bayano
5th March 2010, 15:11
Perhaps this goes into the strategy section, but who knows?
Yesterday was a national day of action against cuts in education, led by students throughout the University of California system that have been occupying their campuses, skirmishing with police in the streets, rallying and marching against this year against something that public students have been dealing with since the 1970s- regular rollbacks on their education.
As part of a Pay More For Less set of austerity measures that seem to occur nearly every year since the early 1990s, schools across the country have regularly cut budgets and hiked tuitions, screwing over their students. They have likewise increasingly relied on adjunct professors with lower salaries and often no benefits. They have sub-contracted staff jobs. This is part of the neo-liberal project, and tends to use many of the same formulas of similar rollbacks in government services. In public transit systems across this country (including every year in New York, Chicago, and elsewhere, this year being no different) neo-liberal heads have threatened terrifying service cuts and fare hikes, and after sometimes heated public outcry, they have pushed through terrible but more subtle service cuts and fare hikes- holding the working class rage for the next year's incremental cuts and hikes. Public housing, county health care, zoning, the police state, mortgages and loans, all facets of our lives are shifted consistently as this neo-liberal project gains ground.
The past two days, public education and public transit have been zones of skirmish for the neo-liberals in charge of running their government agencies into the group, and the organized and unorganized working class people of New York City. On Wednesday, a public transit hearing about yet more hike-n-cut threats ended in four arrests.
Thursday, students across New York City joined the California call for national actions. The 440,000 State University of New York students in the rest of the state are facing cuts. City University of New York (the NYC public university/community college system, funded by the state and city, and with another 440,000 total students) is threatened with $108 million in cuts and more in tuition hikes- as well as a restructured system to make tuition hikes easier. Rallies and marches, culminating in a march to the Governor's Manhattan office and the public transit MTA office where they are cutting high school students' free transit cards. Citywide meetings of students from many of the 23 CUNY schools also included nonstudents, and students from private schools, including the New School and NYU.
Unfortunately, the radical Left had to go and shit itself.
I was not in attendance at the following, but many accounts have been posted to Facebook, blogs, and told to me directly. A rally at Hunter, perhaps the largest 4-year college in the CUNY system, was organized by disparate elements. Hunter has seemingly every Trotskyist sect, as well as Maoish groups and other Leninists. Much of this past year's struggle there has been centered around defending childcare for students who are parents. These two sectors and others organized a rally, originally intended to be partly in-doors. The increasing private security and NYPD presence on the campus restricted the walk-out students to a rally outside. They largely chose to remain outside rather than skirmish with the police (which I have witnessed, and the security are not afraid to assault mothers in front of their small children and w/o provocation). Hunter is economically, racially, and nationally diverse, just to mention. A group of predominantly anarchists, overwhelmingly from off campus, including non-students and NYU students and New School students (many had been in those occupations) arrived. Some of them had been in the March 4 meetings. They are very provocative and aggressive. They decided they wanted to go in the buildings, try to push for an occupation, and push past campus police.
Now, those are largely facts. Much of the rest of the story is allegations and recriminations. 3-4 of the anarchists were arrested, a few of them tried to assault the Leninists and childcare activists, and there are unsubstantiated claims of snitching. There is vitriol, bitterness, and the kind of sectarian language that threatens to 'not work with you ever again' and says 'we are not allies'. There are repeated claims that the anarchists came with more privilege than the student organizers they intervened on, and epithets of 'saboteurs' and 'authoritarians' being bandied about. The blood is flowing, and the tension is high.
As far as I am concerned, largely an outsider to this and with only a smattering of comrades in either side, both sides are in the wrong. But more to the point, there are two firm contradictions at play that I observe.
Firstly, this sectarian speech on both sides that the other side is not an ally or comrade. Know your enemy, know yourself. What are the real sides? The police, school administrators, capitalists, politicians, private security, and student reactionaries are on one side. The students at large and these organized factions are on the other side. Get that? The same side. There are two sides, and those fighting the Pay More For Less austerity measures are on the same side. I can repeat it again. Same side. And that is in direct contradiction with the kind of language increasingly seen in the radical left in the United States, by groups ranging from Bash Back! to Platypus to the ISO to Take The City to certain APOC individuals. They decide that whites/straights/socialists/anarchists/insert are not on their side and not their comrades and not in the same struggle. This is incorrect. It is stupid. It pushes us back.
Secondly, there are obviously very real differences between the two internal sides of this conflict. There is one side that does have more privilege than the other, led three failed occupations at NYU or NS, openly tries to provoke police (and as someone who tries to provoke police, I know what that looks like <3), and is obsessed with nonsensical slogans like
Occupy Everything! Demand Nothing!
Occupy, Strike, Negate!
Abolish Yourself!
There is another side that is just as sectarian, but is part of a consistent tradition of failed campaigns to resist these neo-liberal pressures on public institutions going back decades. And not everyone on this side is completely clear that police are always the enemy.
Both sides are impatient, quick to judge, controlling, radicaler-than-thou, and do not always respect the autonomy of their comrades.
Together, they can get thousands into the streets. The final march, largely but not just led by a united front of Leninist types, was decent. There were those content with sitting in the NYPD free speech cages, and mopey anarchists who sat a distance away. There were moments where everyone collectively got out of the barricade pens, including where Leninists who often yell at anarchists when it is not time, saw the tenor of the crowd and decided that that was a good moment. There were TWU union guys who tried to intervene on tense moments between students and cops.
Some will only know about the decent, usually caged march. Many of the city's student organizers will, however, be drained and frustrated about the tension between the Manhattan schools (and to be fair, there is overlap every which way). And the neo-liberal administrators will laugh all the way to the bank.
Yesterday was a national day of action against cuts in education, led by students throughout the University of California system that have been occupying their campuses, skirmishing with police in the streets, rallying and marching against this year against something that public students have been dealing with since the 1970s- regular rollbacks on their education.
As part of a Pay More For Less set of austerity measures that seem to occur nearly every year since the early 1990s, schools across the country have regularly cut budgets and hiked tuitions, screwing over their students. They have likewise increasingly relied on adjunct professors with lower salaries and often no benefits. They have sub-contracted staff jobs. This is part of the neo-liberal project, and tends to use many of the same formulas of similar rollbacks in government services. In public transit systems across this country (including every year in New York, Chicago, and elsewhere, this year being no different) neo-liberal heads have threatened terrifying service cuts and fare hikes, and after sometimes heated public outcry, they have pushed through terrible but more subtle service cuts and fare hikes- holding the working class rage for the next year's incremental cuts and hikes. Public housing, county health care, zoning, the police state, mortgages and loans, all facets of our lives are shifted consistently as this neo-liberal project gains ground.
The past two days, public education and public transit have been zones of skirmish for the neo-liberals in charge of running their government agencies into the group, and the organized and unorganized working class people of New York City. On Wednesday, a public transit hearing about yet more hike-n-cut threats ended in four arrests.
Thursday, students across New York City joined the California call for national actions. The 440,000 State University of New York students in the rest of the state are facing cuts. City University of New York (the NYC public university/community college system, funded by the state and city, and with another 440,000 total students) is threatened with $108 million in cuts and more in tuition hikes- as well as a restructured system to make tuition hikes easier. Rallies and marches, culminating in a march to the Governor's Manhattan office and the public transit MTA office where they are cutting high school students' free transit cards. Citywide meetings of students from many of the 23 CUNY schools also included nonstudents, and students from private schools, including the New School and NYU.
Unfortunately, the radical Left had to go and shit itself.
I was not in attendance at the following, but many accounts have been posted to Facebook, blogs, and told to me directly. A rally at Hunter, perhaps the largest 4-year college in the CUNY system, was organized by disparate elements. Hunter has seemingly every Trotskyist sect, as well as Maoish groups and other Leninists. Much of this past year's struggle there has been centered around defending childcare for students who are parents. These two sectors and others organized a rally, originally intended to be partly in-doors. The increasing private security and NYPD presence on the campus restricted the walk-out students to a rally outside. They largely chose to remain outside rather than skirmish with the police (which I have witnessed, and the security are not afraid to assault mothers in front of their small children and w/o provocation). Hunter is economically, racially, and nationally diverse, just to mention. A group of predominantly anarchists, overwhelmingly from off campus, including non-students and NYU students and New School students (many had been in those occupations) arrived. Some of them had been in the March 4 meetings. They are very provocative and aggressive. They decided they wanted to go in the buildings, try to push for an occupation, and push past campus police.
Now, those are largely facts. Much of the rest of the story is allegations and recriminations. 3-4 of the anarchists were arrested, a few of them tried to assault the Leninists and childcare activists, and there are unsubstantiated claims of snitching. There is vitriol, bitterness, and the kind of sectarian language that threatens to 'not work with you ever again' and says 'we are not allies'. There are repeated claims that the anarchists came with more privilege than the student organizers they intervened on, and epithets of 'saboteurs' and 'authoritarians' being bandied about. The blood is flowing, and the tension is high.
As far as I am concerned, largely an outsider to this and with only a smattering of comrades in either side, both sides are in the wrong. But more to the point, there are two firm contradictions at play that I observe.
Firstly, this sectarian speech on both sides that the other side is not an ally or comrade. Know your enemy, know yourself. What are the real sides? The police, school administrators, capitalists, politicians, private security, and student reactionaries are on one side. The students at large and these organized factions are on the other side. Get that? The same side. There are two sides, and those fighting the Pay More For Less austerity measures are on the same side. I can repeat it again. Same side. And that is in direct contradiction with the kind of language increasingly seen in the radical left in the United States, by groups ranging from Bash Back! to Platypus to the ISO to Take The City to certain APOC individuals. They decide that whites/straights/socialists/anarchists/insert are not on their side and not their comrades and not in the same struggle. This is incorrect. It is stupid. It pushes us back.
Secondly, there are obviously very real differences between the two internal sides of this conflict. There is one side that does have more privilege than the other, led three failed occupations at NYU or NS, openly tries to provoke police (and as someone who tries to provoke police, I know what that looks like <3), and is obsessed with nonsensical slogans like
Occupy Everything! Demand Nothing!
Occupy, Strike, Negate!
Abolish Yourself!
There is another side that is just as sectarian, but is part of a consistent tradition of failed campaigns to resist these neo-liberal pressures on public institutions going back decades. And not everyone on this side is completely clear that police are always the enemy.
Both sides are impatient, quick to judge, controlling, radicaler-than-thou, and do not always respect the autonomy of their comrades.
Together, they can get thousands into the streets. The final march, largely but not just led by a united front of Leninist types, was decent. There were those content with sitting in the NYPD free speech cages, and mopey anarchists who sat a distance away. There were moments where everyone collectively got out of the barricade pens, including where Leninists who often yell at anarchists when it is not time, saw the tenor of the crowd and decided that that was a good moment. There were TWU union guys who tried to intervene on tense moments between students and cops.
Some will only know about the decent, usually caged march. Many of the city's student organizers will, however, be drained and frustrated about the tension between the Manhattan schools (and to be fair, there is overlap every which way). And the neo-liberal administrators will laugh all the way to the bank.