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The students occupying a building at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities have made it through their first night, and they’ve released a list of demands:
Because we are residents of Minnesota, and because this is a public, land-grant university,
We demand the right to peacefully occupy space at our university,
We demand that the general public has reasonable access to university resources;
We demand that the university respect the rights of all workers to organize and to earn at least a living wage;
We demand tuition and fee reductions;
We demand that regents be democratically elected by the university community;
We demand that the university treat student groups fairly and equitably with respect to funding and space. We demand student groups on the 2nd floor of Coffman Union be able to keep their spaces.
In doing so, we stand in solidarity with the people of Wisconsin, and students and workers worldwide.
More soon…
A morning rally at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities has turned into what organizers are calling an “open and soft occupation” of the university’s Social Sciences Tower.
“Students and community supporters,” a post on the group’s blog declared, “are outraged over soaring tuition, budget cuts, skyrocketing administrative salaries, mounting student debt, attacks on cultural diversity groups on campus, and blatant disregard for workers’ rights across the nation. In light of recent student and worker uprisings around the world, students in the Twin Cities are no longer willing to bear the burdens of the economic crisis while the rich only get richer. Inspired by the actions of students at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, Madison, and other campuses around the state, U of M students are standing up against injustices in their own state and their own university.”
The U of M occupiers are allowing other members of the campus community unconstrained access to the Social Sciences Tower, and “planning specific events for the space in order to benefit the entire community.” The building is scheduled to close at 11 pm local time, however, and it is not clear whether university administrators will try to remove them at that time.
As I noted in an earlier post, some activists have declared this Thursday to be a day of walkouts, occupations, and strikes nationwide. It seems that Thursday came early to Minneapolis-St. Paul this week.
Tuesday Morning Update | This tweet just came in from the @umnsolidarity account: “Hey everybody, the doors of the Social Sciences Building are open and Day 2 of the occupation has begun. Come on down!”
Looks like they made it through the night.
Second Update | The occupiers have released a list of demands.
March has already seen two days of national student action this month. On the 2nd, students at dozens of college campuses from coast to coast staged co-ordinated budget protests. On the 11th, high schoolers in more than twenty states walked out of classes in support of their teachers and in solidarity with demonstrators in Wisconsin.
On Thursday, the last day of March, there may be another — the folks at Defend Public Education, one of the big boosters of the March 2 day of action, are calling for a day of walkouts and strikes on March 31.
I’ll have more on those plans as the week progresses. In the meantime, however, some students and other activists in New York are planning to get a jump on Thursday’s actions by staging a Wisconsin-style state capitol occupation in Albany beginning on Wednesday the 30th.
Stay tuned…
One year ago today a student protest action took place in Canada that was, as I put it at the time, “unlike anything I’d ever heard of before.” Here’s how I described it then:
Student activists and others at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, a Canadian university some seventy miles northwest of Seattle, held a teach-out on “food democracy” and sustainability issues. There was music, a slate of speakers, pamphlets to read, and tea. At the end of the event the group planted a garden.
On the lawn.
In front of the library.
They ripped up the sod, built some raised beds, and planted a variety of vegetables and other native plants. They planted, they mulched, they designed rock borders. They put up fences to keep rabbits out.
On the lawn of the quad, in front of the library.
There’s a symposium about that action — which was hugely controversial in the campus community — being held on the U Vic campus tomorrow. And though organizers have been circumspect about the details, there’s apparently some sort of follow-up action happening today.
More as I get it.
Last night students at UC Davis went back to Mrak Hall, where 52 people were arrested last Thursday, and launched the week’s eighth UC building occupation.
This takeover was shorter than several of its predecessors, but dramatic — it was the first in this wave of occupations to end with a written commitment by the administration to honor a set of protest demands.
The students began the occupation with a lengthy list of demands, but negotiated a suspension of the occupation on the basis of five: the university committed to conducting a review of one previous campus arrest, to urging the district attorney to “strongly consider … not filing charges” against the 52 Thursday arrestees, to dropping any disciplinary action against those students, to pursuing “further discussion” about co-op housing on campus based on “a mutual desire to promote sustainable, affordable cooperative living facilities,” and to holding “further discussions on all other demands with a representative group, as early as Monday, November 30.”
There’s nothing earth-shattering here, of course, but it’s still significant in at least three ways.
First, it gives students throughout the UC system a precedent for negotiated settlement of an occupation. There has been some resistance to that approach from both sides in the last week — from students who conducted “demandless” occupations, and from administrators who refused to enter into dialogue. Last night’s agreement affirms that negotiation is a live option in this series of actions.
Second, it provides a template for such negotiations. The Davis administration’s biggest concession was its agreement to forego disciplinary action against the Thursday demonstrators (and, implicitly, against last night’s demonstrators as well). That concession sets up amnesty as an achievable demand in future occupations.
Third, it opens up ongoing negotiations on local campus issues. A single university’s administrators have no direct power to roll back fees or reform the UC board of regents — such demands are aimed at off campus targets, and winning full victories on them is not a project for a single day. But local concessions can be won in a single action, and ongoing negotiations are a mechanism for refining and sharpening such demands to the point that more substantive victories become more likely.
In the NYU and New School occupations of 2008-09, those universities’ administrations shifted away from negotiation and toward punitive legal action as the students’ campaigns developed. The resolution of yesterday’s Mrak Hall occupation is the strongest evidence yet that the University of California is now moving in the opposite direction.
Update | Here is the UC Davis administration’s official statement on the occupation. Note that it describes the takeover as beginning with a study-in at eight o’clock yesterday morning, that it says that 150 demonstrators were present in Mrak at the end of the night, and that it strikes a conciliatory, respectful tone throughout. Note also that it binds the university to a new commitment beyond the five agreed to last night — the presence of Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi at a meeting with students next Monday.
Second Update | Commenter Cynthia D. notes that the Monday student meeting with the chancellor is actually a long-planned, regularly scheduled event. She also has a perspective on the administration’s behavior during the occupation that’s worth reading, so click through and read it.
Third Update | The Yolo County District Attorney announced on Friday that charges against 51 of the 52 Mrak Hall demonstrators have been dropped, with the only exception being the student charged with assault and resisting arrest. This is obviously a further victory for the second occupation.
Fourth Update | The third update above, based on a report from a local news station’s website, is inaccurate. Charges against the Mrak 51 have not been dropped, they’ve just been set aside, and they can be re-instated at any time in the next year.
studentactivism.net 
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