Messages of Support for the Sheffield Occupation

Last week Croatian students expressed their solidarity with Italian and British students, placing banners on prominent public and academic sites to alert the public of the continuing student struggle against the growing commercialization and privatization of education, reduction of university autonomy and monstrous tuition fees. The banners were placed by the independent student initiatives from Osijek, Pula and Zadar as well as plenums of the Faculties of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb and Rijeka.  

In England, the commercialization is now most readily visible in the incredible and socially insensitive fee hikes which will deny access to higher education even to middle class families, who will have to accept slavery to debt in order to educate their children. This means that higher education will be denied to most of the population.

In Italy, the reforms are curbing university autonomy, abolishing grants for students from poorer backgrounds and closing numerous “unprofitable” departments – and these are just some of the facets of commercialization taking place all over the world.

Croatia is among countries whose politics are blindly following the practices of more “advanced” Western societies. The laws that have been in the “public discussion” for over a year promise to introduce the very scenarios the students are protesting against in Europe and beyond. Among other innovations, these laws are about to place politicians into university administrations in order to ease their privatization. Education thus becomes another “ballast” to get rid of, just like healthcare and social care. A society which values life in terms of profit is a perverse society, and it needs to be changed now.

Thus, this was not just an expression of solidarity, but also a call to all of us to consider the gravity of the situation and fight with all means available.

One world, one struggle! Education is not for sale!

(Story Here)

To the British students, fighting against tuition fees raises:

Dear friends, We have been following the current situation in the UK with great interest and we sincerely admire your unity and purposefulness in the fight against tuition fee raises and the privatization of education. We would like to express our support for this endeavor. Your unfaltering and resolute actions against government policies in the field of education inspire us to continue our own fight with even more determined steps. We are facing issues similar to your own. Currently serious cut-backs in education system finance, enforcements of private interests and criminal violation of university autonomy have been undertaken. Many institutions of higher education in Bulgaria have been forced to shut down for the winter months due to a lack of finance. Gradually the student body here began displaying our discontentment – we have organized a few protests against the government’s lunacy, but as yet without significant results. In January we plan to renew the protests and we feel ready to take more radical action in our efforts to achieve our common goal. We, the students of Bulgaria, would like to declare our solidarity with you and your struggle. We would be happy to stay in contact with you in the future.

In solidarity, Students’ Organization Studentski Glas, Bulgaria

Hi Sheffield,
 Hope all is well, We wanted to offer you our solidarity and were wondering your plans for the new year? Camberwell Occupation has decided to stay on through the winter break so will be spending christmas day at university! We wanted to welcome you to visit us if you can, we’re trying to build up links with all occupations in the U.K. With the hope of creating a strong network between the universitys come January! 
If there is anyone amongst you looking for an occupation over christmas! Send them to us!
 
speak soon
cheers!
 
The Camberwell Occupiers

To our fellow students in Iran:

We the students who are actively fighting for our rights to education in the UK, are sending this message of solidarity and unity to support your struggle and endeavours for democracy and justice. We have followed your determination and bravery and the dear price you have paid since the summer of 2009. We have also been informed of the level of systematic oppression against students, imprisonment of student activists, suspending students from their studies and intimidation through internal and external disciplinary measures. Although incomparable, we have also experienced some degree of state brutality, intimidation and limitations to our rights to protests. We believe that our similarities overshadow our differences and we stand with you in unity. From students in London to Athens, to Tehran, we are fighting to return the power back to its rightful owners, the people.

Solidarity,

UCL, Manchester, Sheffield, SOAS, Brighton, Goldsmiths and Bath occupations

To the students in the UK

Greetings to you all from San Luis Potosi, Mexico. We are a movement that struggles against a transnational mining company that is destroying our environment, emptying our water resources, polluting our cities with cyanide, dividing our citizens and corrupting the Mexican government. Many of us are students and we also suffer the constant cuts to public education from the Mexican government, which today is investing more in its irracional and  “war” against the narco than in public education. This “war” has led to the killing of thousands of innocent citizens, mostly youngsters and also students killed by the police forces for being confused with criminals. 

Today you are an example of concious young people with dignity and strength to struggle for its defense from a governmental system that pretends to privilege the elites and leave the lower class without options.

Here it goes our full solidarity with you, the students in struggle. We will keep an eye on the events, and let us know how else we can help.

Representing the students of Japan, we wish to express solidarity.

This December, with the British students leading the battle, students of the world rise up in action. Our battle is also a link in this. We students fight for justice.  Just as the British students have been labelled “insurgents” etc, the anti-war speeches at Hosei university (in Tokyo) have been labelled “noisy” and “a disruption to lectures”, and in the end have been used as a pretext for suspension and expulsion. Despite this, the fact that the students movement fights for justice is unchanging.

With the excuses of financial deficit and great fear, they are crying for cuts of the education budget, but right from the outset, the budget deficit is the resposibility of the capitalists that have profited from the financial bubble and spent the money of the world’s labourers and students on war money for mass-slaughter, while we students bear absoltely no responsibility. There is no future in a system that tries to commercialise education, and snatch both the chance for education and the future away from the students.  Those capitalists are going to be sent to the rubbish bin! To show the true force of the anger that we hold is a natural and right.

Japan’s student movement is in solidarity with the students of the world, and this December we will rise up in a movement against war. The war that has begun in the Korean peninsula is drawing in America, Japan and China and is forming a situation that could develop into a world war. The anger of the Okinawa and the other islands with bases is blowing with full force at the American-Japanese peace treaty and the American bases. The mission of the students of Japan is not to permit Japan’s imperialist participation in this war, and in solidarity with the workers and students of Okinawa, is to rise up and battle to smash the US-Japan alliance and to beat down imperialism. Especially with the solidarity of the workers and students of the world, we will have the fullest power to stop the war.

The cuts to the education budget, along with military research, the debt of student fees and loans and a scarcity of employment, are leading us down a path in which the university is becoming a battleground. We students are not just things left on the shelf, unsold units of labour, we are the central actors in discussing the world, preventing wars and building the history of the fut ure. In the middle of standing up in the fight against war, each individual student must be proof of this. Japan’s student movement makes clear that it is participating in the fight until the last battle of the workers and students is won.

All-Japan Federation of Student Autonomous Bodies

I’m moved and amazed by your tremendous effort and work! You are an inspiration to our and future generations!
Keep up the amazing work, you whole heartedly have my support!

Good luck and keep up the resistance!

Natalie, SHU

“I strongly support your campaign and the unfair and punitive rise in student fees. A generation of politicians is pulling up the ladder on future generations. Though Cameron and Osborne tell us that the only thing that matters is the national deficit they do not care about saddling young people with massive debts for years to come. Students and staff are being made to pay for a crisis they did not commit.   

We need to build a campaign that makes sure the Tory-led government continues to pay for the debts and cuts they are imposing. 

The economic situation we face was not created by teachers, lecturers, students or public spending as a whole but a crisis in the international banking system. Only by investing in our future can we resolve the problems our society faces. Cuts and austerity are not the answer. 

Good luck with your campaign and the work that you’re doing to make the case for a fairer society.”

It is heart-warming to know that resistance to a totally unnecessary austerity is building in Britain throughout the university system and I salute all of you in the University of Sheffield for your courageous efforts to put an end to what is in effect a class assault on the well-being of the people for the bene…fit of the few who corrupt politics and line their pockets through accumulation by dispossession. They are the ones who should be dispossessed, not you. Keep up the struggle.

david harvey

University of Bristol is now under occupation as well!
Love and solidarity from all those involved