Five Theses on the Student Strike
I. As students, we strike at the heart of an economy that depends on an education system that exploits us, disciplines us, and profits from us.
To strike as students is to recognize ourselves as workers in the present and future economy. Our labor is necessary to produce and reproduce an educational system which is a source of profit and plunder for the 1% and a source of disciplined and exploitable labor power. A student strike is a refusal of this role at every level—from high schools to colleges and universities. So long as the employing class profits from our knowledge, we should not pay tuition and be plunged into debt in order to be employable. Instead, we should be guaranteed a wage to learn.
II. We strike to reject a system that divides us.
We strike because our desire to learn must not be used to maintain violent social divisions. We reject a system that exploits our differences and divides us along race, sexual, gender, and class lines. We are taught that education is our best means to ‘get ahead’ in life, yet, many are also left behind, devalued, discarded, or simply excluded. We reject a system that forces us into vicious competition and pits us against each other.
III. We strike against a failing system that robs us of our future.
We strike against the devaluation of our education through austerity measures, rising tuition and budget cuts. We strike against being doomed to lifelong debt, constant training and re-skilling, and against a system that saddles us with the cost of producing exploitable workers for the market. We refuse an educational system governed by the dictates of competition, individualism, and profit.
IV. We strike to affirm and create education as we want it.
We strike for an educational system that serves our collective needs and desires. We want to be decision-makers in our collective future, for knowledge to be a genuine commons and not a source of profit.
V. We strike to build our collective power and create something new.
To strike is to realize our power to determine our everyday lives. We refuse to let our bodies and our minds be held hostage to the current educational and work regimes, to collaborate quietly as the violent logic of capital bankrupts us of our present and future. We strike together to build a better world and reclaim our future.
- by Students at the CUNY Graduate Center, first published in
Tidal (2012)
1 comment
Josh says:
April 29, 2012 at 10:03 pm (UTC 0 )
Below is a letter that a member of Parents of OWS sent to her child’s school. I think it is eloquent and powerful. Please consider sending it with your child tomorrow, and forwarding it to other parents you know.
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Dear School teachers and staff,
Student won’t be in school on May 1 because she/he will be participating in a series of protests and teach-ins in support of worker and immigrant rights that are part of “A Day Without the 99%.”
As you know, May 1 has long been a day of action in support of international workers’ rights, and we continue that tradition as part of the Occupy Wall Street movement. This year we specifically protest a government that bails out big banks and offers tax breaks to large corporations while individuals lose their jobs, their homes and their access to basic human rights, such as public education and healthcare.
We want to be clear that we are not protesting against this school or any other public school. Instead, we protest on your behalf. We understand that the New York City Department of Education has cut over 1,000 teachers’ aides positions in under five years and given up hundreds of teaching positions to attrition. We also know that New York City public school budgets have been slashed more than 14% in the past five years, leading to ballooning class sizes and diminishing programs. Our teachers now have more students and less help in the classroom. As a family, and as a community, we march for you – our teachers and administration that take the education of our children so seriously. We also march on behalf of all city workers and others who have been so deeply affected by Bloomberg’s austerity measures.
While Student won’t be in the school building that day, she’ll/he’ll be heavily engaged in education, exploring the history and practice of change-making in the United States. She/he will have access to oral histories and documents that will further enrich her/his understanding of politics, history and math. And most importantly, she/he will contribute in her/his own way to the political process in this country – direct democracy played out in its truest form – in the streets. We hope that you choose not to mark Student absent that day because of this, but we understand if you choose to do so.
Either way, I believe that participating will not only give Student the chance to witness history, but will give her/him the chance to stand in solidarity with teachers, police, documented and undocumented workers, whose labor has been exploited and dishonored by the establishment for far too long. I believe that taking her/him this coming Tuesday is as important a civic duty as the many times I have taken her/him with me to the voting booth.
We also invite you to join us on this day. Parents and students will gather at The Free University in Madison Square Park at 11 a.m. We will continue to Union Square for a rally at 4:30 p.m.
In solidarity,
Parent