A-Infos (en) Greece, APO, Land & Freedom[Columbia]: First we take Columbia - Lessons from the 1968 Occupy Movement (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

When you get Columbia, when you get Paris, get the media, tell the world 
what you're doing, what you're planning and why and how you're going to 
do it, how they can help, keep the news going, steady, you've got 70 
years of media influence (mass media) that you have to fight is a wall 
that you have to break through, somehow, to reach the instinctive man 
who struggles like a plant for light, for air // when you take over a 
city, a campus, you take over the stations energy, water, transport, 
forget to negotiate, forget how to negotiate, don't wait for De Gaulle 
or Kirk to resign, they won't, you don't "protest" , fight a war, fight 
to win, don't wait for it Johnson or Humphrey or Rockefeller to agree to 
your terms, take what you need, "it's free because it's yours"

-Diane Di Prima, Revolutionary Letter #15

On April 23, 1968 hundreds of Columbia students occupied Hamilton Hall, 
holding Provost Coleman hostage. In the following days, five campus 
buildings were occupied. The sit-ins demanded Columbia halt a 
construction project that would have helped gentrify Harlem, end a 
secret CIA-funded research program, and grant amnesty to protesting 
students. The occupations were finally ended on April 29, when the New 
York City police raided the occupied buildings, resulting in 
approximately seven hundred arrests. In response, faculty went on strike 
and the campus was closed for the remainder of the semester. New squats 
on campus and in the surrounding neighborhood sprung up in the following 
weeks. Eventually the Columbia administration gave in to almost all of 
the squatters' demands. What follows are some lessons from April 1968 
that might be useful today, now that university occupations have 
re-emerged as a tactic in the movement to stop the genocide in Gaza.

I. Occupies are effective because they are disruptive . The April 1968 
sit-ins shut down the entire university for over a week. This forced the 
administration to give in to the squatters' demands, even as the 
movement faced repression.

II. An occupation must spread to survive. New buildings must be occupied 
on campus, across the city and across the country. Surprise the enemy. 
Strive for daily or even hourly successes, no matter how small. Maintain 
the moral high ground at all costs - your moral edge.

III. Every occupation is a community. By interrupting the "normal" flow 
of capitalist society, it makes room for something new to emerge. A 
space is created to experiment with how we might live differently. Share 
everything . Within the occupation, there is no individual property. 
Break the barriers . Inside the occupation, social status and jobs are 
meaningless.

"The point of Columbia in '68 was that if you were inside one of the 
occupied buildings, you had the same power as anyone else. It didn't 
matter who you were, what you studied, who your parents were, if you got 
a scholarship or if you paid for yourself or if you weren't even a 
student. None of these things mattered when it came to our daily lives 
inside the (occupied) School of Mathematics. Everyone was equal..."

IV. All movements come face to face with the divisions of capitalist 
society. This is even more true in squatting, as it is directly a 
question of living together. But grappling with this limit can be done 
in a way that contributes to the momentum of the movement rather than 
devouring it. The 1968 occupations immediately confronted issues of race 
and gender. Black and white students occupied separate buildings. But by 
organizing themselves, black students contributed to the strength of the 
entire movement. The determination and discipline of the black students 
who occupied Hamilton Hall inspired the rest of the student occupiers to 
become more determined. Within each occupation, efforts were made to 
overcome the gendered division of labor. Guarding and cooking were done 
by people of all sexes. The toilets were declassified.

V.  The spread of occupied spaces requires space for the spread of 
autonomous initiatives. Every trend in the movement will have to find 
the confidence to organize and act. As new settlements opened in 1968, 
each acquired its own distinct characteristics and culture. The 
Mathematics building, for example, was known to be the most "militant" 
and had the largest percentage of outsiders.

VI. Occupants draw strength from the specter of rebellion. The April 
1968 sit-ins took place immediately after the "Big Week" of riots in 
surrounding neighborhoods and cities across the country following the 
assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Campus administrators, city 
officials and the police department worried that any attempt to crack 
down on the squats could lead to unrest in the surrounding 
neighborhood-Harlem could invade Columbia. An occupation today will be 
in a stronger position if it is similarly able to build and mobilize the 
support of the surrounding neighborhood.

VII.  So the first task is to open the campus to the community. Students 
from other campuses, residents of the surrounding neighborhood and 
external allies should be welcome. In April 1968, five hundred people 
marched through the gate at 116th St & Broadway. The New York Police 
backed down for fear of violent incidents breaking out. A similar tactic 
may be necessary today.

VIII. The future belongs to the brave. It is unclear whether a majority 
of the campus or the city supported the sit-ins while they were 
happening. But polls show a large majority in Columbia claimed to 
support them in retrospect. No one wants to be on the wrong side of 
history. But initiative is needed to overcome inertia. Boldness clears 
away the clouds of confusion. Bold actions win support, even in retrospect.

IX. Form committees. Once you occupy a building, organize yourself 
around practical tasks. In 1968, a defense committee built barricades 
and coordinated the night guard shift. A liaison committee established 
communication between the squatters and with the outside world.

"We had a system of wireless, citizen band wireless, as well as 
telephone communications in every building, monitored by the university. 
We had three polygraphs running continuously and there were people doing 
nothing during the strike but relaying on the polygraph .And there was a 
big sign on the wall, a phrase from someone in Berkeley, that said "five 
students and a polygraph can do more damage to a university than an army".

X. Avoid endless meetings. Accounts of the Columbia occupations 
emphasize that participants spent almost all of their time in 
round-the-clock meetings. This was intended to ensure equal 
participation and real communication. Recent experience has shown that 
general meetings often demoralize and stifle initiative.

XI.  This is just the beginning. A number of revolutionary organizations 
emerged from the occupy movement of 1968. Pushing the university 
struggle to its limits could similarly contribute to the production of a 
complex of revolutionary forces in the city today.

XII. "Two, three, many Columbias". Then as now, it will take the opening 
of new fronts and the deployment of increasingly disruptive tactics, 
such as building occupations, to put the emergency brakes on the war 
machine.

XIII. The sit-in movement in France the following month showed that, 
under the right conditions, struggles within the university can spark a 
much wider social explosion.

XIV.  Smoke the president's cigars.

All power to the communities.

The proliferation of occupied spaces requires space for the 
proliferation of autonomous initiatives. Every trend in the movement 
will have to find the confidence to organize and act.

Source: First we take Columbia
Lessons from the April 1968 occupation movement
https://illwill.com/columbia

https://landandfreedom.gr/el/diethni/1594-first-take-columbia
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