I am blogging from the Take Back NYU occupation.After a two-year campaign of letter-writing, tabling, flyering, educational events, and even electing a member onto the Student Senate, Take Back NYU! decided to occupy the 3rd floor dining hall in Kimmel.
I rushed the barricades with a group of American Studies students and other concerned graduate students at roughly 8pm to show solidarity and support the occupation.
Here are the demands of the occupation:
- Amnesty for all parties involved.
- Full compensation for all employees whose jobs were disrupted during the course of the occupation.
- Public release of NYU’s annual budget and endowment.
- Allow student workers (including T.A.’s) to collectively bargain.
- A fair labor contract for all NYU employees at home and abroad.
- A Socially Responsible Finance Committee that will immediately investigate war profiteers and the lifting of the Coke ban.
- Annual scholarships be provided for thirteen Palestinian students.
- That the university donates all excess supplies and materials in an effort to rebuild the University of Gaza.
- Tuition stabilization for all students, beginning with the class of 2012. Tuition rates for each successive year will not exceed the rate of inflation. The university shall meet 100% of government-calculated student financial need.
- That student groups have priority when reserving space in the buildings owned or leased by New York University, including, and especially, the Kimmel Center.
- That the general public have access to Bobst Library.
What you can do:
- Come support the occupation, inside or outside! We’ll be inside all night.
- Send a letter to the administration in solidarity!
- Tell the world! Send an e-mail to your professors, peers, listservs, facebook groups, etc! Talk to your friends!
TakeBackNYU.com
See live stream of the occupation: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/take-back-nyu
Posts
5 comments:
good to meet a fellow nuyorican radical!!!! We should talk more!
Justino
I go to NYU and you do not speak for me. When you agreed to be accepted did you ask the administration to show you their books. Did you demand they fund scholarships to foreign students. No you made a contract with the school with no questions asked. Stop mixing politics with education.If you want to protest leave school and go to Gaza.If you do not like NYU's policies leave the school. Lets see if you have the courage to post this on your blog.
Anonymous,
I would not speak lightly of "courage" when you are not even using your name.
And you're right I do not speak for you, I am speaking for myself and voicing my opinions on the matter as a member of the NYU community.
I labor for NYU, I am not an undergraduate my relationship with the institution is very different.
Just like how people who are being affected by the financial crisis are now asking to see the books of major corporations like Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers, I too demand to know what the fuck my labor funds. And if its John Sextons bullshit trips to Abu Dahbi to go exploit more laborers over there then than that is an issue for me.
Telling me to go to Gaza is an absurd and lazy response. That's like telling everyone who is complaining about financial mismanagement to go to Cuba. Go tell those thousands of people to go somewhere else if they don't like the bullshit happening to them and see what happens, but I suspect you wouldn't do that.
The problem is that you think that education is not a business and that NYU is not an corporation. NYU pays me to go there because I am an investment for them, therefore they are accountable to me and my concerns precisely because I CAN leave and take my intellectual capital to Brown or USC.
I don't pay them to go there, therefore I do not have to just take whatever they dish out because "I am lucky enough" to have NYU shit all over me and my labor.
You need to re-evaluate your argument before you tell me to move to Gaza when we're advocating things that benefit a wide spectrum of the NYU community.
-Marisol
ps. Don't bother responding unless you have the "courage" to identify yourself and not hide behind the veil of the internet. I'm open to debate and people who disagree with me, but I have no time for people who just want to say shit because they think there will be no consequences. This isn't NYU LOCAL.
If NYU is paying you to go there then you are working for me. My family and myself personally are paying for my education at NYU and so if you are employed at NYU you need to listen to MY voice.I am telling you that my time is valuable, my use of the facilities are needed and your "oocupation" does not assist me. Funding an Islamic Univaersity does not benifit my "NYU Community." My parents work hard to pay for my tuition and if you believe funding an Islamic Univesity is important go start a funding drive but do not bring the university into this issue. Once again I say to you if you did not like what the University is doing why do you stay. It must be nice to be able to leave whenever you want, well I can not.Your intellecutal capital is not helping me. Telling students to occupy buildings does not benifit my education.I need to go to this school for what I want to study. So why do you hold hostage other people's dreams to fund your demands. That does not sound very Democratic, it sounds selfish. You want to protest fine but for self glorification purposes to say occupy a building sounds like some 60's style dream. Not actually trying to convince people you have real concerns.
I am not sure what you mean by hiding behind the "veil" of the internet.If you are saying you want to contact me personally through my email address, I choose not to give it to you. That is my free choice. Just as you do not need to show this response on your blog.
Just because I work for NYU does not mean I work for you, unless you're John Sexton which I doubt. And just because I work for NYU doesn't mean I have to be fearful of voicing my opinions. And no, this obviously is not your idea of "nyu community" and for that I'm sorry but you clearly are not part of mine either so that's the way the cookie crumbles.
Again, I speak for myself and not you so I really don't know why you keep trying to assert that that is what I'm trying to do. Thanks for your opinions, but looks like there will be no meeting of the minds here, and that's too bad.
-Marisol
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