New School in Exile, New York City

Exiled in NYU: A communiqué from within the NYU occupation

At the dawn of the New School occupation last December, we wrote, “This is only the beginning.”

We weren’t joking.

We are now occupying the halls of NYU alongside their students. With our bodies and barricades, we continue to manifest ourselves as a force of interruption against the enforced passivity of the university.

This occupation arises at a time of economic turmoil. The current crisis of capital is no fluke; it is the result of the real social conditions in which we live. NYU, one of the largest property owners in New York City, is a clear perpetrator of the misery everyone now feels. It has no alibi, only vulnerabilities.

From the insurrection in Greece to the revolts of Eastern Europe, from the university occupations across England to the general uprising in Oakland, something is in air. We can’t name it, but we can all feel it.

Uncompromising, our power is growing. What has started as a singular strike against the structure of NYU’s form of domination will become a strike against the general logic of domination.

When we occupy spaces and liberate their use, we appropriate for ourselves the means of our very existence. We find each other here and now, in the midst of conflict and crisis, overturning every role we’re given, annulling every attempt to reconcile.

This is how we learn. This is how we fight.

In Exile,
Students of the New School
Feb 19th, 2009

More after the jump.

Cambridge Gaza Solidarity campaign, UK

Dear Take Back NYU!,

We, the students of Cambridge Gaza Solidarity, are writing to express our support for your occupation. Faced with the deafening silence of our academic community concerning Israel’s action in Gaza; the Israeli blockade of Gaza; and the continued Israeli presence in Gaza and the West Bank, we felt compelled to take action.

There have been 25 similar occupations in universities across the UK. In the last few days 4 occupations have begun that are still ongoing. We extend our solidarity to all students involved in the NYU occupation and to all those students in the United States who might be considering taking similar action. Although our occupation has ended, our campaign is continuing to grow and gain strength. We draw inspiration from your actions and hope you achieve your aims. If there is anything that we can do to help you please let us know.

A student movement on this scale has not been seen in this country for a generation. To see that students across the world are now taking action in solidarity with the people of Gaza is inspirational. We applaud your demands that annual scholarships be provided for thirteen Palestinian students, starting with the 2009/2010 academic year., and that the university donate all excess supplies and materials in an effort to rebuild the University of Gaza.

Our occupation was an extremely eye-opening experience. It became clear to us that the university authorities have no interest in genuine engagement with students, that the ‘democratic’ processes of the university are for the most part redundant and that there is very little transparency in the way the university operates.

For this reason we salute your demands for transparency, and for students to be represented on university committees. At Cambridge, we support the campaign for Cambridge University to adopt an Ethical Investment Policy and support your demand for the establishment of a student elected Socially Responsible Finance Committee that will be able to vote on University investment policy and for the disclosure of NYU’s endowment holdings, investment strategy, projected endowment growth, and persons, corporations and firms involved in the investment of the university’s endowment funds.

Locally in Cambridge, Cambridge University Press is firing 170 of its staff, despite making a continued profit. For this reason we salute your demand that NYU agrees to resume negotiations with the union for NYU graduate assistants, teaching assistants, and research assistants, and that NYU signs a contract guaranteeing fair labour practices for all NYU employees at home and abroad.

Stay strong and you will succeed. We are all with you.

Solidarity, greetings and encouragement from the Cambridge
Gaza Solidarity campaign.

Occupiers in University of Barcelona’s Main Building, Spain

Hola compañeros!

We are very glad to hear that students in New York are being active and standing up for their rights and for a better university. In Barcelona we have been occupying the main building of the University of Barcelona for 3 months today to protest against the mercantilization and progresive privitisation of higher education in Spain and Europe, the infamous “Bologna Process”. We hope that your occupation is successful and that it is an empowering experience for those of you involved. Your actions give us great hope in the power of ordinary young people around the world fighting against capitalism and the state. We hope to keep in touch with you via email and also through the forums of the “international student movement” to organise the Global Week of Action 2009. Below is our call to create international comisions:

CALL TO FORM INTERNATIONAL COMMISSIONS FOR THE INSURGENCE OF A NEW INTELLIGENCE!

For all those students interested in building an international network of thought and resistance, we would like to inform you that we have constituted an International Commission from an assembly of a squatted building against the Bolonia process in the University of Barcelona. The assembly was created from the need to communicate with other European student movements. We aim to be a base of support for the European and world wide student movement against our precarious existence that neo-liberalism imposes on our future, and the mercantilization of education locally and globally. We are organized with no hierarchies and are independent from political parties and syndicates. Our objectives are:

* To share and understand the different realities of autonomous and self-managed resistance that students are carrying out across Europe.
* To find the common ground between each movement and attempt to develop a shared critique and alternative.
* To start creating a network of European and International
contacts so as to create a Student International centered on the exchange of experiences and the coordination of joint actions.
* We invite all those who care for a free and self-organized culture and want to develop this international network with us to contact us via e-mail. We would also prompt you to start developing your own international workgroup so that we can start to establish links between groups and quick effective methods of communication.

In the past few months and weeks the student movements in Spain, Italy, UK, Denmark, France and Greece have revolted with demonstrations and occupations, but we cannot do it alone, we must coordinate with each other and with the rest of the world.

For the insurgence of a new intelligence!

our blog: http://tancadaalacentral.wordpress.com/

Sarah Lawrence College students

Sarah Lawrence Students in Solidarity with NYU Protesters Call for End to Retaliation

Students at Sarah Lawrence College have been following the events at the Kimmel Center closely and with concern.

We protest NYU’s unwillingness to recognize the student protesters’ actions as legitimate, negotiate with the protesters, and fulfill the protesters’ demands. It is inappropriate when an institution of higher education trains its students to be scholars of conscience and action, yet reserves for itself the right to determine when and how “robust dialogue” occurs between “students, faculty, and administration”*. As critical thinkers, we have a difficult time reconciling NYU’s purported pedagogy of “commitment to free exchange of ideas, reasoned debate, and legitimate forms of protest” with the distinctly authoritarian actions of the administration in recent days*. We feel strongly that current and prospective NYU students, their parents, alums and the general public experience that same dissonance.

We demand that the participants in the student occupation be granted full amnesty and that there be no change in their status as enrolled students. In addition, we affirm the demands of the protesters and insist that the administration grant them in full.

As a Sarah Lawrence student, I stand in Solidarity with my peers at NYU during this time of extreme financial crisis and political upheaval, and strongly urge NYU to cooperate ethically with the critical mass and lifeblood of its institution.

Sincerely,
Erick A. Paulino
Sarah Lawrence College ‘11

St Andrews Solidarity with Palestine Campaign, Fife, Scotland

Dear Take Back NYU!,

We, the collected students of the St Andrews Solidarity with Palestine Campaign, are writing to express our outrage at the treatment of student occupiers by New York University and the violent handling of protesters by the NYPD.

Like thousands of students across Britain, we were appalled by the illegal bombing and land invasion of Gaza and the indiscriminate killing of civlians that resulted. At 25 British universities, students have occupied buildings in order to convince their Unis to both provide practical support for the people of Gaza in the face of the decimination of an entire educational infrastructure, and to cut ties with organisations linked to the Israeli military. Having occupied Lower & Upper College Halls here at St Andrews for nearly 3 days, we have so far been ‘politely’ asked on more than one occasion to leave the building; both times we have refused. We have been frustrated by some aspects of the relaying of our demands, but our frustration must be nothing compared to what you must be feeling after these events.

We are appalled by the use of night-sticks, pepper spray and tasers on the part of the police when dealing with demonstrators. What we have read suggests that your occupation has been largely peaceful and that the actions of the police were entirely unjustified. We are equally dismayed by the response of New York University to the protest. You were exercising your constitutional right to non-violent action, yet were dismissed by New York University as “dishonour[ing] NYU’s commitment to free exchange of ideas, reasoned debate, and legitimate forms of protest”. We believe it is disingenuous of Senior VP Lynne Brown to describe the protest as having ended peacefully, given student testimonies to the contrary.

Given the risks that you were faced with in carrying out this occupation, we would like to express our admiration for your perseverance. We believe that your case deserves to be heard, and will inform other British students involved in occupations. We will also be relaying our concerns to the NYU administration.

In solidarity,
St Andrews Solidarity with Palestine Campaign

Students for Social Democracy of Columbus State University in Columbus, GA

Students for Social Democracy of Columbus State University in Columbus, GA stands with your occupation. Don’t let up. You’re action is an inspiration and a model for future resistance.

Solidarity,
SSD, Columbus State University

CUNY Graduate Center Student Union, New York City

We, the students of the CUNY Graduate Center Student Union, extend our support and solidarity to Take Back NYU!’s occupation of the Kimmel Center at NYU. Your struggle to make your university a force for social justice, to open access to higher education to all, for student participation in decisions that affect them, and for institutional transparency and accountability, is our struggle as well. We assert that the purpose of education is to give people the tools to think and act for themselves and for the greater good of humanity. The NYU administration’s threats against the student occupiers are unacceptable and reveal their ignorance of the history of student struggles that have advanced the cause of social justice, including the student movements and occupations in support of civil rights, against the Vietnam war, and against South African apartheid. The values, goals and tradition of these movements are being carried forward by Take Back NYU!. Your occupation has inspired us and we are proud to stand with you.

In solidarity,
CUNY Graduate Center Student Union
New York City

The Ninth Floor Sitters, York University, Toronto, Canada

We are each of us a raindrop. Together, we can be an ocean.

Greetings and solidarity from the Ninth Floor Sitters at York University in Toronto.

We are a group of undergraduate and graduate students at York who held a sit-in outside our president’s office for 599 hours in December and January. This sit-in occurred during a strike by the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), Local 3903, which represents contract faculty, teaching assistants, graduate assistants, and research assistants. The strike, against the neoliberalization of our university, lasted 12 weeks. It was the longest university-sector strike in English-Canadian history, and it ended only when the Ontario government legislated the union back to work. The sit-in was in support of CUPE and in opposition to the university’s president, who was MIA during the strike.

Five hundred and ninety-nine hours is a long time, so we sat, slept, snored, played, worked, figured, outfigured, videoed, discussed, debated, decided, rained, flooded, romanced, and snuggled.

Congratulations on your occupation. We hope you flood NYU again. And that the rains spread.

Raindrops of the world unite!

Yours in the snuggle,
The Ninth Floor Sitters

Void Network, Athens, Greece

Void Network

We are expressing our solidarity to your actions and you have to know that we will fight here for all of you as you fight for us there …We are happy that you can liberate your time and space and you can fight to take back your basic rights as students of university and human beings…As you stay in the belly of the capitalistic mega-machine, as you fight in the center of the elitist’s black darkness that pollutes the planet and destroys the cultures of this world, as you fight in the center of the Empire…you have to remember that we are millions of people out there in the planet that take part in you struggle, people in all different countries, in all different workplaces, in all different schools and universities…Keep your spirit in great enthusiasm!…Whenever we exist in action, whenever our actions
achieve visibility, thousands of new comrades appears in our side in all the planet, thousands of new visions comes from the collective mind to the streets of our cities! Keep the Fight! WE ARE WINNING!

University of Rochester Students for a Democratic Society, New York

I’m merely writing in to tell you of our support for your actions in solidarity with Gaza, and in your effort to democratize your university. I am from the University of Rocheter SDS and we had a sit-in two weeks ago in Solidarity with Gaza (taking much inspiration from the UK and New School occupations), and it was a success!

Fortunately, our administration was willing to negotiate, sending the Dean of Students out on a Friday night (from 10pm to midnight) to try and reach an agreement with us.

The old white men who run the universities of this country are scared of actions like yours, and I would like to say thank you for doing this. This continues to open up a range of possibilities for the
future of radical student activism, making the future look very bright! I believe three of my friends from Rochester have joined you.

I wish you well!

Solidarity,
Eugene Brud, UR-SDS

Ken Keplinger, University of Maine

Just wanted you guys to know that there are a group of us at the University of Maine watching your videos and following closely your movement. Thank you for having the guts to do this, few here have the heart for such ideas to become actions.

Everyday the occupation goes on at 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. our group is going to offer a few moments of silence for you before we begin meditation, so know we are thinking of you and we are all there in spirit with you!

peace and love, and stay safe
Ken Keplinger

DC Students for a Democratic Society, Virginia, Maryland, and DC

DC SDS is in solidarity with Take Back NYU! and all the students of NYU who are standing up for affordable, democratic, and socially responsible universities. We are inspired by this bold action and excited by the momentum that’s building in the student movement today. Hopefully, some members from DC SDS will be coming to NYU to support the occupation in person. From Greece to NYU, MAKE TOTAL DESTROY!
Love, DC SDS

University of Pennsylvania Students for a Democratic Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

University of Pennsylvania SDS pledges solidarity and support for your continuing struggle for democracy and autonomy at NYU. Your occupation along with the student occupations around the world, are an inspiration to us as a new chapter and remind us of the tangible reality that student power can become. Writing from Philadelphia, the birthplace of liberty and independence in this nation, and in the spirit of peoplehood, your struggle reminds us that we are everywhere, and we are winning.

Radical Students Union Loyola Chicago, Illinois

Dear NYU Resister,

I adore you and wish you the best in your mission. My first reaction was disbelief, shock, intimidation. I ran to a meeting that had sprung up. We consisted of four courageous students, a mob of one cuartet.

How are the demands so involved? It’s the culmination of a two year movement. The demands represent a conglomeration of causes, each requiring implementation of your analysis, your values. The action relates itself with the unfolding of student movements around the world from the Grecians to the latest Palestinians. We do not know what it is that you want us to do but we ask you to spread your urge to us in Chicago and clarify your message to other students.

We want to unite with you in the cause and to beat the drums of worldwide take over in the name of greater justice, peace, equilibrium, and a new kind of power. Please give us the orientation. And what would be a way to create the agitation to shift consciousness in this setting, in this place, and in this reality?

We create the structures for a kind of network.

Signing out,
Radical Students Union Loyola Chicago

Franklin House, St. Charles, Missouri

Hey all, just letting you know that we are in solidarity with you. her eis some music from us for you to have while you are in there. When we get to New York in late march, we should collaborate on an action.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-CRjjj0USE

yours in the struggle,
the franklin house

Columbia University Hunger Strikers and Organizers, New York City

February 19, 2009

We, the student activists who confronted our administration in the November 2007 hunger strike at Columbia University, stand in unequivocal solidarity with the Take Back NYU! Coalition’s occupation of Kimmel Hall. Your demands, including budget disclosure and student representation in the power structure of your own university, resonate with the on-going legacy of students who actively pursue a vision of justice in their schools.

When our friends put their bodies on the line in the November cold and abstained from food for ten days, they did so because they were guided by a burning conviction—that a university education is not something that should be passively consumed but actively produced and contested. From NYU to Columbia, from New School to England and Greece, a growing student movement is showing that our university administrations cannot trample over our rights and those of the communities around them.

To anyone who scorns or dismisses this movement as undemocratic or too radical, we ask you to consider why your fellow students have found it necessary to take bold action against your administration, which itself has not set in place the avenues for democratic participation. Their actions are creative, not destructive, and motivated by justice, not greed. There is no question that direct action is not mere political theater, but should motivate further dialogue on these issues, which call forth the very ideals of critical minds and civil engagement that underlie NYU’s academic foundation.

If the NYU administration is too cowardly and hides behind the nightsticks and handcuffs of the NYPD, it will prove their unwillingness to engage their own ideals and be challenged by the emerging minds they seek to foster.

As Frederick Douglass once said, “If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation…want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters…Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” We stand with you in mind, heart, soul, and fist.

–Columbia University Hunger Strikers and Organizers

Democratic Solidarity Committee, NYU, New York City

Democratic Solidarity Committee Supports Take Back NYU student occupation

As student members of the anti-Israeli apartheid Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions coalition campaign that is currently forming at NYU, we fully support and are participating in the Take Back NYU occupation of the Kimmel Center.

Since its completion in 2003, this so-called “student center” has been a fitting symbol for everything that is wrong with NYU. More of a citadel and platform for administrative offices, politicians, corporate mixers, and think-tank conferences, it is the least accessible to those who deserve it most: the students and workers of NYU. We have heard over and over again the NYU motto of “A Private University in the Public Service” and President John Sexton’s routine bad-faith posturing about “free exchange of ideas” as our college ideal. However, like every facet of NYU, Kimmel is organized around the key ideological principle of those who rule campus: this is an institution in the service of official society rather than the people who work and study here.

Mirroring broader trends in New York City, the administration has attempted to create what has been called “NYU Inc.”

Corporate NYU is a place where student free speech and association are routinely combated, where tuition is rising while the quality of student life is on a steady decline, where there is no financial transparency, where meaningful scholarships are few and far between, where for staff, graduate teachers, and adjunct faculty there is a race to the bottom in wages and working conditions, where the GSOC UAW local 2110 was smashed because it is the only legitimate representative of graduate teachers, where Washington Square Park is becoming the private property of NYU and long-time Village residents are evicted from their homes by one of the largest real estate owners in the city. Is this a university or a corporation?

It is no accident the NYU administration has enthusiastically supported Israeli apartheid. This is not only because NYU serves as a prominent speaking stage for Israeli politicians. It is so because John Sexton speaks of democracy and promoting the public good while vocally attacking the idea of divestment and academic boycott, most recently targeting the British University and College Union boycott of Israeli academic institutions. Sexton called it “a disavowal of the free exchange of ideas, antithetical to the values and tenets of institutions of advanced learning.” Needless to say, Palestinians under a racist system, with fewer or no political rights themselves, cannot take such “values” for granted.

The building of a study abroad program in Tel Aviv is only the most tangible example of such hypocritical commitments by the NYU administration. It is equally unsurprising that NYU is building a satellite campus in the United Arab Emirates, a dictatorship where the majority of workers have no citizenship rights at all. Perhaps John Sexton will next be lecturing the student and workers movements in the Middle East struggling against U.S.-backed dictatorships and corrupt neo-liberal elites.

Finally, we are very pleased that among the sit-in demands were those supporting NYU scholarships for Palestinians and donations to the Islamic University of Gaza, recently destroyed by the Israeli army. This is an important step in linking our struggles in the U.S., particularly among people of color and working people, with the struggles against apartheid as well as democratic struggles throughout the Middle East.

We call on people to support the Take Back NYU occupation of Kimmel and continue to support the Take Back NYU campaign, as well as the campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions at NYU.

Axis of Logic, Toronto, Canada; Boston, Massachusetts; and Caracas, Venezuela

Dear NYU Administration,

We are an international website based in Toronto, Boston and Caracas. We fully support the students who are occupying The Market Place at Kimmel and each of their demands. We are urging our readers throughout the world to support them. We urge you to listen to them and take their demands seriously. It is time for NYU to assume real leadership in higher education in the U.S. and review your war-related investments, investments that have an impact in the Middle East and your treatment of workers and students in this time of economic collapse. We also join these courageous students in their call for transparency in NYU endowment holdings. These students are not alone. Students are rising up around the world to oppose wars taking place in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine. We also join their first demand of disciplinary and legal amnesty relative to this courageous and moral action they have taken. NYU should be proud of students like these who demonstrate their commitment to universal values. The world is changing. Get with the program!

For full display go to: http://www.axisoflogic.com

From the Axis of Logic Editorial Board
Les Blough, Editor
Boston & Caracas

No War But Dance War collective, Austin, Texas; Tacoma, Washington; and Olympia, Washington

In Solidarity… A Breakdown Is Approaching

We, of the No War But Dance War collective - Austin, Tacoma, and Olympia Affinity Groups, offer our support to the student occupiers of the Kimmel Center for University Life at New York University. We hope that all demands be met and that new demands arise perpetually.

Only by increasing the volume may we shimmy-shake our chains loose.

In solidarity,
the No War But Dance War collective
Austin, Tacoma, Olympia

Free Education for Everyone, Dublin, Ireland

Greetings Take Back NYU!,

Free Education for Everyone (FEE), an Irish grassroots campaign group fighting the introduction of college fees and cutbacks in third level education salutes your actions and sends our complete solidarity.

FEE formed in September 2008 in University College Dublin (UCD) as we felt there was a need for a genuine grassroots student movement to fight the re-introduction of fees. We now have groups in Trinity College Dublin (TCD),National University of Ireland, Maynooth (NUIM), National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG), University College Cork (UCC) and the University of Limerick (UL).

Activists in FEE include members of the anarchist Workers Solidarity Movement (WSM), Socialist Workers Party (SWP), the Workers Party (WP), Ógra Shinn Féin (OSF) , Labour Youth (LY), Socialist Party (SP) and the 32 County Sovereignty Movement (32CSM) as well as many non political students. We work with the Student Unions in our colleges and the national Union of Student of
Ireland (USI) but we believe only a mass, grassroots student movement can defeat fees. As we state on website, “Lobbying or photo-stunts will not be sufficient”.

We’ve been organised dozens of occupations, blockades of government politicians on our campuses, protests, pickets and sit-ins since September.
We wish you all the best in your struggle,

University College Dublin (UCD) Free Education for Everyone (FEE).

Pluto Press, London, England

Occupations: Solidarity from occupations in the UK - good luck with winning your demands.
Solidarity from here at the Pluto Press in London. Good luck.
Owen

We appreciate that among the list of demands is “A reassessment of the recently lifted ban on Coca-Cola products.” We also appreciate the demand of “an in depth investigation of all investments in war and genocide profiteers, as well as companies profiting from the occupation of Palestinian territories.” We should note that Coke continues to operate in the Sudan and has paid fines for violating U.S. sanctions.

Incidentally, one of our staff members, Lew Friedman, joined the support rally in front of Kimmel this afternoon. Are there any other scheduled rallies that we can join or any other support activities?

Peace & Justice,

Ray Rogers

Campaign to Stop Killer Coke/Corporate Campaign, Inc.

The University Of the West of the England Gaza Solidarity Occupation

Greetings from The University Of the West of the England Gaza Solidarity Occupation,

brothers, please see details of our occupation of a University Lecture theatre and Foyet.
http://uweoccupation.blogspot.com/

we applaud your actions and wish you the best of luck in achieving your goals in especially Clause 8

In Solidarity
UWE Gaza Solidarity

Northern Arizona University Peace & Justice

With the recent news of the NYU student takeover, we would like to express our solidarity with the brothers & sisters in New York who are part of the 2009 Kimmel Occupation.

Our hearts & minds are with you and all others that struggle daily to make this world a better place. Thank you.

From northern Arizona,
Peace, Love, Unity.

Northern Arizona University Peace & Justice

New York City Labor Against the War

New York City Labor Against the War denounces the NYU administration’s attack on student protesters of Take Back NYU. The students demand that the university serve its student body through financial transparency and accountability.

They demand that the administration recognize the Graduate Student Organizing Committee/UAW Local 2110, and agree to fair labor contracts for all university employees.

They are particularly courageous in calling on NYU to support the people of Gaza and end University complicity with the Israeli apartheid regime — demands that parallel recent student protests at the University of Rochester, Hampshire College, and two dozen universities through the UK.

When the administration arrogantly ignored these concerns, protesters nonviolently occupied their student center, a direct action in the tradition of the civil rights, Vietnam antiwar and anti-apartheid
movements.

The administration’s response has been typically deceitful and vindictive.

It called in the NYPD to attack protest rallies outside the building. It falsely agreed to negotiate, only to detain the students’ representatives. It forcibly removed other protesters — some of whom were assaulted by NYU security, and at least one of whom was arrested. It suspended eighteen protesters and evicted them from university residences.

We are proud of these students’ protest and refusal to be silenced. NYU administration must immediately:

1. Rescind suspensions, dorm evictions and all other disciplinary action.

2. Drop all criminal charges.

3. Meet the students’ demands.

University Group En Clave ROJA

Internationalist greetings to all students in struggle of NYU

From University Group En Clave ROJA from Argentina, we send our
greetings and support to NYU fighting students who have occupated NYU.
All over the World student movement begins to arise not only defending
public education and knowledge, but also saying that “capitalists have
to pay for the crisis”

Last months we have seen how Greek youth rebelled against antipopular
plans of Karamanlis governmet. He’ve seen French students raising
against Sarkozy plans. We have seen how Spanish, German, Italian and
all UE students rebell and organice against Bolonia plan. Today we’re
also see how New York students fight for the defense of their Rights.

International economy crisis that travels every country in the World,
puts on the agenda students organization and struggle, not only in
defense of education, but also in defense of workers and exploited all
over the World. Student movement has to be close to workers and and
common people from French Antilles, who have being holding a general
strike for four weeks; closet o people from Gaza against Israel
massacre; closet o workers al over the World who are being fired from
their Jobs because of the capitalist bankruptcy.

En Clave ROJA fight for shaping a student movement democratically
auto-organized, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist, who getting back
French May and Argentinian Cordobazo, join working class and oppressed
from all the world, to fight against governments and companies and
claiming that capitalists pay for the crisis.

¡Long live the struggle of students from New York and around the World!
¡Capitalists have to pay for the crisis!

En Clave ROJA – Argentina
www.enclaveroja.org.ar
enclaveroja@enclaveroja.org.ar

Versión español:

Saludo internacionalista a los estudiantes en lucha de la Universidad
de Nueva York

Desde la Agrupación Universitaria En Clave ROJA de Argentina, enviamos
nuestro saludo y apoyo a los estudiantes de Nueva York en lucha que
han tomado durante más de 40 horas la universidad.

En diferentes países del mundo el movimiento estudiantil comienza a
levantarse no solo en defensa de la educación pública y el
conocimiento, sino para que “la crisis la paguen los capitalistas”.

Los últimos meses hemos visto como la juventud griega se rebeló contra
los planes antipopulares del gobierno de Karamanlis. Hemos visto como
los estudiantes franceses se rebelaron contra los planes de Sarkozy.
Hemos visto como los estudiantes de España, Alemania, Italia y toda
Europa se rebelan y organizan contra el plan Bolonia. Hoy también
vemos como los estudiantes de Nueva York se rebelan por la defensa de
sus derechos.

La crisis económica internacional que recorre todo los países del
mundo, pone a la orden del día la organización y lucha estudiantil, no
solo en defensa de la educación, sino en defensa de los trabajadores y
explotados de todo el mundo. El movimiento estudiantil debe estar
junto a los trabajadores y el pueblo de las Antillas francesas que
hace cuatro semanas realizan una huelga general; junto al pueblo de
Gaza frente a la masacre del Estado de Israel; junto a los
trabajadores de todo el mundo que son despedidos de sus trabajos por
la bancarrota capitalista.

Desde En Clave ROJA luchamos por construir un movimiento estudiantil
autoorganizado democráticamente, anticapitalista y antiimperialista, y
que retomando las banderas del Mayo francés y el Cordobazo argentino
se una junto a la clase obrera y los explotados del mundo, para
enfrentar a los gobiernos y las patronales y para que la crisis la
paguen los capitalistas.

¡Viva la lucha de los estudiantes de Nueva York y todo el mundo!
¡Que la crisis la paguen los capitalistas!

En Clave ROJA – Argentina
www.enclaveroja.org.ar
enclaveroja@enclaveroja.org.ar

Solidarity from the University of Helsinki to the occupants at NYU

Today on Thursday, February the 19th, we occupied the administration
building of our university.

This took place after our demonstration against the new Universities Act
proposed by the Finnish government. The parliament will decide about the
law this Spring. We demand the law to be withdrawn. We want to reform
our university from a totally different, more democratic perspective.

We are also protesting against the university leadership which has given
its support to the law despite our opposition.

The law we are opposing would significantly increase the influence
corporations have on our university and thus our science. We are
defending the autonomy of knowledge and the freedom of research. We are
also defending the free access to higher education as stated in the
Finnish Constitution. We are not defending our university as it is, we
want to create autonomous spaces for producing and sharing information.

Our demonstration today was participated by 1500 people. It was
organised autonomously by students and university staff, independently
of their unions. After the demonstration, a group of more than 100
demonstrators occupied this building. Today we have made our voices
heard and we will keep doing so until we win!

We want to send you our solidarity. We share your struggle!

Opiskelijatoiminta
http://opiskelijatoiminta.net <http://opiskelijatoiminta.net/>