On July 11th, the article Students Step Up by Michael Albert was published on ZNetwork, where I happen to be a staff member. That article provides an inspiring and substantive hope and even calls for students to take on the crises and prospects of our time. Reading that piece, I felt a need to write about the events in which I and other students at The New School just recently stepped up and the feelings and results and also our on-going hopes. My questions are can we do it again, and again, bigger, better, this Fall and Winter? Can other students, elsewhere, do it where they are? Can we all address our situations and the world we all face? I hoped while writing my piece, named Students Step Up 2, that it might prove useful itself but also provoke yet another campus and another, and another to assess and act. Could Students Step Up (SSU) even become an overarching call and name for students who look around where we are, and look at our societies, and gather together to pursue better schools and a better world? We shall see.
On June 8th, The New School’s president, Dwight A. McBride, announced his resignation. I was on vacation in Berlin at the time when I checked my school email (I was on summer break, why would I check my email) and saw the news. At first, I was elated. As students, we had come to despise McBride for his audacious and ruthless union busting tactics. Then, I was underwhelmed. It is not McBride as a person, per say, though he was antithetical to everything The New School strives to be (at least in rhetoric). It is the structure of the school. The board in the clouds will simply elect another box-checking-social-justice figurehead to take over his role. The fight continues. More importantly, that email stirred emotions in me that took me right back to the fall of 2022.
On November 15th in 2022, ACT-UAW 7902, the union representing Part-Time faculty at The New School (as well as NYU adjuncts), announced a strike after failed negotiations with the administration. All of us students, especially those of us right on the front lines, saw this coming a mile away. The university hadn’t budged on anything substantial. We even held a preparatory strike education rally, preparing students for what was to come. The turn out was huge and the energy was palpable. Two fellow students and I had been working on this announcement, though we didn’t know it at the time, since the previous January. We did lots of educational work to inform our peers about the conditions 87% of our faculty face daily. Most students had no idea what a picket line or a strike even entailed. Hell, we were learning what it meant as well; and we truly wouldn’t know until we were on the picket chanting and banging on gallon drums.
The energy on the 15th was far beyond what I expected. The picket line stretched half way down 13th street and almost to the end of 5th Ave; where our school’s prized $394 million dollar (rumor is it’s sinking into the ground) ‘University Center’ sits. Megaphones rang out chants that we would come to learn by heart: “1, we are The New School, 2, a little bit louder, 3, we’re out here fighting FOR OUR CONTRACT!” Students and professors skipping, dancing, sliding inside the line with those orange buckets and drum sticks keeping the rhythm. Students on the streets, hanging off the side of structures with signs reading: “Honk for Part-Time Faculty” or “Honk for fair wages.” As the sun fell, the energy took its place. We were not going anywhere. The administration had to hear us. I couldn’t forget the faces scrunched, screaming as long as they could, or the grins ear to ear as students chanted with other students and professors. This sort of community gathering was unprecedented at our school; all sprawled out lower Manhattan in different buildings; separate from one another. Though classes were canceled, this education, I knew even from that first night, would leave lasting impressions.
The longer the strike went on, the colder it got on the picket line, the less promising any sort of concession from the administration got, the more anxious I got. I was out there almost every single day; no matter the conditions. I felt called to be there even though I was exhausted (we all were) and my mind was melting with stress. There was still other work to do for our student group, ‘Student-Faculty Solidarity’, but the real action was to show support in numbers and in energy. I felt energized from seeing my peers.I remember thinking that from the administration’s point of view; a group of people with megaphones and signs, simply marching in circles and then packing up and going home, must not have been too threatening. I imagined them not even thinking twice about this “cute” little show of “protest.” It made me angry. Seeing my fellow students losing steam and falling off in favor of any of the many clubs, bars, and house parties disappointed me. I was frustrated. I couldn’t just keep marching! All this would have been for nothing. We had to raise the stakes. I didn’t know what the hell that meant, but I wasn’t going to let this boat sink without trying everything I could. However, I knew I couldn’t do it alone, I needed to talk to other students.
The idea of an occupation got thrown around. I was in a coffee shop down the block from my school with seven other students. I had seen all of them on the picket line everyday and vaguely knew them through mutuals. I knew they were committed, intelligent, and serious. We were all in agreement that we had to raise the stakes if we wanted to win anything. The strike had been going for three weeks at this point, the administration was paying a lawyer from a known union-busting law firm daily more than what they were even paying the faculty. With the end of the semester looming, it was all or nothing.
We spent hours in the evening at a friend’s apartment in Brooklyn planning out every last detail of the occupation. Some of the people in the group had experience with this sort of thing, I did not. When would we enter? Where would we stay? How would we get food, medicine, sleeping supplies, etc.? Should it be a surprise? How long would we stay and what would we do when we were there? There was so much we couldn’t account for, so we opted to plan for everything up until getting inside. We were very conscious about not taking on an authoritative role, so we would do the work to get everyone in and make sure it was safe, then we would be one of everyone. I was nervous, but proud and excited about the work we had all accomplished. We wanted to think this would make a big splash, but how could you be sure? Maybe we would have only 10 students show up and the whole thing would look pathetic. We had no idea what to expect, but the energy in that apartment on Himrod street and the looks of reassurance and love from that occupation group carried us all into what was to come.
We planned the announcement and storming of the university Center to take place under the guise of a last-big-push sort of rally. We figured if we could just get all students out here, using the notion of just one more showing, maybe we could reinvigorate the energy. I knew there were going to be a lot of eyes on the three of us as we gave our prefacing speech that would conclude with our announcement. My body had been feeling the pressure of everything and it came in the form of a stye. I wore sunglasses that day because I wouldn’t have appreciated showing up in photos looking like that. I finished my part of the speech, trying to speak clearly and confidently (I tend to mumble so I’ve been told), with something to get the crowd energized, “At all points, the administration of the New School is trying to break the solidarity that ALL faculty and students have fostered— but we will not let them.” Big cheers and roars from the crowd. My friend, Bella, followed with another crowd cheerer, “We no longer recognize this administration as representative of the new school. WE ARE THE NEW SCHOOL.” More claps and cheers. Then, the announcement:
“The violent, manipulative, and cruel attacks from the administration upon every part of the New School community have left us with no choice but to escalate student action—
WE ARE NOW OCCUPYING THE UNIVERSITY CENTER.
We will occupy the building day and night until the administration resumes pay, full healthcare protection, and retirement benefits to all school employees and until the university reaches a fair contract with part-time faculty.
We do not take occupation lightly, this is a necessary response to the administration’s violent escalations.
We students will stand in solidarity without faculty who we love, trust, and demand that they will be treated and paid not only a livable wage and benefits – but that they are respected. The administration would like to believe that they can divide us, that we will allow them to exploit our faculty and our friends, but if anything this strike has shown us and the struggle for fair working conditions around the world, the UCs, in HarperCollins, in UCU in UK, that SOLIDARITY IS FOREVER. These Administrators have nothing on us and cannot be allowed to continue operating as such. WE WILL WIN.”
A mix of looks flashed at me as my other friend, Emmanuel, was explaining the procedures for entering. Confused and elated looks glanced at me and everyone around. We hadn’t stepped into this building in over three weeks now. Almost as quickly as I could process what was going on, I was wearing my pink bandana (our organizer identifier) and leading the herd of students, staff, and faculty into the building and down into the lower level where we had designated it as home for the indefinite future.
We were inside and it was packed! Students chatting, unsure of what to do now (us included). Pink bandanas frantically running around (though we kept telling each other to stay calm as stress is not good for optics), students and professor chatting at tables, on the stairs, on the floor. People filming and pictures being taken; this was something huge. Again, the only idea we had for what was to come next was a vague thing called “general assembly,” but we knew we were exactly where we were supposed to be. Prior to this, we had only told one member of the Part-Time faculty union, one member of the full-time faculty association, AAUP (American Association of Professors), and a number of students we could trust to spend the night and dedicate themselves. Everyone was in the dark until now, but now we collectively had to figure out what to do next.
As hours passed on that first day, we tried to hold a general assembly. To be frank, it was quite disorganized, and we were overwhelmed. For the first time we were all in a room holding much needed conversations. It felt as if all these voices had been suppressed to the chants of the picket line. Now, we were hearing everything. I don’t even remember what got decided if anything that day. Come night, we had filled every classroom in the University Center’. We were incredibly proud and knew all our work was just beginning all over again. The building has six floors, and as I mentioned previously, that Lower Level was our home base. There is a big open floor with a projector where we held our assemblies and then a separate room that we housed all our supplies: Cold and hot food, medical supplies (we had a medic on site, a seasoned activist named Rose), and sleeping supplies with a designated, rotating student in charge of coordinating donations (even that first night money and supplies).
Students were up at all hours of the night and come that next morning, many of us were up early and ready to work. We were eager. A morning general assembly time had been set and that pretty much remained the same the entirety of our stay. As it turned out (something we had no idea about in our planning stage), the administration and the union were in the middle of a bargaining session when we had entered the ‘University Center’. We had caught them completely off guard! This prompted them to send an email to the entire student body saying they were going to meet all of the union’s demands. We all called bullshit. Checked with our union reps and they confirmed our suspicions. Fight on. At this point the Labor Board for NYC was putting calls out to their networks to get us donation, we had somewhat forced The New School Student Senate to serve us hot food daily (after much fuss with them beforehand), Media publications were reaching out to us and even before we entered we had sent out a press release with the help of one of our journalism professors which resulted in Teen Vogue breaking the store. Democracy Now! reached out, including HellGate, local news stations, even Jacobin and The New York Times had published stories on the strike. The energy was surging inside, but we still had no contract for our Part-Time Faculty.
That third day is when our conversations started to shift a little bit. Now that we were all collectively running this space and caring for each other in a way that felt profound, we found a lot of things beyond the treatment of our faculty that we wanted to see change. We started on a list of “occupation” demands which wouldn’t necessarily reflect the whole student body. We went through each issue with 80 of us and nitpicked every detail. It was incredibly tedious but rewarding. At the end of 4 hours or so, we had our list of occupation demands.
The ball kept rolling and the question of leverage was brought up. These are great and all, but how?
What about a general strike? What if we were able to get the staff, faculty, and students to strike? What if we brought the entire New School operation to a halt? How would the administration respond? To us, even the announcement of such a thing, no matter how long it lasted or even if it got off the ground, would turn the heads of the administration. Remember, 87% of our teaching staff was already on strike and almost all the Full-Time faculty was striking in solidarity. The prospect of this plan, shutting down everything, caused us all to erupt with excitement. People whispered with excitement and curiosity. We all got to working right away on what this might look like.
Just then, we got a call from one of the union representatives saying they were right on the brink of a deal with the administration.
Initially I felt relief, then, to be honest, I had feelings of disappointment. If the strike was over, so was our opportunity to make changes for us, the students.
What if we could stop it? Was that selfish? The occupation, the student support, is without a doubt what forced this contract (the administration hadn’t budged for months!), so why not show up for our demands? We immediately hopped on the phone with someone on the bargaining committee and pleaded with them. The atmosphere was incredibly emotional, I am getting chills right now thinking about it. They clearly heard our plea and were conflicted about what to do. They told us to talk to someone else.
We wanted them to delay the decision just a bit longer for us to make this announcement the next day. A big group of students was waiting in one of our classrooms as we were making these calls. We wanted to return with good news so badly! Every time one of us would come into the room to grab or check something, all the heads snapped back in anticipation. The tone in that second conversation was stiff on the union’s part. They wouldn’t budge. They got the contract, albeit still not a great one. We felt castaway, after all the work we did, to fight alone. They promised they would have our backs, but we thought this would have been the only substantial way. We didn’t think that another moment of this magnitude would come ever again in our lives. We were devastated. We met sunken faces when we broke the news. We were of course happy that a contract was reached; our faculty had been out for weeks which was a huge sacrifice. However, we had no idea what we would do to win these demands. Tears were shed from many. The photos from that night are heartbreaking to look at. We pulled ourselves together to post a congratulations video for our faculty. But we concluded with, “We’re still here.”
The important thing about having a group of people, large or small, is that for what you might lack in, whether energy or knowledge, someone will step up. That was a big lesson for us: relinquishing controlling tendencies and putting our faith in the collective. That previous night I was defeated, so I stepped out to release on the dance floor at my favorite club, hoping to gather more strength for the following day. Others followed their own systems of release.
Come that following morning, the excitement of others rallied the entire group about a new direction altogether. The leverage question remained and the bright faces I met as I returned, told me that there was energy and hope amongst the group. Each new day, a different person stepped up to fill one of the many needed roles; often the people least expected or who had remained quiet up to this point. That’s the power of creating an environment, especially a political one, based upon equal say, respect, and solidarity.
Bright and hopeful faces revealed themselves in our general assembly that day. It was decided after that meeting that we would be pouring our energy into a coalition of staff, faculty, and students called: One New School. Our wishes for this new coalition were to “affirm confidence in ourselves, in each other, rather than the current University Leadership, and to bind us into an active political body, and to hold ourselves accountable for continuing the emergent struggle for a renewed, more just New School.” The excitement was palpable, and it was almost as if the “defeat” the night before never happened. Our founding statement concluded: “As a collective and diverse body of students, staff, part-time faculty, full-time faculty, alumni, and parents of The New School, we stand united. We are One New School.”
Our first action as a coalition was to hold a vote of no confidence in the current administration and board of trustees. The vote received more than 1,600 in favor. We were energized. We continued that week by holding panel discussions on participatory budgeting from Real Utopia and Z Network members, Alexandria Shaner and Matic Primc. The conversations amongst the group continued to grow larger and larger as we realized how much decision-making power we could potentially hold at our own university.
Those last few days of the occupation were incredibly empowering, but we were nearing the end of the semester. We all knew we were going to leave New York for winter break. Keeping up the momentum was prescient on our minds, and we wanted to leave with something tangible that we could dig into the following semester: What about a blueprint? One that would of course change in the coming months, but valuable enough for us to have some logical place to start. Working groups were formed and the blueprint was finished. Now, all we had to do was get ready for the coming semester.
On the plane back to California, I was in a bit of a daze. What just happened? The last month had taken it out of all of us. I spent the next month coordinating with my fellow students and processing all that we had accomplished. We wanted to come back with strength that let the administration and all our fellow students know: We’re not finished. I’ll save the rest of the One New School story for another time.
As students get ready for the coming semester and transition out of the freedom of June and July, I anxiously await the year. Will students look to each other to identify where they could take action at their own school? Will we look to neighboring campuses elsewhere in the US, or the rest of the world, for solidarity and inspiration? Will we reach out, connect, and organize together? What about using our unique positions as students to show up at various picket lines, marches, protests; or perhaps start our own? Students have much more power than I ever realized. The only way I found that out was taking the leap. I encourage you to do the same; you never know what could come of it.
I also encourage others to share their stories of revolt and student power. In the preparatory weeks before the occupation, we spoke with a number of alumni from The New School about their experiences with student movements. Their stories were incredibly inspiring. We knew we could add to this radical legacy of activism at our school and the time was now. Hearing other experiences gave us hope that we could accomplish all the wildly ambitious goals we were so excited about. Perhaps you could do the same for any number of students elsewhere in the world.
The experience left me relating to my peers and the world much differently. That same dream deferred has not died out in the slightest, even as I write this today. In fact, that is why I am even writing this in the first place. I want to be able to translate and share what happened at The New School, because hearing something like this back then would’ve only bolstered our spirit. There is no point for these experiences to live in a vacuum or for me to have to get the story from a news/media outlet. I want to hear directly from those students on the frontlines; student to student. My beliefs were only strengthened: The most potent and militant movements can and will start at the universities. That is, if we are able to connect with one another and engage in exactly what I am trying to do now.
I have been working at Z Network for a little over two years now. The support, wisdom, and strategic insights I get from my fellow volunteers and our broader community has been invaluable. The more I spoke with students at my school made me realize that a lot of us know one, two, or many people who can share knowledge. The more we are able to open up these channels of communication, the more unstoppable we will be. Michael Albert, co-author of Parecon, founder of ZNet, and host of the transformative podcast, Revolution Z, has been another friend and resource that allows us to bridge the radical legacy of the 60’s student movements, of which Michael was instrumental at MIT, and the student activists of today. I strongly recommend you go back and read the original Students Step Up to contrast with what I have shared today. In my opinion, the 60’s wisdom still has a lot to offer the present. From speaking with Michael, a key downfall of that period was a lack of vision and strategy in order to keep the movements sustainably pushing for more.
Recognizing this about a year and a half ago, I joined Real Utopia: Foundation for a Participatory Society. This open, participatory, international organization seeks to “plant the seeds of the future in the present by organizing ourselves using the methods we believe in.” This is exactly what One New School is trying to accomplish. The blueprint that we had created together was to be the ever changing framework on which we could slowly transform and take back the university. Everyone in the occupation was excited and energized by participatory principles and the prospect of us getting an equitable, self-managed say in university affairs. Real Utopia has incredible resources for learning about participatory theory, vision and strategy and for finding like minded projects and people from around the globe. Check out the site, attend an event, or engage with the various essays, pdfs, and videos.
Recently at Z Network, we released the 20 Theses for Liberation. Hosted along with DiEM25, Academy of Democratic Modernity, MetaCPC, Real Utopia, and Cooperation Jackson, this living document seeks to initiate a wide conversation aimed at generating a basis for left unity. These are exactly the sort of documents that the left needs. It is even stated that not all endorsing organizations agree with every word of the document, but instead that it offers a great basis for “debate and elaboration that can, over time, inform not just agreed opposition to existing injustices, but collective pursuit of a better world.” It should be remembered that we don’t “own” these, but instead this is a collective output from all involved that encapsulates decades of activist and organizing experience. This could be an excellent tool to use in organizing or to debate within your various circles.
Generating movements anywhere is a complicated endeavor that has a lot of interconnected and nuanced aspects of it. No one has the keys, but we all have things to share. You won’t have all the parts figured out until you are in the thick of it. That was a key lesson for me during the strike and occupation. I wanted to have the solution to all the problems that arose, like a playbook. Sometimes I was the person who solved the task at hand, but often it was someone else. That is how it goes. Putting all of our heads together and trusting one another is what allowed us to achieve all that we did. We can and will do it again. This coming fall, I want to continue to raise the stakes and dig in deeper to administration, taking back more for the students, staff, and faculty. Here at Z Network, we have a commitment to sharing, amplifying, and supporting student voices and movements all over. I personally would love to see Z be a hub for sharing strategic insights, providing resources, and connecting student movements. Let’s see what this 2023/2024 school year holds.
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