Realize the Dream. RSVP for the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington
Civil rights, faith-based and community groups and labor unions, including the PSC, are mobilizing to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the occasion of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Support for racial justice and civil rights demonstrated at that march spurred passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It’s time to take a renewed message of anti-racism and human rights to Capitol Hill, especially after the Trayvon Martin verdict. It’s time to stand together against the recent attack on voter rights, Stand Your Ground laws and racial profiling, and to demand action on unemployment, poverty, gun violence and immigrants’ rights.
The 50th anniversary commemoration will take place Sat., Aug. 24. It will feature a rally at the Lincoln Memorial (starting at 8 AM) followed by a march to the King Memorial (more info here).
PSC will provide transportation to Washington D.C. and back for members who travel by bus with the union. (Click here to RSVP.) Members who RSVP for the march will be contacted with travel details. If you plan to travel separately, click this link to let us know, and we will send you info about how to meet up with your PSC colleagues at the rally.
Meddling in Departmental Governance at Brooklyn College
Over the last several months Brooklyn College President Karen Gould has intervened in the governance of several departments including Accounting, Modern Languages, and Business Management and Finance. She has rejected department chairs who were elected—sometimes unanimously—by colleagues in their departments and also removed the director of the College’s children and youth studies program and cut the program’s course offerings. The Brooklyn College PSC chapter has covered the faculty’s reaction to this administrative overreach on their blog, and now the Wall Street Journal has covered it as well.
Tell Your Legislators: Protect Health Services and Jobs at SUNY Downstate
PSC’s sister union United University Professions (UUP) has been waging an aggressive campaign to save health care services and members’ jobs at Downstate Medical Center’s University Hospital, Brooklyn’s only State-run hospital. You can help by calling your State legislator today and saying: Keep Downstate Medical Center’s University Hospital open as a fully operational State-run hospital.
SUNY Downstate has been on the verge of insolvency since it acquired Long Island College Hospital (LICH), but instead of providing funding to stabilize the hospitals, the enacted State budget called for a “Sustainability Plan” for restructuring the SUNY Downstate’s finances. If the lawmakers who represent the community and workforce at Downstate don’t demand better, the plan could be to shrink, close, or privatize University Hospital, which treats nearly 400,000 patients a year, with or without health insurance.
To look up your State legislators and their phone numbers, visit Who Represents Me? NYC. You may also use the AFL-CIO action line at 877-255-9417 and follow the prompts. For more information and more ways you can help, visit savejobsatsunydownstate.org and uupinfo.org.
