Revolution #162, April 19, 2009
3rd NYC Campus Occupation in Five Months:
New School Students Seize Building,
Viciously Attacked
On the morning of Friday April 10, students of the New School University in New York City occupied the Graduate Facility at that university, demanding control of the building, and the resignations of the president of their university, Bob Kerrey (a war criminal), and the school’s Executive Vice President, James Murtha.
This was the third student occupation of a building at a New York City university campus in the past five months, the second at the New School (the other occupation was at New York University—see “A Fresh Wind Out of NYU – Students Occupy Building… Unrepentant in Face of Repression…” at revcom.us).
What followed was a vicious and brutal attack on students by the NYPD that represents a leap in the repression of the student movement, and is in line with the overall clampdown on critical thinking and dissent in academia. In the face of mounted police, police helicopters, and police beatings, the students continued to protest all day and into the night.
A student bitterly recounts this, “This time they had the police come in, over a hundred officers in riot gear came into the school, arrested the students and as the students were trying to escape from the building the door opened, the cops pepper sprayed students trying to escape and arrested them. Also, there were three demonstrators on the outside who were arrested.”
A widely viewed online video shows several NYPD cops jumping on and beating a student for the “crime” of yelling “shame on you!” as they brutalized another student. One student told us that the victim is “a vegan pacifist, and he was yelling shame on you as a cop arrested a student and they were macing him. The cop turned around punched him in the face, tasered him and arrested him.” (youtube.com/watch?v=s9UR3X-2PzE)
A New School student from the Lang College who was there described for Revolution the response on the scene, “The crowds were furious. After the arrest of the young man who was thrown to the ground, a few people became very vocal, cursing the police and the administration for handling them like they did. But as onlookers who were greatly outnumbered, we were forced to watch our friends go out in handcuffs.” A New School student at the support rally said that when he heard about all this, “I felt sick to my stomach, that’s not what our school’s based on, that’s not the foundation of our school, we’re all about peaceful demonstration, which it was.”
Later that evening, there was a support rally where about 100 students mobilized to gather in Union Square in solidarity with arrested students. There was an intense atmosphere of anger at the police, and uncertainty as to what would happen to the students who were being held. It was announced that an arraignment would occur on Saturday, April 11. Students took to the streets and marched through lower Manhattan, passing Bob Kerrey’s house. They were again met with brutal repression with several students attacked, beaten, and arrested.
Among students at the New School, there was also lot of discussion about everything that was behind the occupations. For example one student said, “They didn’t even used to have endowments, but now they’re using our endowments to invest in L3 communications because one of our board members, he’s the president or CEO of it, and they supplied arms to both sides of the Bosnian conflict and they’re currently a top ten defense contractor for the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Another student commented later, “I think students are inspired by what is going on at New School. There is definitely room for improvement in strategy, tactics, and organizing. But I also think that this is a new political moment for students in this country. I think it shows that once we develop a community of struggle, we can accomplish a great deal.”
Interviewed in the New York Post, Kerry said, “An illegal occupation of a building is not a legitimate protest,” and, “There’s a long list of legitimate ways to protest a university. This isn’t one of them.” And, he said, “I called the NYPD and said there are people who have broken into our building and I want them removed,” said Kerrey. “If they do it again, I’ll call again.” And speaking of the students involved in the occupation, Kerrey told the New School Free Press, “I cannot consider them students at this point.”
Let’s be clear, demanding the firing of a vicious war criminal is not a crime, but is righteous and needs to be supported by everyone.
The New York City chapter of the National Lawyer’s Guild issued a statement calling for “the release of students wrongfully arrested at the New School.”
NYU student activists posted a statement of solidarity at their web site. One student from Take Back NYU! said, “We need to take this to other students and get them involved. We can’t do anything without greater student power, like we’ve seen in Spain and Italy, and the UK. If nothing else, I hope that the unnecessary brutality will open people’s eyes to importance of the struggle. The strong arm tactics shown by Bob Kerrey and the NYPD are unacceptable and we need to show them that that will not be tolerated.”
These student protests are desperately needed, both at the New School and throughout the country, at a time when the anti-war movement is collapsing and we are being told to put our faith in Obama as the US’s war for empire is expanded, students taking a stand around their education, and the role their schools play in the world is a breathe of fresh air. At the same time, this brutality that the students at the New School are facing is from the same system that shoots handcuffed Black men in the back like Oscar Grant in Oakland, and the same system that has killed over a million people in Iraq and is expanding its war in Afghanistan. It’s going to take a lot more resistance from all sections of society to reverse this direction, including people standing with the students of the New School, and ultimately we need a revolution.
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