University Occupations

Students across the country are holding occupations and sit ins in solidarity with Gaza. SOAS shut down a MOD exhibition on their campus whilst students at LSE declared victory after seven days when the university agreed to all of their demands.

They are followed by others at King’s College,Essex, Warwick, Sussex , Birmingham and over 80 Oxford University students have occupied the historic Bodleian building to demand that the university releases a statement condemning the attack on Gaza and cancel the lecture series at Balliol College inaugurated by Israeli war criminal Shimon Peres. There are also early reports of occupations at Manchester Met, Newcastle, Leeds and Cambridge universities.

In Yorkshire, students have occupied a building at Leeds University whilst the Bradford AGM voted to give the university the weekend to comply with demands to support the Palestinians, or expect action on Monday.

The students say they “are enraged and horrified by the unspeakable atrocities that have been committed by the Israeli military on the people of Palestine, and … will not tolerate the complicity of … institutions of education in this violence.”

The Birmingham occupation was ended after just 12 hours when the university and police besieged the occupation. They attempted to cut off water supplies, succeeded in preventing food from being brought in and forced the students to blockade themselves in. The occupiers decided to accept a meeting with the Vice-Chancellor to discuss their demands in exchange for leaving the building.

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Reclaim the Campus

The Autonomous Students Network (ASN) was founded at the October 2008 London Anarchist Bookfair at a meeting organised by London Autonomous Students Network (LASN). ASN has a strategic outlook based on tackling our problems at source, from the bottom up, which enables us to directly create alternatives to capitalism ourselves. This is why we choose to work on issues directly affecting us at our colleges, because we can have a real effect on these, which in turn have knock-on effects for people elsewhere.

We favour methods such as going on strike with canteen workers and spreading information to others on campus about companies here, rather than going on a general anti-war demo or twinning our college with a less well off college elsewhere.

Our common values are autonomy, anti-capitalism and horizontal organising and direct action.

It is a federation of groups based at different colleges and individuals, not everyone involved is a student, but the issues we focus on are often education-based. We’re keen to work with like-minded people, so get in touch if you want to struggle with us!

Email: autonomous-students-network [at] riseup.net

Mailing list: autonomous-students-network [at] lists.riseup.net

 

 

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