconds): “Women of color in SLAM taught me how to organize”

Orlando Green, National Hip-Hop Political Convention, Blacks Against War, SLAM alum, City College alum, organizer at Baruch College in the 90s (10 minutes, 33 seconds): SLAM’s roots in the Black community and radical people of color organizing

John Kim, SLAM member back in the day, initiated this workshop (5 minutes, 56 seconds): “We knew we needed to build organizational power”

Daniel Tasripin, Hunter College Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Hunter SLAM member 2001-2004 (13 minutes, 34 seconds): “The message came down from 80th Street to Hunter’s president – ‘Enough of these radicals in student government!'”

Hank Williams, in Africana Studies at CUNY grad center, organizing for Black studies doctorate, was in 2nd generation of SLAM at City College (13 minutes, 5 seconds): “SLAM was a movement engine to support larger struggles around the city”

Terry Marshall, Hip-Hop Media Lab, Hip-Hop Sustains, was in Students Organizing for Unity and Liberation (SOUL) at Roxbury Community College in Boston in the 90s (11 minutes, 9 seconds): “We just had this indignation, like ‘They don’t even respect us as human beings…. Fuck that, we’re going to take this building!'”

Questions & Answers

What is the potential for CUNY students to organize high school students?

What was day-to-day SLAM organizing like? And how did it play out with Leninists, anarchists, nationalists working together?

With a high turnover rate among students, how do you bring people in who are interested first thing in September?

Could you adopt a high school, teach the truth, and bring those students into CUNY? The mayor controls the schools, but cats don’t educate mice, they eat them. Also, while we oppose the system, how can we use an above-ground strategy to undermine the 2-party electoral system?

Read Full Post »

CUNY Social Forum opening plenary: “The Movement for Educational Democracy and Self-Determination at CUNY in the Context of the Global Struggle for Human Rights and Reparations”

To listen to these sound files, recorded Oct. 17, 2008, in Harlem at the CUNY Social Forum, click on the links below:

Maria Arettines (moderator), a CUNY Social Forum organizer and Hunter College student: “What are our desires?” (5 minutes, 23 seconds)

Hank Williams, veteran of the Student Liberation Action Movement (SLAM!) and organizer with the Africana Studies Group at the CUNY Graduate Center: The CUNY movement, women of color feminism, and our vision of the university in the aftermath of losing Open Admissions (12 minutes, 31 seconds)

Vanessa James, Parents in Action for Leadership and Human Rights: Fighting Children’s Services for the human right to keep our children from being taken away (10 minutes, 58 seconds)

Mark Torres, former City College student activist, member of the Hostos Educators’ Association: Building organizational power – “Educate, agitate, organize!” (11 minutes, 33 seconds)

Dr. Leonard Jeffries, department of political science, City College; former chair of Black Studies Department: From shattered consciousness and fractured identities to a blueprint for people’s power (21 minutes, 36 seconds)

Luz Schreiber, co-founder of Hunter Parent Union, former member of SLAM and founding member of Ollin Imagination: Dreaming revolution, imagining collective solutions (9 minutes, 40 seconds)

Q&A – Movement elders and students speak and ask questions (41 minutes, 18 seconds)

Read Full Post »