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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.
Student activists at New York City’s New School have reportedly launched another building occupation.
According to the activist group Take Back NYU, students from the New School have occupied “the entire building” at 65 Fifth Avenue. (65 Fifth is at 14th Street: map.)
The occupation looks very much like the work of The New School In Exile, As of 8 am, there’s been no news directly from the NSIE’s website or blog. More details as they become available, here and on our Twitter feed.
9 am: The New School Free Press is liveblogging the occupation. They say about 60 students entered the building at five o’clock this morning. Cops have cordoned off the sidewalk, and NS president Bob Kerrey says “this is an NYPD situation.” Kerrey claims students “broke and entered” the building, and assaulted a guard. A student inside said the group made a “peaceful entrance.”
9:30 am: News media are starting to cover the story (NY1, AP/Fox), but still no statement from the occupiers.
9:55 am: NY1 has a statement from student Andy Folk: “”Our demand for them to resign is consistent with the faculty’s ‘no confidence’ vote in Bob Kerrey. That demand was not met. Other demands were met, such as starting a socially-responsible investment committee, which Bob Kerrey is trying to bury in red tape. So, we need to show him by force and civil disobedience that students have a right over the school that they pay money for. This is just a demonstration of students taking back their space.”
10:00 am: New post up here.
10:08 am: Cable news channel NY1 is airing a lengthy live report from the scene of the occupation. They say cops have closed down some streets, cleared protesters from sidewalks. Report included video of masked occupiers on the roof of 65 Fifth Avenue waving black-and-red flags.
10:30 am: The New York Times and Gawker weigh in.
10:50 am: Blogpost up from the Village Voice, with photos. Says cops are blocking students from going to class. 13th Street shut down. “Massive police presence … helicopters whirring overhead.”
11:05 am: NY1 reports dozens of cops “preparing to go inside 65 Fifth Avenue.” Cops wearing helmets, shields, carrying plastic handcuffs.
11:20 am: http://reoccupied.wordpress.com/ claims to be blogging from inside occupation. Latest post says cops are storming the building, have used pepper spray and tear gas. Trying to get confirmation…
11:35 am: NY1 news reporting that police are inside the building and on the roof, and that “at least two” students have been removed. No mention of pepper spray or tear gas, no word on mass arrests.
11:45 am: Village Voice blog: “The cops have pulled paddy wagons between the press pen and the front of the building so the press can’t see any of the actual arrests.”
11:50 am: http://reoccupied.wordpress.com/: “Rally NOW at 6th Precinct! Let’s get them free!!! 233 w10th st at Bleecker. NOW NOW NOW Until every last one is out!”
12:05 pm: NY1 reporting that NYPD entered 65 Fifth Ave at 11:15, and cleared the building by noon. Nineteen arrests — fifteen men, four women.
12:30 pm: The New School has released a statement to the media on this morning’s occupation. That statement, and subsequent developments, will be covered in this follow-up post.
According to the LA Times, more and more community colleges, responding to contracting opportunities at four-year institutions and growth in international student enrollment, are building dorms. And though the Times doesn’t speculate, this development may in turn help foster student organizing at community colleges.
Anyone who has tried to organize students on a commuter campus knows how hard it can be to get things going and keep them going. The proportion of American college students living on campus is much lower now than it was a few decades ago, and this shift is one of the factors that has made student organizing more challenging. From that perspective, a movetoward dorms at community colleges may provide a boost for student activists at those campuses.
And the benefits of dorms to organizers go beyond the students who live in them. Dorms create a 24/7 community on campus, and make it easier to schedule events outside of peak class hours — if people know that students living in the dorms will be coming out for an event, they’ll be more likely to schlep to campus to attend.
Community college student organizing has been growing in recent years. Dorms may give it an additional push.
A group of students presented a University of Florida administrator with a petition Wednesday protesting the disproportionate impact of recent university layoffs on women and people of color.
According to the group, women represent 34% of full-time UF faculty, but 61% of those fired as a result of recent budget cuts. Among people of color, the figures were 25% and 54%, respectively.
Update: Here’s an article from the Gainesville Sun about other recent student organizing against UF budget cuts.
French students escalated ongoing protests in advance of the Easter holiday this week, occupying offices on two campuses and barricading a Paris street.
Early in the week student protesters held university administrators in Orleans, Rennes, and Strasbourg hostage for a brief time. In Rennes, the president was forced to flee his office and call for help from a stairway, and in Strasbourg more than a hundred students forced their way into a room where thirty administrators were meeting, blocking their way out for a time.
On Wednesday protesters in Paris turned the Boulevard Saint-Michel into an impromptu beach, dumping sand into the road and blocking traffic. The beach was a nod to a slogan from the May 1968 protests that shook French society: “sous les pavés, la plage” — under the cobblestones, the beach. (For a discussion of the various shades of meaning behind this slogan, click here.)
Protests against changes to French higher education policy have been going on for two months, and administrators now say that if the disruption does not end after Easter, the spring semester may be lost entirely. Click here for a Reuters article from the newspaper Le Monde on the recent demonstrations, or here for Google’s English translation.
This post was updated on April 10 with new details on the Rennes and Strasbourg protests.
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