6 Comments
founding

I hate to say it, but let's be honest about all this. The students wouldn't have been successful if the power that be weren't on that side. The utter destruction of the white population in SA was the agenda, test case for a country near you. This time is different. TPTB will not go against Isre-hell, EVER and we know this because the henchmen of this generation tend to be dual citizens. Divestiture ain't happening.

Expand full comment
author

Remember, these events were five full years before Mandela was released from prison.

Expand full comment

Excellent work, closing the gap of the dark years in between the 1980s and the present. I didn't know much if anything about the history of the SUNY South Africa Apartheid divestiture movement. Amazing righteous action by Jane McAlevey organizing the chain-in at the SUNY administrative office which forced the Regents to divest.

The Student Association of the State University (SASU) was the right idea at the right time. No surprise that the SUNY hierarchy acted to completely shred it in the late '80s-early '90s.

I need to note that this was not something which happened in a vacuum. This was yet one more step in rolling back the small progress achieved by the "Sixties" movement which maintained momentum well into the '70s, changing aspects of American society, only to succumb to a political and cultural counterrevolution organized very consciously by the powers-that-shouldn't-be via mass media culture and the "education" system.. By the early '90s, American society was rendered self-absorbed and obsessed, rendered infantile in terms of social awareness. A milieu capable of supporting SASU in resisting the powers no longer existed. And this counterrevolution has marched on ever since.

It's actually quite miraculous that the events at SUNY Purchase and SUNY New Paltz happened at all. At first, i was a bit annoyed with your audience for being apparently unable to focus and pay attention, but i came to enjoy their participatory fervor. These kids are alright!! They understand in a big way where things are at, even if they haven't figured out all the details. Such understanding is of course very important, but having an intuitive affinity for a willingness to do something is an absolute opening requirement.

Some of this took me time traveling. I went to high school (Bronx Science) a block away from Lehman College, a campus of the City University of New York (CUNY), which you reported re being a major center of activity, i assume you meant the '80s. Back when i went to Bronx Sci, that campus was still called Hunter College Bronx Campus. And i went to college at the CUNY's City College of New York campus, the flagship of the CUNY system (the "college" part of the name is an artifact of the naming having happened in 1847, long before terms like "city college" became associated with junior colleges).

Expand full comment

Meridian at Lehman was going strong 89 into the early 1990s...concurrently with Student Leader, we had a lot of cross pollination of talent and angle. Meridian was edgy, once trying to get the attention of the student body by posting the Mapplethorpe with the whip up his ass on the front page as a joke...that, and they were some of the best investigative reporters I've ever worked with (our City Desk) -- that being part of the Livin' Large story about which i will share soon. I miss all those people. We were the Talking Heads of student journalism...what great fun...

Expand full comment

Terrific! These kids are fully up to inheriting 100% of what students were doing in the Sixties. Excellent job by Eric to get into the 80s’ South African divestiture story and bring it right to the front of the conversation.

Expand full comment