Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube

Brooklyn College Students and Staff Walk Out and Rally for Abortion Rights

Brooklyn College students, faculty, and staff walked out and rallied for abortion rights on Friday. The fight ahead will require a mass movement in the streets, organized in our workplaces and places of study.

Left Voice

May 14, 2022
Facebook Twitter Share
Protesters rally outside Brooklyn College on Friday, May 13. A banner reads "CUNY for abortion rights."

On Friday at noon, dozens of people gathered outside Brooklyn College in New York City. “Out of the classrooms and into the streets,” they chanted, asking students to participate in a walkout for abortion rights.

In light of the leaked Supreme Court decision, students, staff and professors took action. The protest was organized by CUNY for Abortion Rights, a new coalition of activists across CUNY campuses who want to fight for reproductive justice.

The students and staff marched through campus and then began a rally outside the gates of Brooklyn College.

“The same people who are pro life won’t bat a eye when Black and Brown people are brutalized and terrorized by the cops. The same pro lifers who are complicit in proposed 238 anti LGBTQ bills this year alone and the same ‘pro lifers’ who are complicit in the climate emergency we are seeing right now,” said Hennesey, a student at Medgar Evers College and member of NYC for Abortion Rights. “There is no reproductive justice without racial justice. There is no reproductive justice without the liberation of trans, queer and non binary people.”

The rally was MCed by Tatiana Cozzarelli, adjunct professor at Brooklyn College, student at the Graduate Center and member of Left Voice:

The Democrats say they are on the side of abortion rights. But they supported and passed the Hyde amendment which stopped low income people’s access to abortion. Right now, even with this happening, Nancy Pelosi is supporting an anti-choice Democrats in Texas. And they’ve had 50 years to pass free, safe and legal abortion into law and they haven’t done it.

Tatiana reminded people about the Latin American feminist movement whose symbol was the green bandana that many in the crowd were wearing. “We must build a movement in the streets, a green wave, like the one in Argentina to crush all those who oppose our rights.”

Next, Josiah, a former Amazon worker who was involved in unionizing the Staten Island warehouse, took the mic. The crowd cheered, chanting “Fuck Jeff Bezos!”

Josiah said “The Amazon Labor Union supports abortion rights. We are here with you … Rights in general are being attacked all over. Millionaires and billionaires shit on the workers every day. We have to fight back at some point.”

A group of students in the Music Department led the group in a song backed by a trumpet that a student had brought to the protest: “Free abortion, safe abortion, My body, my choice,” the crowd chanted.

Nina, a staff member at CUNY and an incoming nursing student, spoke about the importance of organizing at CUNY. She spoke about the student organizing against the brutal imperialist war in Vietnam, as well as the fighting history of CUNY, which includes student walkouts, sit-ins, and massive protests. “We need that kind of movement now here at CUNY,” she explained.

The need to organize a mass movement for abortion rights is clear. And we have to build that movement by organizing in our workplaces and places of study. We have to build that movement by organizing at CUNY, on every campus, mobilizing our friends, co-workers and colleagues in this struggle.This kind of rank-and-file organizing, of community building and community mobilization is necessary for the fights ahead.

As the rally ended, many committed to taking the streets in the national day of action at Cadman Plaza.

As participants chanted: “I believe that we will win.”

Facebook Twitter Share

Left Voice

Militant journalism, revolutionary politics.

United States

Train Derailment in Metro Detroit Illustrates That Capitalist Control of the Railroads Is Fundamentally Unsafe

With the capitalists in control of the railroads, they will destroy the environment and poison and kill workers. The catastrophe in East Palestine will not be the last if we don’t nationalize our railroads and put the safety of people and the environment over profit.

Emma Boyhtari

February 28, 2023
East Palestine, Ohio in the distance at night, smoke and fire springing up due to the train derailment.

The Ohio Train Disaster Is on Biden’s Hands

Just months after President Biden and Congress blocked railway workers from striking over dangerous working conditions, the exact type of disaster that workers predicted has come to pass. The fate of East Palestine must be a wake-up call for the labor and climate movements to fight for the nationalization of the railroads under workers’ control.

B.C. Daurelle

February 15, 2023
US President Joe Biden speaks during a State of the Union address with US Vice President Kamala Harris, left, and US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a Republican from California, right, at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2023. Biden is speaking against the backdrop of renewed tensions with China and a brewing showdown with House Republicans over raising the federal debt ceiling.

Biden’s Populist Speech Can’t Cover Up Capitalist Crisis

Biden tried to paint a picture of a United States that has come back stronger after the pandemic. But despite his populist rhetoric and laundry list of policies, none of these measures can address the real needs of the vast majority of the working class and poor who have been exploited and oppressed for much longer than the last two years.

Tatiana Cozzarelli

February 8, 2023
A horizontal testing scantron with almost all of the bubbles filled in

The Changes to AP African American Studies Are “Absolutely Political”: A Former College Board Worker Speaks Out

A former College Board worker explains how the company's "apolitical" pedagogical approaches privilege right wing ideas, even as the right wing accuses them of spreading "wokeism."

Jess DuBois

February 4, 2023

MOST RECENT

It is Possible to Win: The Pension Reform Crisis in France

A French socialist reflects on the way forward after Macron invites Article 49.3 to pass pension reform.

Paul Morao

March 20, 2023

“We are your economy”: Trans Youth Walkout and Speak Out

The following is a speech by a young trans person as part of an action called for by NYC Youth for Trans Rights.

Tatiana Cozzarelli

March 20, 2023
Three tables full of food, with signs hung above them. One says "The People's Pantry: FREE FOOD." Banners hung from the tables say "Free CUNY" and "Cop Free School Zone"

CUNY Administration Cracks Down on Student and Worker-Run Food Pantry

Students and workers opened "The People's Pantry" seven weeks ago as part of a broader anti-austerity campaign at CUNY, leading to several direct confrontations with the administration.

Olivia Wood

March 19, 2023

Neither NATO Nor Putin: An Anti-war Program for an Anti-war Protest

The following is a flier that Left Voice distributed at the March 18 rally in DC with the anti-war program we believe we must all take up.

Left Voice

March 19, 2023