Love & Rage Archive

by Dave Lawrence

by Christopher Day

by Suzy Subways

On Apr. 25 a diverse group of activists successfully shut down four major New York City bridges. Traffic was blocked, during rush hour, from 15 minutes to an hour at each location. The locations were divided between 4 groups: ACT-UP and neighborhood groups protesting Medicaid Cuts and hospital closings; CUNY (City University of New York) students and public school teachers protesting budget cuts in public education; and groups opposed to police brutality and racist and homophobic violence (including the Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence, the Congress for Puerto Rican Rights, and families of those killed by police). 185 people were arrested.

This is a Members Handbook that was produced by the New York Love & Rage Local in August 1997.

I would say that this is the best single document to download to get a whole picture of Love & Rage. It is the only L&R publication that included an organizational history, the draft of L&R's political statement, and documents on L&R's structure all in one place.

By Suzy Subways

On January 14, New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani attacked the City University of New York’s open admissions policy in his State of the City address, claiming that the University has no “standards.” Within weeks, several CUNY Trustees and college presidents made proposals to limit remedial education and impose stricter entrance requirements on students at CUNY’s 17 colleges. These proposals sparked a series of student and faculty protests, but barely three months passed before the Trustees voted on May 26 to end all remedial classes at the senior colleges.

CUNY’s open admissions policy was won by radical Black and Latino students in 1969, with a long struggle culminating in a student strike at City College that had tremendous support from the surrounding Harlem community. At the time, the student body of City College was 94% white; it was called the “pearl of Harlem.” To open the door to higher education to all New Yorkers, the open admissions policy guaranteed a place at CUNY for everyone who has graduated from high school or earned a G.E.D. Now the majority of CUNY students are people of color and many are single mothers, immigrants, and poor people.

By Keith Mitchell

On August 29, over 10,000 demonstrators closed down southern Brooklyn in support of Abner Louima who was allegedly assaulted in the basement of Brooklyn’s 70th precinct. Marchers packed the trains in the early morning hours on the way to the rally’s starting point. An eclectic bunch of nuns, priests, whites, Latinos, and African-Americans broke down the barriers that partition everyday life in New York’s transit system, and spoke of a common disgust of the details of the Louima case and the high level of police abuse under Mayor Giuliani.

Among the groups participating in the rally were the October 22 Coalition, Refuse and Resist, Forever In Struggle Together (FIST), and ACT-UP! Tim, an activist in ACT-UP!, expressed the common ground between different groups in the city in reaction to the police “Brutality is often times used against our community as a means of intimidating, especially those who begin to speak out.”