SUNY Purchase update

As of now SUNY Purchase is still occupied but numbers may be low. Students are meeting and planning what to do next. Outside support is necessary. If this video is any indication the building was packed at one point, but police presence may have intimidated some students into leaving.

SUNY Purchase Occupied!

SUNY PURCHASE IS OCCUPIED!

Solidarity to all students, workers and faculty!

We ‘ve taken over the Student Services Building. We started on the bottom level, turning a meager rally into a protest-party on the inside.Students are chanting, singing, dancing. The energy moved upstairs to the second floor where a folk group is performing right now. Downstairs another band is about to play. We are holding space and reclaiming it as ours. We will not leave!

The local media showed up for the rally outside but left before we went inward. Channel 12 and other local media sources watched as the president of our school spoke. Students were the real stars, the expression of solidarity was fantastic. Food not bombs came out to feed everyone that was hungry, we screened the occupation of wheeler hall so passerbys could connect with the struggles in the west. Students are making noise!!!!, and celebrated our ability to come together. It’s more than just tuition hikes and budget cuts,

WE are not leaving! This IS just the beginning!

Reoccupied Solidarity Statement

SOLIDARITY TO ALL STRIKERS, RIOTERS, AND OCCUPIERS!

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

today

we see it in the eyes of the youth. No words are said to confirm the energy that propels us towards the barricades.

“California is a vision of the future,”

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:

Social War must be made! Students to the barricades!
Taking the streets is not enough! Occupy! Fuck shit up!
The university is dead! Kill the Student in your head!
Human strike is now in sight! It’s 2010! It’s time to fight!
Forever’s! Gonna! Start to-night!
Debtors of the world revolt!
FORM! CONTENT! FORM! CONTENT!
COAT! LINEN! SELF-ABOLITION!
Open up the Vortex! Let us all in!

Communique from SUNY Purchase

From: SUNY Purchase:

March 4^th is coming and a “University Strike” is in the air. Around 3:30 this morning we climbed the roof of the library and dropped a banner. Budget cuts, increased tuition, layoffs, and the privatization/corporatization of our schools are happening all across the country. Public education is being attacked on all levels from k-12 to higher education and we will not be quiet. At 1pm this Thursday (March 4^th) walk out of your class and congregate outside the library for the national day of action to defend public education. Bring pots and pans, noise-makers and your friends.

This is bigger than our school and bigger than students, our entire system is fucked. Thursday is just the beginning of what will hopefully spread through all sectors of society. The priorities of the government are clear; banks and business are more important than people and the earth is a resource to be exploited.

We must fight!

Thursday is just the beginning!

We stand in solidarity with students, faculty and workers everywhere!

Anonymous friend

SUNY Purchase Call to Action

Students, Faculty and Staff,

We are in a dire state.

We are currently in the throes of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. New York’s unemployment rate is at its highest level in almost seventeen years and is showing no sign of improvement. Yet in the midst of this, we’ve managed to neglect the greatest possible hope our country and our community has to offer: our institutions of public higher education.

Nationwide, tuition continues to skyrocket as federal aid stagnates under ever increasing financial pressure from public universities. Students are being priced out of higher education and privatization threatens the very existence of public education as know it. College has become out of reach for all but the most economically elite and tuition differentiation threatens to exacerbate the divide between the poor and the privileged.

We bailed out the banks. We bailed out the motor industry. Where is higher education’s reprieve? Now is not the time to abandon higher education. Now, more than ever, we need Albany to invest in SUNY and invest in our futures.

What began as an action in California to take a stand against tuition hikes of almost 32 percent has become a nationwide movement to defend public education against the risk of rising tuition, increased class size and delayed graduation time. Our colleagues at campuses across the country have put out a national appeal to protect higher education from the instabilities of unregulated tuition increases, and we, as concerned students of SUNY Purchase, have heeded the call.

This March 4, we must show Governor Patterson and President Schwarz that we will not acquiesce to the whims of shortsighted budget cuts and a privatization that goes against the character of our school and the integrity of the educational system. This March 4, we must join forces with students from across the country to protect and defend higher education.