UC Santa Cruz has occupied again!!! After the recent occupation of their student 

center, UCSC students have occupied their Deans Office, demanding the end of capital, 

the abolition of work and and the negation of the commodity form. THE INSURRECTION

BEGINS WITH YOU! 

 

 

Communiqué from UCSC occupiers:

 

The glass walls of passivity, separating us from one another, can only be 

shattered with revolt. We are occupying a second building on the Santa Cruz

campus of the University of California because we have answered the call of

the first to occupy everything. Tonight is a demonstration to students and

workers everywhere that the division between taking what you want and

planning for a movement to come only appears as a problem for abstract

thought about taking action. We only catch sight of the fires of the

insurrection to come on the morning after the unrest of the night before.

 

What is a crisis anyway? It is the exclusion from work and public services

of those most precariously situated within this system. To a crisis which is

generalized, it is pointless to respond with generic activism. Activists of

more prosperous eras held demonstrations. Still, they were unable to secure

any lasting position for those on whose behalf they took “action”. As the

current crisis unfolds, it is necessary to elaborate innovative forms of

escalation and revolt. Our crisis is as much the failure of these tired

forms of mobilization as it is the collateral damage caused by a growing

economic catastrophe.

 

We have lived through too many cycles of defeat and must try something else.

We are compelled to negate the crisis itself with whatever capacity we have

now. Tonight, we have taken the Humanities and Social Sciences building. As

long as we occupy this space, Dean Sheldon Kamienecki will be deprived of

his workplace. This empty figurehead, who last spring made decisions about

what jobs get cut and which departments lose funding, will no longer have

access to the means of his existence. While we hope this occupation quickens

his pulse and that of administrators like him, we have not taken this

building to send them a message. Although we hope that they fear for the

integrity of their documents and office supplies, we do not occupy to demand

the reinstatement of funding channels to what they were before the crisis

exposed the fucked up priorities of this school. This occupation is a second

call to everyone who has been targeted by this crisis. Which is to say: it

is a call to everyone. We cannot wait for some movement to come that will

stop the forces pushing ever more people out of this system. Our task is to

disrupt the functioning of this system by appropriating what is ours for

ourselves.

 

No amount of organizational meetings, phone calls or emails to legislators

have the capacity to build a movement. Society cannot negotiate its way

towards liberation. There is no need to raise consciousness. The crisis is

already making people painfully aware of the situation. Peaceful marches,

rallies and symbolic protests, attracting spectacular media attention, will

never increase our ranks because this very process of mediation reduces us

to passive observers of what is supposed to be our own activity.

Organization for action has become an end in itself cut off from the reality

of capitalism in decline. How many voices of outrage are required for a

political rally to have a set demands met? We all know the answer to this

question: no amount of voices will ever be enough. There is no power to

which we can appeal except that which we find in one another. The

organization of the movement occurs whenever a freshman or a service worker

learns how to barricade doors, how to avoid arrest, how to pick locks. The

movement has staying power when, for every one of us who grows tired, there

are three who will take our place.

 

We have recently learned that the University of California does not use

tuition money or student fees to fund research and education. On the

contrary, they place one hundred percent of this money into an account with

the Bank of New York Mellon Trust in order to protect their borrowing power

in credit markets. They hold our tuition as collateral in order to finance

the largest and most speculative construction projects in the state of

California. UC pledged collateral rose by 60% with the last issue of bonds

to $6.72B from $4.2B. The number of students taking out debt has risen 20%

since 2000: 80-100% for students of color. Average debt levels for

graduating seniors rose to $23,200 in 2008 alone, a 24% percent increase

over 2004. We know very well what is going on: the University’s ability to

finance bonds for new construction increases in direct proportion to their

ability to slash spending on education, raise student fees indefinitely and

ensure that students cannot disrupt the function of the University itself.

This spectacular credit swap finances new construction on the backs of

parents who increasingly risk foreclosure on their homes and students who

will work the rest of their lives to pay off their debt. The University of

California has already been securitized, ensuring that none of us have a

future within this system.

 

We in the US have been too timid for far too long. We are afraid of the

police. We are afraid of losing our jobs or getting expelled from school. We

are afraid of people shouting in the streets. Security is the watchword of

our era: no one wants to take risks. But this illusion of comfort - our

separation from one another into perfectly compartmentalized lives,

disconnected and self-amused - increasingly unravels with each person thrown

out of work, every family evicted from their home and each student unable to

afford unending tuition increases without bartering away her future on

credit markets. It remains for those terminated by this system to use these

failures as flash-points for generalizing the struggle. Perhaps, at last, we

can understand one another, for we are all going bankrupt.

 

Press contact: (eight-three-one) 332-8916

 

website:  <http://occupyca.wordpress.com/> http://occupyca.wordpress.com