A privileged campus, a segregated community

When students at Columbia talk about “taking advantage of New York City” while in college, they usually mean just that. They are “taking advantage,” exploiting the city for their own hedonistic pleasures and cultural consumption with little thought for the working people who make their drinks, serve their food, bag their groceries, and pick up their trash. We live cloistered lives of privilege, narrowly pursuing whatever combination of academics and inebriation we choose. Perhaps one day a year we participate in Columbia Community Outreach. A nice gesture, but conspicuously performed just once a year, it smacks of paternalism. I am proud to be a member of Lucha, one of the few groups on campus that treats our neighbors to the north not as scary strangers or hapless natives in need of uplift, but as partners in a struggle for social, political and economic change.

When I came to Columbia, I was excited that the school was in the City. After growing up in the rural Midwest, miles outside of a tiny town of three thousand, moving to New York was culture shock. However, it was not the clubs, bars, and theaters—the high culture and sophistication—that drew me to New York. I could not afford these. Rather, it was the chance to be part of a broader community. In my visit to the City, I saw African Americans, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Chinese and West Africans mingling in a shared urban space. It seemed like a utopia compared to the white monolith of my hometown and the stark segregation of Midwestern cities like Milwaukee.

Yet I quickly learned that the reality of student life at Columbia, while it boasts of its own internal “diversity,” was harshly segregated from the communities to the north of campus. I am sure that while a few intrepid students may have curiously explored 125th Street and a bit of Harlem, almost no one knows about 181st Street and the thriving Dominican community in the Heights. Even in organizing with activists on the left, it was always assumed, and often explicitly insisted upon, that events be “for university students only.” The one exception to this rule has been my time as an activist with Lucha.

Lucha was forced to learn an early, painful lesson. Its founding members organized the group in the aftermath of the Oct. 4, 2006 protest against Jim Gilchrist and the Minuteman Project. While President Bollinger and almost the entire campus self-righteously sung hymns to free speech and denounced the protestors, they failed to recognize that the real reason for the dramatic confrontation was the racist thugs whom the Minuteman Project and their hosts, the College Republicans, brought to campus. It was the presence of these unsavory characters that turned things ugly, in particular, Mr. Kevin Hahulski from Queens who committed the only act of personal violence that night by kicking a defenseless latino student in the head from the stage of Roone Arledge Auditorium. While Bollinger was crooning about free speech, and the protesters were feeling deeply isolated, thousands of people in Harlem, Washington Heights and the Bronx supported the protesters. They understood that what unfolded on stage simply proved that racist thugs had to be visibly confronted and denounced, not politely questioned with cleverly worded note-cards. Thus Lucha, from its very origins, has been rooted in, supported by, and connected with the people of Harlem, the Heights, and the Bronx.

Lucha now needs volunteer support from all students in an effort both to serve our local community and to organize with them as political supporters and allies. As I mentioned in a previous column, Lucha has focused its work this semester on fighting for health care reform, with the specific aim of universal, non-profit health care, that is free for all residents as a basic human right. Towards this goal, Lucha has organized a Community Health Fair on April 11 that will provide free services, screenings, and health care advice, as well as disseminate information on the fight for health care reform and coordinate community leadership to start organizing the people of Harlem and Washington Heights to demand health care as a human right. Just as the Black Panther Party organized free clinics to mobilize poor black people for liberation, Lucha is following in this tradition by combining community service with political mobilization. It is time to “take advantage of the city,” but to become a real New Yorker—an organizer, a citizen.

Rudi Batzell is a Columbia College senior majoring in history and sociology. He is an editor for El Participante, a member of Lucha, and the former chair of the Columbia Undergraduate Journal of History. History and Politics runs alternate Wednesdays. opinion@columbiaspectator.com