The plan has ignited an uproar among liberal media outlets. In an analysis piece, CNN senior reporter Stephen Collinson called the proposed ban “a crackdown on academic freedom”, while the New York Times ran an opinion column by Dr. Steven Pinker, Harvard professor of psychology titled “Harvard Derangement Syndrome” about Donald Trump’s bizarre obsession with the university. Neither the prim moralizing nor the attempted psychoanalysis understands the true nature of the Trump administration’s decree. The move is just another instance of squabbling among factions of the coalition running the United States government.

The Republican wing of the U.S. government believes (or at least claims to believe) that all non-U.S. citizens are leeches on U.S. society and must be rooted out and removed. In a remarkable show of obviously transparent projection, Republicans consider the very presence of non-citizens in United States society to be an existential threat to the sovereignty of the United States. Thus, they view the removal of such “undesirables” as a necessary inoculation against the chaos of a world gone mad.

Harvard and other elite universities have long been bastions and promulgators of United States soft power. The elite university boasts the scion of power holders from around the world among its alumni and student body, as well as the best and brightest students from around the world, incorporating the fruits of their labor into the U.S. empire and depriving so-called “developing” countries from researchers and innovators of the future. While on campus, students rub shoulders with the next generation of U.S. business leaders, intelligence officers, media executives, and politicians. These relationships further the United States’ expansion into every nook and cranny of the planet.

Massive resource extraction deals and colossal concessions, counterrevolutions and covert operations, the wholesale mortgaging of the future of entire nations in the interests of United States capital — the bonds formed between ruling class members at universities for the privileged run like veins throughout the capitalist world, sending blood money back to the heart of empire.

The revocation of the privilege of elite education for the foreign bourgeoisies will shake networks of power that keep capitalism going. Cooperation across international borders is seen as weakness by chauvinistic, vapid U.S. politicians, who seek a greater consolidation and concentration of power among themselves and their allies, even at the expense of alienating the very facilitators of the imperial riches and success they enjoy. Members of ruling classes in the periphery judge strength among themselves by the level and quality of their connection to foreign capital and imperial power, and even a nonessential change in the dialectic of imperial oppression will prove to be a severe shock to them.

Base infighting for power is nothing but a flailing attempt by the ruling class to preserve a past that is slipping through their fingers like sand through an hourglass. They are losing control, and while they may not foresee the tailspin into which they are headed, the brutish, panicked actions undertaken by the Trump regime should not be seen as anything other than desperation. The ruling class’s own greed is knocking out the foundations of the very state that provides them with the power they crave. 

The time has come for all principled Marxists to engage directly with the student movement and aid it in its self-organization. The student movement  must now adapt and advance to address the new needs it has called forth. The state is using  a two-pronged assault on the movement: the first prong is the use of the legal repressive apparatus — the courts, the police, deportation — and the second prong is the use of the civil institutions acting  as state agents (in this case the universities) which are expelling, suspending, and revoking the degrees of student radicals.

As repression intensifies, it becomes clearer and clearer that we Marxists have not learned the correct lessons from the initial attacks on the movement (see our prior article, “Join the Student Movement!”). The movement must become organized to a high degree. Organization must develop in a particular direction and particular fashion to address the attacks the movement is now suffering.

That means the movement must develop to address:

• Organizational safety from the university system’s discipline;
• Physical safety from federal and state agents of repression (police, ICE, etc.) as well as paramilitary responses from private citizens;
• Anonymity of the leadership cadre and opacity of plans of action;
• Open lines of retreat after actions, and cessation of all action that results in identification or arrest.

To the purpose of addressing these issues, we have put together the following plans that Marxists involved in the movement should pursue. As always, we encourage to the strongest degree that any Marxists involved form separate, Marxist-Leninist organizations that are not directly integrated into the student movement and that can guide and coordinate the actions of the individual Marxists involved.

Organizational Defense Against the Universities

The universities are the second rank of defense for the state against the advent of student radicalism. In particular, elite universities like Columbia serve as the center of social reproduction for the ruling class, and thus are very concerned with the needs and demands of that class. These universities obviously have a class-character and a class-standpoint; their faculty are overwhelmingly high petit-bourgeois or bourgeois and their class standpoint is direct adherence to the haute bourgeois imperialists.

Despite the fact that they are “private” institutions, the university system is very malleable to the wishes of the government (and thus, the ruling class through its government agents). They have traditionally been the seat of reproduction for the reactionary vanguard, the CIA, and have always acted hand-in-glove with the state itself. Thus, we should not view the university system as separate from the state, but rather an extension of the state’s power into the social life of society. The university is the agent of the state. In this way, they act as machines of repression like the courts and prisons.

Columbia in particular has increased its repressive activities against student radicals: they have fired the leader of a student-worker union, issued expulsions, suspensions, demanded in-class attendance despite the threat of federal agents prowling the campus to deport radicals, private hearings with students, etc.

Defense against these tactics cannot arise spontaneously; it must be coordinated. The universities, as de facto agencies of the state, are too large and powerful to bend to pressure unless that pressure is exerted on a mass scale. Even the student population itself may be too small to draw the necessary concessions. Thus, the defense against the universities requires the utmost in organizational advancement and will also require the development of direct ties between the student-radicals and the masses of workers in their immediate area. Luckily, even the petit-bourgeoisie is likely to be outraged at the encroachment of the universities on the traditional “liberties” (as liberals understand them) of the students, particularly those who are members of the petit-bourgeois or bourgeois ranks of society. This represents a contradiction which must be exploited, a wedge which must be leveraged against the universities to the greatest degree possible.

1. Internal Solidification and Resilience

Resiliency is the order of the day. Withstanding legal or quasi-legal pressure requires resilience, specifically the organizational resources to ensure that everyone involved in the radical project stands in solidarity with one another. There are several components to a resilience of this type. The first is organization.

Organized groups are more resistant to repression. By organization, we mean a determined set of relationships and rules by which decisions are made and authority is delegated. The student-radical groups must be democratic, they must have defined membership, and they must have defined leadership and delegated channels of authority. This is the first step toward resisting the quasi-legal pressure being brought to bear by the universities.

This organization should then proceed to hold meetings with all involved and ensure that everyone understands the necessity of absolute solidarity. These meetings can boost morale, bring everyone on the same page as to strategy, and collect reports of issues being faced by the student-radicals.

The second component of this resilience is support. Once an organization is functioning, it must begin to garner material support for the radicals being targeted by the administration. This works in concert with component III of this proposal, the existence of Safehouses. In essence, those targeted by the administration should be assured of 1) housing, 2) income or essentials, and, where possible, 3) paid work. In order to achieve this, the organization should pool the resources of its individual members and solicit resources from outside in an effort to prepare for the necessity of material support. This should be done before it is necessary to draw on these resources, but that moment may be behind us.

2. Aggressive Legal Defense

The student-radical organizations must also prepare to strike back in the bourgeois courts with an aggressive legal strategy. The maneuvers currently being undertaken by the administrations are quasi-legal at best, and are subject to challenge. They can be slowed by entangling them in preliminary injunctions and litigation, particularly in federal courts where the local federal judiciary may be seeking to prove its independence from the central government.

This arm of the strategy should be carried out by trained movement lawyers who understand the necessity of militancy in the face of the current repression. We would recommend speaking with the National Lawyers Guild in detail about the potential for pro bono representation.

3. Prepare Plans for Tuition and Labor Strikes

The prior two stages should prepare student-radical organizations for the next stage of escalation: tuition and labor strikes. Unlike regular capitalist businesses, the universities have a flow of income that is independent from their labor-force. This often comes through the state apparatus itself (witness Washington’s attempts to interfere with Columbia’s internal operations by threatening to withdraw funding). However, there is a reliance upon both tuition and student labor in the allocation of university resources.

Tuition and labor strikes must be highly coordinated to be effective, and a large minority of student-workers and tuition-paying students must be prepared to expose themselves to the potential repercussions before they can be successfully carried out. However, given a high degree of organization, they can be extremely effective in bringing the administration to the bargaining table and forcing concessions. 

4. Connect with Unionized Workers on Campus

Other workers on the campus — faculty and staff — should be brought into the movement. Any student-radicals that are not yet in deep dialogues with the unionized workers on their grounds are cut off from the wider pool of labor solidarity and the above-listed labor strikes under C will be far less effective. The survival of the student movement relies on it connecting with the broader struggle of working people and uniting both of those struggles together.

At this stage, with many imperialist unions disclaiming Palestine solidarity, it is important that the student-radicals carefully assess whether the union leadership on their campus is friendly. If they are not, the radicals must bypass union leadership and instead establish connections directly with rank-and-file union members. They should be prepared to explain the manner in which the struggle of the student intifada is connected to the struggle of the unionized workers.

Student Self-Defense

In order to preserve their physical safety from state agents, the student-radicals must adopt modes of self-defense. We propose four steps or stages of heightening intensity to the student self-defense efforts:

1. Identifying the most vulnerable student-radicals;
2. Establishing a phone tree and lines of communication and warning;
3. Designating an on-call schedule for phone contacts; and finally,
4. Forming on-call defense brigades for physical confrontations.

1. Identifying the most vulnerable

The radical organizations, once fully formed, should reflect carefully on who is the most vulnerable to state action. Foreign nationals or anyone who could presumably be deported with a minimum of legal fiction should take precedence over others. Those who are being monitored by the state for any reason — plea bargains, court programs to get rid of cases, etc. — should also be considered. The organizations should privately draw up secret lists of those who must have the highest level of security.

2. Establishing the phone tree

An emergency phone tree must be established. Everyone in the organization should provide two phone numbers and at least one email address. The organization should then establish the call protocol in the case of any threat to an individual or group of student-radicals. Each person should have at minimum two other individuals to contact when an emergency begins. Once someone is contacted, they should immediately contact their listed “downstream” individuals. In this way, the entire organization can be alerted in very short order.

3. Designate an on-call schedule for the phone tree

Optimally, there will be one or two points of contact for the phone tree at any given time who make certain they are available. Anyone experiencing the threat of physical repression should call the on-call numbers; the on-call members may then communicate with the organization’s sitting body for self-defense to determine what actions are appropriate and then begin activating the phone tree. In most cases, physically assembling at the site of the emergency should be considered first.

4. Forming on-call defense brigades

Once the organization reaches a certain degree of development, the decentralized phone tree method should be transitioned to the formation and training of on-call defense brigades who can be called up to respond to emergencies. These defense brigades should be armed with some hand-held striking weapon (bats are a perennial favorite) and trained in defensive tactics. They will be called to rapidly assemble to sites where individuals find their safety threatened.

Safehouses/Underground

The student movement has called forth the need for a functioning underground. Those exposed leaders who now stand subject to vigilante threats or state action must have somewhere safe to retreat to until the crisis subsides. The construction of an underground now will provide the infrastructure for underground actions in the future and will heighten the degree of development of any student-radical organization.

We propose the following phases or schedule of establishing an underground:

1. Establish the network of safe locations available for long-term occupation;
2. Establish safe practices for moving between locations;
3. Prepare retreat plans for people who have been identified under II(1) above;
4. Transition to in-person meetings for all action planning.

1. Establish a network

This requires drawing up the names and addresses of everyone with space that can be used to hide people moving into the underground. A network of 5+ locations is required for this to be effective. These people must be trustworthy and developed, and must realize that they may be seriously inconvenienced for an extended period.

2. Establish safe practices for moving

The organization must establish a protocol for the safe transfer of radicals from safehouse to safehouse. This includes communication between safehouses (to be done in person at pre-arranged locations) as well as what physical routes will be taken and measures taken to obscure the identity of the people being ferried between safehouses.

3. Prepare retreat plans for those identified as most vulnerable

Everyone on the high vulnerability section of the organization’s vulnerability chart should have immediate emergency plans in place should they feel their safety is compromised, with predetermined signals and safehouses to arrive at.

4. Transition to in-person meetings for all action planning

No actions should be planned on any electronic media. All actions should be planned face to face and in person. Communication by digital media should be minimized as much as possible.

This is the Hour

We do not have much time. The student movement is under threat and must radicalize or it will be excised from the universities. Trained Marxists should endeavor to teach themselves the skills necessary to perform the tasks outlined above and should integrate themselves and offer their services to the student movement immediately. If you have resources or access to spaces that could be used as safehouses, you should make that known and contact student-radicals with that information immediately.

A luta continua!

Like May ‘68, the camp has since reopened and sparked empire-wide Gaza solidarity encampments in institutions of higher education across the U.S. Other direct actions and protests have intensified and spread in the wake of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment’s establishment. Major arms dealers have been blockaded, like Connecticut’s Colt Manufacturing and Pratt & Whitney. At Cal Poly Humboldt in Northern California the students have already seized buildings on campus in a breathtaking display of radical militancy. They have successfully fended off police incursions, although on Friday April 26 they consented to take down their barricades.

At least eleven campuses across the U.S. empire have erupted in righteous unrest. Many of these are concentrated in urban areas with a large relative population of students, most notably Boston and NYC. Although their messaging focuses on attacking the zionist state and the moral necessity of severing support from major U.S. institutions to the U.S. imperialist puppet in west Asia, they also represent a major threat to the legitimacy of the capitalist government more broadly. The student revolt is the result of burgeoning class consciousness among young radicals. Not, by any means, an understanding of their position as a class-in-itself, but rather the preliminary consciousness of the role of U.S. imperialism in global oppression and of the collaboration by the supposedly “neutral” or even “progressive” places of higher education. Universities and colleges are objectively sites of social reproduction for the ruling and professional class lackeys of capital.

What has been the response of the Academy and the capitalist government? Swift repression. Suspension. Arrests. The arrests not only of students who were protesting, but of the schools’ own high-ranking department members when they rallied to their students’ cause. The ruling class representatives, the headmasters, police chiefs, mayors, and politicians, closed ranks immediately. Both sides of the aisle stand shoulder to shoulder: Biden condemns the protests as antisemitic and Democratic mayors unleash the police, while the GOP urges counterprotestors to murder students. Snipers are perched on rooftops. Silver-tongued opportunists from the “progressive” establishment, like AOC and Ilhan Omar, were sent to the most prominent encampment at Columbia, with the aim of co-opting and neutralizing it. The result of this instant response, this instant expression of ruling-class solidarity, will be an expanding consciousness on behalf of the student bodies of the class-nature of the imperialist state, and the class-rule that undergirds the structures of all U.S. society.

The Students Must Enter the Movement

The task of already-existing Communist formations must be to support this awakening class consciousness. Student radicals have played an important role in every past revolutionary movement and, although they cannot form the backbone of that movement, they are critical for its advancement and development. (Students are very energetic, but they may burn out quickly, move away, or cease being students when their class-position changes and they enter the workforce). We must all strive to link up the repression of the students, the genocide and occupation in Palestine, the march of U.S. imperialism across the world, and the oppression in the domestic U.S.-Canadian empire with the existence of class society.

In order to do this, we Communists must neither hold ourselves apart from this current student movement, nor may we attempt to commandeer and steer it. It is an unforgivable error for us to applaud from the sidelines and do nothing. We are morally and strategically required to render aid in any way we can. Some will decry us as interlopers. Let them! Communists must become intimately integrated into every liberatory movement. It is an error to demand this student movement conform to Marxist theory or practice. This would constitute commandism, and would require us to deliver orders to those who have no reason to follow them. Both “left” and “right” errors would serve to isolate Communists from this movement and cost us dearly as this pre-revolutionary moment slips by. It is, in fact, our duty to go down into the encampments and work.

Of course, we must not worship spontaneity, but neither may we afford to ignore the spontaneous explosions of rudimentary class consciousness that occur organically as a result of the stresses produced by the contradictions of capital and empire. Spontaneity is neither the engine nor the aim of our organizing, but when the masses — in this instance, the student masses — take up arms of their own accord, we must join them.

However, this is not enough. We Communists also cannot permit ourselves to be swallowed by the anarchistic trend of the student movement. We cannot permit ourselves to be “carried along” by the currents that move through it. We must work but also we must exert our voices and call for changes in the strategy, organization, and composition of the encampments to harden them. We must always assert as well as demonstrate the linkage of the class struggle with the struggle for Palestinian liberation. Above all else, we must guide the student radicals to form Marxist organizations and launch new study groups and struggle circles.

There is a very high risk that Communists  who endeavor to perform this work but who are alone and unorganized, without a study group, cadre-building program, or other Marxist organization to fall back on, will take on the character of the encampment itself. Yet, the work must be done! If such a Communist has no support but can do the work, we urge them to contact the Unity–Struggle–Unity Press so we can offer our support.

To those who see the student movement as a distraction from the class struggle or who cannot comprehend how such a necessarily ephemeral phenomenon can be part of revolutionary strategy, to those who are attached to the model of organizing the revolutionary movement from the unions and labor organizations as the basis and bedrock of their work, we say: unions in the U.S.-Canadian empire have been bought off! They have been deradicalized and compromised, just like all the major Communist movements in the past century have. Only the struggle for national liberation, of which the fight for Palestine is a part, can purge the movement of its imperialist opportunism. We must suffuse the revolutionary movement with this commitment. Eventually this must be made manifest through armed wings of Communist national liberation armies and special control commissions or other structural power for the nationally oppressed within the party-to-be. Today it manifests as support for the integration of all progressive national liberation movements into the Marxist fold.

The Current State of Affairs: Formlessness and Disorganization Predominate

Each of the campus encampments represents weeks of planning by student organizers. Nevertheless, apart from Columbia and Humboldt, the predominant feature of the encampments is formlessness. We can see this at work in, for instance, the mass arrests at Emerson (100+ students) and Yale (46 students). Formlessness does not mean an absolute lack of leadership, but it does mean a lack of formal structure. Formal methods of decision making have either broken down or have yet to be developed in most encampments. Some have made efforts to expand their decision-making apparatus, folding in non-students (which is correct), while others have retained a very narrow, undeclared clique in overall control (which is incorrect). This second trend must cease if the encampments are to survive in the medium-term, if they are to have any hope of achieving their aim, and if they are to bring student radicals into the overall movement for the abolition of capital and class society. Formal, open structures of decision making must develop, and they must do so along lines significantly different from those that grew out of the Occupy Wallstreet movement. Those same, ultraleft, ultrademocratic (i.e.: privileging individual interests over the collective, insisting on full agreement from every member or permitting continuous discussion without decision) mistakes cannot be repeated, but nor can the present narrow cliquishness.

When the organizers do not declare themselves nor make decisions open to the entire encampment, when they remain secret and unapproachable by failure to disclose the fact of their leadership, they cut off the students and workers seeking to aid them. They isolate themselves, narrow the base of knowledge, labor, and skill available to the camp, and enervate those participating who did not have a chance to join the governing clique. While these formless structures often develop to ostensibly combat hierarchy, they end up not only reinforcing hierarchical decision making, but hiding it in an invisible chain of command that is impossible to challenge, join, or combat.

The optimal organizational form for a student and workers encampment must take into account the following principles:

1. Transparency: Positions of authority — collective decision-making — must be public to the camp and known to its membership;
2. Consent: These positions must be elective;
3. Flexibility: Given the speed of events occurring, the main positions should be renewed frequently — perhaps as frequently as each morning;
4. Accountability: Those collectively entrusted with authority should deliver frequent and regular reports to the camp and submit major decisions for later ratification.

The form will thus resemble this one:

Elective Executive Committee

• Makes minute-to-minute decisions
• Reports on the status of the camp each day;
• May trigger expulsions from any committee by camp vote;
• Acts as the central coordinator;

Self-Defense Committee

• Sets watches;
• Coordinates marshals and lookouts;
• Distributes signals and informs camp inhabitants about what they mean;
• Keeps lanes and retreats clear, builds defenses;

Vigilance Committee

• Prevents police and other state agents from entering the camp, voicing their opinions during camp meetings, or voting;
• Conducts elections, guarantees the integrity of camp decisions by confirming votes etc.;

Political Development Committee

• Oversees the camp library and classes;
• Runs and develops political education;
• Strategizes and produces theory;

Health and Welfare Committee

• Oversees camp medics, water, and sanitation;
• Ensures the presence of food, medical supplies, and other necessities;
• Acts as a generalized quartermaster;

Communications and Correspondence Committee

• Handles communications to outside groups;
• Prevents outsiders from co-opting camp messaging;
• Opens lines of communication and correspondence with other camps in the same locality, as well as the most radical and progressive elements within local labor and nationally oppressed communities;

Committees must be small and agile and should not consume their days with talk. They must make decisions and then work, not spend their time embroiled in continuous debate. Once someone is heard from, they should not be heard from again on that topic unless there is good reason. Time limits must be adopted for holding the floor, and strictly adhered to. Circular discussion must be barred.

To the extent this or a similar form is not adopted, we must strive to work for the camp and toward its organization.

Do Concrete Work

When you arrive at an encampment, assuming you were not one of the people who helped plan it, you should present yourself and your group and give others an understanding of your skills with a short introduction. You might say, for instance, “Hi, we’re a local Marxist study circle and some of us have medic training. One of us is a carpenter.” Immediately follow this with the most important part of your greeting: placing yourself at the disposal of the camp. “We’re here to help. What can we do?” Even in the absence of a “traditional” (read: declared, obvious) hierarchy, this will help you gravitate toward the camp’s leadership. You may have to do this a few, or even many times. Once you have been given a task to accomplish, do it. Don’t quibble over operational questions. You must establish your commitment to the movement.

After you begin to work, others will see your commitment to the movement. When you have established yourselves firmly as an asset to the camp, you should begin to make suggestions about the organization of its decision-making structure. You must work toward democratization — a mass meeting of the entire encampment — and toward hardening and radicalizing the defense network of the encampment to protect it from police raids. Be clear: no one should aim to be arrested. You yourself must do everything you can to avoid arrest. Arrests are one of the ways movements are broken up and revolutionary organizations destroyed. In fact, some of the best work you can do is to assist in the marshal work, which is thankless and can always be more organized than it is currently.

Marshals must not only be prepared to break up internal arguments, protect the camp, build defenses, and push out counter-protestors, they must also work out schedules of who is on duty when, create patrol routes, and formulate a system of signs and signals to alert the camp to danger. They must keep a clear lane of retreat for the camp in case overwhelming force should be applied. In the best case scenario, they would ideally be outfitted with short-range walkie talkies or other communication devices outside of cellular phones.

Marxists are also particularly suited, generally, to political education work. Forming study groups, reading circles, and encampment libraries should be a specialty, as you will likely have been developing reading lists etc. with your other Marxist organizers as part of your regular work. Different from work in your study groups, if you are a political educator in an encampment you must be prepared for democracy that includes non-Marxists. You will need to educate yourself on non-Marxist texts, analyze them with non-Marxists, and make a case for Marxist readings.

Above all, your work with the camp must be democratic. Even when the encampment’s leadership is not democratic, you must work by convincing the members of the encampment of the correctness of your position vis-a-vis arrests, organizing, and escalation. You cannot insist. You must guide by example. You must remain humble. You are working among the advanced student masses, and you must help them build bridges with the advanced working classes.

Even if they refuse your every suggestion, it is a worthwhile endeavor to continue to work for the encampment and supply aid. Your rectitude is not determined by your success.

Escalation and Militancy

The entire goal is to help the encampment self-organize so it can become more and more militant and then prepare escalation tactics. That which is not coming-to-be is dying away, and we must do everything in our power to prevent the student movement from being swept from the field, as it has been each time throughout the past century. While you must avoid calling for adventurism (direct armed conflicts with the police, the arming of the encampment with guns, etc.), you must also be certain to press for ever-intensifying tactics.

Escalation must come in the form of linkage with the other progressive movements in your locality or, at the very least, must not create antagonisms with them. Before you call for escalatory action, you must be certain that the encampment is organized enough and militant enough to survive such a call. For instance, prior to forming governing committees, it would be suicidal to suggest the taking and occupation of an administration building. Likewise, prior to the successful occupation of multiple buildings and a high degree of militancy, it would be literally suicidal to suggest the arming of student-militias with firearms.

Escalation and militancy are a dialectic. You must help achieve greater militancy, then use that militancy to escalate. Militancy is primary to begin with, then escalation is primary; once escalation has been achieved, militancy will once again be primary, and a new, more heightened degree of militancy must be achieved before the next plateau and escalatory action.

Ultimately, you should push the encampment to make ties with the most radical elements in the local unions, newspapers, among the most radical local faith leaders, and among the oppressed national communities. 

May Day

May Day, the international day of labor solidarity, is the day on which this program should begin. We must unite the student movement — both with other branches of that movement and with the wider labor struggle! We implore all those Communists who are able to go forth and execute the plan to help the encampments self-organize. We implore all those at the encampments who read the Red Clarion or get their hands on this article to begin efforts starting May 1.

Since 1889, May 1 has been the international day of labor solidarity and one of the chief holidays of Communists worldwide. It commemorates the May 4, 1886 slaughter of the workers of Chicago at the Haymarket Massacre and the fight for the 8-hour work day. This year, let May Day commemorate the intensification of the protracted struggle to bring down the U.S.-Canadian capitalist empire, to reduce the corrupt governments of the West to their knees, and a day on which we advanced the struggle to give the people of Palestine breathing room with which to win an end to the occupation of their land, and the total destruction of the zionist state that stands on it.

EDITORS NOTE: This statement was released by the New School Students Occupation on 12/8/22 and is reproduced here exactly as it was released, with their permission.

In light of recent attacks by the New School administration on all school employees including faculty and students, as well as the blatant refusal to meet ACT-UAW 7902’s demands or even negotiate in good faith, the students have decided it is the time to escalate direct action. The University Center will be occupied until the administration resumes pay, full healthcare protection, and retirement benefits to all striking employees and a fair contract is reached with part-time faculty.

New York, NY: ACT-UAW 7902, composed of Part-Time Faculty at the New School, has been on strike for 23 days—this makes the strike the longest strike of adjunct faculty in the nation’s history. Part-time faculty are fighting for a fair contract that truly compensates them for their labor, their care, and their commitment to their students—which the New School administration has refused to offer. Not only has the administration prolonged this strike, showing a complete disregard for its students, staff, and faculty it claims to care for, it offered nothing of substance.

They have retaliated violently. As of yesterday, ALL striking workers at the New School have their wages withheld, no access to healthcare benefits, as well as no added funds to their retirement plans. This decision risks the lives of our faculty—many of whom are caretakers, primary insurance holders, some even pregnant or have upcoming surgeries—and this is all happening while New York City experiences a Covid-19 surge with over 40k cases as of the last two weeks. Students who work at The New School have also been notified that if they don’t cross the picket line they will be without pay as well. This applies to Federal Work Study employees—a disgusting move by the administration upon students who qualify based on financial need for the FWS grant.

The administration has also attacked Full-Time faculty who are in solidarity with PTF, notifying them that they must sign “work certification” forms that they will hold class, and if they do not or are found to have not fulfilled what they sign on the form—they risk termination. At all points, the administration of the New School is trying to break the solidarity that ALL faculty and students have fostered—but we will not let them.

This abuse of power by the administration is exemplary of a long history of the New School betraying its founding mission, radical history, and declared values. We no longer recognize the administration as representative of The New School.

The violent, manipulative, and cruel attacks from the administration upon every part of the New School community have left us with no choice but to escalate student action—We are now occupying the University Center.

We will peacefully occupy the building day and night until the administration resumes pay, full healthcare protection, and retirement benefits to all school employees and until the university reaches a fair contract with part-time faculty. We do not take occupation lightly, this is a necessary response to the administration’s violent escalations.

We students will stand in solidarity with faculty who we love and trust, and demand that they are treated and paid not only a living wage and benefits—but that they are respected. The administration would like to believe they can divide us, that we will allow them to exploit our faculty and our friends, but if anything this strike has shown us and the struggle for fair working conditions around the world, the UCs, in HarperCollins, in UCU in UK, that ‘Solidarity is Forever.’ These Administrators have nothing on us and cannot be allowed to continue operating as such. We will win.