News for Educational Workers

Occupy Education

After most of Occupy Wall Street’s physical outdoor sites were closed down by police violence, Occupy moved to many other areas of political protest sites such as home mortgage closings, health care providers, and educational institutions.

In November of 2011, the Board of Trustees of The City University of New York (CUNY) raised tuition $300 per year for the next five years, thus taking it from $4,500 to $6,000. This is a drastic increase considering that half of CUNY students come from families making under $30,000 a year. In response, over 1,000 students from throughout CUNY’s 18 campuses gathered in protest at the downtown Manhattan Baruch campus, where the Board of Trustees was meeting (http://www.truth-out.org/print/9945, December 4, 2011). Students and faculty were arrested for trying to attend this open trustees’ meeting. CUNY’s decision to use force in the form of batons and arrests was sharply criticized (The Clarion, December 2011) and Baruch’s college president later admitted that he regretted such use of force against students and faculty.

On February 12, 2012 on Chicago’s Upper West Side, parents of students from the Brian Piccolo Specialty School occupied the school through a sit-in in an attempt to prevent the school from a “turn around” which would fire the entire staff, replace it with new teachers, and turn the new management over to a charter school system. Occupy Chicago notes that Brian Piccolo is one of ten Chicago schools facing the possibility of such an overhaul (www.care2.com, Febrary 21, 2012).

Occupy the Department of Education, an event which took place on February 9, 2012 protesting the closing of 23 New York City schools, had many activists from Occupy Wall Street because in the NYC General Assembly, many early organizers were teachers or students or parents already involved in grassroots education movements (www.truth-out.org/print/12815, February 22, 2012).

Occupy Student Debt

Student loan debt is approaching $1 trillion dollars, an amount higher than Americans owe on their credit cards. In response, a group of occupiers launched the Occupy Student Debt Campaign just before Thanksgiving of 2011 with the single goal of getting one million people to pledge their refusal to pay their student-loan debt (Dollars & Sense, January/February 2012). Of this $1 trillion in student loan debt, $36 billion of it is owed by people over 60, coming from either unpaid loans right after college, loans for mid-career educations, or co-signed loans for younger family members (Common Dreams, April 3, 2012). The January/February issue of Academe focuses on student loan debt.

Libraries

The first incarnation of The People’s Library at Zuccotti Park was a collection of over 5,000 donated books on every subject and in every genre, free to both Occupy participants and anyone from New York or the world who stopped by Zuccotti to browse through, read, or donate a book. Most of that collection was destroyed in the early morning of November 15, 2011 when, under the orders of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the New York Police Department tore down the library site and threw the collection of books into dumpsters. By 6:00 A.M. that same morning, 200 new book donations were received, but by 7:30 the next evening, another police raid threw this second People’s Library into the trash. Now, the Occupy Wall Street librarians have reorganized into three mobile units which can go anywhere (The Nation, December 12, 2011; reprinted in The Clarion, December 2011).

In “‘There’s a Ripple Effect’: A Chicago Librarian Speaks Out About Cutbacks,” an anonymous (because he is not authorized to speak to reporters) 67 year old librarian explains in this interview the important role Chicago libraries play and how library workers and residents have been affected by the more than 100 layoffs and cuts in service hours. He is asked how the layoffs and cuts affect librarians who are still working (demoralized); the role of libraries in low-income communities (provides books and resources people can no longer afford); how libraries create a refuge for...