The Latest from Our Neighbors to the South
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| - Image via NYULocal.com |
Things are heating up 100+ blocks to the south, as the NYU student occupation moves into its second night. Major highlights of the day include the long negotiations over food (strangely, the university’s dining staff is feeding the protesters), the annoyance of many fellow students (to be expected when you demand a ban on Coke), and (if you go for this sort of thing) topless protesters. Link NSFW.
For up-to-the-minute coverage, check out NYULocal’s liveblogging, which has become even awsomer as its correspondent has become more sleep-deprived. Style note #2 to protestors: don’t moan to the person live-blogging your occupation about how he sucks. Not cool.
All the fun, though, could be over shortly, as the university administration has set a a deadline of 1 a.m. for the students to leave, after which “there will be consequences.” Oh, and if you do agree with their demands, there’s a support rally planned for around midnight. Enjoy.
UPDATE (1:15 PM): Just after noon, NYU security guards raided the occupied space, and rounded up all but 4 of the occupying students. Bwog’ll have a summary of the day once everything calms down, but in the meantime keep with NYULocal’s coverage.
- JCD
Tags: city, nyu, protests
19 February 2009 @ 5:21 PM · 35 comments
what’s worse than topless protestors? Ugly topless protestors.
they just need to grow the fuck up. nyu won’t give a shit if they’re naked or taking over their own student center.
oh no! activists! whine whine whine all they do is complain, that’s so annoying! wahhh! how dare they try to get coke banned, it tastes yummy so who cares what the company does? those stupid bratty privileged activists.. taking over buildings.. fucking whiners, why don’t they sit their ass on the internet like me and throw a hissy fit online instead? GRRR GROW UP, ACTIVISTS!
curious as to whether or not the NYU administration will sick the NYPD on them.
…how much does NYU cost, again? $40,000/year? doesn’t that mean that these people are already supporting NYU’s “unfair” policies by paying their outrageous tuition?
No, their parents are. And taxpayers.
that’s what the whole protest is about, dude.
does that mean that we should protest, too? i mean, using your logic, our protest should be exponentially more annoying than theirs, based on our $51,000/year tuition.
the one with the cigarette, is my hero.
nadia is really hot, i’d protest with her any day
her friend isn’t bad either, though, i hasten to add
i hate nyu with all my guts
END THE ILLEGAL OCCUPATION OF NYU
topless protesters are totally the best kind! i’ll support their cause for sure.
what does NSFW stand for?
not safe for work
Take me now, to take back nyu now! A mass fuck fest will surely lead to mass support for their ridiculous cause. I can’t believe they want to ban Coke. My experience w/ activists like these is that their indignant stands on issues actually makes them just about as intolerant as Right Wing Bible-humpers. It’s sort of ironic really. Remember the SCEG incident in April? A mob from uptown and SCEG joined together and occupied Low Plaza while a (completely unrelated) student group’s event was going on, and forced them out for a while, saying “their cause was more important”.
Isn’t that sort of what SCEG is protesting, really? One big mob forcing out innocent, helpless victims for “the greater good”? I don’t mean to single out SCEG because their issue is legit but progressive activists like these aren’t truly liberal and tolerant at all.
2:05 – So before all hell broke loose, I sat down with Emily Stainkamp (CAS ‘11) to talk about how food was going to get in here. She told me that NYU made a “bizarre†and “paternalistic†move by “[offering] to bring [them] food.†TBNYU said that the food would have to be vegan and NYU agreed. But then TBNYU decided that it couldn’t accept food from Aramark because the “outsource to prison labor.†Stainkamp said, “Why can’t our friends just bring us food?…Our food, our space.â€
NYU said “they would talk to their people.†So there is currently no food, and with the added development of people breaking into the occupied area and breaking through the balcony door (dead bolt!), it seems unlikely that there will be any.
From now on, I recommend that everyone avoid events that offer free food so as not to sanction or promote oppressive paternalism. And I say that all announcements of free food be entitled or prefaced with the words “paternalism exposed” so that the slow-witted amongst us not forget to make the appropriate associations and act according to principle.
If it was free of alleged ties to prison labor, they would require it to be prepared by a “socially responsible” company that gave full health benefits to its workers, including free dental care, and insist that it be comprised of “fair trade” ingredients, and be delivered by a New Age healer.
if these chics are so hung up on corporate responsibility and being good citizens and what not, then why the fuck are they smoking cigarettes? I can’t think of a scummier more “capitalist” set of companies than cigarette manufacturers.
Conspicuously enough, a small faction of protesters was willing to accept the offer of food, provided that the labor involve only minimum security prisons with extensive outreach and rehabilitation programs, and not medium to high maximum facilities. But the Olsen twins quickly shot down that suggestion, and said that under no circumstances should such obvious paternalism be compromised with…
there was a full on scrimmage in the street, hundreds of people outside and we took over west 4th street. cops jumped in physically, maced someone. better updating perhaps, bwog
Where you at??
rioting? oh please, grow the fuck up.
those people deserve every expulsion and arrest they earn.
That NYU let them stay is a disgrace.
need to now one up NYU and take over lerner. Anyone have any ideas for something we should protest? PrezBo needs a haircut is all i got right now
You took over west 4th street? Amazing. What did you do then? Oh, nothing, because your shenanigans were nothing but a farce.
Now let me ask you. Are you upset a police officer maced someone? You did just say you took over W.4th.
Instead of better updating bwog, how about good job in realizing what a joke this whole thing is.
#28, I vote we protest the administration’s choice of plantings in campus walk. We all know hydrangeas are the flower of the proletariat.
anyone wanna compare CU’s hunger strike to this NYU circus?
also — why are they anti-Coke? Just needed to be against another company, or do some of them just prefer Pepsi products?
coke supports paramilitary organizations that murder people. NO FUCKING JOKE. READ A FUCKING BOOK.
and then arrest them, and keep mommy and daddy’s money, too.
I will agree that the hunger strike wasn’t this insane, it’s still on the same continuum of kids with way too much time on their hands. If you want to make a difference, study hard at university and go into public policy, medicine, or something altruistic…don’t threaten to starve yourself and kick and scream like a resentful teenager or toddler.
one would think this is obvious, but i guess we need someone to actually state it.
Now hear me out. To discourage these sorts of incidents from happening, NYU (and Columbia) should make the humanities curricula harder. This will:
a) Ensure these radical nutjobs have less time on their hands for crap like this, and will instead spend their weekends doing homework.
b) Ensure fewer radical nutjobs get into competitive schools.
c) Ensure fewer people are humanities majors and actually try doing something worthwhile in their lives.
I assumed here of course that Science, Math and Engg kids would never engage in a form of protest as misguided as this.
please, if you are planning to do the same kind of shit, PLEASE hold off until next year, after I graduate.