PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY: ASSEMBLY FOR JUSTICE 5/16
Carrie Freshour
**Please distribute widely! This is an *open* event, for the entire Cornell, Ithaca, Ithaca College community!**
Calling all members of the Cornell, Ithaca College, and Ithaca community!
Who: A coalition of Cornell University, Ithaca College and Ithaca residents
What: Assembly for Justice - to address the recent racist and sexist acts of violence at Cornell Univ.
Where: Sig Pi, 730 University Ave, Ithaca NY
When: Wednesday May 16, 2012 at 4pm
A coalition of Cornell University, Ithaca College, and Ithaca residents invites the entire community to an Assembly for Justice at 730 University Avenue, Ithaca, NY on WEDNESDAY, MAY 16, 2012, at 4 p.m.
On May 6, 2012 an undetermined number of people threw glass bottles and beer cans from the roof of the Sigma Pi fraternity at a group of Black and Latino students. When some of those being attacked responded verbally to their attacker(s), a person on the roof of Sigma Pi taunted them with the names of Trayvon Martin, Gary Coleman (African American actor) and “Tyrone.”
We invite all people who feel that such acts of violence are wrong to join us. By gathering, we collectively denounce such racist and sexist acts, the cultures that make such acts permissible in the first place, and the failure of Cornell’s Administration to address racist and sexist acts in a substantial, structural, and effective way.
We will begin the assembly in front of the Sigma Pi fraternity because we wish to mark the site where these injustices occurred. From there, we will walk to Day Hall, Cornell’s Central Administration Building, to symbolize that this type of racist, sexist violence is a collective, institutional, and cyclical problem about which the Cornell administration must exercise leadership in order to stop.
The justice rally is a time and place for people to express their grief, hurt, and moral outrage against institutional cultures and individuals that endorse, through overt action or complicit inaction, the violation of people’s bodily and psychological integrity. As numerous students, faculty, and community members testified at Cornell’s May 9 forum, this recent incident is part of a recurring pattern of violence rooted in racist, sexist, and homophobic attitudes at Cornell University. Rather than neutralizing such testimonies with empty rhetorical promises, the coalition advocates for proactive and sustained institutional measures that will foster an expectation of racial and gender justice on Cornell’s campus. The failure to implement such measures means that Cornell’s institutional culture will actively continue to reproduce climates of hostility and stratified inequality on the basis of race, gender, class, and sexuality.
We will conclude the rally by handing the administration a list of demands as a launching point for a sustained, long-term, and broad process of building justice at Cornell University.
**Please distribute widely! This is an *open* event, for the entire Cornell, Ithaca, Ithaca College community!**
Development Sociology
Email: cr...@cornell.edu