Remedial Class Struggle Continues: Renate Bridenthal Arrested at CUNY

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Date: Sun, 07 Jun 1998 17:11:04 -0700
>From: David Stevens <phylstevens at worldnet.att.net>
>Subject: Renate Bridenthal arrested at CUNY
>To: A place for marxist-feminists to hang out <M-Fem at csf.colorado.edu>
>X-CC: RNBBC at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
>Reply-to: M-Fem at csf.colorado.edu
>
>I'm posting this to M-FEM.  I haven't seen Renate
>Bridenthal post to our list since last August, and
>perhaps other readers also didn't get this news,
>which is from _Workers Vanguard_ No. 692, p. 15,
>(5 June 1998), newspaper of the Spartacist League:
>
> "... the NYPD hauled off 24 supporters of open
>admissions at CUNY [City University of New York]
>in handcuffs.  Among those arrested were a state
>assemblyman and 62-year-old Brooklyn College
>professor Renate Bridenthal, who came to the US
>as a refugee from Nazi Germany.  Their 'crime' was
>to protest at a 'public' hearing -- which was
>cleared of the public -- where the CUNY Board of
>Trustees rammed through plans to shut down remedial
>classes at the four-year colleges and exclude any
>student who fails any of the four entrance exams.
>This will effectively end the open admissions
>policy inaugurated in 1969, as CUNY chancellor
>Anne Paolucci made clear when she sneered about
>'cleaning out' the colleges after '30 years of
>neglect.'  Open admissions provided an avenue to
>higher education for working-class youth, particularly
>minorities and immigrants.  This racist new policy
>will bar more than half of all Hispanic and Asian
>applicants and 46 percent of black students from
>the four-year colleges."
>
> -- "Giuliani's NYC: 'Quality of Life' Police State,"
>    _Workers Vanguard_ No. 692
>
> All I know about this is what I read in the papers ...
>
>- David Stevens
>