Notes from a student protester

The time to educate! agitate! and organize! is now.

The historical development and preservation of the American nation-state necessitates certain ideologies such as capitalism and patriarchy, but more specifically in this case, white supremacy. 

Last week’s decision to not indict the officer responsible for the murder of Eric Garner, followed by mass protests throughout the city, sheds light on both the criminal injustice system and the need to assemble information or literature on white supremacy’s legacy. Here I would like to take a moment to reiterate that racism is not single-handedly responsible for most of our minority communities’ issues, but that race relations cannot be isolated from class antagonisms. In this country, their origins are nearly indistinguishable. 

I was present during the protests on Dec. 3 and something that I noticed was that there were many more youths involved in this process, at least when compared to many other actions I have participated in. Not only were these youth out in larger numbers, but also, they were better organized or efficient at decision making when changing the route to outflank police authorities attempting to contain and provide order. While these youths lacked the experience necessary, they still managed to demonstrate the power of the people by shutting arteries of or to the city down.

Interestingly, that very same Wednesday afternoon, some friends and I agitated at our Lehman College campus in an action of solidarity with families, friends, students and workers that oppose the militarization and state repression of our communities domestically and abroad, namely Mexico. This action was coordinated under the hash tag #USTired2 along with several others in more than 50 U.S. cities. Its goal was to bring much needed attention to military aid the U.S. state provides its neighboring Mexican state in the alleged “War on Drugs” vis-à-vis the Merida Initiative. 

As students, we have an immediate interest in understanding the state’s military defense budget given that it negatively affects one’s ability to obtain financial assistance from federal and state programs. Therefore, if the Mexican state has been directly responsible for the recent disappearance of 43 students of their own, how can we hold our own state accountable for similar, if not worse, atrocities like facilitating funding for state violence?    

Although our turnout was low, we are eager and plan to build locally in. On campus, there are student clubs that wish to participate in an array of actions condemning the decision not to indict either of the officers responsible for murdering Eric Garner here in New York City or Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, which is why we have organized a coalition autonomous of any campus administrative body. Being independent from said CUNY administration is imperative to our movement-building efforts because, like state administrators, their duty is to see that one follows preset procedures from the powers that be that too often run contrary to the general student body’s alternative methods of organization. 

While our fallen brothers have not all been students, the renewal of a mass student movement is useful to our communities that would otherwise not have access to institutions in charge of protecting the battle of ideas/ academic expression. 

Eric Nava-Perez is a junior political science student at Lehman College. He is part of the People Power Movement activist group.