Dear Friends,
After a jubilant moment outside the University last night and continued demonstration through the streets of New York, we can say that we have won a decisive victory! And the it is only the first of many that we will need for our final goals.
Students and workers have long been neglected. Freedom Fighters see themselves branded as terrorists. However, we can change that, if we are able to claim, control, and defend our space as we did over the past three days, we overcome their illegitimate authority. Legitimacy, comes before and is far more important than legality, but legitimacy is also the birthplace of a new legality. The contract we forced upon Mr. Kerrey and Mr. Murtha through our negotiations last night is an excellent beginning. When we began this process we were the slaves to their master. Now we have a Social Contract of our own bringing us ever closer to our final goals.
This will not be our final act! We will continue to struggle for not just a place in the constitution of our university, but to be the constitution of our university.
We wish to thank everyone who has sent us messages of solidarity, the members of our faculty and the faculty of the Consoritum scholls who have supported us, both inside and out, and those members of the press who are sympathetic to our cause. We stand in solidarity with you all and you must know that we won last night and that we will continue to win.
In solidarity and with gratitude,
The New School in Exile.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
By not consolidating student support before you undertook the occupation and by giving in so quickly with so few demands met you have only strengthened Kerrey's position. Now he has defeated the "students" and secured his position as president of the University. You have hindered not helped the cause of removing Kerrey from this school.
ReplyDeletethat couldn't be further from the truth. Kerrey hasn't defeated shit because the students made no concessions to him other than ending the protest, which can easily be begun again in the future.
ReplyDelete-Raf
I guess urge + ask equals monumental changes. The fact is nothing will really change and all of this ruckus was for nothing.
ReplyDeleteYes, the protest can potentially be resumed. The fact is, however, that security from this point on will probably be increased. Currently, they won't even let you in without your ID and you can't even take guests in either. Thanks to this protest and the CUNY participation, I can only wonder what is going to happen in the future.
Support as JDM said was not consolidated beforehand, and ending it so early with so few demands met really does weaken your position. The fact is I know a lot of people were excited that you took a stand, but what exactly was that stand for?
Was it for the space or againist Kerry or changes in Univeristy governance? It seems that the space was the only thing that was won, and the changes agreed to by Kerry were only met with promises to urge/suggest that the board makes changes.
The only thing that really changed in the course of this protest is the length that the school will have to wait to have some much needed updating done to the building.
Greetings companions of the Ocupation of New York ,
ReplyDeleteMy name is Bernardo Pilotto, I'm a member of the Sindicate of Workers of UFPR (the public university of Paraná, a state of Brasil). I'd like to send my support and sympathy to the ocupation that's happening right now in New York. It's time for the workers and students of all world to unite in order to defeat the imperialism (american, as in Iraq, or brasilian, as in Haiti) and the capitalism.
Hold Still in the fight.
my compliments,
Bernardo Pilotto
berne84@hotmail.com
when you talk about 'consolidating support' does that mean the thousands of students who attend the school should be consulted and must unanimously agree to an action before it is taken? Our barricade was open to anyone willing to join us, and we were not dragging people in there by force. Don't complain about people being left out. This has been brewing for a while, and if you were not paying attention to student meetings and were unaware of what was going to happen, don't blame the people who finally made a stand.
ReplyDeleteEven if security has been upped, so has media coverage and people's knowledge of what exactly the problems of this school are. Security will also not prevent demonstrations from occurring in the future. Kerrey is already treading thin ice with the trustees, according to faculty sources.
-Raf
What you were doing by force was creating a situation in which other students who did not want to support your views could not use the facilities during finals. Maybe it was out of fear, annoyance, or disagreement. I'm not sure.
ReplyDeleteThe fact is even though you allowed people in freely, I highly doubt it would have been possible to use the facilities to study due to the noise of the protest. That is what I mean by consilidating student support. It seemed convient for yout to do this at this time, but was it because your finals were already over?
The fact remains, nevertheless, putting other peoples final academic performance in jeopardy is not being inclusive of everyone. Therefore, the movement courted more resentment than support from the general student body. After all, were the thousands of students from the New School there? No. Therefore, for whatever reason, support is not exactly brewing from the entire student body.
were you even at the school these past two days? The fact is that people WERE sitting and studying in the reading room until the school went on lockdown at about 7 pm last night. This means people only lost about 4 hours of study time that they would have originally had with the school closing at 11. Furthermore, people inside were not chanting or making any noise above the normal levels that can be found in the cafeteria on any other day.
ReplyDeleteMany people in the cafeteria actually were doing finals work as well. You do not speak for the entire student body, as shown by the large numbers of NS students that came during the day to give us support, even though they did not stay.
I never said I did.
ReplyDeleteI was just pointing out what went on and my views on the events as they unfolded. I was there at school for the past 2 days, and I have also discussed this matter with other students. They were not happy with the protest either, and one of them even chalked it up to being and I quote "lang kids being wierdos". Doesn't seem so supportive of the movement now does it?
I was planning on going to use the facilities on Thursday, but chose not to do the protest. I thought it would have an impact on my ability to study. As some people lost their voices from chanting, I guess I was right. The fact that all of the facilities got shut down last night further illustrates this point.
Oh and yes there was so much support that it was reported that there was only 75 kids in the building in a school of thousands. They even had to haul in kids from CUNY to make the protest larger. Where was the whole student body that so fervently supported them? The proof is in the pudding so to speak, and in this case it is in the numbers.
I'm done participating in this conversation as people constantly make it seem as if I think I represent the whole student body, don't care about my school, and am not open to any another point of view.
The entire reason I logged onto this board was I was afraid that I wouldn't get to take a final. That I needed to take and as a member of this school I have a right to make my voice heard as well.
I even left a comment about how to improve their movement, which I would have loved to be a member of if it were not so polarizing.
The fact is the New School should be a place for all of its students to engage in discourse, and not always agree. I took this board as an extension of that, because I looked it as an opportunity to make that a reality.
You failed to achieve 3 of your 6 demands before you abandoned your occupation. That sounds like defeat to me, especially when those three were calls for the resignations of Kerrey, Murtha, and Millard. You didn't even really achieve demand 3, "electing president, EVP, and provost."
ReplyDeleteI agree with your demands and wish we as a school had been able to attain them, but by jumping the gun those who organized the sit-in have hindered the cause.
When I write "consolidate support" I mean organize a larger base of students and faculty. While there were a hundred at the sit-in and a couple hundred outside (myself included) that is a far cry from a general student support. Lets say 300 people showed up in solidarity, in a school of 10,000 students, that's 0.03%. Did you even have the whole USS there in support? The whole GSS? A majority of ESU or other student union members present in support? There is a strong network of student representation and organization that you could have used to bring together thousands of students to shut down the entire school. Instead you blew a beautiful opportunity through poor planning and haste.
once again, I reiterate that no one's abilities to study were hindered because chanting only picked up in the night, after other people were kicked out of the school. Chanting began when the facilities were shut down, but the shutdown itself didn't happen because of that.
ReplyDeleteThe students inside were not only 'Lang weirdos.' There were people from NSSR and Parsons as well. By the middle of the day yesterday, the size grew to over 100 people inside the room with others outside waiting to be let in.
Like I said, your concerns were not made at student meetings prior to the events. You have no one to blame for that but yourself.
Traitors to the international cause! Aristofanes Polytripas here, again from the Polytechnic in Athens. Here we fight for true freedom and world revolution against the neo-global fascists. Here we believed your clarion call to revolution in solidarity with our desperate cause. And now we learn that you have abandoned your crusade and returned to your comfortable little hovels after extracting meaningless concessions from the neo-global fascistic oppressors. Fools! Clowns! Comedians on the global revolutionary stage. Babies! Infants! You disgust me and my brothers and sisters!
ReplyDeleteThe New School is full of freaks, weirdos, and fringe groups...Except for Parsons students, most of you will graduate with degrees that cost 100k and prepare you to do nothing in the real world...unless you plan on getting paid to talk about Kant and railing against America...You are a bunch of spoiled and misguided children...Grow up already
ReplyDeleteWonderful beat ! I wish to apprentice while you amend
ReplyDeleteyour web site, how can i subscribe for a blog site? The account helped me a acceptable deal.
I had been a little bit acquainted of this your broadcast
provided bright clear idea.
Here is my web site - 풀싸롱
(jk)
I accidentally searched and visited your site. I still saw several posts during my visit, but the text was neat and readable. I will quote this post and post it on my blog. Would you like to visit my blog later? keonha cai
ReplyDeleteThanks to my father who shared with me concerning this website, this web site is truly amazing.
ReplyDelete야설
립카페
마사지
건전마사지
온라인카지노