A group of students have taken over the Housing Community Center (HCC) at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington.
A communique from the students who conducted the takeover was posted at about 10:30 am Pacific Time today. It says that the group is “disheartened, discouraged and frustrated” by the realization that they have been paying tuition to follow rules they had no say in creating, and that they have thus “commandeer[ed] the facilities that we are paying for.”
“Everything that we paid for is ours,” the statement says. “Everything is ours. It’s right there in front of you, waiting for the intention, the desire and the effort.”
The message closes with a slogan that has been frequently used in recent California campus takeovers: “Occupy Everything. Demand Nothing.”
I’ll have more on this story soon.
2:45 pm Pacific Time | I’ve found a Twitter feed from the Evergreen occupation: @OccupiedHCC. Tweets posted from that account suggest that the occupation began at the end of a dance party yesterday evening, and that thirty people slept in the HCC last night. They’ve also posted a schedule of workshops for this afternoon.
3:05 pm | According to the @OccupiedHCC Twitter feed, the first of the afternoon’s workshops is scheduled to start in ten minutes, and it’s on university budget cuts. Later there will be a workshop called “on occupying and occupations” and one on the history of protest in Olympia. A concert is planned for later tonight.
It’s worth underscoring that this is an open occupation, one in which students and others are encouraged to come and participate, and in which there’s no attempt to lock down the occupied building. Like the Berkeley Live Week occupation last December, the HCC occupation is oriented toward creating — on at least a small scale — an alternative university rather than an attempt to shut down the one that exists.
I’ll write about this in more detail in a separate post soon, but it seems to me that the last year or so has seen a gradual shift in tactics in American campus protests from closed occupations to open ones, and that this shift is potentially a very significant development.
4:25 pm | I’ve raised the question of open vs. closed occupations over on Twitter, and it’s produced two really interesting responses (so far). @anticapitalproj argues that “Closed & open tend to be tactical choices based on local factors, take on meaning w/in that context,” while @MPHarris27 says “Student liberation means no locked doors ever.”
Feel free to join the conversation over there … or here, in comments.
4:40 am Sunday (still Pacific Time) | As of a bit after midnight, the occupation was still going on, but whether the students planned to continue it overnight was unclear.
Also, I may have jumped to conclusions about this being an open occupation — commenter Gesa writes that some students have been prevented from entering HCC. I haven’t been able to confirm that account, but seems to be at least partially backed up by a tweet from @OccupiedHCC that described a failed attempt to take down barricades at the occupation.
2:45 pm | The @OccupiedHCC tweeter has posted that the occupation has concluded after “36 hours of a fully autonomous HCC.”
studentactivism.net 
18 comments
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February 20, 2010 at 8:39 pm
Adam Truxler
It seems to me that open occupations could result in more loss of property.
February 20, 2010 at 8:43 pm
mpharris
Thanks for the plug, but I was being a little bit too glib. Student liberation also means no cops and I don’t mean to make it sound like an easy call. I also didn’t mean that in any way as a shot at my friends in California or New York. That said, open occupation seems more about rebuilding and are inherently more open to curious students who aren’t yet involved. Not always tactically possible, but if occupations are supposed to prefigure and/or constitute the universities we want, it seems we should be shooting for open.
– Malcolm
http://umdmarch4.wordpress.com
February 20, 2010 at 8:43 pm
Angus Johnston
Students’ property, you mean? I’m not sure I follow you.
February 20, 2010 at 8:56 pm
Angus Johnston
My inclination, like yours, is toward open occupation, for the reasons you state, and I guess my question is under what conditions a closed occupation is tactically preferable.
I’m not morally opposed to barricades, and I don’t mean that question to suggest that I am. I’m just not sure I understand the premises behind a closed occupation under the current conditions in the American university, and I want to understand them better than I do.
February 20, 2010 at 9:03 pm
Pancho Ramos-Stierle
Our means are our ends in the making. We are not saving public education but we are Transforming Public Learning.
That’s all I have to say.
Planetizing the Movement of the Ahimsa (R)evolution from some corner of our round borderless country…
In solidarity + insurgent learning + radical love,
Pancho
February 20, 2010 at 9:09 pm
deterritorialization
We are fighting to open the university, to use its space and its property, as organizing centers not for the production of value but for the mobilization of students of workers in struggle against the regime of exploitation. In this sense, we must fight to keep occupations open to both the presences and desires of “outsiders”. The storming of the barricades and rushing inside of the first New School occupation was what saved it from the fate of the second.
However, we are fighting to defend spaces free of capitalist social relations, free of the illusion of property. We are facing everywhere the armed first of state repression, so barricades are necessary on a tactical basis–subordinate to the overall strategy of broadening, widening and escalating the struggle against private property and the attacks on workers and students. We may have to build barricades to defend our occupations from the police on a case-by-case basis.
I think we should be aiming at taking and holding spaces as long as possible and using the space with the explicit intent of spreading occupations, strikes and blockades as means of escalating struggles. It would behoove us to control also the streets around occupied buildings so that the doors can be left open but WITH NO COPS INSIDE (or anywhere behind our lines). For this we will need mass support. We will need more of the picket lines they have built in California, but bigger and everywhere.
We need to turn disparate occupations across state and university lines into staging grounds for a strike so general that it is not limited to one city or state, one university system or one sector of industry. Occupy everything – and use the occupations to generalize the strike!
February 21, 2010 at 1:20 am
Joe
It is acts like these that make me want to transfer out of Evergreen. You children have no idea what you are talking about and your ‘socialist’ bullshit makes me fucking sick. You should just drop out of college altogether and take your crazy fucking antics to the streets instead. That is where you all are going to end up anyway if you don’t get your acts together. Grow the fuck up and use your parent’s money wisely while you are in school. You should be studying while you are in college, not having slumber parties in the community housing center.
February 21, 2010 at 3:17 am
Gesa
This is not true, I know that students at this evergreen occupation were turned away for having past work affiliations with the college, which is bullshit in an open occupation, I also know that certain students were denied access because members inside the occupation didn’t like them, and that one of the activists forcefully pushed a campus student away from the door for trying to enter the building. Open occupation my ass.
This is another broken attempt by student “Activists” that is dividing the community.
If they want it to be a true open occupation they are going to have to swallow their own shit and truly support all members in being a part of the discussion. That means, even the members they dislike or disagree with.
-Another pissed student
February 21, 2010 at 5:08 am
Jane
Two very minimal truths, one following on the other. First, the question of open/closed is subordinate to the occupation itself: as a space of autonomy and self-determination, a space for organizing, and an act which throws itself on the levers and the gears of the university or factory or etc. There has to be an actual occupation before its mode can be debated and chosen.
Second, thusly, tactical choices are made both before, and during, to maintain the occupation. There are many factors, and they are largely local, having to do with terrain and history, and with shifting and sudden developments that are peculiar to each occupation.
For example, in a place with a tradition of strong police imtervention, you can have an open occupation, but you need a large contingent of people, whose sheer number and mass makes it hard for the cops to remove them. A smaller number in that situation is going to lock down. Or, during an open occupation, if someone — cop, student, administrator — seems to want to come in so as to end the occupation rather than support it, then of course you try to avoid that. And so on. Egalitarianism doesn’t actually mean mechanistic laissez-faire; that in fact is an ideological vision proper to libertarians and to the 19th century marketplace.
Tactical decisions aren’t made out of abstractions, they’re made out of the balance of forces (as ever, I would remind the usual chorus of “what about MLK, Jr? What about Gandhi?” folks to actually read the history books, and see the delicacy with which tactical choices were made on occasion after occasion, in extraordinarily incommensurate situations).
Finally, let’s remember that the occupations have indeed been characterized by episodes of force and violence against people — invariably carried out by anti-occupation thugs. This is a true condition for decision-making, and until it changes, expect to see choices made within that context. The idea that those choices should be held as well to some imposed morality about the metaphysical nature of an occupation is not a serious one, at least for the moment.
February 21, 2010 at 10:40 am
Angus Johnston
Good stuff, and this is a rich topic. The more I think about it, the more it seems to me that the distinction between open and closed occupations is at least as much strategic as tactical.
I’ll definitely be coming back to this one.
February 21, 2010 at 12:18 pm
*
As far as accessibility goes, it should be noted that there is a gradation from open to closed occupation. The permeable occupation, such as Live Week at UC Berkeley, brought with it many new students interested in the space, but also brought with it a police activity within the space. In other words police were able to enter, observe, retain some sense of authority, and record events inside the occupation.
An alternative is the semi-permeable occupation that we saw at the Graduate Student Commons at UC Santa Cruz, where the doors were locked at all times and people had to be allowed inside. Ostensibly a locked down building, but in reality pretty easy to get in. This in fact was the reason why three undercover police infiltrated the space and were then immediately removed.
The occupation of Kerr Hall too was semi-permeable. Although the doors automatically locked at all times, students were allowed to freely enter and leave as they pleased. Police, campus security, some press, and administrators were not allowed to enter (with exceptions for admin at certain times). Even after the doors were locked down, later in the evening, when it was evident the police were not approaching immediately, the doors were unlocked and people allowed to enter/leave.
So as Jane suggest, the occupation is not a static definition.
February 21, 2010 at 12:25 pm
Angus Johnston
Thanks, *. This is an excellent point, and some of the details you provided were new to me.
February 21, 2010 at 10:03 pm
in response to gesa
in response to gesa. There were only three people who the group decided would not be entering the HCC. Police/administration, ON DUTY RA’s, and verified snitches. You are talking about Tez Staire who was removed from the building. He’s not a fucking activist or community member. he is a snitch. He admits to providing police with information about what students have done and said he would do it again. This was an illegal act. Therefore verified snitches, people known to report other students to the police were not going to be entering the occupation. Pretty reasonable excuse to me. That piece of shit Tez was not turned away be we didn’t “like” him, there were plenty of people we didn’t “like” there. He’s a fucking snitch and he’s proud of it
February 21, 2010 at 10:36 pm
Gesa
I heard you also turned away other RAD service students. Are they not good enough to be a part of your community because they work for the state. Honestly as long as you guys continue to play favorites in your “Open Occupation” of a student resource center and continue to make it unusable to students, I have little respect for your cause. I also will continue to have no problem paying a school that has been more than willing to come half way in most of these silly “Protests” more money. At least they have some fucking respect. Your cause has yet to impress me with even a remotely well thought out exercise of community partnership and creation. How many of you are even from Washington State? You have no idea how harmful you have been to the community.
I dare you to swallow your preaching, quit acting like selfish 2 year olds and come half way in this community, because you aren’t respecting us until you do, and why should we respect you until then.
I dare you to come half way and recognize that just because some one holds a position, does not mean that they think they are better than you or want to oppress you, because until you do, your “open community” will always be divided.
I am just sick of it!
-another pissed student
February 21, 2010 at 11:46 pm
SSS0
Occupation? Give me a break. It was a student housing community center! Nobody would have even noticed if these kids didn’t say, “we’ve occupied it! look at me! look at me!” — nobody gives a shit about the HCC. All the HCC has is a little market, some ping pong tables, student mail boxes, and laundry machines. Ohhh, thank you so much for occupying that space, I’ve felt the administration just taking it over and having control for it for months now. NOT!
February 22, 2010 at 8:25 am
Jane
I wasn’t at Evergreen and can’t speak to the dynamics among folks there. But in general: the idea that an occupation is somehow obligated to let everyone in is nonsense, and that’s putting it generously. It’s on par with saying that, say, the great Soviet designer El Lissitzsky was obligated to let all comers contribute to his revolutionary artworks because he was an anarchist. No, he was trying to do a thing — to make an informational and inspirational intervention that would forward the struggle. Ditto an occupation.
Suppose someone shows up at El Lissitzsky’s studio and says, “dude, let’s debate returning to tsarism. Here, I’m putting in a plug for mild reforms to the serf system in the lower right, that’s cool, right?” The correct answer is not to say “yes, that would be truly democratic.” The correct answer is to slam the door and get to work.
February 22, 2010 at 11:24 am
EJK
In terms of open or shut, and in terms of any protest tactic you must take into account the environment. The first in this wave of US university occupations took place in New York. These are highly trafficked urban areas with a large police presence. The buildings are only open to students regularly with security guards checking the IDs of every single person walking into the building. Compare that to a university in a small city. Is the university isolated from the larger community itself? How do the police and university security forces act? Who is closing the occupation, the students or the police?
February 24, 2010 at 3:00 pm
James
Interesting discussion. No idea what happened at Evergreen, so I’m not going to comment on that. Great that the movement’s still spreading, though.
On ‘open’ vs. ‘closed’ occupations: whoever pointed out that there’s a gradation is clearly correct.
But…there’s a theoretical/ideological dimension, too. In the California movement, at least, ‘communization theory’ is a pretty big deal. According to ‘communizers’, occupied buildings become ‘communes’–not just a tactic in the fight against the cuts, but spaces that exist outside of capitalist social relations and become the building blocks of a future post-capitalist society. This theory tends to lend itself to ‘hard’ or ‘closed’ occupations.
I think it’s worth noting that none of the ‘hard’ occupations have come close to keeping out the police when the authorities are determined to end them. Some have lasted a few hours, most a few minutes. It does seem to me that the number of participants is more important than the quality of barricades in this sense.