Categories
Communiqués

PUBLIC MEETING: GOLDSMITHS FIGHTS BACK

PUBLIC MEETING: GOLDSMITHS FIGHTS BACK
The Stretch, Goldsmiths Student Union, UK
Thursday, January 20 · 6:00pm – 8:00pm

The Government’s destruction of education continues in the face of massive opposition from students. Meanwhile the management of Goldsmiths and other universities across Britain remain completely obedient to the ConDem programme and continue to ignore our demands.

Goldsmiths students and staff have already protested and occupied in opposition to the management and government’s attack on education. We intend to continue the struggle, and we are calling this meeting to bring people together to discuss the next step in the fightback at Goldsmiths.

Please come down and join us for an open discussion about the current situation. All students, academic and support staff, local anti-cuts groups, and supporters are invited to exchange ideas and work together to coordinate further action.

Everyone’s ideas and input are welcome, and we hope that this meeting will help us to both regroup and expand.

Who we are:

Goldsmiths Fights Back is formed out of those involved in recent occupations and is open to anyone who wants to resist the imposition of fees and cuts at Goldsmiths and beyond.

What unites us:

We are a group that has come together in opposition to the cuts, in education and across the public sector.

Education is a right for all!

We act in solidarity with all those affected and all groups organising in resistance against these ideologically-motivated attacks on the whole of society.

What we aim to do:

Take action to oppose and resist the Government that is orchestrating these cuts, and the institutions that are attempting to impose them.

Raise engagement with the issue of the cuts and their impacts, amongst Goldsmiths students and the wider community.

Build a network with other university occupations, schools and sixth forms, workers and communities.

Imagine and demonstrate a new educational paradigm, and a society that is equitable, just and creative.

Venue details: The Stretch, Student Union, Goldsmiths College, 8 Lewisham Way, London SE14 6NW.

For more information contact: info@goldsmithsfightsback.org.uk

Categories
Communiqués

Brown Cuts UC Budget by 500 Million

From Jerry Brown’s Website:

Governor Jerry Brown will release a balanced state budget today that slashes spending by $12.5 billion, including an eight to 10 percent cut in take-home pay for most state employees, and proposes a “vast and historic” restructuring of government operations…

Major spending reductions include $1.7 billion to Medi-Cal, $1.5 billion to California’s welfare-to-work program (CalWORKs), $750 million to the Department of Developmental Services, $500 million to the University of California, $500 million to California State University, and $308 million for a 10 percent reduction in take-home pay for state employees not currently covered under collective bargaining agreements. Brown also plans to trim state government operations by $200 million through a variety of actions, including reorganizations, consolidations and other efficiencies.

Categories
Communiqués

Spring 2011 Statement: Lines of Demarcation

At reclaimuc.blogspot.com:

From Lines of Demarcation [PDF here]:

Many of us are looking back right now at the sets of actions that trace student/worker/faculty opposition to the programmatic final neoliberalizing of the university. We have engaged in various actions over the course of the last two years, some of which we have seen the immediate effects of and some whose effects we have not been able to see or anticipate. Those actions in the second group are the source of much anxiety; we wonder if they have been a waste since they appear not to have advanced anything. We should remember that actions have a dispersed life and bear on our moment in many ways. One way that we can understand this is by the effects that we can see in the actions of our enemies. The administration is shaken. This is evident by the unprecedented police presence on our campuses after the Regents’ meeting. They are trying to forcibly enter our meetings, scare us with heavy handed legal consequences. Collectively, we are students, faculty, student-workers, and service workers, we are the classes that make the university, we provide the labor that it uses as capital and cache in its attempt to sell the university as a commodity. They hold us in precarious positions and divide us from one another through bureaucratic distinctions like job titles and degree designations. They pit us against each other, making us think that we have to fight each other for resources. This is a lie. They know that we produce, collectively, the product that they sell and profit from. They keep our wages down and our ability to determine the university by keeping us from aligning with one another. We have learned in the history of our actions that we are already aligned. When we act together, as we have, they cannot stop us. The problem emerges when we are again divided by our fear: fear of sanctions, fear of violence, fear of future retribution. We must not let this be the case. We must remain in solidarity.

It may be easy to feel depressed about the lack of apparent wins, but our actions have had consequences. Now is the time to push those consequences to the conclusions that we want. Let’s not let the round of repression from the university, the police, and their allies keep us from reconfiguring the spaces that we live and work in. We are angry at the wave of arrests, home ‘visits’, police standing guard on our campuses, sending students to jail, and charging them with ‘serious’ crimes.

The convention of looking backward as one begins something new only reveals what is normally concealed; the past can only exist in the present. We look to the past to get a sense of what to do in the present, but the present is opaque to us too. The present is the name that we give to what has just happened. To be concerned with the present in this way is to think ideologically about what is possible. We can and must thinkwith the conjuncture, not about it. The present that we occupy is under construction at every moment in the sense that we produce the narratives of our actions that give them meaning. We live here. We live now. We act in the relations that we live in if we do this, we move against ideological separation and we move in solidarity. This is to say: they are afraid; if we were not threatening, they would not push back with this force; however, their fear alone isn’t a win and it doesn’t mean that they can’t hurt us. Let’s push the situation further. We should begin to disrupt every aspect of business as usual. Engage in every tactic that brings the university to a halt. Solidarity means that we act in concert but not in unification. We should have one demand: the control of the place that we both produce and are produced by. We must do everything we can to disrupt every process that forces us to produce our own debt and hold us accountable for it. Shut down the processes that are mobilized to keep students and workers from controlling the university. Let’s realize the relations that capital tries to conceal from us. Categories of hierarchy (graduate students, lecturers, adjuncts, undergraduates, faculty, staff, service workers) though material, conceal the ways in which we are all precariously situated in the institution that we make.

WE WANT EVERYTHING * WE WILL NOT COMPROMISE WITH ADMINISTRATORS OR POLICE * DISRUPT * OCCUPY * STRIKE * TAKE OVER * SHUT DOWN * BARRICADE EVERYTHING // OCCUPY EVERYTHING




Categories
Communiqués

RED. in the red. speculative lending, student debt and stellar bond ratings in the UC

http://www.sfbg.com/2011/01/11/red?page=0%2C0

robert meister : http://keepcaliforniaspromise.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/UC-on-Wall-Street-summary.pdf

bob samuels: http://berkeleycuts.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Links-for-Budget-Crisis-Informational-Flyer.pdf

When the University of California Board of Regents met Nov. 17, 2010 to approve an 8 percent tuition hike, roughly 300 UC students who were furious about the decision converged outside the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) campus at Mission Bay to rally in opposition, some traveling from as far away as Los Angeles.

“We had been organizing with all the campuses to get students to come up because we really wanted to be there to let them know that it’s not what we want, and it’s something they can’t just get away with doing year after year,” said UC Student Association President Claudia Magana. The protests were raucous, and police cracked down by discharging pepper spray and making 13 arrests.

Despite the palpable fury outside and impassioned student opposition delivered to the Regents inside, the 8 percent fee increase was approved. It came on the heels of a 32 percent tuition increase imposed the year before, and the price was ratcheted up by 9 percent and 7 percent in the years prior to that.

The tuition hikes were steep, but hardly new. Indeed, the cost of attending UC schools has been rising steadily for quite a while. According to a study by economist Peter Donohue, student tuition and fees increased 277 percent from 1990-91 to 2008-09, and that was prior to the 40 percent increase that followed. That trend is repeated in rising costs at the California State University and California Community College systems (See “Access Denied,” April 6, 2010).

Student protesters have sought to make it clear that their outrage isn’t rooted in selfish unwillingness to shell out more money, but instead is linked to a broader concern about privatization and the increasingly limited accessibility of public education.

Magana expressed concern that the climbing cost of instruction at UC, though still a relative bargain compared with private institutions, would ultimately start to affect who could and couldn’t attain higher education through the public university system. The question isn’t limited to UC — tuition is increasing at public and private colleges across the board, and as income inequality sharpens, more students seek higher education.

“Students will always pay to be here,” she noted. “The issue is going to be, which students are here? That’s really the big problem — the huge class issue that’s going to come up. Although there are some forms of support for low-income students, it’s not easy.”


DEEPER IN DEBT

Rising costs at UC mirror the upward trend at private nonprofit and for-profit postsecondary institutions nationwide, and those higher prices have triggered a dramatic increase in student borrowing. While students from low- or medium-income families can access higher education at any institution they’re admitted to as long as they’re willing to take out significant sums in student loans, many find themselves at a serious disadvantage once they have to start repaying their debt.

A study conducted by the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) noted that hefty debt burdens often dissuade graduates from pursuing careers in teaching, social work, the nonprofit sector, or other low-paying occupations that foster social justice. PIRG found that 23 percent of public four-year college grads and 38 percent of private four-year college grads were saddled with too much debt to manage paying back student loans on a starting teacher’s salary.

For students pursuing careers as social workers, the economic bind looked even worse: 37 percent of public school grads and 55 percent of private school grads with student loans wouldn’t be able to manage repayment with starting salaries in that field, the study concluded.

“Because students with lower incomes are more dependent on student loans than higher income students, students who already face significant challenges to attending college will more strongly feel the effect of loan debt on career choice,” the report points out.

“It’s a serious problem for so many young people to be starting out their working life so deep in debt,” said Edie Irons, spokesperson for The Institute on College Access and Success (TICAS), an Oakland-based research organization. “It really does limit people’s ability to take advantage of the opportunities education is supposed to provide. In concrete terms, it can make it really hard to buy a house, or start a business, or start a family, or go back to grad school, or to save for retirement or your own children’s education. And that’s all assuming you can keep up with the payments.”

Student loan debt has intensified over the past two decades. In 1993, just one third of all four-year college students graduated with debt, owing on average slightly more than $9,000, according to PIRG.

Today, the majority of college students take out loans to finance their education. Around 62 percent of public university students graduate with student loans, as do 72 percent of students attending private nonprofit institutions, and 96 percent of students attending for-profit institutions such as the University of Phoenix or the Academy of Art University, according to TICAS. Nationally, students graduate owing an average of $24,000, not counting debt associated with advanced degrees.

While young people must invest more than ever before to obtain higher education, the return on investment isn’t showing signs of improvement. The expected median income for UC graduates has stayed the same over the last decade, even as the cost of tuition has ballooned.

What’s more, says Bob Meister, president of the Council of UC Faculty Associations and professor of Political and Social Thought at UC Santa Cruz, is that an estimated 40 percent of public university students entering the workforce will either be unable to find a job, or will land in a lower-paying job that doesn’t require a college degree.

“For college graduates under 25, the unemployment rate is nearly as high as the national unemployment rate,” around 10 percent, Meister notes. “Over the past decade, what’s happened is that the median hasn’t risen. The top has risen very fast, and the bottom has fallen.”


IN A DIFFERENT CLASS

There’s no doubt that diminished state funding is affecting California’s public universities.

“A lot of departments are being eliminated, and a lot of professors who are really amazing are leaving to other universities,” Magana says. “And the waiting lists for classes are just ridiculous.” Academic goals are being compromised — for example, students had to abandon their push for an ethnic studies program at UCSC, she added, because the American studies department that would have partially supported it was slashed.

While diminished public funding has been used to explain the need to raise tuition, Meister has published numerous essays suggesting that the root cause of rising tuition costs at UC goes deeper than that, and he has gone so far as to publicly encourage students not to accept higher tuition without first demanding financial information.

Meister previously served on the UC budget committee and has observed the institution’s evolving financial policies for years. He doesn’t seem surprised that tuition is going up, regardless of what condition the economy is in or what amount of public funding is available because, as he puts it, “the universities will cost as much as they can.” UC had long sought to boost revenue by raising tuition, he noted, yet its leaders feared a rollback in state funding in response. But that changed under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who agreed to increase state support only on condition of that UC in turn require students to contribute more.

Around the same time that Schwarzenegger provided this new incentive to raise tuition, UC pooled its various revenue streams into a consolidated general revenue fund, Meister said, a departure from the old way of keeping separate accounts. This new fund, which included all non-state revenue and funding that wasn’t legally required to be used for certain purposes, could be pledged entirely as collateral for bonds for new construction projects, greatly increasing the institution’s borrowing power and boosting its revenue with the addition of new facilities.

To maintain its stellar bond rating, UC had to ensure an increase in revenues, according to Meister’s explanation, and to do that, UC ratcheted up the one source of revenue it had full control over: tuition. Meister laid bare this financial play in a 2009 open letter to students, titled “They Pledged Your Tuition.” Since it was published, a small corps of student activists has become deeply engaged in studying campus finance documents and airing criticism of financial policies.

Just before the Nov. 17 protests at UCSF Mission Bay, Meister published another open letter, this one addressed to UC President Mark Yudof. This one contemplated, “Why they think they can increase revenues regardless of how fast the economy grows … and regardless of whether the income of graduates is stagnant.”

His answer is somewhat surprising: “Their ability to raise tuition is a function of the growth of income inequality,” he told the Guardian. In the letter, Meister charges, “In the 21st century, when almost all income growth has been in the top 1 to 2 percent of California’s population, UC is still marketing income inequality to students as its most important product. It now expects all students to pay more for an ever-shrinking chance of reaping the ever-growing rewards that our economy makes available to the few. Your plan to increase revenue through tuition growth is feasible, of course, only because the federal government still allows students to borrow more for education despite the greater likelihood that they will not be able to repay — student loans may be the last form of subprime credit available in our economy.” Meister Report: http://keepcaliforniaspromise.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/UC-on-Wall-Street-summary.pdf

His theory highlights a paradox. “Being in the have-not category is increasingly worse,” he explains, “and so they are willing to take on more debt, which actually dampens their prospects for income growth.”

The question now is what will happen under Gov. Jerry Brown, who is likely to take a different stance toward rising tuition than Schwarzenegger but nonetheless is expected to unveil harsh cuts to education as a way to address a $26 billion budget deficit.

In a recent interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, UC Regent Richard Blum indicated that it probably would not be feasible to raise tuition again, so the message was that students should brace for more cuts to education.

Categories
Communiqués

OCCUPY EVERYTHING: tunisia timeline

Unable to find a job after university, Muhammad Bouazizi, moved to a big city and sold vegetables on the streets. But police confiscated his unlicensed cart, and slapped and insulted him. The 26-year-old returned to his home town, Sidi Bouzid, and on 17 December stood in its main square, doused himself in petrol and set himself on fire. He died of his injuries on 4 January.

1736: Two sources close to the government confirm to the AFP news agency that President Ben Ali has left Tunisia.

1735: Air France has temporarily suspended all flights to Tunis due to the state of emergency and the closure of air space.

1733: Sources tell al-Jazeera TV that President Ben Ali has left the country and that the army is in control.

1732: Saudi-based al-Arabiya TV reports that Tunisian Parliamentary Speaker Fouad Mbazaa will announce shortly that he is taking over control of the country from the president.

1724: Sources tell al-Jazeera TV that the Tunisian security forces have arrested members of Trabelsi family at an airport. Many of the protesters have expressed their anger at the power, wealth and influence of the extended family of President Ben Ali’s second wife, Leila Trabelsi. “No, no to the Trabelsis who looted the budget,” has been a popular slogan. Many refer to the president’s relations simply as “The Family” or “The Mafia”, according to the New York Times.

1719: Mahmoud Ben Romdhane of the opposition Renewal Movement tells BBC World News: “At this moment, according to the latest information that I have, the president it no longer in power and a coup has happened. If this information is true, the answer is clear. He will no longer have the power to decide to accept or refuse [the demands for him to step down].”

1705: State television says a major announcement to the Tunisian people is to be made soon, according to the Reuters news agency.

1654: The Tunisian authorities have released Hamma Hammami, the leader of the banned Tunisian Workers’ Communist Party (POCT), three days after arresting him, his party tells the AFP news agency.

1646: A source at Tunis Carthage airport tells the AFP news agency that the army has taken control there and that the country’s airspace has been shut down.

1628: BBC Monitoring reports that emotions ran high in one debate on Tunisian TV7, in which one of the pundits screamed: “People are being shot dead with live ammunition. How can you praise the president?” He then turned to the camera and said: “Ben Ali, as you know him, is dead.” The debate was immediately cut short. Shortly after, a TV technician sat in the studio, next to the newsreader, and went on apologise to the public and condemn his own channel’s coverage of events, saying they were government employees and they were doing what they had been asked to do.

1626: The full announcement by state television was as follows: “The president has given orders to Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi to create a new government. Following acts of violence, it has been decided to introduce a state of emergency in the country to protect Tunisian citizens. This state of emergency means that any gathering of more than three people is forbidden, that arms will be used by security forces in cases where a suspect does not stop when asked to do so by the police and thirdly, a curfew [is imposed] from 1700 this evening until 0700 in the morning for an indefinite period.”

1617: The government has also warned that “arms will be used” if the orders of the security forces are not obeyed.

1615: Under the terms of the state of emergency, the government has banned any meetings outside of more than three people, according to state television. There will also be a nationwide curfew from 1700 (1600 GMT) until 0700 (0600 GMT).

1604: A state of emergency has been declared “to protect the Tunisian people and their properties on all the soil of the Tunisian Republic”, Tunisian TV7 reports. The government has declared a state of emergency and banned public meetings

1551: UN human rights spokesman Rupert Colville says it is ready to help investigate the reports that more than 60 protesters have been shot dead by the security forces in the past week. “We’ve made it clear we believe there needs to be investigations. A large number of people have been killed and there are very serious allegations of the manner of these killings,” he tells reporters in Geneva.

1544: There have been violent clashes between protesters and the police in the centre of Tunis, according to the AFP news agency.

1523: Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi says he has been tasked with forming a new administration.

1521: President Ben Ali has dismissed the government and called legislative elections within six months, state television reports.

1518: The government has put the death toll at 23, but the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights said on Thursday that it had the names of 66 people killed.

1513: Asked about last night’s reported fatalities, a medical source tells AFP: “The bodies of three people struck with bullets were taken to the hospital at Kram, close to Tunis, and 10 others have been brought to Charles Nicolle hospital in Tunis.”

1502: Asked about last night’s reported fatalities, a medical source tells AFP: “The bodies of three people struck with bullets were taken to the hospital at Kram, close to Tunis, and 10 others have been brought to Charles Nicolle hospital in Tunis.”

1454: Thirteen civilians were shot dead by the security forces in Tunis and its suburbs in clashes on Thursday, medical sources tell the AFP news agency. Reuters meanwhile says 12 died – 10 in the capital and two in the coastal town of Ras Jebel. Tunisian officials have not yet commented. It is not clear if the deaths came after President Ben Ali ordered police to stop using lethal force against demonstrators.

1447: Dubai-based al-Arabiya TV says protesters are trying to “storm” the Central Bank in Tunis. The bank is on Avenue Mohamed V, to the north of the interior ministry.

1435: Emen Binmluka, a 21-year-old protester, tells Reuters: “A bus came with police in it and they started firing tear gas. Women, children and everyone fled.”

1426: Protesters have been sent fleeing down Bourguiba Avenue by the volleys of tear gas fired by riot police outside the interior ministry. The Reuters news agency say a crowd of youths threw stones at police after they fired volleys of tear gas

1426: Protesters have been sent fleeing down Bourguiba Avenue by the volleys of tear gas fired by riot police outside the interior ministry. The Reuters news agency say a crowd of youths have begun retaliating by throwing stones.

1408: Tunisia’s ambassador to the UN’s cultural organisation, Unesco, has resigned in protest at the government’s handling of the unrest, according to a letter seen by the AFP news agency. Mezri Haddad told the president that he had asked him to “stop the bloodbath by disarming the police”. “I told you that the protesters are not against you but against the oligarchy to which you have fallen hostage and which has plundered the country’s riches without cease,” he added.

1402: A reporter for the Reuters news agency says gunshots have been heard near the interior ministry building. President Ben Ali said on Thursday that live ammunition would not be fired at protesters.

1355: Tear-gas canisters have been fired by the security forces at protesters outside the interior ministry, forcing many to flee. The Associated Press reports that the move came after people climbed on top of the ministry’s roof. The demonstrator sare surrounded by dozens of police and soldiers.

1334: Jalloul Azzouna, the secretary-general of the League of Writers, a non-official body, tells reporters at the Tunis protest that it is demanding “a general amnesty and the release of hundreds of political prisoners whose existence is denied by the regime”.

1321: It was the death of a young unemployed graduate which triggered the protests. Unable to find a job after university, Muhammad Bouazizi, moved to a big city and sold vegetables on the streets. But police confiscated his unlicensed cart, and slapped and insulted him. The 26-year-old returned to his home town, Sidi Bouzid, and on 17 December stood in its main square, doused himself in petrol and set himself on fire. He died of his injuries on 4 January.

1313: Demonstrations are also being held in other towns, including Sidi Bouzid, where the unrest began a month ago over unemployment and food prices. People there are demanding the president resign. “We have come out in our thousands to say: ‘Ben Ali, go away!'” trade union activist Sliman Rouissi tells the Reuters news agency.

1309: Radia Nasraoui, a lawyer at the protest in central Tunis, tells the Reuters news agency: “We want Ben Ali to go. All we’ve known since he’s been in power has been misery, prisons, torture, repression and unfair trials. I’m a lawyer. I’ve been assaulted. I see traces of torture every time I meet people in Tunisian prisons. There are only unfair trials. People are sentenced to dozens of years for political opinions. People have died under torture in the interior ministry.” Her husband, Workers’ Communist Party leader Hamma Hammami, was arrested on Wednesday and has not been heard of since.

1303: The BBC’s Aidan Lewis says a new generation of activists has been credited with driving the Tunisian protest movement forward by using the internet. This has happened despite increasingly strict controls by a government that, even before the demonstrations, was regarded as unusually zealous in its online censorship. A steady flow of protest videos, tweets, and political manifestos has continued to make its way onto the web in a variety of languages: Arabic, the Darija Tunisian dialect, French and English.

1256: Tunisian medical officials tell the Associated Press that 13 people have died in new unrest in the country.

1137: The AFP news agency reports that demonstrations are also taking place in other towns across the country.

1119: The march was organised by Tunisia’s only legal trade union, which also called a symbolic two-hour strike in the capital on Friday.

1113: A Reuters news agency reporter says the protesters are chanting “Ben Ali, leave!” and “Ben Ali, thank you but that’s enough!”

1108: The BBC’s Adam Mynott in Tunis says: I have been told there are 6,000 or 7,000 people here. The rally is surrounded by dozens of police and soldiers, but crucially they have not so far intervened as they have in recent weeks.

1106: After President Ben Ali announced on Thursday night that he would not seek an extension to his term of office and other measures to appease protesters some people celebrated on the streets of Tunis. It is not clear if this was a spontaneous act or a celebration arranged by the followers of the president. However, correspondents say his promise to stop the security forces firing live ammunition at protesters, to cut the price of basic foodstuffs and free up the media in Tunisia do go some way to meet the concerns of protesters.

1101: In a nationwide address on Thursday, the president said he would not stand for re-election in 2014 and announced cuts in the prices of basic foods. Foreign Minister Kamel Morjane has since spoken of a national unity government being possible – as well as early parliamentary elections. The protests erupted a month ago over economic problems and the lack of basic freedoms.

1100: There have been renewed protests against the government in Tunisia. Thousands of people joined a march in the capital, Tunis, demanding that President Ben Ali resign immediately. The protesters went to the interior ministry, which is blamed for the deaths of at least 23 people in recent demonstrations. Human rights groups say the number killed is more than twice that official figure.