First Published: Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume XCVII, Number 4, June 14, 1973.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
Copyright: This work is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.
More than two hundred members of the Attica Brigade, a recently-formed campus radical organization, discussed the progress their group has made in the past year, laid the groundwork for a regional structure, and optimistically detailed plans for the building of a “student anti-imperialist movement,” at the Attica Brigade’s first quarterly regional conference held in Earl Hall last Sunday.
At the conference, which was attended by students from thirty-five colleges and universities along the East Coast, forty position papers, on subjects ranging from the status of women to the problems of prisons, were exchanged, and representatives from each campus discussed the experiences of their particular chapter over the past year.
According to a spokesman for the Columbia chapter, formerly known as the Columbia Anti-Imperialist Movement (CAIM), the Attica Brigade now has members on forty-five campuses, including twelve in New York City.
Most of the students attending the conference believed that the past year had been a “shining success” for their organization and noted that although their projects were still in the formative stage they were making “great progress” in rebuilding “the student movement.”
A special delegate from Antioch reported on the significance of a six-week student strike against financial cutbacks at that Ohio college, and asserted that the Attica Brigade had played a major role in fostering the unity between black and white students which made that strike last as long as it did.
A representative of the City University of New York chapter stressed the work that the group had done there to protect the open admissions policy and to secure day care and health facilities.
Other representatives of New York City colleges emphasized, in the words of David Allen of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, “the need for the Brigade to do day work around areas affecting everyone’s lives if we are to grow into a mass organization.”
Most of the Brigade members were confident that such a goal could be attained and many expressed the belief that the very holding of the conference justified their optimism.
“After this conference I think I can safely say that the Attica Brigade has the best possibility of becoming the largest and most active student organization in the country,” stated Bruce Bernstein ’76, a member of the Columbia chapter.
Richie Chevat of City College predicted that the Attica Brigade, which is organized around the principles of “support for national liberation struggles abroad” and “support for oppressed groups at home,” would soon be able “to put our politics into practice.”