Press Release From Students at NYU

About a dozen NYU students who stayed until the end of the protest were suspended indefinitely and banned from all NYU buildings and facilities — including residence halls. This number includes the five student negotiators who were told that they were going to have a negotiating session with the NYU administration, willingly crossed the barriers, and then were abducted by NYU guards and told that they were suspended and not allowed back into the protest. We’re told that they will have hearings next week, please follow the updates on takebacknyu.com for follow-up action.

NYU’s Lynne Brown, Senior Vice President for University Relations and Public Affairs, sent out an e-mail to all NYU students today trying to undermine our efforts and cast us as violent criminals. Please call her out on her shameful lies, e-mail her directly at .

As stated on takebacknyu.com, please e-mail the Housing Dept. at and urge those administrators to refrain from denying students involved in the occupation on-campus housing. This repercussion is one discordant with the peaceful protesting of these students.

Finally, please e-mail, phone, fax and otherwise harass the following list of administrators on our behalf!

John Sexton
john.sexton@nyu.edu,
Telephone: 212.998.6840
Fax: 212.995.4021

John Beckman, NYU Spokesman
(212) 998-6848
jhb5@nyu.edu

Office of the Provost
Tel: (212) 998-2415
Fax: (212) 995-3190
Email: provost@nyu.edu

Office of the Vice President
evp@nyu.edu
212-998-4090

Solidarity forever!

NYU Live Feed!!!!

LIVE FEED OF KIMMEL NYU

NYU IS OCCUPIED!!!

Students take NYU

****FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE******

NYU BUILDING TAKEOVER!!!

At approximately 10pm tonight (Feb. 18), students of Take Back NYU! took over the Kimmel Marketplace. They have blockaded the doors and declared an occupation! They presented their demands to the NYU administration. They read as follows:

DEMANDS

We, the students of NYU, declare an occupation of this space. This occupation is the culmination of a two-year campaign by the Take Back NYU! coalition, and of campaigns from years past, in whose footsteps we follow.

In order to create a more accountable, democratic and socially responsible university, we demand the following:

1.    Full legal and disciplinary amnesty for all parties involved in the occupation.

2.    Full compensation for all employees whose jobs were disrupted during the course of the occupation.

3.    Public release of NYU’s annual operating budget, including a full list of university expenditures, salaries for all employees compensated on a semester or annual basis, funds allocated for staff wages, contracts to non-university organizations for university construction and services, financial aid data for each college, and money allocated to each college, department, and administrative unit of the university. Furthermore, this should include a full disclosure of the amount and sources of the university’s funding.

4.    Disclosure of NYU’s endowment holdings, investment strategy, projected endowment growth, and persons, corporations and firms involved in the investment of the university’s endowment funds. Additionally, we demand an endowment oversight body of students, faculty and staff who exercise shareholder proxy voting power for the university’s investments.

5.    That the NYU Administration agrees to resume negotiations with GSOC/UAW Local 2110 – the union for NYU graduate assistants, teaching assistants, and research assistants. That NYU publically affirm its commitment to respect all its workers, including student employees, by recognizing their right to form unions and to bargain collectively. That NYU publically affirm that it will recognize workers’ unions through majority card verification.

6.    That NYU signs a contract guaranteeing fair labor practices for all NYU employees at home and abroad. This contract will extend to subcontracted workers, including bus drivers, food service employees and anyone involved in the construction, operation and maintenance at any of NYU’s non-U.S. sites.

7.    The establishment of a student elected Socially Responsible Finance Committee. This Committee will have full power to vote on proxies, draft shareholder resolutions, screen all university investments, establish new programs that encourage social and environmental responsibility and override all financial decisions the committee deems socially irresponsible, including investment decisions. The committee will be composed of two subcommittees: one to assess the operating budget and one to assess the endowment holdings. Each committee will be composed of ten students democratically elected from the graduate and under-graduate student bodies. All committee decisions will be made a strict majority vote, and will be upheld by the university. All members of the Socially Responsible Finance Committee will sit on the board of trustees, and will have equal voting rights. All Socially Responsible Finance Committee and Trustee meetings shall be open to the public, and their minutes made accessible electronically through NYU’s website. Elections will be held the second Tuesday of every March beginning March 10th 2009, and meetings will be held biweekly beginning the week of March 30th 2009.

8.    That the first two orders of business of the Socially Responsible Finance committee will be:
a) An in depth investigation of all investments in war and genocide profiteers, as well as companies profiting from the occupation of Palestinian territories.
b) A reassessment of the recently lifted of the ban on Coca Cola products.

9.    That annual scholarships be provided for thirteen Palestinian students, starting with the 2009/2010 academic year. These scholarships will include funding for books, housing, meals and travel expenses.

10.    That the university donate all excess supplies and materials in an effort to rebuild the University of Gaza.

11.    Tuition stabilization for all students, beginning with the class of 2012. All students will pay their initial tuition rate throughout the course of their education at New York University.  Tuition rates for each successive year will not exceed the rate of inflation, nor shall they exceed one percent. The university shall meet 100% of government-calculated student financial need.

12.    That student groups have priority when reserving space in the buildings owned or leased by New York University, including, and especially, the Kimmel Center.

13.    That the general public have access to Bobst Library.

Along with this, students have issued a

SOLIDARITY STATEMENT

We, the students of Take Back NYU! declare our solidarity with the student [sleepovers] in Greece,
Italy, and the United Kingdom, as well as those of the University of
Rochester, the New School for Social Research, and with future
[sleepovers] to come in the name of democracy and student power. We stand
in solidarity with the University of Gaza, and with the people of
Palestine.

####

Who Still Has ‘Cold War Mentality’?

Rice ups the ante for Russians

As the Russian military slowly pulls out from deep in the interior of Georgia to areas protecting the small breakaway republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, they have faced criticism all along of their “Soviet” mentality and Cold War one ups-manship. These criticisms hailed from the White House and most NATO allies.

Today, Condoleezza Rice signs a deal with Polish President Lech Kaczynski to install a Missile Defense shield in Poland. I wonder if the impetus to do so is still the reported possibility of Iranian long range missile attacks? Let’s get real, who really still has cold war mentality?

What about the Maobadi?

[This is a repost for something which I put up on the social networking site Facebook. It was basically a frustrating letter and note to friends within mostly the New York Student Activist scene to begin looking toward Nepal and whats happening there. I repost this up because Mike Ely has posted a brilliant essay, entitled Eyes on the Maobadi: 4 Reasons Nepal's Revolution Matters, which we will post on this site June 10th, 2008]                              

 

I tend to sit at my computer, googling for the news and updates about what is happening in Nepal over the current political struggle between Maoists, their growing coalition, and the other parliamentary parties who are set to try to win as much as possible if not sabotage the process of creating a coalition government under the leadership of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), a Party who won a great plurality of the historical elections, which surprised the international community. It has been over ten years of People’s War, which saw around 10,000 people lose their lives, over two years of political struggle since which saw the fascist feudal King Gyendera fall from power and beginning of desolution of the Monarchy. There is a real struggle for the path and future of over 25 million people in Nepal, and yet my Google news search results only get the international news from the Hindi Times or Kantipur Online. Unbelievable.

How is it we in this country here nothing of what is happening? How is it there is almost an unspoken silence of the struggles of South Asia? Of course there is a failure here of the media to report, no questioning, we hear nothing of the truth in the struggles of the people in Latin America, in Palestine, etc. We know this as just the Chomksyian unspoken rule of the media, it is general knowledge. This is not what makes me flinch, its the fact that the Left is unquestionably silent on it. We still get more reports on Chipas (a struggle, that for all honesty, has stagnated and is losing its base.), on Tibet and all its Oriental mystique attached, and even on the need to defend China (Party for Socialism and Liberation is promoting a book on the need to defend tarnished “socialism” in China.). There are a few notable exceptions like Revolution in South Asia blog and Learn from Nepal project.

I am astounded of why this is, whats with the silence? First it has to be laid on the feet of the fraternal party of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) for creating an atmosphere of ignorance of whats happening in Nepal, that fraternal Party being the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. It is an absolute shame that you can’t even pick up The Worker #11 [11th issue of the theoretical journal of the Nepali Maobadi] at the nearest Revolution Books near you. It also goes without saying that the very tactics and methodology of the RCP is motive enough for many to be turned off from the Maobadi in Nepal, the Naxalites in India, armed struggle in the Philippines. But it also on the heads of the general Left, for all those who speak of politics of liberation and aren’t acknowledging the most thorough-going and radical Revolutionary Movement in more than two decades.

If you want to get a grasp of the emerging world economy, how can we ignore South Asia? Nepal is a country, that has been a semi-colonial outpost of India. It is a a source of cheap labor for the developing economies in Qatar, the UAE, in the cities of India (remittances are a huge part of the Nepalese economy). Men go into these countries as guest workers, often paid well below the national minimum, others are recruited into the Indian armed forces. There is also an incredible amount of human trafficking of Nepalese women into prostitution in India. It is also a country deep with the contradictions presented in the Global South of developing emerging urban centers, alongside great shantyization of poor communities in the cities or near them. It is coupled with the deep backwardness of rural peasantry with the emerging Industrial agriculture throughout South Asia.

What is more bothersome is that there is from this not even the willingness to postulate what possibly can be a new South Asia. Why isn’t it accessible to us, the fact that India (the largest “democracy”) practices holistically a policy of repression of political revolutionaries [imprisoning and murdering], and puts into policy a Hindi-chauvinistic oppression of the various national minorities that compose the country? Why isn’t it well known that half the states of India have active revolutionary parallel states in rural areas, that national oppression is being fought with national liberation by the various ethnic minorities, that the Naxalite uprising of 1969 hasn’t died, but has intensified. That the Maobadi have united in many areas and are actively fighting the militiarist police state in West Bengal? In Andra Pradesh? In Jarkhand? Whats happening in Bengal? Whats happening in Bhutan? We would be surprised to learn the truth isn’t the typical good-will story development perpetuated by NGOs’.

To not begin even looking at the developments of Nepal shows the utter routine that the “Left” of this country has gotten into, how we are so stuck in our models, or have already set our verdicts. This goes for everyone from the A’s to the C’s.

Com. Azad killed during Battle or Murdered by Police

Printed from
       The Times of India -Breaking news, views. reviews, cricket from across India
Top Maoist, wife killed in ‘encounter’
3 Apr 2008, 0402 hrs IST,TNN

SMS NEWS to 58888 for latest updates
Top Maosit. Gajerla Saraiah
Gajerla Saraiah
WARANGAL: CPI (Maoist) central committee member Gajerla Saraiah alias Azad and his wife Rama were killed in an “encounter” in the Eturunagaram forests on Wednesday morning. Azad was one of the key members of the party and a proponent of the Maoist “red corridor” concept.

While Warangal district SP V C Sajjanar said the “encounter” followed after a group of six Maoists were spotted in the forest, sources said that a State Intelligence Bureau (SIB) team had picked up Azad from Karnataka on Tuesday and brought him here. But police stuck to the encounter story saying it took place at around 6.30 am in Kanthanpally forest.

Sajjanar said four Naxalites managed to escape while Azad and his wife were killed in the “encounter” that lasted an hour. He said the police special party combing the area chanced upon the Maoists who opened fire on seeing the police team. The police recovered a carbine, one pistol, a revolver and three kitbags from the encounter site.

Azad was allegedly involved in the 1999 killing of eight coverts (police informers) in the Manala forests in Nizamabad district. He carried a reward of Rs 5 lakh on his head and was wanted in 40 offences. Azad, a native of Velishala village in Chityal mandal in the district, has been underground for the past two decades. His elder brother Gajerla Ravi alias Ganesh is also a top Maoist and had participated in the talks with the government in 2004.

The slain Maoist’s son, G Naveen, later approached the court seeking a direction to the police to conduct the post-mortem at MGM Hospital in Warangal. Judge Kishan Rao then ordered the police to shift the body to MGM Hospital and directed them to videograph the entire post-mortem in the presence of a judge.

Assailing the police version, Virasam leader Vara Vara Rao said Azad was picked up from somewhere and killed in cold blood. “They killed him and dumped his body in the Warangal forests,” he said. While balladeer Gadar said that Azad and Rama were killed in Jharkhand and their bodies dumped in the forests in Warangal. Meanwhile, sources said that Ganesh has issued a warning that Maoists would soon retaliate against his brother’s killing.

A Short Response to the “New Synthesis”

Let us assume for the sake of argument that recent research had disproved once and for all every one of Marx’s individual theses. Even if this were to be proved, every serious ‘orthodox’ Marxist would still be able to accept all such modern findings without reservation and hence dismiss all of Marx’s theses in toto – without having to renounce his orthodoxy for a single moment. Orthodox Marxism, therefore, does not imply the uncritical acceptance of the results of Marx’s investigations. It is not the ‘belief’ in this or that thesis, nor the exegesis of a ‘sacred’ book. On the contrary, orthodoxy refers exclusively to method. It is the scientific conviction that dialectical materialism is the road to truth and that its methods can be developed, expanded and deepened only along the lines laid down by its founders. It is the conviction, moreover, that all attempts to surpass or ‘improve’ it have led and must lead to over-simplification, triviality and eclecticism.

-Georg Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness.

 (a Critique of the RCP event that was held in NYC this past Sunday will be up soon enough…please wait Comrades!!)

Revolutionary Love

 

Stalin is faced with a decision in WWII to free his son, captured by the Nazis and sent to a concentration camp (where he would surely die) by releasing Nazi war commanders. Stalin choices not to free his son. Is this not profound love for the “people?” I should ask people look at Guevera’s quote about being moved by love, he not only loves but knows the duty that comes from such love. “You might have to cut the flowers, but you won’t stop the spring” is what he writes (maybe playing off a Neruda poem).

I think there are two distinctions that can be made here. There is the world of intimate love, love between people which have individual relations. There is love as a factor in politics. There are definite distinctions though, in that the first world of intimate personal relations is bound by shared identity and a certain recpriocal and mutual relation.

Politics is different, in the sense that there is not “intimate love” for anyone. You’re not making love to the Proletariat. Rather the Love that Guevera is speaking about is Duty as a political revolutionary to the masses of oppressed, and as his actual thought and work shows, that might even take the most violent means. He cuts the flowers, but there will still be spring.

Maybe just a thought, but what is taking priority for a Revolutionary. Here in a certain sense, love for the people is an ethos for self-sacrifice which is embodied in Stalin making the faithful decision not to save his son, an Abrahamic sacrafice, in favor of waging a ruthless war against Nazis.

Update: Govindan Kutty

Row over HR activists’ visit to Viyyur prison
Wednesday January 9 2008 10:48 IST
From newindpress.com

THRISSUR: Suspecting to be extremists, the police action to hold a group of five human rights activists who came to make a fact-finding study in the Central Prison at Viyyur, near here, on Tuesday kicked off a controversy.

Members of the group were PUCL state president P A Powran, editor of Hindi language monthly ‘Janaprathirodh’ published from Delhi, Raj Kishore, Tamil Nadu PUCl secretary K Kesavan, P A Shyna and Thusar Nirmal Sarathi from Ernakulam.

Later, reporters at the Press Club here on Tuesday, they said that they had come to Thrissur to visit Viyyur Central Prison and meet P Govindankutty, 65, editor of ‘People’s March’, who is on remand in the prison since December 20.

They said that Govindankutty was arrested from Aluva on December 19 . His bail applications were rejected both by the Aluva Judicial First Class Magistrate and the Sessions Court.

They said that the purpose of their visit was to obtain the signature of Govindankutty on a vakalath for filing bail application in a higher court and also to make a fact-finding study of his situation in the prison.

The human rights activists said that Govindankutty was fasting in the jail and the jail authorities indulged in forced-feeding of glucose after tying his hands and legs.

They said that Govindankutty had told them that the jail authorities were treating him cruelly. They said that the jail authorities told them that he was being forcibly fed as per orders from higher authorities and requested them to urge Govindankutty to end his fast.

However, Govindan Kutty turned down their request for ending the fast. They said that the group had gone to Viyyur Central Prison on Monday and had presented their identities to the jail authorities.

However, the jail authorities could not grant them permission to enter the jail as it was late in the afternoon. They were allowed entry to the prison on Tuesday and meet Govindankutty.

They said that during the meeting, they obtained the signature on the vakalath from him. However, when they came out of the jail, the Viyyur police, led by the Sub- Inspector, asked them to come to the police station, which they refused as the police had no warrant.

They said that when asked why they were wanted in the police station, the police told them that it was for the verification of their identities.

They said they had informed the police that their addresses and other identities could be verified from the jail authorities. They said that dissatisfied with their reply, the police was planning to detain them. However, somehow they managed to escape.

They said that they will demand withdrawal of the false case against Govindankutty and compensation for his illegal detention from the State Government.

First Posting, New Star

For a couple of months the creators of this blog have been discussing, in what way can we bring forward Revolutionary politics and Marxism-Leninism-Maoism into a new age? What would our contribution be? We were young Communists, who came to age in our political development with the US Imperialists launching their war for Empire, asserting its domination in this World. In this context we became Revolutionaries. There has been great development of the people’s struggles across the world, and right in the middle of the Imperialist monster, there are Movements developing out of the contradictions of the Capitalist system.

With the guiding princples of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. We took the maxims of “Serve the People” and ”Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win” to heart, hit the streets and fought back. We in the process, we came to understand, we were lacking something principle to carry forward these movements to become revolutionary ones. We were lacking actual revolutionary leadership, a revolutionary line that could polarize politics, and the methodology of Mass Line to actually raise the consciousness of the masses.

What could the snot nosed young Rebels do? We didn’t, like many, burn away and go back to being a slave to life. No longer cogs, and conscious of the need for struggle and development to make revolution, we sought something to do. We are still seeking. However it is necessary to do this not insularly, but with like minded committed radicals and revolutionaries to begin engaging these questions. We had the duty to open up the space for such discussions, especially amongst the rebellious Youth like us, to create the spirit, the culture, and the politics that can help us through the path and roads toward Revolution.

We decided to create this blog precisely to do this. The blog is collectively run and will be discussing a wide array of issues pertaining to the burning questions of Liberation. Our experiences with blogs in the past have been dominated by the fact there was a lack of collectivity and merely came from the subjective spontaneity of its Authors. We will strive for a rigor, for line discussion and struggle, and for honest and thought provoking debates. We hope those who will read this blog join us in our project, and take up the project themselves.