Taking back our building, our school, our education, our city.
We, students of the New School, stand in solidarity with Cooper Union students who are currently occupying the 4th and 8th floors of the Foundation Building to protest threatened tuition implementation. At the New School, we are by now very familiar with tuition increases to fund enormous new development, a lack of financial transparency, and the barring of student participation in decision making. As the 60 5th Avenue building continues to rise we are sinking into more private and federal debt.
We support Cooper Union’s Save our School’s demands:
1. Cooper Union maintains its commitment to free education
2. Cooper Union immediately implements increased financial transparency
3. That President Bharucha step down.
Standing in front of the CU occupation, we are reminded that nothing will change unless we continue to fight together and show solidarity across schools and universities. We see this struggle in the context of the privatization of education and the crisis of capitalism.
President Bharucha told CU students today that CU has reached a limit for free education. How is it that an institution like Cooper Union, which survived for 159 years (through other crisis) suddenly faces an insurmountable crisis that challenges its core principles of education ‘as free as water and air’? In our struggles as student and workers, we resist the idea that shouldering their debt is the solution.
The way the administration chooses to deal with this crisis has been to push this burden onto students, workers, and faculty. How is it that while the students around the world (Canada, Mexico, Chile, Puerto Rico, Italy, Greece and many others) continue to fight for free, accessible education, we in the United States are expected to accept a fate of limited exclusive education and ever increasing debt?
We support Cooper Union students who have taken necessary measures to make their voices heard. When the administrators prevent access to information, when the board members decide the future of students behind closed doors, it becomes clear that we as students have no choice but to occupy behind barricaded doors.. Students and workers should not depend on leaked documents about the financial future of their schools. It is absolutely necessary, in all schools, that we directly participate in the discussion of budgets and projects through action.
SOLIDARITY WITH COOPER UNION// WE WILL NOT PAY FOR YOUR CRISIS//
ALL POWER TO THE OCCUPATIONS!
On the 22st day (May 14th) of the University of Puerto Rico student strike: The situation in Puerto Rico has intensified. Over the last few days the university students have demonstrated heroic & militant resistance. Yesterday, at a huge assembly of students at the PR Convention Center, students overwhelmingly decided to to step up the 22-day takeover/strike at the University of PR despite intimidation & harassment attempts by the university administration.
The colonial government has responded with intolerance and repressive police tactics. On this day the riot police squad was mobilized against the students! Water has been cut off to the Rio Piedras campus, the campus dorms have been evacuated, and folks have been arrested for simply trying to pass water & food through the fences to the striking students.
The father of a striking student who was bringing food and water was beaten and then arrested.
Fortunately, the blockade was broken when hundreds of professors, parents, and supporters began to arrive with water and bags of food, which they successfully tossed over the fence and over the heads of the cops, unable to stop them in front of the TV cameras. In the face of this repression, hundreds of parents, workers, community leaders and concerned have joined the picket lines (at all the island campuses) to protect the striking students.
Later in the day, José Pérez, a disabled graduate student who has won the love and respect of the entire striking community for his militancy and dedication, was badly beaten, dragged on the floor, and arrested for “aggression” when he attempted to re-enter the campus, after leaving momentarily to take care of personal affairs. Professors and fellow students who tried to come to his aid were doused in pepper spray. Two more students have been also been arrested for unknown reasons.
This afternoon, the workers unions of Puerto Rico have announced a general strike (work stoppage) for Tuesday May 18th in unity with the student movement and to denounce the confrontational politics of the colonial government of PR.
A call has been made to all people & workers to mobilize in unity with the students at all the various UPR campuses on the island.
In NYC, the Network in Support of the Workers of PR CALLS for ALL TO DENOUNCE THE REPRESSIVE GOVERNMENT AND FOR SOLIDARITY WITH THE STRUGGLE OF WORKERS AND STUDENTS OF UPR.
Join the NYC Protest!
Tue May 18,
5:30PM
at the Offices of the PR colonial Government (PRFAA)
135 West 50 (between 6th and 7th Ave)
From http://defendsussex.wordpress.com/:
THE ‘STOP THE CUTS’ DEMANDS FOR THE VCEG OF SUSSEX UNIVERSITY
We, the students of the Stop the Cuts campaign, have assembled in Arts A2, in response to the actions of the management, specifically the arbitrary suspension and exclusion of 6 students by the Vice Chancellor last week. These students were not violent, and the demonstration in no way merited the presence of riot police on campus. There has been a widespread response from both outside and inside the university condemning this action as disproportionate. These students are part of a wider campaign involving hundreds of students and workers, which continues to be against the compulsory redundancies of staff at Sussex, and to defend public services nationally.
In order to leave here today, our demands are:
1. The unconditional reinstatement of the six students who were suspended and excluded last week – the terms outlined in the statement on Sussex Direct today were not good enough.
2. No disciplinary action against anyone in the room.
3. No punishment of non-violent dissent, no criminalisation of any form of non-violent protest, demonstrations or occupations.
Signed,
The students of the Stop the Cuts campaign
In California, they face the same shit. Critiques of the so-called “white anarchist male outside agitator” emerge and simultaneously erase all the power and agency of the inside agitators, of all the nonwhite nonmale nonanarchists who know how to fight and don’t play by the activist rulebook. In solidarity with our comrades in Cali, we post the following three letters below, letters which take such critiques to task. Enjoy!
Response to a Critic of the “White” Student Movement by The Invisible Women Committee
Rebuttal to “Why Did the March onto the 980 Freeway Happen” by Melissa Merin
Raider Nation Collective Statement on the M4 Highway Takeover
From Berkeley Liberation Radio.
Following Thursday, March 4th’s Berkeley to Oakland march and rally at Frank Ogawa Plaza for the statewide strike and day of action against budget cuts, layoffs and furloughs to public education, a second march commenced. 200-250 students, educators, and activists marched from the close of the rally to the exterior of Mark Yudof’s office for a street dance party. The group then made their way toward the I-880 freeway, where 150-200 elected to enter on foot to shut down traffic.
All traffic slowed to a stop, and no individuals were in in any danger of being struck by automobiles. The riot police pursued them as they hopped over barriers in an attempt to make their way to the Jackson street off-ramp. As police closed in, most of the group sat down in anticipation of being arrested.
The police were violent with many of the protesters, using excessive force with their riot batons. None of the arrested were reported to be carrying weapons of any kind, and none were attempting to attack any of the officers. The police shut down the freeway in both directions, handcuffed and escorted the marchers to the Jackson street offramp where police busses slowly arrived to take the prisoners to North County and Sana Rita Jail facilities.
155 individuals were reported to have been arrested, in addition to some minors who were released into the custody of their parents. Francois Zimany was taken to the hospital after either falling, jumping, or being pushed by police off of the freeway, and is now at home with his family. The group was held over night, and released periodically throughout the day on Friday.
You can learn more by visiting indybay.org. All photos were taken by BLR DJ Paisley Cuttlefish who was among those arrested. She sustained a bad fracture to her elbow after being hit with a police baton.
That’s kind of what it sounds like.
A safety update posted at 7:00 am California time on the UCSC website says that “Due to potential safety concerns, people, including any employee scheduled for work, are advised not to come to the main campus. Check back for updated conditions.”
(633 Third Ave. @ 41st St.)
(Seventh Ave. @ 27th St.)
Year Round
Our desires are empty, our power is null. Our gestures of escape are pushed to the margins – drunken debates with coworkers, crumpled pamphlets, the violent fantasies of miserable morning commutes, graffiti in the bathroom stalls. Struggle is a daily reality. Rather than forcing our anger against our common enemies, we turn our struggles inwards. We let our self-doubt grow infectiously as we wallow in self-appointed passivity. We drink ourselves to death to survive this meaningless culture.
But our individual struggles are communal and our set is beginning to take notice. In times of crisis the working class has two options: accept cutbacks in order to keep capitalism running, or revolt against the bosses and politicians who we all know we don’t need. “The people united will never be defeated!” chants the left. We stare at the metal barricades in which they’ve trapped us, despising this chant in its inaccuracy. We are defeated at every turn. So we search the crowd for others as angry as us, and
we see it in the eyes of the youth. No words are said to confirm the energy that propels us towards the barricades.
says the old new left of the East Coast academia, far enough away to study it as if it is the past.
The walls are ours to tear down, the streets are ours to shatter. Its matter hold no authority. Bricks are no longer stamped with the name of the empire, and all roads lead to an infinite number of terrible paths. The enraged classes are growing in size and strength and desire for something new and terrifying beyond the barricades.
Let us teach others to fight. Let the eace-police feel their irrelevance. Let the police-police trip as they chase us down alleyways. Let University Presidents from San Diego to Boston dump frenzied memos on each other. Let the student class and the working class ally and together abolish their social categories!
NEW CHANTS FOR MARCH 4:
Occupy Everything Fight Everywhere Strike March 4!
The call has gone out. On March 4th, students, workers and teachers throughout the nation and across the globe will strike. Pre K-12, adult education, community colleges, and state-funded universities will come together in an international Strike and Day of Action to resist the neoliberal destruction of public education in California and beyond.
We stand beside all who wish to transform public education, and we seek to advance the struggle by generalizing the tactic that has, by far, been the strength of the movement: direct action.
In keeping with the spirit of March 4th, we call upon everyone, everywhere, to occupy everything—from collapsing public universities and closed high schools to millions of foreclosed homes. We call on all concerned students and workers to escalate the fight against privatization where they are, in solidarity with the California statewide actions. We envision a network of occupied campuses in multiple states across the nation.
from: http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20100113201615185
Students are being forced to pay more for less. Government bureaucrats have slashed the higher education budget for the second straight year. And the cuts are only getting worse. Our tuition has ratcheted up 10% and the Post-Secondary Education Review Commission is discussing as much as a 30% increase next Fall. They have already cut classes and majors, jammed every class to bursting, layed off whole crews of UNO workers, and restricted access to labs and buildings. Dirt is piling up in the buildings and students are watching the classes they need to graduate evaporate.
The economic crisis has come home. This is a crisis created by policymakers in bed with Wall Street, not by the students, faculty, or workers at UNO, and WE WON’T PAY FOR THEIR CRISIS.
De-funding higher education is a sure way to keep Louisiana at the bottom of the heap and destroy any hope of a better future for our state.
This situation is untenable.
We urge faculty to discuss the budget cuts in their classes, the staff to organize strikes as the layoffs continue, and for students to take action against tuition increases and class cuts. Faculty, workers, students: stand together and halt the looting of public higher education in Louisiana!
20 of the 25 highest paid government employees in Louisiana are Louisiana university administrators. LSU System President John Lombardi makes $600,000 a year. What Lombardi hopes for is our silence as he dismantles the university with one hand and stuffs his pocket with the other. That is business as usual, for now, but it rests on our complacency in allowing it to function in this time of crisis.
We are the university, we can shut it down.
-A few fed up UNO students
neworleansstudents@gmail.com
While some following the UC unrest are are lamenting the attack against the Chancellor’s mansion, few have offered alternatives to hold him accountable for repeatedly ordering officers to assault and arrest his students. We, however, applaud all actions that students, individuals, mobs, friends, and just regular fucking people take against those that mobilize the violence of the state. The fury and vengeance of those outside the chancellor’s mansion was born through the actions of the police and chancellor themselves; they are now seeing their progeny.
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.
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.
Outstanding doc from inside Wheeler Hall by Brandon Jourdan and David Martinez:
And an update on last night’s UC Davis action:
Video of an early negotiation with a typical faux-sympathetic administrative snake at Mrak Hall, UC Davis:
The second Davis Occupation ended last night when administrators agreed on 5 student demands, including recommending charges dropped against the students arrested in the last week’s occupation, and not pursuing academic sanctions against those students.
Last time the administration decided to arrest all occupying students, this time the students left around 11 pm without a single arrest!
The administrators are running scared, UC! Keep up the momentum! Occupy again! Again and again!
Here’s administrator Janet Gong reading the agreement:
If she doesn’t seem too happy, it might be because she refused to meet these demands the day after the occupation in front of a ballroom of pissed students who attempted to reoccupy Mrak that night, but after this succesful action she was forced to give in!
Here’s a video of Janet Gong earlier in the night arguing the pigs she just called aren’t riot cops, they’re just armed with “tactical equipment” like tazers, batons, and shields!
More from the Davis Students’ blog: http://ouruniversity.wordpress.com/
In other news, there was another large student demo at UC Irvine this afternoon, and Université de Lausanne in Switzerland was occupied today!
The New School Reoccupied 