RUTHFULLY YOURS

A disturbing editorial in a CUNY grad-student newspaper calls for rioters protesting the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown to arm themselves and wage violent war with cops.

“The time for peace has passed,” says a revolutionary editorial titled “In Support of Violence” that was penned by editor-in-chief Gordon Barnes in the Dec. 3 issue of The Advocate.

“The problem with the protesters’ violence in Ferguson is that it is unorganized. If the violence was to be organized, and the protesters armed — more so than the few that sparingly are — then the brunt of social pressures would not be laid onto middling proprietors [of looted small businesses], but unto those deserving the most virulent response of an enraged populace,” Barnes writes in the CUNY Grad Center’s publication.“The acts of looting, destruction of property and violence directed towards state representatives is not only warranted, it is necessary,” says Barnes, a doctoral student in history who once studied in Cuba.

The editorial — illustrated in the online version with the circled, capital A that symbolizes anarchy — also urges rioters to emulate the Black Panthers and Malcolm X instead of Martin Luther King and other advocates of nonviolence — and hopes the unrest will morph into a revolution.

“The violence against property, that is destruction and theft, is only an unorganized form of something with the potential to be far more revolutionary and inspiring,” says Barnes, who is paid from $10,000 to $20,000 a year as a graduate assistant and who also pockets an annual stipend of $24,000 as a Presidential MAGNET fellow, according to his LinkedIn page.

The screed was posted online the same day a grand jury declined to indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo in Garner’s death, which is mentioned in an online note but not in the original editorial.

It also ran 11 days before CUNY Professor Eric Linsker was busted on assault and other charges for attacking cops at a protest on the Brooklyn Bridge, and 17 days before two NYPD officers were assassinated by a madman in Brooklyn seeking revenge for the Garner and Brown killings.

The 1,861-word, densely written and jargon-filled diatribe ultimately issues a direct call for more violence in the streets.“What is needed now is to take the next step from indiscriminate attacks to ones directly pointed at state power as well as at the lackeys and apologists who allow it to prosper,” says Barnes, who also studied at Instituto de Filosofía de Cuba and is a graduate of the Valley Forge Military Academy and Temple and Rutgers universities, his LinkedIn page says.

The paper added a disclaimer at the end of the piece, saying the views are Barnes’ only.

CUNY Grad Center President Chase F. Robinson condemned the editorial.

“While freedom of speech must be protected, and the views expressed by the editor in chief of this student newspaper are stated as sole views, we deplore calls of any kind for violence. As Martin Luther King’s birthday approaches, we should instead recommit ourselves to nonviolence as the true path to social justice,” Robinson said.