Occupy Boston
February 22, 2010
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 4th 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
The Game: Take What Is Ours, Because Everything Is Ours
December 2, 2009
Here is a shout out to fellow west coast conspirators
for some good ol’ fashion insurrection!
Its a time of crisis,
but it sure don’t look like one yet!
So get going and bring it on,
because we are the crisis!
This is a call for a competitive occupation
to get things started:
this will be called the Game.
And this game never fucking ends!
UC Headquarters in Oakland briefly occupied
November 23, 2009
Outraged by the eviction of the Wheeler Occupation and the police violence around Berkeley Friday, over 100 students seized UC Headquarters demanding to talk to UC President Mark Yudof.
With supporters and riot police massing some administrators apparently talked to the students for 2 hours, and the students left by the time the building closed. This tweet indicates a very phoney sounding compromise on the part of a UC administrator. Nonetheless, action continues throughout California.
Follow this indymedia link for updates on Monday’s action and search these Hash Tags on Twitter: #UCStrike #OurUni #UCregents
From the Academy of Refusal in Vienna: Solidarity with UC Santa Cruz
November 23, 2009
Via Indybay
Occupy the Crisis: The Emerging Student-Worker Direct Action Movement in California
October 29, 2009
A summary commissioned by the antioch rebel newspaper from a participant in the ucsc actions
On Sept. 24, thousands of students, faculty, and staff walked out of University of California campuses across the state. The walk-outs and one-day strike were called by a wide coalition of UC unions and activist groups as a largely symbolic protest against the budget cuts, fee hikes and firings associated with the state budget crisis. At two campuses, however, in Santa Cruz and Berkeley, some people then walked back in and began to initiate occupations. Administrators and activists alike were stunned that the logic of symbolic protest had been abandoned for concrete, insurrectionary activity. Occupation, a tactic which is mostly unfamiliar in the U.S., is widely generalized in many social struggles throughout the world, and points towards new dimensions of struggle and autonomous organization that are likely to prove particularly vital as the economic crisis continues and deepens.
WHAT IS AN OCCUPATION?
An occupation is a break in capitalist reality that occurs when people directly take control of a space, suspending its normal functions and animating it as a site of struggle and a weapon for autonomous power.
Occupations are a common part of student struggles in France, where for example in 2006 a massive youth movement against the CPE (a new law that would allow employers to fire first-time workers who had been employed for up to 2 years without cause) occupied high schools and universities and blockaded transit routes. In 1999, the National Autonomous University of Mexico City was occupied for close to a year to prevent tuition from being charged. Both of these struggles were successful. In Greece and Chile, long and determined student struggles have turned campuses into cop-free zones, which has in turn led to their use as vital organizing spaces for social movement involving other groups like undocumented migrants and indigenous people.
Occupations have not been seen much in the U.S. since the 1970s until 2008 when workers at the Republic Windows and Doors Factory in Chicago occupied the building and won back pay from the bank that foreclosed the factory. In following months, university students in New York City staged several occupations in resistance to the corporatization of their schools. It was this activity which inspired the students in Santa Cruz and Berkeley.
Destroy the University
September 18, 2009
by André Gorz 1970
- The university cannot function, and we must thus prevent it from functioning so that this impossibility is made manifest. No reform of any kind can render this institution viable. We must thus combat reforms, in their effects and in their conception, not because they are dangerous, but because they are illusory. The crisis of the institution of the university goes beyond (as we will show) the realm of the university and involves the social and technical division of labor as a whole. And so, this crisis must come to a head.
New School Pres. Kerrey To Step Down In 2011
May 7, 2009
News reports: NY1 Report | New York Times report | CityFile
New School Economics Review – President Bob Kerrey, against whom the New School students have been protesting for a long time now (as mentioned earlier) will leave the New School in 2011 once his current contract expires. He confirmed that he will not try to extend his tenure at the University’s Board of Trustees Meeting yesterday, and re-affirmed it with the New York Times this morning.
UVM Students’ Occupation Against the Cuts
May 2, 2009
report on the student occupation at the University of Vermont that came in the wake of growing protest against budget cuts and layoff threats.
April 23, 2009
AROUND 100 students marched on administration offices at the University of Vermont April 22 and staged a sit-in in two joint actions. The action ended late in the evening, with police moving in to arrest protesting students who refused to leave, with a total of more than 30 arrests during the day.
Coming on the heels of 1,000-strong, faculty-supported walkout two weeks earlier, these actions were the culmination of a semester-long campaign aimed at turning back UVM President Daniel Fogel’s proposed cutbacks.
Off the sidewalk, into the FUTURE!
April 17, 2009
HOLY SHITBALLS! What the fuck happened last night at the New School?
New School in Exile: Video | Photos
Hundreds of people at the anti-police brutality rally at the 55 w13th st New School building, dozens in Bob Kerrey masks, speaker after speaker condeming the NYPD and the New School’s violent response to the occupation, absurd revolutionaries challenging everyone to OCCUPY EVERYTHING! ABOLISH TIME! and NEGATE NEGATION. The crowd gets pumped and takes the street in front of the building, screaming at the top of their lungs against the structures of abusive authority that surround them – including the numerous undercover cops and new school-hired private security teams, as well as the FBI, TARU units, and other violent state-sanctioned gangs like them present. The atmosphere becomes raucous and the joy and fear of everyone surges. DROP THE CHARGES, OCCUPY AGAIN they say.
Dear friends and colleagues,
We write from Paris, a city where protests, demonstrations, and yes, even building occupations are frequent occurrences; a city whose traditions of creative, robust forms of political expression we admire and one whose
inhabitants regularly manifest what seems to us a healthy dose of self-respect in objecting publicly and forcefully to demeaning and unjust conditions. Having breathed this atmosphere for many months now, we view recent events at the New School in a different light from that reflected in communications we have so far received.
Granted we are far away. And undoubtedly we miss many nuances. Nevertheless, having carefully read all the documents sent to us (student manifestoes, presidential memos, and communiqués from deans, provosts, trustees and individual professors), we can see no justification for the Administration”s resort to police force against the occupiers of 65 Fifth Avenue. Furthermore, we are against proposals to condemn both sides. On the contrary, we urge the faculty to condemn the administration”s action forthwith and to support the right of the demonstrators to their protest, regardless of our agreement or disagreement with their views and goals.
Read the rest of this entry »
And What About France? Students Block Traffic, Hold Administrators Hostage, Barricade City
April 15, 2009
Up go the barricades as universities voice anger at Sarkozy
French Students Hold Administrators Hostage, Block Traffic In Paris
French universities in chaos over Sarkozy reforms
French Student Protesters Disrupt Paris’s Academic Core and Seize Presidents’ Offices Elsewhere
Student Protesters Take Radical Measures in France
Being president of a French university is a tough job these days. After the violent assault on Rennes 2 University on April 6, universities in Strasbourg and Orleans were also besieged by angry students on April 7.
In Rennes, west of France, the president of the university, Marc Gontard, had to flee from his office when more than 100 students broke the windows and entered the building. “The president’s office has been attacked. We are up in the stairs waiting for external help,” said Gontard in a phone call to French press agency AFP. Following this, close to 150 students in the eastern city of Strasbourg forced their way into the general council room, preventing 30 directors of research and study courses from leaving, according to media reports. At the same time, in the central city of Orleans 60 students entered the office of University President Gérald Guillaumet, keeping him prisoner for the afternoon. Finally, in Paris a student mob sequestrated the head of the organization in charge of granting scholarships and university rooms. Police had to use force to free the manager.
What The Fuck Happened Friday Morning?
April 11, 2009
A timeline of events from the re-occupation of the New School building at 65 Fifth Ave
WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED FRIDAY MORNING?
That’s the question on just about every New School student’s mind right now. Too make a long story short what happened was a peaceful act of civil disobedience and reclaimation of space was violently evicted by the NYPD in cooperation with the New School administration. But here’s the full story:
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.
FAQ: NEW SCHOOL reOCCUPATION
April 10, 2009
Q: Wait, what’s going on?
A: 65 5th Avenue has been occupied. This time, the entire building has been taken and the doors locked shut. As of the last count, there are at least 60 students inside with many more planning to join.
Q: Whose idea was this? New School in Exile? RSU?
A: Neither. It was a collective decision by a group of students who may or may not be involved in either, but the planning was done outside the context of any group.
Q: Isn’t this dangerous!?
A: This is civil disobedience, the occupation is intended to be safe and non-violent. No one wishes any physical harm to any university employees or security. Inside there is a trained medic, and everyone’s health and safety is being provided for. Anyone who wishes to leave will be able to leave. The NYPD is, of course, a wild card. Its up to everyone outside the occupation to make sure the administration does not resort to violence as they did in December.
The New School Reoccupied 