You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘The Corporate University’ category.
Students occupying the administrations building at Sacramento State were rousted by police at three o’clock this morning, halfway through the third night of their action.
Activists staged sit-ins on eleven CSU campuses on Wednesday (and attempted a twelfth, though Long Beach officials closed the administration building before they arrived). Though most of those occupations ended voluntarily within a few hours, the Sac State students decided to stay put.
Relations between students and administrators at the Sac State occupation were mostly amicable until Friday evening, when police arrived to lock down the building. Activists who were already inside were permitted to stay, but no new people — and no new supplies — were allowed entry.
At 3:24 am, according to tweets from the occupiers, campus police in riot gear appeared at the building’s back entrance. They told the group that they had already called for backup from the SFPD, and that students had five minutes to clear the building. “Students made it out safely,” according to the final tweet of the series, “and no arrests were made.”
The folks behind the occupation will be meeting this afternoon to plan their next steps. Follow their blog for more.
Students are conducting administration building occupations in at least seven eleven of the 23 campuses of the California State University system. The student activists are protesting budget cuts and demanding the resignation of the Cal State chancellor, Charles B. Reed.
Reports on Twitter show that occupations are currently underway at San Francisco State, Northridge, Sacramento, Monterey Bay, East Bay, Pomona, and San Jose. Activists are tweeting live from the scene of the various occupations using the #Apr13 hashtag.
I’ll be liveblogging as the situation develops, so be sure to check back in over the course of the afternoon and evening.
Update: 4 pm Pacific Time | The occupations currently underway are part of a statewide day of protest throughout the CSU system. According to this article, student/faculty demonstrations were planned for all of the Cal State campuses today.
4:10 pm | CSU Fresno students held an occupation this afternoon, bringing the total to eight campuses. According to a report from @alexandrasaras on Twitter, about eighty students participated, shutting down at least part of the building for about two hours. The CSUF president wasn’t on campus today, but protesters have been promised a meeting with her tomorrow.
4:50 pm | Looks like most of the occupations are winding down, with students making plans for future actions in coming days and weeks. Reports on Twitter suggest that there have been occupations at as many as eleven CSU campuses this afternoon, with a twelfth — Long Beach — seeing the admin building shut down to keep students out. More soon.
5:40 pm | The Atlanta Journal-Constitution says eight hundred students marched on the administration building at CSU Long Beach. News reports are also coming in from San Jose, Bakersfield, San Francisco, and Stanislaus, among others.
6:00 am | Although almost all of yesterday’s occupations ended voluntarily after a few hours, students at Sacramento State kept their occupation going overnight. They’re still there, and are gearing up for a Day Two rally when the administration building officially re-opens at seven o’clock. Local media are apparently on their way.
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…
Activists from the British group UK Uncut have split off from a much larger anti-cuts protest in London at this hour to occupy the high-end department store Fortnum and Mason.
Protesters are staging the occupation to draw attention to Britain’s corporate tax avoiders, but critics have leaped to criticize the group, claiming that Fortnum and Mason is actually a charitable enterprise, donating all of its profits to charity.
Are they right? Not really.
Fortnum’s is owned by Wittington Investments Limited, which is in turn owned by two entities — the Garfield Weston Foundation, one of Britain’s biggest charities, owns almost 80% of it, and the Weston family owns the rest. So most, but not all, of Fortnum’s profits go to charity.
UK Uncut claim that they have good reason to target Fortnum’s, though. In a press release today, they say that “Whittington Investments … have a 54% stake in Associated British Foods who produce Ryvita, Kingsmill and others and own Primark, and that “ABF have dodged over £40 million in tax.”
I’m still trying to track down the source of UK Uncut’s claims about ABF, but that’s the deal. Fortnum and Mason is owned by Wittington Investments, and UK Uncut says Wittington Investments is a tax dodger. Wittington is mostly, but not entirely, charitable.
Update | And there’s this. The Garfield Weston Foundation was found last year to have violated British charity law because it allowed Wittington Investments to make donations to non-charitable political organizations amounting to some £1.32 million. The donations, all to right-wing groups, included £900,000 in gifts to the Conservative Party.
First the students rose up. Then everybody rose up.
Half a million people are marching in London today against Conservative-LibDem plans for massive cuts in government services. The government’s budget drew little protest when it was originally announced, but public opposition has grown in the wake of a series of huge, high-profile student demonstrations.
I’ll be liveblogging today’s demos, so be sure to check back. For starters, you can watch live coverage from BBC News here and get reports directly from the scene via the #March26 Twitter hashtag.
2:30 pm London time | Liveblogs from the Guardian and Telegraph newspapers.
3:30 pm | Okay, so it turns out I’m livetweeting today much more than liveblogging it. Follow me at @studentactivism if you’re interested in my take.
studentactivism.net 
Recent Comments