Ten days ago a group of students from campuses across New York City occupied a suite of rooms at the New School at 90 Fifth Avenue. They set up a blog, released a statement, and settled in to work.
The space the group was occupying, however, wasn’t owned by the New School itself but was leased (or rather borrowed, as it was “leased” rent-free), and before too long the owners started making noises about evicting the occupation. Fire Marshals were called. The New School offered to relocate the group to the Kellen gallery, another NS space a few blocks away, with a commitment to let them stay until the fall semester ends in late December.
The occupation voted to accept the offer at a mass meeting on Tuesday night, but the vote wasn’t close to unanimous and some charged that non-occupiers had been sent in to tip the vote. As a result, one group moved to the new space, while another stayed at the old, and set up their own blog.
In the early morning hours of Friday, November 25, the group that stayed behind at 90 Fifth Avenue released a statement saying that they had received word of a planned police raid, and that they had “chosen to barricade all entrances to this space and will defend it by all means available to us.”
Then they left.
What exactly happened at that point isn’t completely clear, but New School officials say that the group abandoned the occupation during the night, and that some of the occupiers then vandalized the Kellen Gallery with messages that included “Spoiled New School Anarchists,” “Free Education,” “Pussies,” and “Cops Out Of CUNY.”
By morning, there were just five people left in Kellen, and the New School president asked them to leave so that the space could be cleaned and painted. They did.
The New School says that they hope to have both previously occupied spaces reopened by Monday morning. They intend to return the space at 90 Fifth Avenue to its previous use as a study area, and have not yet announced whether they plan to offer the Kellen Gallery to the occupation again.
Some links:
- The New School Free Press, which has been covering this story since the beginning. (Twitter here.)
- The original blog (and Twitter account) of the occupiers.
- An early critique of the political and interpersonal dynamics of the occupation.
- The blog of the group that stayed in 90 5th Avenue.
- Another blog that may or may not have been put together by the 90 Fifth group after they left.
- Messages to the New School community from its president, including several relating to the occupation.
- A New School student’s criticism of the Kellen vandalism.
Update | Here’s a Flickr photoset from a NS person. The first six shots are of preparations for the Kellen occupation, and the rest are of graffiti left behind by the 90 Fifth Avenue occupation.
studentactivism.net 
11 comments
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November 26, 2011 at 9:25 am
E
I am continually amazed at the low level of intelligence of today’s college students. They couldn’t mount a relevant, effective social protest if their lives depended on it (which their lives never will, since they’re all children from well-off families).
LOL.
November 26, 2011 at 9:42 am
someonewhoknows
It’s not complicated or weird. A small cluster of extremists (some of whom are alumni of earlier NSU occupations) tried to hijack the OWS movement at NSU. They don’t care a fig for OWS or its values of transparency, inclusion, and consensus; they’re fixated on hopelessly discredited models of producing maximal confrontation in order to hasten the revolution etc. Their “GAs” were cynical parodies: a handful of radicals dominated the facilitation and process, regularly erupted in aggressive cheering or booing or chanting, scurried around to whisper in facilitators’ ears, etc. Luckily, there was a committed and much larger contingent of organizers who were deeply committed to OWS’s values. They won the main GA by (horror of horrors!) INCLUDING people. The radicals responded by disrespecting the GA’s consensus, issuing paranoid rants, and barricading themselves in. They WANTED violence. But they didn’t get what they wanted because the NSU administration was deeply committed to finding a nonviolent resolution. Their commitment – despite many broken promises, escalating damages, and bad-faith negotiations – was met with actions that are beneath contempt: trashing common resources, a heavily student study center and a gallery.
November 26, 2011 at 9:48 am
E
What I don’t understand is how this outcome could have surprised anyone. This whole “protest” exactly echoed the nonsense a few years ago at NYU where students tried to occupy a library. There are some particularly hilarious videos of these “proceedings” on Youtube.
This seems to be a serious blog about student activism, but these incidents are just mockeries of student protest by rich kids who are play-acting. Better to concentrate on UC Davis.
November 26, 2011 at 1:08 pm
Angus Johnston
Thanks for that analysis, SWK. Always good to hear from folks on the ground.
November 26, 2011 at 4:32 pm
someonewhoknows
“E”‘s remarks are silly. They have elements of truth, but their condemnation of an entire generation is awful. There were some GREAT people involved in the NSU occupation, and it’s upsetting that their efforts and trust were so badly betrayed – I think it’s too early to have to learn such bitter lessons. I’m glad that you’ve gotten that Flickr URL, though truth be told those pictures are very kind: the damage was worse, and much more shameful. It was the work of people who have no creative vision, people whose imagination is hopelessly colonized by what they think they oppose – so, as the pictures show, they would meet violence with violence, cynicism with cynicism, ignorance with ignorance. They were a small minority of the movement, and I’m sorry that their actions will set back the ideas of the movement for so many others at NSU, students and faculty. That’s surely what they wanted, because extremists can’t tolerate the middle. But they’ve set back their own cause (to the extent it can be said to exist) much worse. The bitter lessons the moderates learned directly, and many others will learn indirectly, will help first to exclude and then to box in extremists wherever this occupation’s alumni go. And I hope NSU’s thoughtful response will be recognized as the right way to respond to student unrest – not with violence but with critical intelligence and principled compassion. It’s easy to condemn clubs and mace; it’s much harder to applaud their alternative because we don’t know what it looks like. But now we’re starting to get a glimpse of what it could be.
November 26, 2011 at 5:19 pm
E
Sorry if I sound condemnatory of an entire generation, but this generation of middle class college students, in general, is 2 or 3 generations removed from the actual working class – people who worked in factories or did other manual labor and knew what effective organization was and what it was for. They have no institutional knowledge passed down to them from their parents and grandparents, for the most part. Which is sad. They are making it up as they go and many of them think they are doing just swell at it, when they aren’t. At all.
It’s never too early to have to learn bitter lessons.
November 26, 2011 at 5:30 pm
someonewhoknows
E, these remarks help me understand your position much better. Actually, I agree with a lot of what you say. A little part of me dies every time I hear someone babble about OWS’s “infrastructure,” like someone peddling on a bicycle generator can be compared with all the blood, sweat, and toil that went into making every solid thing we know. That’s delusional AND ignorant. On the other hand, I see OWS as a means to an end, and that end is a renewal of the ability to question and imagine. I know that’s really tenuous, but without that we have nothing. So I guess I want to safeguard whatever signs of life I see, which is why I think it’s a shame such a bitter lesson was learned. But you’re right, the sooner the better.
November 26, 2011 at 6:31 pm
Milan Moravec
Unhiversity of California Berkeley Chancellor Birgenea allows his campus police to apply batons on Cal students protesting increases in tuition.
Campus UCPD report to chancellors and take direction from their chancellor. University of California campus chancellors vet their campus police protocols. Chancellors are knowledgeable that pepper spray and use of batons are included in their campus police protocols.
Chancellor Birgeneau’s campus police use batons on his students. UC Berkeley Chancellor Birgeneau and UC Davis Chancellor are in dereliction of their duties.
UC Berkeley Chancellor Birgeneau and UC Davis Chancellor need to quit or be
fired for permitting the brutal outrages on students protesting tuition increases
and student debt
Opinions? Email the UC Board of Regents marsha.kelman@ucop.edu
November 26, 2011 at 8:20 pm
scooter
My only experience w/New School protestors is when they took over a protest at Hunter College and pretty much ran riot, turning a nonviolent demonstration about tuition hikes into a free-for-all. Following that, they used FaceBook page created by Hunter students to criticize the CUNY folks for not being aggressive enough. To be honest, I was pretty irritated by the classism of the whole thing: let’s invade a CUNY school and then tell the working-class students who organized the protest that they’re not radical enough.
November 26, 2011 at 9:59 pm
Sunday Reading « zunguzungu
[…] The Weird, Evolving Story of the New School Occupation […]
November 27, 2011 at 5:46 pm
Milan Moravec
Brutal use of batons by University of California Berkeley Chancellor Birgeneau on his students protesting student debt.
Campus UCPD report to chancellors and take direction from their chancellor. University of California campus chancellors vet their campus police protocols. Chancellors are knowledgeable that pepper spray and use of batons are included in their campus police protocols.
Chancellor Birgeneau’s campus police use batons on his students. UC Berkeley Chancellor Birgeneau and UC Davis Chancellor are in dereliction of their duties.
UC Berkeley Chancellor Birgeneau and UC Davis Chancellor need to quit or be
fired for permitting the brutal outrages on students protesting tuition increases
and student debt
Opinions? Email the UC Board of Regents marsha.kelman@ucop.edu