Your defiance and rebellion is beautiful. We watch in awe as you take to the streets night after night, day after day – filling it, making it yours. We send you our thoughts and our warmest solidarity. Your courage and tenacity ignites our resolve. We are, after all, like you.
Like you we suffer the relentless erosion of our livelihoods, like you we are afflicted by an unending vandalism wrought upon even the vaguest dream for a future not dictated by those who would keep us precarious. We too are facing a brave new world of austerity, shock economics and class war. Living under the militarised rule of capital, with ever-escalating police violence against anyone who says Enough is Enough! and takes to our city streets and squares to protest, rebel and reclaim their dignity.
Across much of the globe as here in the UK, the University is being ever-more rationalised and managerialised. Key performance indicators, imposed not for the pursuit of knowledge, but for the pursuit of profit and for hierarchies of prestige, beholden to empty performance metrics and the enclosures of privatisation. A barren training ground for individualised competition between students vying to become the most employable in a labour market that can’t keep its promise. A University these ‘visionaries’ are making unaffordable for all but the privileged few, at the same time as they are depriving it of the rich creativity and joy that learning together can bring. We listen and know that this logic is intensifying everywhere: California to Quebec, Auckland to Oakland, London and San Miguel.
Your mass defiance and outright refusal give us hope in this moment of fear and frustration. We see you fight and remember that we too fought, and know that we can, and will, fight again. We stand together, not only to defend what is being taken away from us, but to create the kind of world we want to live in.
We are raising funds for your legal battles, hoping to contribute in some small way to your struggle. Know that our thoughts and dreams are with you.
In solidarity,
Plan C London & Leeds
June 2012
