Columbia Universisty Eminent Domain Abuse Update

Community March on Columbia’s Expansion,
Thursday, March 22 – 4:00pm participants gather at 116th Street and
Broadway
(Outside the Columbia campus gates)
4:30pm:  March up Broadway to 125th,  making a few short stops along
the way and ending up on 125th and 12th Ave.

Community members and Columbia and CCNY students will have a rally,
food and entertainment around 6pm at this site of the Triangle of
Eviction (Floridita, Tuckitaway, Singh’s gas station) which symbolizes
the eviction of Harlem residents that has already occurred and will
keep up as long as Cuomo’s Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC)
does Columbia’s dirty work and facilitates the digging of West Harlem’s
graveyard. We’ll be there for a while, so come late if you can’t come
early.

A flyer circulating our demands (jobs, no biohazard level 3 labs*, no
forced displacement, justice for the businesses facing eminent domain,
that CU pay for asbestos removal in Floridita Restaurant so it can
reopen) will be available, or you can email bfrappy24@aol.com and the
flyer can be sent as an attachment.

Please join Coalition to Preserve Community members and bring something
to keep a beat and make some noise.

OCCUPY/RESIST:

Columbia U’s:      Harlem Eviction Plan

Gov. Cuomo’s:     Eviction Agency – E.S.D.C.

FORUM ON THE EXPANSION, MONDAY, MARCH 26TH, 8pm, Mathematics building,
on campus:

Some Columbia students are holding a forum on the expansion plan on
Monday, March 26th, from 8 to 10pm. Members of the community will be on
the panel which includes Prof. Mindy Fullilove (Columbia), Ramon Diaz
(owner of Floridita), Rev. Earl Kooperkamp (St. Mary’s Church), Sarah
Martin (Pres. of Grant Houses), Luis Tejada (Mirabal Sisters), and Tom
DeMott (CPC), and others. Lee Bollinger (employee of the Trustees) has
been invited by students.

Place: Mathematics Building  - room 203. Ask someone to direct you once
on campus.


* Ben Strauss of Climate Control spoke out once again last week about
sea level rise being a particular threat to NYC, suggesting the subway
system could be dramatically jeopardized by the effects of a low
category hurricane. He recommended that certain development projects
needed to be assessed and scaled back. Although he did not talk
specifically about Columbia’s acres of 80 foot basement a few hundred
feet from the Hudson - a foundation which is supposed to support
bio-hazard level 3 labs and 26 story buildings - we have all heard from
Columbia professor Klaus Jacobs about the dangers of this basement for
years.