Students save campus childcare center at CUNY Hunter

On Tuesday the New York State Supreme Court granted an injunction preventing Hunter from turning the childcare center into an administrative office. The decision was in the midst of an escalating student struggle to prevent the center’s closing that would result in education becoming unaffordable for many current students who are already struggling to pay CUNY’s rising tuition.

On Monday, students from throughout the CUNY system, NYU, and New School attended a rally outside of Hunter, one of several so far, to demand the center stay open. At one point, the rally attempted to march inside the well-policed building to bring their demands directly to the administrators. One student was arrested in the demonstration and is being charged with incite to riot.

Administrators are beginning to learn it is no longer so easy to disenfranchise a single faction of students as solidarity between students at New York City rapidly strengthens.

What if They Threw a Black Bloc and the Police Arrested Everyone?… Part II

From Youtube User occupyeverything:

After a long day of demonstrations against the Canadian Tar Sands, and the issues of climate change and migration activists have been tear-gassed and arrested by police while attending an evening party. The police appear to be trying to wear down street-level opposition through constant offensive action against activists. This Video Shows fire barricades set up by people in the neighborhood to stop advancing Riot Police.

Photos here

A Torchlit Evening with Birgeneau

“Everybody throw your lighters up, tell me y’all finna fight or what?” -The Coup

It is no secret that the kids are pissed. Since September, we’ve carried out over a dozen building takeovers of varying scale and intensity on California campuses, and during the Days of Action against Cuts and Hikes in November, students in Berkeley and LA actually fought police. In the past few days, evictions of occupied spaces at SFSU and Berkeley by the armed agents of the state and academy can only represent the future of this form of education. Last night, we marched to war and for once didn’t wait for the enemy to strike the first blow.

First Accounts from Last Night’s Berkeley Riot

Although some may attempt to paint the evening as a night of petty violence, this event reveals a refusal to accept the university’s actions and the physically violent police repression in passivity. The property damage incurred may seem ruthlessly aberrant and scarring on a university already suffering budget woes, but the damage incurred by the silencing of stakeholders Friday morning exceeds beyond any value the university can place on some broken glass and ceramics.

Read the rest of the account along with more pictures and audio at Occupy CA.

Riots at UC Berkeley last night

After 66 students were ambushed and arrested yesterday morning (some of whom are apparently still in jail) students retaliated after a relocated concert that featured Boots from the Coup.

From Daily Californian:

Several dozen individuals, some wielding torches, marched on UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau’s home on the north side of campus early Saturday morning at about midnight, in what police said was an attack where damage was done to the home and several torches were thrown at police officers responding to the scene.

…

The group also damaged several concrete planters and lights around the house, Tejada said. In addition, unspecified large heavy objects were thrown with “considerable force,” damaging several windows. The windows were “impact-resistant” and were not breached, he added.

SF Gate reports:

UC Berkeley police arrested eight people, two of whom are students, on suspicion of rioting, threatening an education official, attempted burglary, attempted arson of an occupied building, vandalism and assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer, Mogulof said.

Ontario Homeless and Poor Occupy Municipal Building

(Found this searching Occupy CA on Twitter)

From OCAP:
December 8th, 2009 – Today, starting at 11:30am, members of the
Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) and more than 150, to at
times 250 people, who are struggling to survive on Ontario Works and ODSP occupied the 12th floor and main lobby of Toronto’s Metro Hall – the head of Welfare bureaucracy in Toronto.

Despite intimidation, the group refused to leave and instead demanded the right to have their Special Diet forms properly processed. The group was loud and determined – chanting “We won’t be quiet ’till we get the special diet!”. Social Services responded by vaguely telling the group that they are waiting on ‘clarification’ from the Province on policy around the Special Diet. They then issued an ultimatum and sent in a large team of police, including ETF, who were preparing to mass arrest and physically remove people from the building. After
almost 4 hours, the group was forced to exit the building. But this
fight is not over – the group from today has vowed to return with an even larger number of supporters.

News and Communique from Ongoing SFSU Occupation

we are still here
December 9, 2009 by occupysfsu.wordpress.com:
To those disaffected and affected by the budget cuts.
To those laid-off faculty who have been sent off this campus because Robert Corrigan values his six-figure income more than your pedagogy.
To those workers, always the unseen heroes who are the first to take the sacrifices.
To those janitors, who were denied from doing their jobs because of us. We do this for you.

40 years ago on this campus, San Francisco State College gave in to the demands of the 5-month Ethnic Studies strike, which gained valuable educational and economic opportunities for all Black and Third-World people. Self-determination for people of color was the word of the day, and although concessions were made, the struggle for self-determination of the working-class has not ended, but is going through a new phase of global class struggle intensified by the polarization of capital and labor.

Also 40 years ago, Indians of All Nations took a famous federal property known as Alcatraz Island, or The Rock, and again occupied the land that Lakota Indians had taken years prior unsuccessfully. The organizers, American Indians from tribes all across the continent, included young Richard Oakes, a Mohawk SF State student. The occupation lasted 19 months, whereby the IAN demanded a new American Indian Center on the unused surplus property, created a Bureau of Caucasian Affairs to deal with the white man, and purchased the island with feathers and beads worth more than the money paid to the native inhabitants of Manhattan Island by colonialists.

San Francisco State Occupied!

SAN FRANCISCO – a business building at SFSU has been occupied ~6am Wednesday morning

Mainstream report:

SFSU Students Take Over Building in Protest

SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) — An early morning protest on the San Francisco State campus over budget cuts and fee increases has university officials scrambling this morning, as student organizers say they have taken over the school’s business building.
KCBS’ Holly Quan Reports

It’s the week before finals at SFSU, and protestors say they didn’t want to let the semester go by without making some kind of statement on the recent fee increases brought on by California’s budget problems.

The 20 or so protestors inside the building donned masks and blocked the entrances to the building with desks and chairs, while another 30 protestors gathered outside.

Students tell KCBS that paying $2,300 to $2,400 in tuition next semester prices many working-class students out of a college education.

UC Semester not quite over yet…

Early this morning Wheeler hall was reoccupied “reclaimed” by students intending to turn it into a cooperatively run 24-hour free-school for the entire week. It seems the action has been successful, at least for the night. Twitter reports cops began to move in with eyes toward arrests, but “The tensions have subsided, thanks to your support. We can now go in & out.” (Via http://twitter.com/ucbprotest)

An earlier statement from describes the intent of the action, called Live Week:

“Dear friends, and those we’ve yet to meet,

Over the past months, we, the workers, students, and faculty of this campus, have shown the world that we can shut this university down.

Now, we show that we can run our public university the way it should be—by the public.

Starting Monday, December 7 on the steps of Wheeler Hall at 2:30 p.m., we will transform Wheeler Hall into a 24-hour open university. We will open the space for anyone in the community to come and go as they please, to organize study sessions, teach-ins, concerts, forums, club meetings, dance parties, and anything else our creative minds dream up.

Live Week is a time for us to open this university to all people and to all forms of expression and education. Our university is not only a space for hard work and practicality; it is a place for fun, fulfillment, and happiness. Our university is not only a space for people of privilege; it is a place for all of the community: young and old, rich and poor, majority and minority, teacher and student, on-campus and off-campus. Our university is not only a space to learn from books and lectures; it is a place to learn from each other’s experiences and expressions, and to create new knowledge and build a new future.

This university is yours! We shift competition to cooperation. We replace stress and anxiety with compassion and joy. We transform the traditional balance of power of this institution to create an education that includes the interests, concerns, and passions of all of us, and embodies the true ideal of democracy.

It’s time to reinvent public education together, So come one, come all to your university!”

At UC Irvine, administrators caved to threat of a similar action and agreed to keep the library open 24 hours.

NYC Removes Bike Lane, NYC Bikers Repaint it

If the State taketh away, taketh it back!

The Polytechnic is Open!

The facade of Athens Polytechnic, occupied once again. The banner (possibly the most impressive yet) reads:

“State and Capital assassinate every day and not with bullets alone. We live the causes, we don’t wait for any occasions. Everyone to the streets: For dignity, for freedom, for Anarchy.”

From  Occupied London

The Polytechnic is Open!

Faced with political statements and intense rumors about the closing down of universities ahead of the 6th of December, we decided on the 3rd of December, ahead of the mobilizations one year after the state assassination of Alexandros Grigoropoulos, to come and remain in the Polytechnic – and so, with our physical and political presence, to keep this space open.

The Polytechnic and all other schools are not the property of whatever government or university administration, for them to close them down whenever they decide according to their interests. They belong, first and foremost, to the struggling people. For this reason the state decided, after all, to close down the schools in order for them not to be used by those in struggle as spaces of meeting up, discussion, counter-information and collective making of decisions and actions.

We keep the Polytechnic open and we have called for an open assembly for Thursday, December 3rd at 9pm, an assembly for the mutual shaping and coordination of collective actions of struggle ahead of the next days.

Academic asylum belongs to the society, not to university directors and the police!

We don’t forget, we don’t forgive – December 6th, 2008

The revolt cannot be repressed, its specter is haunting the city

Comrades”

More updates on the Greek December in the coming days…

Occupy Schools, Not Countries!

Last Tuesday Obama continued the policies of the previous administration by committing an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. The fact that an any war, especially such an unpopular one, can continue to escalate without massive social upheaval is a pathetic sign of the times. The politicians are still addicted to war, they still idiotically believe in the its myths: war for peace, the smart bomb, social order.The United States left may be so-duped but, but we know that as long there is State there will be constant War, and we must make it our own…

On Wednesday night about 50 New York City students gathered in Union Square outraged both by Obama’s escalation of war and the complacency of the anti-war left at its announcement. Chanting “1 2 3 4 We don’t want your fucking war! 2 4 6 8 Turn the war against the state!” we took the streets around 6:45 pm, walking uptown on Broadway into the heart of Manhattan’s tourist and shopping district.
The march had two targets: first, the United for Peace and Justice rally in Times Square, pathetically advertised as a candlelight vigil and Die-in. Playing dead is too close to the reality of the current anti-war movement in the United States, so we intended to wake up the liberals and bring them with us to our second target: the Rockefeller Center Christmas-tree lighting.

Chanting “while you’re shopping bombs are dropping!” the mob made it all the way to 42nd street with no police attention, but as soon as we penetrated Times Square a swarm of swine made two random arrests…

As we surrounded the sub-station the terrified cops called dozens of reinforcements. Responding to the spectacle many of the bored-looking liberals joined us as we continued to Rockefeller Center, but the area had already been well-barricaded and the terrified cops surrounded us as we approached 5th Avenue.

The element of surprise gone we made our way to the Midtown precinct to support our friends, who would later be charged with Resisting Arrest and Obstruction of Justice. (That night a journalist inquiring with the Police Department Public Relations bureau was given false information that they were only released with summonses.)

While the police attack caught us by surprise and effectively ended our momentum, this march proved a few things for the angry anti-authoritarian youth of New York. First, we can improvise loud and passionate resistence without the mediation of huge Troskyist/liberal front groups. UFPJ, ANSWER, Not in Our Name, etc are all failures, and their tactics have proven themselves irrelevant as they have faded away with the 2008 election. Although their leaders will constantly tell us that we must organize first, then fight, all this action needed was a few minutes of reaching out to our friends. They knew what do from there. Second, the police are terrified of any sort of disruption to tourism, shopping, and capitalist normality in general. We need to learn how to continue to exploit this without allowing their random attacks to slow us down. Next time, let’s attack first.