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Public
Employee Press CNR forum looks
at recession
The DC 37 Campus of the College of
New Rochelle presented its fifth round-table program April 23 at the union. The
panel of professors Luis Barrios, Dan Kryston, Rosemari Mealy and moderator
Nibaldo Aguilera made presentations on the current Great Recession,
the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
For working-class
people this is not a new crisis, said Dr. Aguilera, who chairs CNRs
Social Sciences and Communications Dept. He pointed out that the failure of the
real wages of American workers to rise, a factor in causing the recession, began
in the 1970s.
Professor Kryston provided a brief overview of the
U.S. financial system from 1789-2009 and pointed out that economic recessions
come in cycles. He also encouraged students to go beyond the sound bites
that you hear on television and use non-commercial radio stations and independent
periodicals as important sources of information that take more critical views
of current affairs.
In her presentation, Dr. Mealy, assistant director
of the Ed Fund, said a new and radical critique of financial institutions on Wall
Street is needed. She challenged college students to play a significant role in
history by filling the intellectual vacuum.
Barrios criticized the prevalent
U.S. profits-at-all-cost economic approach. When they build a hospital here,
its not because they want to provide health care for everyone, its
so that they can sell us something, he said.
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