NYU Solidarity Statement with Cooper Union Occupation

December 5, 2012

Dear Occupied Cooper Union,

We were inspired to hear of your occupation and see the red fabric unfurled from your windows, so near our own.  We have visited, hung around, and we will continue to do so and offer whatever we have that you might need. The past 48 hours have energized us, have challenged us to seek the places we could revivify our struggle on our campus, have helped us to remember fully and to refocus our attentions. But even as we are prompted to look back and recognize the many student struggles that feed your occupation, we equally recognize the absolute urgency of today. We hope this occupation will be infectious. We need it to be so. December 2012 is a tipping point for Cooper Union, but Cooper Union today must be a watershed for our student movement. We are grateful and excited.

In the president’s meeting today, some in the crowd shouted that to expect free tuition is incomprehensible. This position – that education without tuition is ludicrous – is often bolstered by comparing no- or low-fee institutions like yours to those like our own, whose undergraduate fees amounts to a sum more or less equal to the median yearly income of NYC households. Somehow, our situation, in which the entire yearly earnings of a family would be spent on one students’ tuition, in a city in which income and work are so thoroughly striated by gender, race, and legal status – this is somehow more plausible.

What logic makes something that was possible in June seem unthinkable in December? Cooper Union was free, just as CUNY was in 1970 (following an occupation by Black and Puerto Rican students demanding open admissions). Why not now? Administrators claim spikes in tuition are a natural offshoot of the crisis, as if it wasn’t the administrations’ plans that made the university vulnerable to the vicissitudes of capitalist crisis in the first place. Jamshed Bharucha rehearses an argument typical of adminstrators’ euphemistic austerity boosting: Cooper Union’s funding structure was “shortsighted.” Cooper Union is a relic in an age of student debt, that mechanism that perpetually defers the crisis by deflecting it onto working class futures. We do not let pass without notice the deep irony of calling free education shortsighted while the average trade of financial equity brokers lasts a matter of microseconds.

As we roam through the rubble of financialization’s impact on higher education, it is clear that pressuring administrations to find new investors for endowments is not a solution. Should, then, we press for a reclamation of the welfare state, and recenter public education in the production and stabilization of a fully-employed working class? Let us be clear: there is no going back. Industrialists like Peter Cooper founded free schools in capitalist societies, and we live this contradiction coming to a head. So, we turn away from administrators, from capitalist benefactors, from the talking heads and the haters. We turn to your occupation, recognizing it as the only kind of place in which we can think through and construct the education, and society, we want.

Yours,

Some feminist faculty and students at NYU

From the Autonomous Occupation of 90 5th Avenue

Since November 17th, students, non-students, workers and others have transformed through political occupation a formerly isolating, frigid and closed study space into a 24hour educational hub for not just all students, but all people.  We have held this space for seven days and in that time we have set up multiple general assemblies, established a safer spaces group, dismantled institutional oppression with the immediate creation of gender neutral bathrooms, fed and housed over 200 people, provided teach-ins from an anti-capitalist perspective on the financial crisis and political struggle, and created a gathering place for political conversation.  In reclaiming a New School building, a private university with astronomical tuition, there has been a sometimes pre-conceived perception of elitism and exclusivity; some have said they feel alienated, that the space is still too white, or that the theoretical discussion is too pretentious or academic. Some of these issues weren’t resolved nor they could have been resolved in such a short window. But this contradiction–where anti-capitalist/anti-racist debate is viewed as an elite politics–is precisely what we are in the process of shattering in this space.  Hundreds of people have come to hear talks and have conversations about capitalism, revolutionary practice, anti-oppression, queer politics and international struggle.  Most who have had problems in the space have consistently returned, recognizing that the politics surrounding the occupation are not solidified, but are instead immanent to the space itself.

Last night, November 22nd, marked the first attendance by many emphatic participants in the General Assembly.   Through several manipulative acts, including the creation of a town hall that was somehow broadly attended in spite of a mere two hours notice, the Assembly was packed by antagonists including several faculty and a large group of students who had not previously been involved in the occupation. For many of us the large attendance was a success, but very soon it became clear that the sole goal of the majority of participants present was not discussion, but a yes vote for the destruction of the occupation.  The intention was to disrupt any possibility of dialogue and to frame the voting of the assembly in the manner of representational politics and parliamentary theater.

At this assembly the faculty, the bureaucratic manipulators and students hand picked by administration revealed their faces.  Arguments about race and alienation, couching pro-capitalist rhetoric and theatrical fear mongering, were used to disrespect and disempower the open assembly.  Immediately after a perceived victory in “accepting” Van Zandt’s proposal, these individuals removed themselves from the process and demonized the continuing deliberation of the assembly’s remaining participants.

We are writing to expose the misinformation and the constant sabotage that has being circulating through media and disseminated by specific individuals whose only purpose is to break this occupation from within.  We also see this document as an opportunity to put forward a political perspective on these events, and on hopes for the future.

It is clear that we should not have trusted negotiations with the President of the New School about the security and the character of this occupation.  After six days of dealing with this matter it is evident that it has caused fragmentation not only of the occupation itself, but poses a larger threat for the entire student struggle and the growth of the occupation movement. Political organizations still playing ping-pong on the back of the student body, in favor of specific ideological positions and with vested interests, have succeeded in the creation of media misrepresentation, the recruitment of students against the occupation, and the disruption of any possibility of dialogue.  This has happened only for their own benefit to legitimate their bureaucratic actions, and to expand their conservative and archaic way of organizing.  This method of organizing is one that they are unable to and refuse to transform when confronted with a movement that is against of any form of leadership or representation. 

The struggle can only develop with the opening of a space that is initiated by political praxis that remains open for any political analysis. 

Any jeopardization of autonomous practice will doom the struggle to failure.

November 23rd , 2011

Self-Understanding of the Occupation

Hegel via Aaron

The planning for this “action”, for logistical and pragmatically necessary reasons was, in its initial stages, kept as quiet as possible. For this reason it was frequently referred to as “the action” in correspondence and conversation. Now we have acted and the abstract concept is apparently no less determined. What does it mean to have engaged in or accomplished this “action”? The “action”, of course, is not accomplished, not terminated with the taking of space, but not for that reason, any less an action. In taking the space, in acting, we have created the condition for further instantiations of “action.” In creating a space for the further development of the movement we create space and opportunity for “action” previously lacking. The “action” is, in this way, a continuous development out of and beyond itself. It does not bleed into something different, but is itself further determined by what it becomes. Only through the process of progressively unfolding in ever richer determinations can we come to understand the meaning of the action we have taken. The determination of all actions is future oriented, that is, they are essentially the possibilities they open by what becomes thinkable and doable as their result. In this radical break from normal relations, we advance in an as yet undetermined dialectic. In recognizing our constitutive role in the process of determination we simultaneously acknowledge our freedom, our freedom to create freely. To continue acting is to continue in the manifestation of free meaning by increasing the horizon of possibilities, and in this way we simultaneously challenge both reified consciousness and the persistent foreclosure of opportunities for a truly rational, socially integrated society.

Arendt via Marianne

“No chaos resulted from the actions of people without leadership and without previously formulated program…instead of mob rule there appeared immediately the same organization which for more than a hundred years now has emerged whenever the people have been permitted for a few days, or a few weeks or months, to follow their own political devices without a government (or a party program) imposed from above.” So said Arendt, over fifty years ago, about the Hungarian revolution. She went on, in that article, to point out tat “the councils were born exclusively out of the actions and spontaneous demands of the people, and they were not deduced from an ideology, nor foreseen, let alone preconceived, by any theory about the best form of government. Wherever they appeared they were met with utmost hostility from leaders from right to left ant with the unanimous neglect of political theorists and political scientists. The point is that these councils have always been undoubtedly democratic, but in a sense never seen before and never thought about.” Such is our General Assembly. It is the next form of politics and freedom – one coming blessedly, just in time.

New School Re-Re-Occupied

All-City Student Occupation @ 90 5th Avenue – Inaugural Statement

November 17, 2011

Two days ago the NYPD, under the orders of a billionaire mayor who does not represent us, raided Occupy Wall Street with riot gear and batons. Today we occupy. Everywhere. On this historic day of global action, the students of New York City public and private universities and colleges, in solidarity with the 99%, Occupy Wall Street, labor, and all those dispossessed by our economic and political system, will expand the struggle and occupy a university space.

Today, the university is a supreme symbol of social and economic inequality. Skyrocketing tuition costs at public and private institutions deny us access to higher education and saddle us with crushing debt. We will reclaim this elite space and make it open to all. We will foster dialogue and build solidarity between students, workers, and others excluded or marginalized by economic and social inequalities. We will build community through the commonality of occupation. We will offer free education – this is systematically forbidden. We join a long tradition of student activism and struggle. We the indebted and the future unemployed and underemployed stand committed to this movement for our collective lives. We invite all to join us in this open occupation.

Workers, students, and the millions of this city unite!

Together we will be victorious.

ESCALATE the Struggle. EXPAND the Movement. OCCUPY!

From mobilisation to ‘massification’

Libcom – A text produced during the successful 8-day occupation at Sussex University in March 2010.

Preface
This short text was written by an occupier on the third day (Saturday 13 March 2010) of an 8-day occupation of Arts A2 building at Sussex University. It was borne out of frustration with the way a radical act – a mass contempt of court (an imprisonable offence) by hundreds of students and even some staff – so quickly returned to the safe leftist territory of listening to Party hacks (and at least one non-affiliated local militant) urging us to unite against the “fascist BNP”. But it was also urging against the safe anarchist territory of small group activism. The text is a call for both the popular frontism of the leftists and the substitutionist activism of many anarchists to be superseded by a process of ‘massification.’

Crisis and Consciousness: Lessons and Reflections from March 4th

Advance The Struggle

Tables of Contents

1. Introduction to March 4th
2. October 24^th Compromise
3. City committees: Oakland and LA, Class Struggle Left Committees
4. San Francisco: Center Wins Over Left
5. UC Berkeley vs. UC Santa Cruz: Campus Committees Choose Focus
6. UC Davis and CSU Fresno: Central Valley Consciousnesa
7. Seattle: Worker-Student Power
8. Conclusion
9. Appendix
   1. Canada Community College
   2. UC Berkeley marches to Oakland
   3. Youth lead in Oakland
   4. CCSF

I. Introduction

Spirit is indeed never at rest but always engaged in moving forward. But just as the first breath drawn by a child after its long, quiet nourishment breaks the gradualness of merely quantitative growth – there is a qualitative leap, and the child is born.

– Hegel

March 4^th provides us with a snapshot into the strategic and theoretical frameworks used by the Left to understand, develop and radicalize consciousness; we begin to see patterns emerge as this consciousness is translated into working class action, and we begin to ask ourselves what is needed to learn from these actions and begin developing a revolutionary consciousness and practice to address the ongoing crisis of capital.

Anti-Capital Projects: Reflections on the I-980/I-880 Takeover

More thoughts from California: Anti-Capital Projects

Like any number of urban freeways, the I-980 and I-880 are lines of containment. They mark out the zones and boundaries of economic apartheid, making West Oakland into an island of poverty, a police zone, boxed in on all sides. A freeway, in this sense, is merely one of the most visible forms of the lines of force that cut up our cities and, in turn, our lives, that butcher them according to the logics of race and class, money and property. How can we see these arteries as anything less than instruments for the formation of a controlled population, instruments in the successive waves of urban centralization, white flight, gentrification? They are checkpoints and blockages – massive pours of concrete, of labor, erected to determine who gets to go where and how. And they have no meaning beyond the insinuation of the automobile into every facet of our lives, the automobile which is hallmark of US economic power in the 20^th century, token of class mobility, passageway to pseudo-freedom, emitter of poison gases, turning our lives into a cut-and-paste of frantic alienation and isolation, responsible for more deaths than the M-16. Who could love a freeway?

Same Shit, Different City (from Cali)

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

MARCH 4TH NY

from takethecity:

-Walk-Out / Indoor demo at CUNY Hunter:

At 1pm students and supporters gathered on the 3rd floor of the 68th street campus. There was a large police presence inside and outside the building. Students attempted to move toward the upper part of the building to get more students to participate but were blocked by campus security. Scuffles broke out as students forced their way past a campus guard and took to the stairwells.

Word has it that, inside the building, the financial aid office had its windows broken, and the much hated security turnstiles at the entrance to the building were attacked and broken.

Before the demo, signs were posted up on the 3rd floor saying that the indoor demo would not be permitted but the simultaneous rally called by the International Socialist Organization (ISO) and others would be. There are also rumors that ‘Student Activists’ were warning other students via text message that unpaid agent provocateurs would be coming to Hunter to cause a riot (more on this when we get confirmation). A New School Student supporting the Hunter walkout was ejected from the building possibly after being pointed out by an ISO activist (there have been conflicting reports).

Students and allies marched through Hunter’s walkways, to the cheering of students standing by, many of whom joined in. The INDOOR DEMO proceeded to the 3rd floor:

The police were in full force blocking the escalators but at least 40 students broke through into the back stairwell and surged up the stairs, only to find yet more police on every single floor blocking every door.

While some ran through the building urging students to walk out of their classes, others began to urge people to leave the building and attend the rally outside. A few scuffles broke out between people involved in the walkout and those running the permitted rally.  3 or 4 individuals have supposedly been arrested inside of CUNY Hunter.

Eventually enough people were pushed out of the building by the police or by Organizers who wanted to have the rally and talk at the crowd:

someone in the crowd is trying to send a message to the speakers

Read NY Times article

More info soon…

-Brooklyn College:

Hundreds participated in a successful teach in that will hopefully build up to larger actions in the future.

– CUNY Graduate Center

about 30 Graduate Students (also  adjunct professors) from the CUNY Grad Center arrived with allies at school this morning, to see five black cop cars parked in front of the building and the cafeteria filled with  police. The students, however, were headed towards the elevators (the only means of entering the building), and filled them with their angry bodies, blocking entrance to the elevators while others spoke to people about the cuts, their shitty jobs, and encouraged folks to go to Hunter College. One of the elevators was boarded by a plainclothes police officer who shoved one of the students to the floor. He stayed in the elevator, harassing the students for their names and calling them cowards while the students hurled insults. He left the elevator only when the students exited to find support.

CUNY Grad Center Students also executed a banner drop, small but real (LUV U RIVERSIDE), with only more to come.

like a tiny purple patch of desire facing the empire state building

The Grad Students exited unscathed and immediately went to join the Hunter walkout.

– Centralized Rally

-There is currently a heavily policed and relatively small march making its way to the MTA hearings at F.I.T.

–SUNY Purchase is Occupied!

occupation still going, it needs support!

More to come,

For breaking news from California check:

Occupy CA

FREE CUNY WALK OUT

MARCH 4th SCHEDULE

TAKE THE CITY

Rally at Gov. Paterson’s Office, 4 pm

(633 Third Ave. @ 41st St.)

Then March to the MTA Hearings at FIT

(Seventh Ave. @ 27th St.)

Facebook event page

• Stop the school closings and privatization of public education
• Stop the cuts to K-12 and higher education
• Restore the free student MetroCard
• Full funding for all educational needs
• Education is a right – Free, high-quality education for all

Sussex Reoccupied!

Students at Sussex released the following statement:

The management of our university has rejected all alternative plans proposed by the UCU, by the Student Advisors, by the Parents who use the crèche, and by various academic departments. We feel that taking this action is our only option to protect our education from cuts.

We oppose the authoritarian tactics employed by management, just as we oppose all cuts to public services. Whether we be students, workers or unemployed, we should not be made to pay for a funding crisis created by an irresponsible, outmoded, and defunct economic system.

NO CUTS ANYWHERE

THE UNIVERSITY IS A FACTORY: STRIKE, OCCUPY

That’s Not The Sky, That’s The Ceiling: Video Communique from Berkeley

A brief video statement from participants in the Durant Hall Occupation and the subsequent street party/riot in downtown Berkeley. For more information on the occupation movement in California visit: occupyca.wordpress.com

Banner drops in California

NEW SCHOOL WALK OUT MARCH 4

Yesterday the dumpsters, Tomorrow the world: UC Irvine

occupy uci

UCI is NOT a state of anarchy!” – UCI Political Science Department Chair Mark Petracca, to Muslim students disrupting Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren’s talk 2 weeks ago.

Well, Mr. Petracca, we’ve tried it your way, it’s time for ours!

A curious thing happened yesterday at the University of California Irvine: for several hours, the campus descended into a state of anarchy.

At 9:30am, 14 students and 3 AFSCME 3299 representatives began a sit-in outside Chancellor Michael Drake’s office.  The police were caught completely flat-footed, and it was only because a police officer saw the crowd and rushed to the 5th floor to lock Drake’s door that the students didn’t get inside.  A list of demands was issued, and while there has already been much debate and discussion about the demands, we have no interest in dissecting the demands–the fact that these issues are even being talked about is sufficient.  Police seemed unprepared to deal with the sit-in; really, nothing like this has happened in years on our quiet Stepford-esque campus.  After nearly an hour, police finally made the move to arrest the protesters.

Occupy Boston

occupyboston

As “youth,” there is no future presently worth working or studying for. We study in hopes of getting jobs, even while lost in the mazes of precarity. We work in hopes to make enough to live, despite the guarantee of needing to work for the rest of our lives.

As “adults,” we face the same problems. We work forever in order to give our children the chances of getting their own job upon graduating. This of course is for the “lucky” ones with parents able to help out.

The present future offers us nothing other than the uncertainty of whether we are able to continue to live; we are left worrying about food and money. The only assurance we have in the present future is uncertainty. The uncertainty of whether we are able to complete college. The uncertainty of getting a job after graduating. The uncertainty of having enough food to feed ourselves. The uncertainty of living life. Only these uncertainties are for certain.

Yet, in these uncertainties is also the assurance for the need of a new world. In order to break the illusion of this future that is laid out before us we must to take matters into our own hands. To break the illusion, we must take what we need. No more asking politely. We are to take and appropriate. We are to occupy and live.

March 4^th is not just a National Day of Action to Defend Education. It is also the National Day of Action to Stop Police Brutality. It is also the National Day of Action Against Capitalism. It is also the National Day of Action to Fight for Our Lives: To Fight for Our Futures.

We are with you California and New York and everyone else (you know who you are).

Occupy Everything for Everyone

See you March 4th

-occupyboston