“Now is the time of the furnaces and only light should be seen,”-Jose Marti

“The duty of every revolutionary is to make the revolution.” -Che Guevara

“Dare to struggle, dare to win!”-Fred Hampton

Our issues are numerous and diverse. We fight against issues occurring here, at Columbia, as well as issues that are much larger. Columbia is a part of the larger society, of larger institutions that continue a cycle of violence and injustice.

Our primary goal is to get people to “understand the forces at work to create the war in Vietnam, to create racism.”

http://www.thestickingplace.com/wp-content/_pdfs/cct_spring_1968.pdf

“We are disgusted with the war, with racism, with being a part of a system over which we have no control, a system which demands gross inequalities of wealth and power, a system which denies personal and social freedom and potential, a system which has to manipulate and repress us in order to exist.”

http://www.thestickingplace.com/wp-content/_pdfs/cct_spring_1968.pdf

“The worlds of Columbia and Vietnam were not divisible. The two were interrelated. The idea that these were separate spheres, that politics existed in one place but didn’t exist in the other, was not the case. Some of us saw Columbia as a microcosm of the imperialist, racist and war-mongering American government” –Lewis Cole, Member of SDS

Below we have reprinted in full the open letter sent from Steering Committee Member Mark Rudd to Columbia President Grayson Kirk on April 22 that outlines our mission as a group, as a community, and as individuals.

Dear Grayson,

Your charge of nihilism is indeed ominous, for if it were true, our nihilism would bring the whole civilized world, from Columbia to Rockefeller Center, crashing down upon all our heads. Though it is not true, your charge does represent something: you call it the generation gap. I see it as a real conflict between those who run things now – you, Grayson Kirk – and those who feel oppressed by, and disgusted with, the society you rule – we, the young people.

You might want to know what is wrong with this society, since, after all, you live in a very tight self-created dream world. We can point to the war in Vietnam as an example of the unimaginable wars of aggression you are prepared to fight to maintain your control over your empire (by now you’ve been beaten by the Vietnamese, so you call for a tactical retreat). We can point to your using us as cannon fodder to fight your war. We can point to your mansion window to the ghetto below you’ve helped to create through your racist University expansion policies, through your unfair labor practices, through your city government and your police. We can point to this University, your University which trains us to be lawyers and engineers, and managers for your IBM, your Socony Mobil, your IDA, your Con Edison (or else to be scholars and teachers in more universities like this one). We can point, in short, to our own meaningless studies, our identity crises, cogs in your corporate machines as a product of and reaction to a basically sick society.

Your cry of “nihilism” represents your inability to understand our positive values. If you were ever to go into a freshman CC [Contemporary Civilization] class you would see that we are seeking a rational basis for society. We do have a vision of the way things could be: how the tremendous resources of our economy could be used to eliminate want, how people in other countries could be free from your domination, how a university could produce knowledge for progress, not waste consumption and destruction (IDA), how men could be free to keep what they produce, to enjoy peaceful lives, to create. These are positive values, but since they mean the destruction of your order, you call them “nihilism.” In the movement we are beginning to call this vision “socialism.” It is a fine and honorable name, one which implies absolute opposition to your corporate capitalism and your government; it will soon be caught up by other young people who want to exert control over their own lives and their society.

You are quite right in feeling that the situation is “potentially dangerous.” For if we win, we will take control of your world, corporation, your University and attempt to mold a world in which we and other people can live as human beings. Your power is directly threatened, since we will have to destroy that power before we take over. We will begin by fighting you about your support of the war in Vietnam and American imperialism – IDA and the School of International Affairs. We will fight you about your control of black people in Morningside Heights, Harlem, and the campus itself. And we will fight you about the type of mis-education you are trying to channel us through. We will have to destroy at times, even violently, in order to end your power and your system – but that is a far cry from nihilism.

Grayson, I doubt if you will understand any of this, since your fantasies have shut out the world as it really is from your thinking. Vice President Truman says the society is basically sound; you say the war in Vietnam was a well-intentioned accident. We, the young people, whom you so rightly fear, say that the society is sick and you and your capitalism are the sickness. You call for order and respect for authority; we call for justice, freedom, and socialism. There is only one thing left to say. It may sound nihilistic to you, since it is the opening shot in a war of liberation. I’ll use the words of Leroi Jones, whom I’m sure you don’t like a whole lot: “Up against the wall, motherfucker, this is a stick-up.”

Yours for freedom,

Mark