London Calling: Dec 9th National demo against tuition fees

Dear fellow campaigners, what a long time a few weeks in politics can feel.

From Millbank to Newsnight, from Carnivals to Cat & Mouse games, ULU has certainly been at the forefront of student activism recently.

At Senate we voted to support peaceful direct actions and occupations and have been heavily involved in the building and organisation of various actions and demos and have called a National demo on Thursday Dec 9^th the day that MP’s will vote in Parliament on the raising of tuition fees.

As you can imagine, it’s been a really busy time so I’m sorry for not replying to all the thousands of requests to speak and/or attend meetings etc.

Six of ULU’s colleges are in occupation and many more actions are planned in the run up to the National Demo. ULU has been really active with all sorts of thing.

Our newly formed London Student Assembly is attracting hundreds of students each Sunday. We submit and pass motions, decide democratically what actions to take next and basically use these assemblies to coordinate our actions to ensure we have maximum unity and strength. The process was a bit painful to start with with the 1^st meeting taking over 3 hours! but we felt it was essential to make sure we are all singing off the same songsheet.

Yesterday we reconfirmed our support for a National Student Assembly sometime in early January. We will let you know more about this closer to the time.

Here’s a few more things that you can get involved in:

1) London Calling: National Demo on the day of the Fees Vote in Parliament.

Here’s a poster for Thursdays demo for you to print off and ut up or handout as flyers. I also have some available at ULU for those of you who don’t have a budget to do at your college.

http://ulucampaigner.wordpress.com/2010/12/05/london-calling-national-demo-against-tuition-fees/

It is imperative that we get as many people to ULU as possible in order to prevent more kettling and containments. If you are organising a meet up point at your campus please then bring it to ULU for 12 NOON.

...and I'm really please that NUS are now promoting this demo.

2) Please volunteer to be a Steward for the demo. Email campaigns@ulu.lon.ac.uk

3) Here also is the link to the Kings College (a ULU college) Petition that has already gathered 900 signatures in two days:http://www.gopetition.com/petition/41174/signatures.html

4) Don’t forget the ULU trip to Berlin for Holocaust Memorial Day. Book your flights and email campaigns@ulu.lon.ac.uk to let me know or call me to ask more details on 07850 177 637. See http://tinyurl.com/uluberlin for more details.

MP's Vote Against Fees Petition

In the coming week, the need to engage with the the wider public, the media and, most
importantly, the British Government, should lie at the very heart of
everything we do.

In this vein, a few of us at KCLSU have put forward a petition. In the
run-up to next week's vote, an intelligent poltical focus will prove
to be one of our greatest assets.

In it, we demand that MPs votes AGAINST the rise in tuition fees.

You can read it here: http://tinyurl.com/voteagainstfees

I would be extremely grateful if you could take the time to read what we have put forward and add your
signature if you agree with our sentiments. If you could also take a
few minutes to spread the word about this, then that would be
fantastic.

It is fair to say that we are sick of being branded lazy, apathetic
trouble-makers. A petition such as this provides a formal and academic
lobbying of our MPs. Our aim is to present this petition to Parliament
on Thursday and we need as many signatures as possible for this to
work. Tell your friends, family, dog - whoever. We need to get this
message out there.

Through this we can show them that we are not the uneducated, naive,
disaffected generation they would so readily have us be.

Thanks,

Natasha

Natasha Wynarczyk,

Editor-in-Chief of Roar,

VP Media and Engagement at KCLSU

Carnival of Resistance 24th Nov 2010 for National Day of Action

Nick Clegg talks to the hand

Daily Mail report and brilliant photos HERE.

The Guardian HERE

We were in the Financial Times, the Metro, on BBC News at 6 & 10pm then also the next day.

On Wednesday, what Nick Clegg intended to be a beautiful publicity stunt turned into a PR disaster when students

managed to grab the media attention. This photo I took inside 70 Whitehall demonstrates, perhaps, how scared the government are at the moment.

12 students from higher education and school students were invited to ‘discuss developing policy on the future of Higher Education Funding’ on the day that the coalition government released their report on education cuts.

He invited me, Clare Solomon, and 11 other education representatives, all of whom have colleges in Lib Dem constituencies, to what I can only describe as a sham consultation.

At 12.30 he released his report into the Brown Review. We were to meet him at 1pm. This gave us no time to download, digest and analyse the content therefore making a mockery of his attempt to pass off the meeting as though he had discussed it thoroughly with us.

Prior to the meeting we decided to write Hands Off Education on the palms of our hands a couple of us wore t-shirts with slogans on them underneath our regular clothes and managed to get past security with them concealed.

When Clegg invited the BBC to do a 3 minute panoramic shot of him looking cosy with students I was able to remove my shirt and tie and expose the message “Remember, Remember, the 3^rd of November: The Coalition Government Plot Blows Up Education’. His minders quickly tried to hide my striking t-shirt by surrounding me but I kept moving and waving my palm in the air.

This set the tone of the meeting, at which all students were very angry with Clegg, his bogus meeting and his defending of the massive cuts to education that he and his party are supporting.

Mr Clegg, along with all his Liberal Democrat colleagues, signed a pledge to vote against any rise in tuition fees. This Wednesday it was confirmed that the Deputy Prime Minister intends to break his promise and vote for fees to be trebled to £9,000 a year, despite having proposed their abolition at the general election and signing a pledge to “vote against any increase in fees.”

We demanded to know why the LibDems broke their manifesto promise of removing fees. Clegg said ‘you may live in a bubble but in the real world we have no alternative; what’s YOUR alternative then?’ he asked!! What a cheek. We told him to stop allowing companies like Vodaphone to dodge taxes, to halt the 55% pay increases for the bosses, to implement a progressive tax system across society, to stop funding war and Trident.

He said ‘that is complete nonsense’!!

When he tried to justify the loans scheme that poorer students will have to take to afford the fees one of the school students asked ‘are you saying that debt is acceptable?’

Elliot from Leeds Uni brought up the fact that Muslim students may not be able to take out loans because of the interest that is associated with the loans so large swathes of people will also not be able to afford the fees.

Elliot also pointed out that since education benefits the whole of society not just the individual who receives it (an educated society is more likely to vote, to have lower infant mortality, is more healthy etc etc) and that, therefore, it should not be the individual that pays. We need to push for progressive taxation across the whole of society so that the rich pay more tax and the poor less. This is the only fair way to fund the best education system.
We told him that we are committed to fighting both the cuts to education and to wider society and also against fees. We told him about the NUS & UCU demo; and we told him we will be hounding the LibDems wherever they go (like the EducCamp students in London have been doing to Vince Cable)

See you on November 10^th. Don’t forget the Big Demo and Breakfast at ULU from 8am, banner & placard making and student press conference at 10.15 all at ULU. Ask your coach to drop you at Mallet St.

Email campaigns@ulu.lon.ac.uk to book your breakfast. We have over 1,200 booked in so far so make sure you let me know asap.

see: http://ulucampaigner.wordpress.com

See more videos on this playlist: http://www.youtube.com/my_playlists?p=5A612FD02298763C

Education on Trial at ULU. Tickets now on sale

Another fantastic line up of discussion, poetry, video and totally Sh!t Theatre are lined up for your debating pleasure.

Set a week before the NUS, UCU & UNISON national demonstration 'Education Cuts: Fund Our Future' this event hopes to build for the demo and beyond. With LSE now announcing they are looking into privatisation these discussions are more than ever important.

Click on the images for provisional lineup and agenda. Feel free to print off and put up round your campuses and workplaces.

Buy your advance tickets HERE before they sell out. And bring slogans to paint on your very own banner at Sky Yarlett's Banner and Placard Making Session :-)

Email, facebook and twitter away this post and feel free to invite anyone you like...

Petition to Save the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Middlesex University

Just quickly, (I'm going to add my own thoughts to this post later in the day), here's the petition to sign. It has nearly 5,000 signatures already

The abrupt closure of the Philosophy programmes at Middlesex University is a matter of national and indeed international concern. Not only does it flatly contradict the stated commitment of Middlesex University to promote 'research excellence', it represents a startling stage in the ongoing impoverishment of Philosophy provision in the UK.



Planning for the resistance meeting today at 3pm at the Trent Park campus. See the facebook event HERE

My 1st speaking engagement as ULU President elect...

I have just been added to the line up...the united fight back against cuts begins here...

Take Back Education teach in at KCL this Saturday.

There is an unprecedented attack on tertiary education with cuts estimated as high as £2.5bn - or 1/3 of total HE funding. Upwards of 14,000 jobs could be in the firing line and many institutions could close altogether. We need a united campaign, not just to save jobs but also to defend education.

3 days left 'til the teach-in – share this message with everyone you know:

TAKE BACK EDUCATION: A TEACH-IN TO BUILD THE RESISTANCE:
THIS SATURDAY 27 FEBRUARY 11AM-4PM, KINGS COLLEGE LONDON

Tickets available at http://educationactionlondon.blogspot.com/
(£6 waged, £3 unwaged)

The No Cuts @ King's campaign and King's UCU are hosting a mass teach-in this Saturday. The event is aimed at both students and education workers from across the country and will be full of alternative lectures and tutorials. Hundreds are signed up already; make sure you're there too!

Sessions include:

• The crisis in our universities and the battle for education
• The tasks ahead – building resistance that can win
• The corporate takeover of our universities
• Reclaiming our students' unions
• Education for liberation – what could our education look like?
• Education for all – challenging Islamophobia, racism and points based immigration
• 1968 – what can we learn from the fire last time?

The line up includes:

• Terry Eagleton – literary critic
• Alison Lord – UCU branch chair from the victorious campaign to stop cuts at Tower Hamlets college
• Michael Rosen – poet and education campaigner
• Jeremy Corbyn MP – member of Parliament for Islington North
• Nikos Lountos – activist from Greece
• Alex Callinicos – author of Education in a Neoliberal World and professor at Kings College London
• Daf Adley & James Haywood – NUS Executive
• Juan Carlos Piedra – Justice for Cleaners
• Stathis Kouvelakis – Lecturer and author
• Lesley McGorrigan – Officer at Leeds University UCU who are striking against cuts
• Mike Gonzalez – 1968 activist and author
• Patrick Ainley – author of Education Make You Fick Innit
• Sarah Young – student from Sussex University occupation
• Gargi Bhattacharyya – author and professor of sociology
• Assed Baig & Tara Hewitt – students union officers
• Jim Wolfreys – president King’s College London UCU

NUS president Wes Streeting stoops to a new low

Check back here soon for video of his remarks on Gaza & student occupations incl on occupations over education cuts. I can't work my YouTube uploader atm.

Please comment below or ask questions. I will try to get them answered.

NUS NEC member James Haywood writes on Wes Streetings latest comments

Wes Streeting stoops to a new low

People should hold their stomachs and read this Ha'aretz article about NUS President Wes Streeting's recent visit to Israel: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1137628.html

I was in two minds of whether to write something about this, it truly is so disgusting that most points don't need much coming back on, but actually some serious issues do come out of this.

Of course Streeting attacking the UCU is nothing new, first the planned strike last year was needed for students "like a hole in the head", and now this attack on the UCU's bravery in standing for the academic boycott (which has now been followed by the TUC). But then, hey, since when has New Labour ever been about supporting unions?

His quoted remarks on Palestine really are disgusting however. Livni, the politician responsible for the massacre in Gaza which will be mourned on campuses across the UK over the next month, was apparently "a really strange choice" for lawyers in the UK to seek arrest for war crimes. With no sense of irony he says this attempt to uphold international law must, "seem so really ignorant". mmm....quite,
so while we're on the subject of ignorance lets carry on with the article:

"my first impression of the West Bank was that it was just like the place on the other side.... The surroundings were the same, the people were doing the same things - there wasn't much difference between the two places." The Palestinian economy in the West Bank seems "to be a lot more stable and active" than he had assumed, he added."
The charities, religious groups, NGOs (including Israeli NGOs), Amnesty, they are all liars.....he didn't add.

What a pity he didn’t go 5 minutes from the Church of Nativity to Dhieshesh refugee camp where thousands of Palestinian refugees live in terrible conditions and survive on UN hand outs: not a stable and active economy. Or perhaps Streeting could have gone to Hebron, and seen the settler violence against Palestinians there and the destruction of the economy by the siege on the old city by the Israeli army. Or gone to Nablus to visit the huge graveyards, or Ramallah to Bir Zeit University to hear from students of the military lockdowns the campus has suffered consistently over the years.

But most normal people know this, so why bother raising it? Because actually this highlights a dangerous issue with this trip. This wasn't a holiday, which can be seen not just from his press comments but Ha'aretz reported that these comments took place, "after a meeting in the Prime Minister's office".
This trip was organised. By who?

Students in the UK have a right to know who organised this trip, and if it was paid for who funded it. Because whatever organisation did organise it are clearly not even interested in promoting a two state solution let alone a just solution. If the issues are so "complex" why did Streeting not visit officials in the West Bank? Why did he not meet the Palestinian student council? Or visit refugee camps? Or look at the illegal settlements and the violence perpetrated by settlers in the West Bank? Or villages being destroyed by the apartheid wall? Why no attempt to enter Gaza? Yet again we have the racist vision of Palestinians as invisible "problems" that need to be "solved", not human beings who have a right to live, let alone to education, health, housing and other basic things they are denied by the occupation.

We have a right to know who organised and funded this trip, and we should question whether such biased and frankly corrupt practises are acceptable in our National Union.
And if Streeting is genuine, then I have an offer for him: Goldsmiths are organising a trip to the West Bank in early April, he is now formally invited to come on the trip to see "the other side". I look forward to his response.


Haarerrz article

[Posted with iBlogger from my iphone ]

London Met. Students Union gov speaks b4 mtg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkfKYbZALnk

And here's one of the police dragging people out:

Sent from my iPhone

http://solomonsmindfield.blogspot.com
http://twitter.com/solomonsmfield

Spivak speaks

Part 2 HERE

Part 3 HERE

Part 4 HERE

Part 5 HERE

Part 6 HERE

Part 7 HERE

$2,500 Daniel Singer Essay prize

Daniel Singer Essay prize, originally uploaded by solomonsmfield.

Click image to enlarge

Useless as a Church dot blogspot

Down with art as a means to escape a life that isn't worth living

A presentation of the Tate Modern exhibition on Rodchenko and Popova's Constructivism.

Myself and two other class mates are putting together a 20 presentation for our Myth and Mythmaking class assignment.

The brief is to:

develop a case study along the lines of those presented in the lectures, one that deals with the ‘discursive’ approach to myth outlined in the course. This means you should take a particular instance of mythmaking—this can be anything from a political event to a form of artistic expression—and track the way in which it is created for particular discursive ends (to create, consolidate, or challenge a particular construction of identity, to establish a form of political or intellectual hegemony, or to authorise a particular worldview against others, for example).

We particularly want to focus on representation, production and dissemination of knowledge. We would welcome any thoughtful thoughts and tips on how to go about it.

But, also, I wanted to share with you how useful blogs can be for organising, discussing and sharing things with a limited number of people.  After a while we will probably set the blog to 'private' so it is only us that can discuss (this will encourage us to share more, we think, we hope).

I am on one particular mailing list for an organisation that will remain nameless (you know who you are!) and I find it very annoying to have my email inbox full of replies from people who just want to say ' I agree' or 'what do you think?'...WHAT DO I THINK ABOUT WHAT ? It all gets very confusing. 

HERE is the basic bones of our organising blog so far (really basic bones).

HERE is another example; one that our teacher set up to allow us to share things.

Anyway, if anyone has any tips on ANYTHING please feel free to comment on either this blog post or on the comments of my other blog.

tell me what I will have learned

 

Cross posted from infinite thØught

Helen DeWitt with an interesting addendum to the Massimo de Angelis and David Harvie paper I linked to recently.

'...the fact is, the instructor, no matter how brilliant, cannot specify what the learning outcomes of the course should be, because it is not in his or her power to assert that measuring up to his or her understanding of what is the case is the best outcome for the course.'

Absolutely true, this (not to mention the uncomfortably unclear tautology of 'aims and objectives' which DeWitt also highlights) - there is something both wearying and impossible about churning out endless 'aims and outcomes' for courses, as if writing prescriptions for the ether. Do students in week 12 go back to the list and check them off? Do they feel cheated if they feel they haven't achieved such-and-such an aim? I've never once seen or heard about this happening. Who are they for? Some benchmark big other, no doubt, whose opaque desires the external validation committee must internalise when pronouncing on the continued survival of the degree programme...

Meetings oscillate wildly between boundless enthusiasm for new projects and total despair - collaborations! (could we not please think of another word? It's very difficult not to think of French Nazis) interdisciplinarity! (like people from different subjects smacking each other on the arse with a paddle) international recognition! (like the world looking in a mirror...aargh! The face of Hegel!). This for a while then the 'but staffing issues...funding...' claw of cynical realism starts its inevitable throttling... 

Although it currently looks like a good idea to be a public servant of one kind or another (as the spivs in shiny shoes run off to teacher training college), it won't be long before the financial crisis hits universities hard (funny how the 'trickle-down' is so much more effective when it's the redistribution of loss). Small departments are in big trouble. Any good will extended towards the future ('give us five years to prove how good we could be!') will be retracted in the name of short-term savings. Informed once again the other day that our department was not in the strongest position because we had no 'stars', it was hard not to imagine senior management pitting small programmes against one another in a kind of X-factor head-to-head (But she once had a piece in the Guardian! But he appeared on Newsnight! Isn't he friends with Martin Amis? Doesn't she have contacts in the city?). 

The management solution, of course, is to cut the time allowed for research (while at the same time push for constant publication) and demand cuts in teaching ('why can't you run seminars with 20?') in favour of the churning out of grant applications. Sod the students! Once they're here we've got their money, who cares if they repeatedly tell us they want more teaching and more seminars and more intellectual engagement? And PhD students! Get lots of them! They bring in tons of cash! Too bad you don't have enough time to write anything on a topic that someone might want to come and work with you on.

Fucking brilliant marking scheme...Markers award students for writing obscenities on GCSE papers

Write ‘f*** off’ on a GCSE paper and you’ll get 7.5%. Add an exclamation mark and it’ll go up to 11%.

"Pupils are being rewarded for writing obscenities in their GCSE English examinations even when it has nothing to do with the question.

One pupil who wrote “f*** off” was given marks for accurate spelling and conveying a meaning successfully."

I should get at least 100% then! How brilliant though-i guess if these are the only words a student writes then we have to refer to not the word itself but what it signifies-a big bugger off to shitty school and their crap examination systems.

My son's class is constantly being put into groups and told to compete with each other to see who can finish the set work the quickest...now they all refuse coz they hate competing against each other. His Maths teacher has promised the highest scoring group a trip to Oxford Uni: "great," they said "take us to a place that we know we will never get into just to rub our noses in it"! Smart kids-smarter than most of the idiots who come out of Oxford anyway...

He is told constantly that if his homework is not up to scratch he will FAIL, if his spelling is incorrect he will FAIL, if his class mates are not up to the standard of the teacher they will all FAIL and be withdrawn from the course. The teahcer has said he will not accept not getting 100% pass marks. In a system where teachers are also on trial, pitted against each other and entered into league tables i guess he is worried that he will FAIL.

A big EFF you to competition and league tables.

Read more here

Record of protests as part of the international day of action so far

http://www.emancipating-education-for-all.org/content/record-protests-part-international-day-action-so-far

Reminder of protest today-Tak the rich to fund education

Meet SOAS steps at 2pm. Or at your Uni's usual place of assembly.

Education protest, originally uploaded by solomonsmfield.

Historical Materialism conference at SOAS this weekend

Historical Materialism is a high level conference with some fabulous speakers right on our dorrsteps at SOAS this weekend.

Sessions on Adorno-Emancipatory praxis and conceptuality in Adorno: Some notes on the time of insurrection. One on "All that is fluid is frozen to stone: sex, individuality, non-identity"

Vygotsky, Gramsci, Zizek, Althusser, Lucaks, Orientalism, Postcolonialism, New left in Palestine and much more.

It suggests a donation for entrance but you could blag it if you bemoan the fact that we are studying at universties in a neo-liberal world; (correct this time? please, please say yes) fees, kids, having to work etc!!

Call me on 07958 034 181 if you want to meet up.

Link to website and full program: http://mercury.soas.ac.uk/hm/

Two sessions to wet (whet?) your whistle eg. Friday 10am:

MARX AND PHILOSOPHY SOCIETY: NORMATIVITY AND ALIENATION
Chair: Martin McIvor
Sean Sayers
Alienation as a critical concept
Gaspar Miklos Tamas
The uniqueness of capitalism and the normative content of a socialist political philosophy
Nicholas Joll
The normativity problem in critical theory: Adorno, Bernstein, Freyenhagen

MARXISMS AND RELIGION
Chair: Peter Thomas
John Roberts
Marx and the "critique of the critique of religion‟ today
Sami Khatib
Capitalism as religion: Re-reading Walter Benjamin‟s Marxism
Alberto Toscano
The mask of apocalypse, the flag of fanaticism: Marxism, religion and revolt

Anyway, hope to see you there...x

Emergency Education Protest-Tax the Rich

Education protest, originally uploaded by solomonsmfield.

Report back from Another Education is Possible conference

Over 170 delegates participated throughout the day in the various workshops and debates. The overwhelming feeling of delegates was that we need an urgent response to the crisis in our education system. The NUS is not going to act to mobilise students so we need to fill that gap and start to rebuild the student movement from below. In this spirit the conference passed the founding statement and three amendments focused on action. Below are the initiatives called by the conference and the results of the committee elections.

Emergency Demonstration - 3pm on Friday the 14^th of November

Assemble outside Westminster Cathedral, Victoria Street (5 minutes from Victoria station)

Tax the rich to fund…

• FREE EDUCATION & LIVING GRANTS FOR ALL
• £200 million “missing” from the governments budget for higher education but Billions in bail outs for the bankers

We have seen year-on-year attacks on our right for an education. The latest are cuts to thousands of student grants after a £200 million short-fall from the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills. This comes only a few weeks after the government promised to bail out bankers with billions of tax payer’s money.

(Publicity will be out in the next few days)

For a National Student Demonstration (25^th of Feburary)

The existing calls for a national demonstration are positive and need to be turned into real activity on the ground. The conference agreed to call the demonstration for Wednesday the 25^th of February assembling at ULU. The demonstration will then be in run up to the government announcing its new budget.

The conference also committed itself to organising an open meeting to discuss the demonstration and take the organisation of it to the next level. The steering committee will meet soon to put together an event where we can both launch the demonstration and draw together as many activists as possible to organise mobilising for it.

A National Tour

The conference noted that many high profile figures support our call to build a student movement for free education. The steering committee will organise contact speakers to organise meetings across the country to discuss what is happening to our education and organise action to defend it.

Election Results:

The following committee was elected:

Chair: Damiani Sourmaidou

Secretary: Yousuf Joondan

Convener: Dominic Kavakeb

Treasurer: Jenny Jones

Communications: Rob Owen

Block of ten:

Tom Wills (Sussex)

Bonolo Woracker (Coventry)

Zakeera Suffee (Essex)

Mpegwa Mwakang'ata (SOAS)

James Norrie (Oxford)

Alison Smith (Plymouth)

Siobhan Brown (Manchester)

James Foley (Glasgow)

Ben Sellers (SOAS)

Matt Vicary (Sheffield Hallam)