Primera Universidad en Nueva York okupada por l@s estudiantes!
Por favor pasalo a l@s compas en Chicago, GrecÃa, Italia,
España y mas alla!
New School Occupied by Students in inspiration and solidarity with
Chicago, Greece, Spain, Italy and beyond!
New School Occupied! 10:30am Press Conference/Rally Today 12/18/08
CUNY Students statement - Distribute widely!!!
We write this statement from an occupied New School University. (WHAT
WHAT)
At 8pm, December 18th, over 75 students reclaimed the cafeteria at the
New School University as an autonomous student center. Students from
several Universities commandeered this space. Students of City
College, Borough of Manhattan Community College, Hunter College and
the CUNY Graduate Center are here participating in this struggle. This
is every student's occupation.
If this can happen at the New School, through the organized activity
of 75 dedicated students, it can happen at CUNY. And we certainly have
reason to be upset: On the first day of the Fall 2008 semester, the
CUNY budget was slashed $50.6 million. Massive layoffs plague all our
schools. We are now being told of a looming $600-per-year tuition hike
and more colossal budget cuts to CUNY students and teachers, in a
school that was once FREE.
We will continue this campus occupation until our demands are met.
While the demands tonight are specific to The New School we will not
be satisfied until the students and faculty of CUNY, NYU, all the
consortium schools and beyond, have control over their universities.
Education should be free, student debts should be cancelled, students
and workers should work together to achieve our goals, and we start
here.
Please, come out to the New School and support us! Join us! We are at
65 5th avenue (between 13th and 14th St.). The building will be open
to all consortium students at 7:30am, we invite you to come any time
tomorrow, but particularly at 10:30 when there will be a rally and
press conference. The morning hours will be crucial, and the
student-occupiers need to know that we are not struggling alone!
Our next stop? CUNY.
- CUNY students at The New School in Exile
Contact:
Frank at 718.314.2328, fmanning@gc.cuny.edu
Conor Tomás Reed at 979.204.9253, cocoreed@gmail.com
----below we attach the communiqué from all of The New School in
Exile-----
An Open Letter: Come Occupy a Building with Us...Now
Dear Friends,
We are writing to you from the inside of the New School Graduate
Faculty Building on 65 5th Ave. We are occupying it. Right now.
Literally.
Students of the New School University, along with our partners from
other universities and groups â€" like NYU, Hunter College, City
College
of NY, CUNY Graduate Center, and Borough of Manhattan Community
College, have organically risen up to demand the resignation of
President Bob Kerrey, Executive Vice President James Murtha, and Board
Member/torturer Robert B. Millard (he multi-tasks). We have come
together to prevent our study spaces from being flattened by corporate
bulldozers, to have a say in who runs this school, to demand that the
money we spend on this institution be used to facilitate the creation
of a better society, not to build bigger buildings or invest in
companies that make war. We have come here not only to make demands,
but also to live them. Our presence makes it clear that this school is
ours, and yours, if you are with us.
The outside doors have been closed now, so we can't exactly invite you
in...sorry... We know you wanted a piece of the action, but we'll be
around for quite some time. Join us at 7 AM tomorrow when the doors
open again, or come now to stand outside with a sign in solidarity.
You are cordially invited to join us in any way you can. We are not
going anywhere. In the meantime, check out our Web site:
www.newschoolinexile.com. We have all night to make things
interesting, and the website will continue to be updated. Stay tuned
for the musical pieces, doctoral dissertations, and creative
finger-paintings that seem to be the natural result of 150 students
locked into a building together for a night.
We are here, making decisions collectively, doing teach-ins, listening
to music, studying, singing. We've got an upright bassist, guitarists
and vocalists (If anyone can volunteer a drum-set we'll be well on our
way...). We'll be here until this university changes, or until the
party gets boring (but it doesn't seem likely that will happen). We're
not going anywhere. We hope to see you soon, and if you really can't
wait a few hours â€" what the hell â€" occupy your own
universities or
work spaces.
Come use your voice to declare loudly that this school and this world
are yours. Come use your mind to think up a better world. Come use
your body to create it, one all-nighter in the university cafeteria at
a time. Come stand in solidarity with the students, faculty, and staff
of this university. Come to write letters of support to the people of
the village of Thanh Phong whose parents were murdered by the current
President of the New School during his service in Vietnam. Come join
the struggle with the people of Iraq who are being tortured and killed
by a company funded by this university and represented on the New
School Board of Trustees. Come here to join the uprisings and
outpouring of passionate resistance currently taking place all over
this country, and all over the worlds â€" from factory workers in
Chicago to students in Greece. Come for yourself. Come for all of us.
In solidarity,
The New School in Exile
-----------
From New York City:
We have just occupied New School University.
We liberate this space for ourselves, and all those who want to join us,
for our general autonomous use. We take the university in explicit
solidarity with those occupying the universities and streets in Greece,
Italy, France and Spain.
This occupation begins as a response to specific conditions at the New
School, the corporatization of the university and the impoverishment of
education in general. However, it is not just this university but also
New York City that is in crisis: in the next several months, thousands
of us will be losing our jobs, while housing remains unaffordable and
unavailable to many and the cost of living skyrockets.
So we stress that the general nature of these intolerable conditions
exists across the spectrum of capitalist existence, in our universities
and our cities, in all of our social relations. For this reason, what
begins tonight at the New School cannot, and should not, be contained
here.
Thus: with this occupation, we inaugurate a sequence of revolt in New
York City and the United States, a coming wave of occupations,
blockades, and strikes in this time of crisis.
Be assured, this is only the beginning,
With solidarity and love from New York to Greece,
To Italy, France and Spain,
To the coming insurrection.
- New School Occupation Committee
http://www.newschoolinexile. com/
