Columbia Students Oppose Columbia University's West Harlem-Manhattanville Construction Project--Part 10

In October 2014, the Columbia Student Coalition Against Gentrification (CAGe) released a

report

, titled Understanding Columbia University's Expansion into West Harlem: An Activist's Guide, which indicated why many Columbia students, Barnard students and neighborhood residents in Morningside Heights, West Harlem and Manhattanville are apparently still opposed to the Columbia University Administration's Kravis Business School construction/campus expansion project in West Harlem/Manhattanville. As the report notes:

"(June 4, 2014) The District Attorney's Criminal Enterprise Unit and the NYPD's Gang Division conduct the largest 'gang raid' in the history of New York City. The operation uses four years of investigative work, nearly a hundred million dollars, and thousands of hours of surveillance observation to indict 103 teenagers and young adults for charges of conspiracy and assault. The defendants are all residents of the Grant and Manhattanville public housing projects, in the immediate vicinity of Columbia University. In actuality, the indicted are not members of formal gangs. Rather they are either involved or loosely affiliated in a violent inter-project rivalry that claimed two lives from 2011-2014. For years parents had organized to find community-based solutions to problems in their neighborhood, from family brokered truces, job counseling, school reform, and the construction of a welcoming playground and community center. They are dismayed to learn that all the while the city had spent millions spying on their children to criminalize even the most tenuous connection to the violence.

  

"In an open letter to University affiliates, Vice President of Columbia Public Safety, James McShane, celebrates the raids as a moment of progress for West Harlem. He claims that the affair is the result of a `long-term collaboration between local law enforcement agencies.'. What this means precisely, is left unclear. McShane himself has deep ties to the NYPD, having held positions of leadership in four different precincts in the Bronx. During the 1990’s, he was also on the staff of then Deputy Police Commissioner Ray Kelly (one of the masterminds of stop-and-frisk, and later head Commissioner of the NYPD under Mayor Bloomberg). 

In addition, McShane promises in his letter that the University will significantly increase its surveillance and patrol operations throughout Manhattanville. This initiative is to include plain clothed police squads, sky watchtowers, `an extensive system of video cameras,' and an escort service for Columbia students. The document does not so much as mention the hardships endured by local families. Nor does it reveal that the University is responsible for robbing West Harlem of thousands of employment opportunities, on a site immediately across from Manhattanville Houses. Manhattanville public housing, much like the rest of the New York City Housing Authority, suffers from a 27% unemployment rate. When neighborhood parents critique the city's strategies in addressing issues of criminal justice, Columbia offers more of the same, only on an expanded scale....Columbia’s Public Safety Program collaborated with the NYPD as they finished their multi-million dollar surveillance operation to formulate the last of their criminal indictments...."  

Columbia Students Oppose Columbia University's West Harlem-Manhattanville Construction Project--Part 9

In October 2014, the Columbia Student Coalition Against Gentrification (CAGe) released a 

report, titled Understanding Columbia University's Expansion into West Harlem: An Activist's Guide, which indicated why many Columbia students, Barnard students and neighborhood residents in Morningside Heights, West Harlem and Manhattanville are apparently still opposed to the Columbia University Administration's Kravis Business School construction/campus expansion project in West Harlem/Manhattanville. As the report notes:

".....(January 2014) Bill De Blasio is elected as New York's 109th mayor, inheriting a 46% poverty rate, homeless shelters swelling with over 50,000 people in need, 9,000 incarcerated on Riker's Island prison without formal charges, working class communities coming apart at the seams under the weight of gentrification, and a city budget that invests twice as much in police equipment than it does in combined welfare services.... To the surprise of much of his voting base, the new mayor appoints Bill Bratton as Police Commissioner, whose aggressive policies of 'pre-emptive policing' during the Giuliani administration laid the foundations for 'stop and frisk'.

  

"(Spring 2014) The first scaffoldings of Columbia’s new campus are erected on the Manhattanville expansion site.

  

"(May 2014) Bill De Blasio releases the city's proposal to combat the crisis in affordable housing. Housing New York: A Five-Borough, Ten-Year Plan, introduces new tax-exemptions and low-interest rates for developers....From the perspective of Manhattanville, the plan has little to offer. What the neighborhood needs in terms of housing policy is the protection of tenants living in apartment complexes that have already been built....De Blasio's proposal....neglects the crisis of corporate subsumption in many previously existing housing infrastructures...."  

Columbia Students Oppose Columbia University's West Harlem-Manhattanville Construction Project-- Part 8

In October 2014, the Columbia Student Coalition Against Gentrification (CAGe) released a report, titled Understanding Columbia University's Expansion into West Harlem: An Activist's Guide, which indicated why many Columbia students, Barnard students and neighborhood residents in Morningside Heights, West Harlem and Manhattanville are apparently still opposed to the Columbia University Administration's Kravis Business School construction/campus expansion project in West Harlem/Manhattanville. As the report notes:

"(December 8, 2011) Jeff Mays of DNAinfo reports that Columbia has allocated nearly half of the $700,000 dollars actualized in the Community Benefits Agreement since 2009 to pay private consultants with close connections to New York politicians publicaly supporting the University’s expansion. In an interview with Mays, Community Board 9 member Walter South calls out Columbia’s corruption: `They’ve paid these people $300,000 dollars, and what do we have to show for it? The money should go for community improvement, not hiring the politically connected.'..... 

In response, State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman conducts an investigation of the West Harlem Local Development Corporation....

 

"(March 22, 2012) 69-year old construction worker Juan Ruiz is killed while helping to demolish a century-old warehouse on Columbia’s expansion site. While clearing fragments from the building, he is fatally struck by a beam which has not been sufficiently secured. 60year old King Range, and 30-year old Sakim Kirby are buried in rubble, but extracted quickly enough to survive, although with near-crippling injuries.... 

 

"(March 24, 2012) 'Students Against Columbia University Displacement' and 'The Coalition to Preserve Community' stage a week long occupation of one of the last buildings standing on the expansion site, with the aim of condemning unsafe working conditions and the University’s negligence in fulfilling the Community Benefits Agreement. Their efforts lead to valuable dialogues between Columbia students and neighborhood tenants (dialogues without which this document would have never been written), but fail to win the serious attention of the University administration...."