[-empyre-] Demand Nothing, Occupy Everything?

[Marco Deseriis]

Hi Micha,

yes, thank you for sharing those precious links.

> At UCSD, very few students, faculty and staff that I've talked to knew
> about or support the strike do. Myself and a handful of other faculty,
> staff and students are striking, but is the very idea of a strike not
> viral but more based in monolothic constituencies and factory models
> of labor? 
No, I just think that after 3-4 decades of resting on dreams of unabated 
growth Americans (and Californians in particular) need to be re-educated 
and reawakened as to what it means to lose one's job, as to what it 
means to fight for it, and what it means to risk of losing your job for 
defending it. So thank you for taking on this rather humongous task ;-)

To me it is not a matter of virality but of culture. People in Latin 
America, Asia, Europe and all over the world keep going on strike for 
defending their jobs, demanding higher wages, security on the workplace, 
etc. It is only in this country that three decades of brainwashing have 
led to the obliteration of historic memory (the cancellation of May1st 
being the most notable example), and to the perception that going on 
strike is somehow out of fashion.

In actual fact, there exists a growing global movement to defend public 
education, and to build an entirely different model of knowledge 
sharing. You are probably familiar with this site:

http://www.edu-factory.org

which reports the news of 15 arrests at UCLA:

http://www.edu-factory.org/edu15/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=240:students-arrested-at-ucla&catid=34:struggles&Itemid=53

and whose picture eloquently show the response of public authorities to 
this growing mobilization.

> Perhaps the spreading occupations are more viral? I wonder
> about this as I start going on strike tomorrow and join actions at
> UCSD...
>
>   
Well, it is not up to me to say that strikes and occupations are just 
two sides of the same coin.