New School Solidarity Statement with UC Santa Cruz
September 25, 2009
To the occupiers of UCSC,
We fellow workers and students from New York City stand in solidarity with those at UC Santa Cruz who have occupied their university against the cuts and austerity measures forced on them by capital and its bureaucrats.
Public services are some of the first gains to be rescinded when capital desperately thrashes out in an effort to valorize itself. As workers have been crowded out of their jobs, and as the failure of various financial machinations to alleviate this crisis has become clear, more have been heading back to school. They have been burying their heads under even more debt with the hope of riding out the job scarcity and making themselves more attractive to employers.
As California’s universities reduce their enrollment by tens of thousands and simultaneously increase student fees and tuition, they are giving us a clear message: there is no escape from this turbulence.
So lets meet it head on.
To help push along the inquiry into the facts concerning the occupation of 65 Fifth Avenue on April 10th 2009, we are offering clear and direct responses to all the questions that the New School Investigation Committee is seeking to answer. We do hope this clears some things up.
On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 4:56 PM, Announce Announce <Announce@newschool.edu> wrote:
May 5, 2009
The Chair of the Board of Trustees and the Co-chairs of the Faculty Senate have agreed to form a Committee, to be convened by the Chairman of the Board, to conduct a detailed inquiry into the facts relating to the occupation of 65 Fifth Avenue on April 10, 2009 and subsequent events.
Among the questions we expect our report to inquire into are the following:
1. How was entry into 65 Fifth Avenue effected early in the morning of April 10?
Through the vortex.
2. How many persons entered the building at that time?
A risk of lobsters.
(a) How many were students or faculty of the University? How many were not connected with the University?
We are all connected to capital; the university is a capitalist enterprise; we are all connected to the university. QED
3. What was the stated purpose of the entry and how was that purpose communicated?
The effacement of law through an act of divine violence communicated through its very being(-out-of-time).
4. Did the persons entering the building threaten or cause physical harm to any persons or property in the building?
I remember when the property cried, torrents of saltwater down the gutters of law. “Respect my rights,” the doors sang. “Over my dead body,” whispered the epoxy. “But my texture!” the carpet chanted. “Be my lover,” the paint responded. A family of things, packed together in church. “Shhh! The sermon is about to start,” opened the gates.
An analysis and call for action
by New School Schwarz und Rot
“The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘state of emergency’ in which we live is not the exception but the rule. We must attain to a conception of history that is in keeping with this insight. Then we shall clearly realize that it is our task to bring about a real state of emergency…” – Walter Benjamin
Recently there has been a lot of talk connecting the specific conditions at the New School with the general conditions of society-at-large. You may have heard the material and intellectual concerns of students couched in a radical critique of capitalism, injustice and hierarchical power. On the surface, this may seem abstract and out of touch with the everyday life of students at the university. It may appear as an attempt to shoehorn unrelated “activism” into an otherwise simple administrative matter. However, when we delve below the surface appearance of everyday life, it becomes clear that a generalized critique of society based on the twin logics of capitalist accumulation and hierarchical domination has everything to do with our struggle to redefine our school. The following is an attempt to communicate this relation between the general and particular and to reach out to those students who may feel distanced from last semester’s occupation.
The New School Reoccupied 