On the northern side of the 125th Street subway station, shiny glass buildings rise up nine stories into the sky on the same blocks that used to house a slew of independent businesses and hundreds of affordable apartment units. Meanwhile, many West Harlem community members have yet to experience the educational benefits Columbia committed to offering the community when it first began to build the new campus.

On Wednesday, the Student Workers of Columbia-United Auto Workers held multiple picket lines blocking all entrances to Columbia’s Morningside campus from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., asking students and faculty not to cross the picket lines in an effort to entirely shut down the campus. The student-workers were joined by faculty members, undergraduates, and members of other unions and labor organizations across New York City.

On Tuesday evening, as car horns blared and the neon lights of Times Square billboards flashed, roughly 40 people stood together in silence at the southern end of Duffy Square. Many were dressed in white lab coats and held signs that read “Human lives over pharma profits,” “Delay = death,” and, most noticeably, “Support WTO TRIPS waiver.”

When Rep. Adriano Espaillat began his push to rename large swaths of Upper Manhattan to “Quisqueya Heights” in February, his proposal’s attempt to spotlight the Dominican presence in the area garnered fierce pushback from its multiethnic residents. Now, after months of controversy surrounding the renaming, Espaillat has dropped his renaming plan and is instead calling for the creation of a Dominican cultural heritage district.