students

Alfie Meadows and Zak King found not guilty - two years, three months, and three trials later

Submitted by Ramona on Mar 8 2013 17:13

Alfie Meadows after the "not guilty" verdict

After years of uncertainty and two mistrials, Alfie Meadows and Zak King have been found unanimously not guilty of violent disorder on a demonstration against tuition fees and cuts to education of December 9, 2010. Alfie was beaten so badly by police on that day he needed three hours of emergency surgery after he developed bleeding on the brain.

The following is a press statement from Defend the Right to Protest, who have tirelessly supported Zak, Alfie and other victims of police violence and harassment.

“The struggle for justice for my son has finally begun” (Susan Matthews, mother of Alfie Meadows).

Free standing column

“FREE STANDING COLUMN” - This A5, double-sided photocopy from the student protest on November 30th 2010 was the first thing produced by the group that was later to become Deterritorial Support Group. Some of the strands of ultra-left rhetoric are clear but it has a much more tabloid tone. The drop-shadows remained. The term “Wolf-Eyed replicant” to describe Nick Clegg may have been coined by China Mieville.

Could students in the US pull off a strike like in Montreal? An interview with Marianne Garneau

Against a kind of activist-y, spectacular politics, Marianne Garneau argues that US students and workers can learn from the Quebec model how to organize our power as a class. Quebec students have kept their tuition low because they’ve historically had a vibrant, militant student movement, one that is willing to strike and directly disrupt, and not wait for the leadership of the business unions. The organizing model is to create directly democratic bodies—department-by-department assemblies—that know how to leverage our power to fuck up the business of the people who are screwing us over, whether they’re our educators or our employers.

CW: Could you say a little about how you became involved in radical organizing, particularly around universities?

The university is a racket

Submitted by Soapy on Dec 30 2012 01:44

Discussing conflicts of interest on my school's Board of Trustees and some forms that all non-profit institutions are required to keep on their premises and that you can request!

About two months ago, a professor at my university gave a talk sponsored by the student union entitled, “The University as a Racket.” The talk dealt with major conflicts of interest going on inside the upper echelons of university decision-making. At our school, the Board of Trustees (BOT) makes all major decisions. The BOT is primarily made up of financial executives.

Turkish state in unprovoked brutality against students

Submitted by working class s... on Dec 25 2012 01:12

1,000 students have clashed with the police at the METU University in Ankara, Turkey. The students were protesting the visit of the Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan – who has been pushing an agenda of privatisation across higher education in Turkey for the last couple of years.

The demonstration started at 15.50 and was peaceful. At 16.15, without warning or provocation, over 3,000 police officers attacked the protesters, using rubber bullets, irritant gas, and water cannons. Scores of students are reported to have been injured, with at least one on a life support machine in hospital after suffering a brain hemorrhage after being hit by a tear gas canister.

FIOM strike and student demonstrations

Submitted by StrugglesInItaly on Dec 15 2012 14:57

The union FIOM (the metalworkers’ federation) held a general strike on December 5 and 6 to protest against both the agreement’s merit and the fact of having a separate agreement signed by the sector’s right-wing unions excluding FIOM, the sector’s most representative union.

The union FIOM (the metalworkers’ federation affiated to CGIL) held an eight-hour general strike on December 5 (in Lombardy, Marche and Tuscany) and on December 6 (in all other regions of Italy) to protest against the separate agreement signed by the sector’s right-wing unions, FIM and UILM.

1968 - Interview with Ian Bone

Originally published in May 2008.

How old were you in ’68 and what were you doing at the time?

I was 21 and a student at Swansea university. I was in the Swansea Anarchist group – all students – and we occupied the university building in solidarity with the French students and hoisted the red and black flag. We were very serious whereas in 1967 we were very frivolous.

The history of the Quebec student movement and combative unionism

Submitted by wojtek on Dec 8 2012 23:39

An article by Jerome Raza on the history of student syndicalism in Quebec and the conditions which gave rise to Classé.

[b]In September 2012, shortly after the end of the largest unlimited general student strike in the history of Quebec, several class-struggle anarchist organisations in Canada along with a few local chapters of the IWW put together a cross-country tour to bring the history and experiences of the Quebec student movement to students and activists outside the province.

Housing speculation, student debt, fees and dispossession; a 21st century love story - Communique concerning UCL Stratford

An article from the website of The Imaginary Party exposing the relationships between tuition fees, rents, student debt, university funding, and private equity funds, in the context of UCL's £1bn plans to dispossess the 300 residents of the Carpenters Estate in Stratford in order to build "profitable" student housing units.

There are several questions we have all been asking over these last few years. Where will we live? How will we be able to afford such expensive rent in London? How will we find jobs that pay enough to enjoy ourselves and live in comfort? When will we pay back our student debt? How?