May Day 2012

Dear Princeton Students, Faculty, Staff, and Community Members,

May 1st is traditionally an international day of struggle for labor rights and a celebration of workers. In light of the continued oppression of the 99% as a whole in the form of foreclosures, mass unemployment, low wages, racial, gender, and sexual discrimination, environmental destruction, and restriction on public assembly and speech, we echo the call for a People’s General Strike: “Instead of calling upon unionized Labor to make a specific demand (illegal under Taft-Hartley), we are calling upon the people of the world to take this day away from school and the workplace, so that their absence makes their displeasure with this corrupt system be known.” (www.occupymay1st.org)

Our education is continually being remodeled and transformed into an anti-democratic and less inclusive system. We witness this exclusion directly as Princeton University members. This month the total debt held by US students will surpass $1 trillion; tuition rates are skyrocketing; our schools are becoming more privatized and bureaucratic; our buildings and campuses are militarizing; police are conducting surveillance on students; schools are becoming more secluded and alienated from the communities in which they reside; and schools are removing secure and tenure-based positions to rely on contingent labor. It is urgent that we envision and create the type of education system that we want.

We invite you to join us in a day of open lectures, workshops, skill-shares, and discussions at the Free University of New York City that will be held on May 1, 2012, from 10am-3pm in Madison Square Park, free of debt and tuition (http://maydaynyc.org/freeuniversity). This will be followed by a massive student convergence and march to Union Square to participate in the 4pm May Day Rally. Professors – please consider bringing your lecture or precept to the Free University as an act of solidarity. Students – encourage your professors to do so by taking the day off and going to New York.

On the eve of May Day on April 30th from 5:30PM, we will be holding a May Day Pregame Event – an open potluck picnic outside Nassau Hall. On the morning of May 1st, we will have two groups leaving for New York City from Princeton Station: 7:47AM and 8:53AM. We hope to see you there.

Love and Solidarity,

Occupy Princeton
In the Nation’s Service and in the Service of All Nations