Occupy Everything Tour hits D.C. Area

Students involved with the New School and NYU occupations are on tour discussing their experiences and viewpoints regarding the trend toward student occupations in the US. From New York to California — to Vienna — students are taking control of their universities to effect social change.

FROM OUR SPEAKERS:

"We will first attempt to orient ourselves within the University by grappling with the radical transformations in higher education over the past decade. We look at the corporatization of private universities like the New School, the privatization of public universities in Europe and the United States, and the backlash against the rising costs of tuition, the lack of employment potentials, and the ubiquitous burden of student debt.

We then describe the specific political ethos of the New School and the series of events leading up to the December and April occupations of 65 Fifth Avenue. This begins with the founding of the New School in 1919 by scholars fleeing Columbia University after refusing political loyalty oaths during WWI and then the creation of the University in Exile in 1933 as a haven for persecuted European scholars during WWII. Then, we jump to the presidency of Bob Kerrey beginning in 2001, his personal and political histories, the commercialization of the New School, and why students and faculty want him gone. Lastly, we will discuss the faculty no confidence vote that led to the December occupation, that occupation itself, the April 10 occupation, and the aftermath of these events.

Finally, we discuss occupation as a political tactic and medium of dissent, attempting to answer questions like:

Is occupation a means to an end, or is it a “pure means?”

Is it effective in the sense that it ‘gets something done,’ or is it better employed as an affective form protest?

What is affective protest? And why not lobby for reform, picket, or join the student senate?

Above all, we hope to offer what we’ve learned from our experiences at the New School to other university communities with a desire to resist and affect change."

WHY STUDENT OCCUPATIONS?

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.

There will be libations!

November 20th - College Park - University of Maryland Campus in the Art-Sociology building, room 1213 @ 6pm
http://www.facebook.com/#/event.php?eid=209147915478&ref=ts

November 21st - Washington, DC 7 p.m. at Big Bear Cafe! Hosted by the Collective to Open a Radical Space in DC
(http://dcradicalspace.wordpress.com)
For more info: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=177275801085&ref=mf

November 22nd - Frederick, MD 1:00 PM @ the Hippo House sponsored by the Hippo House Book Collective.
For more info: http://www.facebook.com/#/event.php?eid=175687874690&ref=ts