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The activists who occupied the New School building at 65 Fifth Avenue early on Friday morning did not use Twitter to organize their action or to communicate with the world outside. No-one who self-identified as a participant in the occupation ever tweeted while it was going on, and the protesters seem not to have given much weight to Twitter as a medium through which they could communicate with the public.
But news of the protest broke online quickly, and by the time the occupation ended much of the conversation surrounding it was taking place on Twitter. Hundreds of tweets about the occupation were posted that morning — by noon, a new one was going up every eighteen seconds. Many of these tweets were written by eyewitnesses, and taken in aggregate the occupation’s Twitter feed offers both a real-time narrative of the morning’s events and a demonstration of the multiple ways that Twitter is deployed when news breaks.
The Occupation On Twitter
The occupation began at about 5:30 in the morning, by most accounts. The first tweet that mentioned it was posted at 6:46 am — twenty-six minutes after the activist group Take Back NYU announced the action via email to its Facebook group.
The first request that observers bring cameras to the occupation site to document events as they unfolded came at 7:26. The first photo from the scene was posted exactly forty minutes later.
Last week a campus political party at the University of Maryland College Park defied their administration and some state legislators and screened about half an hour’s worth of a hardcore porn movie as part of a free-speech forum.
So what’s happened since?
Well, legislators backed off of their threat to immediately axe UMD’s state funding over the screening, but they’re planning to revisit the issue in the fall. The state legislature directed the university to establish a policy on porn on campus before September 1, and at their Friday meeting the university’s regents told the UMD chancellor to present them with a set of recommendations for such a policy by summer.
In other news, the UMD College Park president, uninterested in picking any new fights with right-wing politicians, has overriden a vote of the university senate to drop the opening prayer from the university’s commencement ceremonies. The senate had voted 32-14 to abandon the prayer, with all of the senate’s student members voting with the majority.
The UMD College Park Student Power Party, the campus activists who staged the porn-screening-slash-free-speech-forum, have apparently seen all their candidates go down to defeat in the student government’s executive board elections. Election results aren’t official yet, though, as one of the other slates has charges of campaign violations pending.
Finally, the university’s student government voted unanimously on Thursday to oppose UMD’s contract with apparel-maker Russell Athletic. More than two dozen colleges and universities have dumped RA since the beginning of the year, in response to findings of labor violations at one of RA’s Honduras factories.
The students of the University of Arkansas voted this week to urge the U of A to adopt “sanctions for the possession and use of marijuana … no greater than those imposed by the University for the possession and use of alcohol.”
The university’s dean of students inserted himself into the referendum debate a week ago, sending a mass email to students arguing that “individuals choosing to possess and/or use marijuana merit different educational sanctions from those who violate the alcohol policy.” All of the candidates running for student government president and vice president endorsed the referendum, however, and it passed by a two-to-one margin.
Update: These referenda have been put on the ballot by NORML chapters at a bunch of campuses — one passed at Purdue just last week.
Earlier reports on this morning’s New School occupation can be found here.
The New School has released a statement to the media on what it calls this morning’s “break in at 65 Fifth Avenue.” The action was not “a simple political protest,” according to the statement, since the protesters’ “entry into this building was forced, they removed a man who was cleaning the building, took his phone, injured a security officer, and did physical damage to the building.”
In the statement, the New School confirms that it asked the NYPD “to remove and arrest those who were trespassing on our property,” and declares that all New School students involved have been suspended effective immediately.
The New School Free Press, a student newspaper, reports that in addition to the nineteen people arrested inside the building, at least one New School student and one NYU student were “maced and arrested” at about 11:30 this morning. There is no confirmation of the charge that police used tear gas and pepper spray inside 65 Fifth Avenue as they retook the building.
Click “Read the rest of this entry” for afternoon updates.
Ongoing reports on the New School occupation can be found here.
So I was supposed to be posting the final installment of my series on the New School In Exile this week, but with another building occupation underway at the New School, that post is going on the back burner. I will, though, share a few thoughts along the lines of what I was going to post there.
As of this writing, at 10:00 am, there’s been no formal statement from the students occupying 65 Fifth Avenue. No statement of demands, no statement of principles. If New School In Exile is behind the occupation, they’re not taking credit.
Other voices are, however, rushing in to fill the void. The New School Free Press is liveblogging the event, and they’ve got several strong quotes up from New School president Bob Kerrey. The story is all over Twitter, and it’s beginning to hit the blogs.
New School In Exile lost momentum in March in large part because it failed to use social media to keep its supporters informed and engaged. Take Back NYU suffered during its February occupation because others provided a more compelling ongoing narrative of their action than they did.
Today’s New School occupiers have an opportunity to create a new dynamic.
I have no idea what kind of internet access the Fifth Avenue occupiers have, but if they have any at all, someone in the building should be broadcasting — on Twitter, on a blog, even by commenting at news sites.
And if you don’t have internet access inside, or you’re too busy with moment-to-moment issues to be blogging, get on the phone to a supporter with a computer, and have them do it for you.
Tell us who you are. Tell us what you’re doing. Tell us why you’re doing it. Tell us what you’re looking for. Start talking, and keep talking.
Get your story out.
11 am update: One of the occupiers is blogging.
studentactivism.net 
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