Today's Stories

April 22, 2009

Chris Floyd
The Fatal Thread: Torture, War and the Imperial Project

April 21, 2009

Randy Rowland
Lindy Blake's Great Escape

Dave Lindorff
Jay Bybee's Conspiracy to Torture

Fidel Castro
The Secret Summit

George McGovern
Pull Out of Iraq This Year

Greg Moses
The Unemployment Channel

Benjamin Dangl
Argentina Remembers

Sonia Nettnin
Saving Lives in Gaza

Frank Barat
The Death of Bassem: a Shooting at the Wall in Bil'n

Binoy Kampmark
Legal Purgatory and John Demjanjuk

John V. Walsh
Code Red for Single Payer

David Macaray
SAG Should be Praised, Not Assailed

Website of the Day
Bonus Man: For Executive Assholes Everywhere

April 20, 2009

Mike Whitney
Housing Bust Comes Roaring Back, Worse Than Ever

Andrea Peacock
Histrionics and Legalisms in Missoula

Henry A. Giroux
Ten Years After Columbine: the Tragedy of Youth Deepens

Liaquat Ali Khan
Drone Attacks on Pakistan's Indigenous Tribes

Fred Gardner
Obama's DoJ Backs Prosecution of Medical Marijuana Providers

Stephen Soldz
Obama, Blair, Panetta and the Torture Memos: Praising Moral Cowards, Ignoring Real Heroes

Nadia Hijab
Obama's Multi-Polar Middle East

Dave Lindorff
The Meeting in Trinidad

P. Sainath
India's Press Nixes "R" Word

Nelson P Valdés
A Modest (Transition) Proposal to Obama

Mark Engler
American Empire Foreclosed?

Belén Fernández
The FARC Can't Dance

Website of the Day
Dear Mr. Buffett...

April 17-19, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Thin Ice From Here to the Horizon

Saul Landau
Infiltrating Alpha 66: a Conversation with Gerardo Hernandez, Leader of the Cuba Five

Franklin Lamb
Persia Rising

Ralph Nader
The Greedsters Are Back!

Fred Gardner
Obama's Chimerical Marijuana Policy: a Guide for the Perplexed

Dean Baker
A Win-Win Solution: Tax the Rich!

Rannie Amiri
The Curious Case of Benjamin Netanyahu

George Wuerthner
The War on Predators

Dave Lindorff
No Amnesty for Torturers

David Swanson
Personal Torture Laws

Jim Goodman
The Control of Food

Kathy Sanborn
Economic Fallout Hits Families Hard

Don Monkerud
Economic Recovery for Whom?

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The People's Money

David Michael Green
Home of the Barricaded, Land of the 'Fraid

Nelson P Valdés
The OAS Charter, Cuba and the United States

Manuel Gomez
From the Bay of Pigs to Trinadad and Tobago

Dr. Susan Block
On Sex Addiction: the Deadliest Sin?

Ramzy Baroud
Non-Violence in Palestine?

Christopher Brauchli
Banning Barbie

Stephen Martin
Statelessness: the Final Frontier

Ron Jacobs
Tearing the Whole Building Down: the Dead in Greensboro

David Yearsley
Monkey Music

Lorenzo Wolff
A Song for the End of the World

Poets' Basement
Moser, McTeer and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
New England Journal of Medicine Report on Civilian Deaths in Iraq

April 16, 2009

Mike Whitney
A Bulletin From the Captain of the Titantic

Russell Mokhiber
The Top 10 Enemies of Single-Payer

Ronald Teska
From Iraq to Appalachia

Gareth Porter
Predator Blowback

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Thinking Like an Afghan

Benjamin Dangl
Latin America Changes

Kevin Pina
Haiti: Obama's First Foreign Policy Disaster?

Robert Bryce
Another Ethanol Producer Goes Bust

George Wuerthner
See the Forest: the Value of Dead Trees

Paul Garon, David Roediger and Kate Khatib The Surreal Life of Franklin Rosemont

Website of the Day
Socialism and the Facebook Generation

April 15, 2009

Kathleen and Bill Christison
Solving Palestine While Israel Destroys It

Ray McGovern
W, the Torture Decider

Robert Sandels
Is There a Latin American Policy?

Heather Williams /
Paul Baker
Carbon Cap and Trade: How Wall Street will Game the Regs and Trash the Planet

Jack Willoughby
The Lessons of the S & L Crisis

David Swanson
Habeas at Bagram?

Paul Craig Roberts
94 Years of Serfdom

Sara Mann
Norman Rockwell and the Perils of Nostalgia

Kenneth Couesbouc
John Maynard's Martingale: How Keynes Got Rich

Binoy Kampmark
Tax Haven Hypocrisies

Kekuni Blaisdell, Lynette Hi'llani Cruz, George Kahumoku Flores, et al.: An Urgent Letter to Obama on the Rights of Native Hawaiians

Website of the Day
Taxa: the Paintings of Isabella Kirkland

April 14, 2009

Conn Hallinan
The Afghan Rubik's Cube

Mike Whitney
Why is Goldman Sachs So Scared of Mike Morgan?

Peter Morici
Taxing Grandma to Subsidize Goldman Sachs

Greg Moses
Economic Curveballs: the Laffer Posse

Fidel Castro
Obama's Cuba Policy: Not a Word About the Blockade

Robert Weissman
No Blank Check for the IMF

Rebecca Macaux /
Philip Primeau
Somali Piracy and American Foreign Policy

Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
The Dubious Revoution: Biofuels, the Next Generation

Dave Lindorff
Snatch-and-Jail Justice: the Ugly War on Immigrants

Walter Brasch
The Resurrection of Intolerance

Benjamin Day
Why Has the Press Failed Us in Reporting on Health Care Reform?

Website of the Day
The Appraisal Bubble

April 13, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi Militia Fear Reprisals After US Exit

Uri Avnery
Our Dissonance

Jeremy Scahill
A Test Case for Habeas Corpus: Will Obama Prosecute the Somali Pirate in a US Court?

Martha Rosenberg
Suicide Syndrome: Are VA Protocols Behind Iraq Vet Suicides?

Karl Grossman
A Radioactive Extension for Aging Nuclear Plants

Nadia Hijab
Still Waiting: Obama and American Muslims

Sam Smith
America's Cultural Bear Market

James McEnteer
Peru's Shining Example

Sean McMahon
Globalizing Politicide: Israel's Strikes on Sudan

Namihei Odaira
Makota's "Campaign Against Poverty"

John V. Walsh
Bossnapping

Website of the Day
Declining IRS Audits for Big Financial Houses

April 10 / 12, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Resurrection and Revenge

Chris Floyd
Hope Abandoned: Obama Protects CIA Torture Memos

Mike Whitney
"Liquidate the Banks; Fire the Executives!" Warren's Devastating Report to Congress

Saul Landau
How the Media Bought the Surge

M. Reza Pirbhai
Obama's Afghanistan Plan and India-Pakistan Relations

Franklin Spinney
The Art of the Scam: Wall Street and the Pentagon

Rannie Amiri
Iran's Elections: Why Arab Leaders Want Ahmadinejad to Win

William Blum
The Ideology of Barack Obama

Matt Vidal
Why Card Check Would Help the Economy

Jeff Howison
Death of the Square Deal

Jeff Leys
Resisting the Af-Pak War: the Creech Air Base Arrests

Dave Lindorff
America's Imperial Wars: Why We Need to See the Horrors

Ramzy Baroud
Israel Investigated: But Will It Repent?

Missy Beattie
The Grateful Dead, Wounded and Displaced

Fred Gardner
Fakes Left, Goes Right: Obama's Crossover Dribble on Marijuana Policy

Harvey Wasserman Another $50 Billion for Rust Bucket Nukes?

Suzan Mazur
A Revolution in Biology: an Interview with Nobel Laureate Paul Nurse

Bernard Umbrecht
German Capitalists Take Fire

David Macaray
A Word Clooney, Hanks and Baldwin Should Learn: Solidarity

Janet Kauffman
How to Starve (or Feed) a River

Ron Jacobs
Daring to Struggle, Failing to Win

Norman Solomon
Getting a Death Grip on Memory

Michael Winship
Let the Railsplitter Awake!

Richard Rhames
Empire, Ennui and Extra Cheese

Wanda Fucha
Brother, Can You Spare a Million Bucks?

David Yearsley
My Journey to the Heart of Rahman

Lorenzo Wolff
Getting Beyond the Black-and-White: Jason Isbell's Challenging New Album

Ben Sonnenberg
Rossellini's Louis XIV: "Neither the Sun Nor Death Can be Gazed Upon Fixedly"

Jeffrey St. Clair
Savage Incongruities: the Photographic Life of Lee Miller

Poets' Basement
Corseri and Corzett

Website of the Weekend
The Palestine Chronicle Needs Your Help!

April 9, 2009

Mike Whitney
The Decade of Darkness

Patrick Cockburn
What It Would Take to Mend Fences with Islam

Stephen Soldz
Caught on Tape: Diagnostic Abuse of Veterans

P. Sainath
The Rise of the Shoe-cide Bomber

Ellen Cantarow
Israel's Master Plan for Transfer

Gareth Porter /
Jim Lobe
Obama and Israel's Threat to Strike Iran

Jeremy Scahill
How Many Democrats Will Stand Up Against Obama's Bloated Military Budget?

Jerry Kroth
Saving GM From Bankruptcy--With the Stroke of a Pen

Binoy Kampmark
Fujimori Convicted: A Measure of Justice in Latin America

Fidel Castro
My Meeting with the Black Caucus

Website of the Day
Bird Song Radio

April 8, 2009

John Prados
The Af-Pak Paradox

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
Changing the Rules of the Blame Game

Winslow T. Wheeler
The Tooth Fairy and the Defense Budget

Russell Mokhiber
PBS Lashes Back

Kathy Sanborn
Depression Fury

Rev. William E. Alberts
If the Shoe Fits: Bush and Al-Zaidi

James McEnteer Rashomon and the Binghamton Shooter: the Rush to Interpret Jiverly Wong's "Statement"

Nadia Hijab
Olmert's Nightmare

Adam Turl
Card Check on the Ropes

Kevin Zeese
Escaping the Drug War Quagmire

Website of the Day
Walk Score Your Neighborhood

April 7, 2009

David Price
Counterinsurgency's Free Ride

Uri Avnery
Who's the Boss?

Chris Floyd
Talking Peace in Prague, Dropping Bombs in Pakistan

Winslow T. Wheeler Defense Cuts: Gates and the System

Marjorie Cohn
Prosecuting the Bush Torture Team: Spain Leads the Way

Dean Baker
Hands Off Social Security

Diana Johnstone
NATO, Strasbourg and the Black Block

Dave Lindorff
Politicizing Accounting

Martha Rosenberg
Life on HBO's Factory Hog Farm

Evelyn Pringle
Motherhood and the Psycho-Pharmaceutical Complex

Website of the Day
Gaza: Closed Zone

April 6, 2009

Michael Hudson
The IMF Rules the World

Andy Worthington Bagram: Guantánamo's Dark Mirror

Ray McGovern
Profiles in Cowardice: Eric Holder and Colin Powell

Deepak Tripathi
The Pakistan Enigma

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Financial Rescue Plan: a Glide-Path to Destitution

Norman Solomon
Meet the New Escalators: the Democrats and the Afghan War

Jonathan Cook
Israel Railways Accused of Racism in Firing of Arab Workers

Judith Bello
Justice for the Developmentally Disabled

Deena Metzger Blackwater in Liberia

Dr. M. Kamiar
"There's No 'Eye' in Iran:" Obama's Pronunciation Problem

Website of the Day
Prison Talk

April 3-5, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
From Twin Towers to Twin Camelots

Kathy Kelly /
Brian Terrall
Getting a Closer Look at the Killer Drones

Sue Sturgis
Fooling with Disaster? Startling Revelations About Three Mile Island Raise New Doubts Over Nuclear Plant Safety

Peter Morici
Girding for a Depression

Kathy Sanborn
Homeless in Tent City, USA

Andy Worthington
Britain's Guantánamo: Fact or Fiction?

Rob Larson
Subprime Supreme Court: The Roberts Court Has Become a Powerful New Tool for Business

Saul Landau
Biden and Nixon: a Tale of Two Latin American Experiences

Steve Early
An Evening with Andy Stern

John Goekler
Was Gaza Israel's Waterloo?

Rannie Amiri
Arab League Reconciliation Summit a Bust

Dave Lindorff
Hooray for Juries! A Courtroom Victory for Ward Churchill and Academic Free Speech

Lee Ballinger
Sound Garden: Tom Morello at the Grammy Museum

Ron Jacobs
Artifacts for Survival

David Macaray
AIG Plays the Sympathy Card

John Wight
G20: Capital's New World Symphony

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Race in the Obama Era

Mychal Bell
Surviving Jena Six

Missy Beattie
Hoop Hopes, War and Peace

Reza Fiyouzat
The Iran/US Rapproachment Dance

Michael Boldin
The War on Drugs is a War on You

Christopher Brauchli
The Pope's Batting 50-50

Charles R. Larson
Too Much Stuff

Susie Day
Bernie Breakout Shocker!!

Stephen Martin
Gordon Brown's Chicken Run at the G20

Kim Nicolini
"Last House on the Left:" Vigilantes of the Bourgeoisie

David Yearsley
Homage to Moog and Mallards

Phyllis Pollack
An Interview with Legendary Rock Producer Chris Kimsey on Working with the Stones, Ronnie Wood, Jimmy Cliff, Peter Tosh and Saint Jude

Poets' Basement
Foley, Valentine and Kozak

Website of the Day
The Corner Store

April 2, 2009

Robert Weissman
What If Obama Had Treated Detroit Like Wall Street?

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
A G20 Meeting for Naught

George Bisharat
Israel's Impunity Must End

Russell Mokhiber
Something is Rotten at PBS

Franklin Lamb
Has Washington Lost Lebanon?

Gareth Porter
Settling Scores in Iraq: Maliki Draws US Troops into Crackdown on Sunni Rivals

David Macaray
Obama and the Ruling Class: "Only the Little People Pay Taxes"

Chris Genovali
B.C.'s Bloody Grizzly Hunt

Sam Smith
The Politics of Adulation

Suzan Mazur
Is Neo-Darwinism Dead?

Website of the Day
Fighting for Change in St. Louis

April 1, 2009

Chris Floyd
Surging Further Into the Afghan Abyss

Stanley Heller
Israeli War Crimes: Thank God, It Was Only Rumors

Mark Brenner, Mischa Gaus and Jane Slaughter Obama's Perilous Plan for Detroit: Restructure the Big 3, But Not With Bankruptcy

Jonathan Cook
The Slow Demise of Ehud Olmert

Eric Walberg
EU in Tatters: Only the Protesters Have Any Vision

Richard Morse
Why Haiti Can't Forget Its Past

Don Fitz
Guess Who Came to Dinner with a Match? Green Mayoral Candidate's Van Firebombed in St. Louis

Laray Polk
Texas and Evolution

Belén Fernández
12 Años de Soledad?

Harvey Wasserman
Cracking the Media Silence on Three Mile Island

Website of the Day
Pentagon Fraud Investigations Fell, While Contracts Soared

March 31, 2009

Uri Avnery
The Deception Tango

Peter Lee
Ghosts in the Machine: the World's Hottest Cyberwar Battlefield

Nicholas Dearden
A New Global Debt Crisis

Dave Lindorff
The Obama Betrayal

Joanne Mariner
"We'll Make You See Death"

Ron Jacobs
Obama's Pakistan Gambit

Wiliam S. Lind
Another Lost War

David Michael Green
Who Says the GOP Doesn't Have a Plan?

Benjamin Dangl
Beyond Elections in the Americas

Johnny Barber
Meditation in Orange

Dedrick Muhammad
Economic Inequality: the Foundation of the Racial Divide

Website of the Day
How the Obama Dems Took Over the Peace Movement

March 30, 2009

Michael Hudson
Financing the Empire: Do US Face G20 Mutiny?

Patrick Cockburn
What Next in Afghanistan?

Henry A. Giroux
Hard Lessons

Mike Whitney
Where's Eliot Spitzer Now That We Need Him?

Ralph Nader
Where's All the Money Coming From?

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama's War on the (Upper) Middle Class

Jeremy Scahill
The Logistical Nightmare in Iraq

Robert Bryce
The Cellulosic Ethanol Delusion

Jonathan Cook
Remembering Land Day in Palestine

Ray McGovern
Obama Bombs

Website of the Day
Hersh: Syria Calling

April 22, 2009

"Occupy Everything"

The Battle to Take Back the New School

By BARUCHA CALAMITY PELLER

Owing to pending legal issues, as well as continuing intimidation from school administration towards student organizers, all the New School students are quoted anonymously in this article, at their request. CB. 

"We occupied a university building, workers in Chicago occupied their factory, people facing foreclosures have refused to leave their homes. Occupation is not merely a tactic to get some demands met; it is a practical strategy for taking our lives back into our own hands. Let's occupy everything until everything is ours.” – a student at the New School for Social Research, NY
  
On Friday, April 10, in the first lights of a cool Manhattan dawn, banging could be heard up to a block away from the four-story New School building at 65 5th Ave, and the sound of chains scraping against metal permeated the silent morning.

When school security arrived the entire building, which takes up a city block steps away from bustling Union Square, had been barricaded by students inside. A huge banner appeared hanging from the roof: “The New School is now re-Occupied.”

Although only lasting four hours before a brutal eviction by NYPD, the bold occupation has once again raised the stakes in the young student movement in New York City. But more importantly, the politics that have been bought forth from within recent occupations at NYC universities challenge reformist solutions to atomized “issues,” and now more than ever gone beyond focusing solely on student demands. Students are proposing direct action, and specifically occupation, as a natural response to the financial crisis, with a distinct anti-capitalist critique.

“The New School’s problems are symptomatic of the larger economic crisis in whish we live, the crisis which is being dealt with by service cuts, foreclosures, bank bailouts, mass unemployment, and layoffs,” said a student inside the barricaded school. “We reject these false solutions. To really fight the crisis means to take over the spaces in which we live and work, and make them our own. And that is what we are doing.”

An escalating resistance to commodification

The April 10 occupation stepped up an already active scene of dissent at the New School, a movement whose contagious energy continues to spread to other universities. On December 17, New School students occupied a large area of the same building at 65th 5th ave for three days, and fights with authorities for the space broke out both inside and outside the building. Among their demands was the resignation of President Bob Kerrey and Vice-President James Murtha, as well as the Board of Trustees Treasurer James B. Millard. Early in the month, faculty had voted no-confidence for Bob Kerrey. The occupation ended after negotiations with the school, but only small concessions to the demands were made, and the administration remained.

Among a plethora of concerns, the students cite a lack of financial transparency and political centralization as their primary grievances with the New School administration. They say Kerrey is making the school into a corporate entity that disregards student and faculty needs.

“We don’t have a library, the school has spent millions on a new logo, and Kerrey is only concerned with making the school profitable,” a student has said. “Our school is a progressive front for the corporate, commodification of education.”

The administration themselves are shadowy characters. Kerrey, a former Nebraska senator, is considered a war criminal for leading a massacre on a village of unarmed civilians during his tour of duty as lieutenant in Vietnam. According to reports, civilians including women and children were executed outside their homes and others were stabbed.

Millard sits on the board of L3 communications, a large war contractor whose subsidiary in Iraq, a company called Titan, was sued in May 2008 for abuses and torture at Abu Ghraib.

After winter break the movement continued. In February, NYU students, with support from their New School counterparts, occupied Kimmel Hall for three days, requesting that the school release a report of the annual operating budget and grant 15 scholarships to students from Gaza.  The NYU occupation ended when police lifted the barricades at Kimmel Hall. Students were photographed and suspended.

Meanwhile there was an obvious lack of any serious changes occurring at New School after the December occupation. A socially responsible investing committee was to be set up, but Kerrey called it merely advisory. Wearing ski-masks, a student group called New School in Exile held a February 10 press conference to announce an ultimatum:  President Kerrey must be out by April 1 or else the students will shut down the school. Any concessions made by the school after the occupation were considered irrelevant if the current administration remained.

Things only escalated further from there. More student groups signed onto the ultimatum. Frequent meetings were held and at one point Kerrey’s house was vandalized.  A February teach-in on the history of student resistance at the New School was disrupted by school security that threatened to arrest and suspend students if they continued the teach-in. A second teach-in was similarly disrupted in March. Using intimidation, administration showed a flagrant disregard for freedom of academic and political expression at the school, and tensions rose.  

April 1 came and went and Kerrey remained. A heightened security detail at the school slackened its  efforts, but the students had not forgotten their ultimatum.  

“Occupy Everything”

On the morning of April 10 crowds of student supporters and pedestrians gathered around the occupied building. Kerrey, who labeled the occupation illegal and refused to recognize it as a political demonstration, summoned the police in force. The demands had expanded since the passing of the April 1st deadline:  the resignation of the Kerrey administration, and full control over the otherwise underutilized building at 65 5th Ave. At the same time, those barricaded within the building used the occupation as a call to action to other students and non-students and as a model of resistance.

“There are two aspects of our struggle,” said a student inside the occupation. “The first revolves around the crisis at our university, which is symbolized by the corrupt and authoritarian President Bob Kerrey. The second, and more important aspect is rooted in the general struggle against capital, as well against all hierarchical power relations.  The solution we propose is a means without end. Our occupation of 65 5th Avenue is a small model of our proposal, which is for workers, students, and dispossessed of all kinds to collectively occupy the places where they live, work and circulate through.”

Huge banners were dropped from the roof of the school: “Occupy Everything.”

As morning pedestrians began to swarm the sidewalks outside the building, wondering what was happening, people fell silent and heads turned upwards toward the roof, where a dozen occupiers appeared masked and waving a black and red flag. The scene was striking- against the backdrop of a grey sky, the masked occupiers began to read a communiqué from a bullhorn. “…When we delve below the surface appearance of everyday life, it becomes clear that a generalized critique of society based on the twin logics of capitalist accumulation and hierarchical domination has everything to do with our struggle to redefine our school.”

The students went on to critique capital and the commodity form to the constantly swelling gathering of press, police, pedestrians, and student supporters below.

President sicks NYPD on students 

Shortly after the occupiers disappeared back into the building, NYPD appeared in their place on the roof, and began a calculated operation to remove the student occupation and hinder outside support by barricading the perimeter of the school and shutting down over a block of 5th Ave. In a move that would later be heavily criticized by both faculty and students, Kerry gave the go-ahead to the NYPD to remove the occupiers, without offering negotiation from the administration.

In an absurd reaction to the occupation, Kerry actually went as far as to compare the students to Al-Qaida, saying, “Some of us still remember 9/11 around here.”  Kerrey, who at one time termed his students as “customers”, later called the students who occupied “terrorists”.

In the late morning, the occupiers attempted to leave the building through a side door. When the door opened, police reached inside and heavily pepper sprayed the students, and then closed the door, preventing them from peacefully retreating from the occupation. Outside the door, police attacked supporters, arresting three and leaving one student with a concussion and scrapes and bruises across his face. The NYPD denied the use of pepper spray on the students until a video surfaced on the Internet clearly showing the brutality at the side door.

The occupation ended when scores of police sawed through the front entrance. Inside, occupiers unlocked the second door and sat in three lines and 19 people were arrested without resistance.

Appalled by president Kerrey’s response that led to the incidents of police brutality at the occupation that day, an angry crowd of 200 masked students from various schools descended on Kerrey’s house in Greenwich Village late at night.  They shouted his name and broke some car windows while barricading the street from approaching police.

Faculty have heavily criticized President Kerry’s calling in of the NYPD as an executive unilateral decision reflecting his general lack of accountability to other existing powers at the New School community. Historically, school administrations hesitate to use police to settle student demonstrations on campus.  It was no small deal in the 60s when Columbia University sent the police in to evict an occupation, and after words, several faculty members resigned in protest.

 “We can see no justification for the administration’s resort to police force against the occupiers of 65 Fifth Avenue…in our view, (Kerrey’s) statements evince no understanding of longstanding traditions of university autonomy vis-à-vis state power and protection from apparatuses of repression.” wrote two prominent professors, Nancy Fraser and Eli Zaretsky. “His action appears to have been taken in ignorance of the specificity of academic life, its values, traditions, and historic rights.” 

A Global Context for Unrelenting Students

President Kerry should consider himself lucky that New School students are only going after buildings. A few days before the latest New School occupation, students in Orleans, France, held their school president hostage, with a motto that reflects sentiments of students in New York: “education is not merchandise.” 

As the December occupation was greatly inspired by the insurrection in Greece and the wave of occupations there, students in New York continue to connect their experiences with others across the globe, specifically in Europe where students are concerned with an unstable job market and university reforms that serve capitalist interests. Since December, letters of solidarity from student occupations from Greece to Italy and Spain have been pouring into New York, and students scour the web for communiqués from their anti-capitalist “comrades” overseas.  Clashes between police and students have swept Italy and France for months.

Despite the administration’s continued efforts to repress dissent through threats of expulsion and disciplinary action, the students at New School continue to organize and escalate: holding assemblies, encouraging direct action, and writing intelligent communiqués to articulate their every move and counter naïve charges that they are merely “political thugs,” or that occupation is an act of violence. Students from schools around the city have come out in support of the New School demonstrations, and are planning actions at their own schools. Pressure from faculty led the to the temporary lifting of suspensions on students involved with the recent occupation.

Last week, Kerrey’s house was visited once again by a mob of students reminding him that they want him to leave, and Fifth avenue was blockaded in front of the school. “Occupy again!” The crowd shouted.

“The students are determined,” said a student yesterday. “The school cannot continue doing this, because we wont back down. Occupation is a powerful experience- to take back space and make it your own. Now that we have had a taste, we know what is possible.”

Barucha Calamity Peller is a writer and photojournalist, high school dropout, and rebel-rouser. For years she has worked within and reported on social movements from Mexico to Europe. She can be reached by email at macheteyamor@gmail.com

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