Comments on: Kimmel Occupation Day 3 Updates

By: Stian Brinch

Stian Brinch — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 18:29:07 +0000

Alex, your mother’s and father’s diseases were not caused by any “system,” and the illogical mental leaps that you make, linking your personal setbacks and misfortunes to a political system, reveal your lack of maturity and your limited analytical ability. The vast majority of people work for a living. So do you. Boo hoo. People get sick. Most people don’t blame others for it. Your favorite totalitarian government Hamas has a special career reserved for compulsive dissident malcontents like you who project their personal rage on their surrounding communities: suicide bomber. Run along now and get your free belt.

By: Naif Mabat

Naif Mabat — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 01:45:54 +0000

I blame Clark Kerr.

By: emmy reveaux

emmy reveaux — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 23:12:54 +0000

OK, Alex…start your own movement that addresses your own concerns. Don’t show up at some other school that people VOLUNTARILY pay craploads of money to attend and stage a terribly lame takeover that lacks a coherent message.

By: Alex Lotorto

Alex Lotorto — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 23:01:21 +0000

Hey folks. It makes me laugh how you have absolutely no information about me or my background, have clearly not read about the demands for an affordable education we are fighting for, and Take Back NYU! is not a failure. They have legitimized their demands after two years of struggling to be heard. Many of them work multiple jobs and had to leave the sit-in to work. I grew up in rural PA, with no health care, no dentist, my family claiming bankruptcy, my dad in rehab, and very very little privileges. My mom is a florist with diabetes that is killing her. It’s made her blind with cataracts, forced emergency heart bypass surgery, a foot amputation, and now kidney failure. We had no health care to pay for any of that. My dad is a landscaper who plows driveways in the winter. I have worked every summer and every break in beer stores, ice cream stores, cleaning shopping centers, and landscaping rich fuckers houses with my dad. I have only been out of the northeast twice with trips on my grampa’s life insurance money. Wealth is not in my family. I am working class. I am struggling with my debt that my *need-based* scholarships cannot cover. I attended the cheapest college I got into. I haven’t bought new clothes in two years. I am non-violent for now, but my rage is infinite and bottomless against the people who have driven me into a despair over my mom and my powerlessness without money to buy my politicians. I’ve written hundreds of letters and made hundreds of phone calls to congressmen about my deep-felt anger about their irresponsibility. I took a semester off in DC to do work on poverty, healthcare, and anti-war issues that directly affect me. I lobbied congressmen who could care less. Then I see them destroying the lives of millions of people across the oceans. What little tax money and tuition money I pay, goes towards cluster bombs and tanks to occupy Arabs in racist wars for profit. Generals, politicians, and CEOs are stepping on the heads of everyone else for benefit. I’m sick and tired of privileged people sitting on their couches, with the power to persuade the system to work otherwise, and doing NOTHING BUT VOTING. That’s why I am non-violent for now. But if the system kills my mom, which it will, and keeps butchering people in wars, prisons, and on the streets of my country…I can’t express how prepared I am to take care of the motherfuckers myself. No justice, no peace will take on a whole different meaning when my mom is on her death bed. If you are working class, then I am struggling for you because I identify with what you’re facing. You haven’t met the Alex Lotorto that sits listening to his generation watching MTV down the hall in the dorm as he clenches his fist because he just had to force the doctor over the phone to perform a surgery on his mom because she didn’t want it and wanted to die. After that, every story coming out of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine makes me overwhelmed. The difference is, I can do something about it here. I can lean and push on the system, shut it down, and make it stop its violence.

That’s what I attempted to do at NYU, like I attempt to do every day at Muhlenberg. If you don’t think it worked, don’t just criticize me, START YOUR OWN MOVEMENT AND FIX IT. Maybe I’ll join it.

By: Cecil DeMille

Cecil DeMille — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 22:28:51 +0000

Noam Choamsky? Charles Baron? Who is missing Ethel Rosenberg? Baron is a supporter of Zimbabwe thug Robert Mugabe. Mugabe would never allowed this sort of protest.

By: Devi Durga

Devi Durga — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 21:06:30 +0000

your parents must be so proud, Alex….

By: How a Fringe Group at NYU Went From Being Disliked to Loathed - The Story of the TBNYU! Kimmel Occupation | NYU Local

Sat, 21 Feb 2009 03:49:50 +0000

[...] DAY THREE [...]

By: Michael Letwin

Michael Letwin — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 03:08:00 +0000

From: Michael Letwin
Date: Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 9:52 PM
Subject: Hands Off Student Protesters
To: john.sexton@nyu.edu, jhb5@nyu.edu, provost@nyu.edu, evp@nyu.edu
Cc: fnk205@gmail.com, emilystainkamp@gmail.com

To: NYU President John Sexton; John Beckman, NYU Spokesperson; Office of the Provost; Office of the Vice President

New York City Labor Against the War denounces in the strongest possible terms the NYU administration’s deceitful and vindictive treatment of student protesters who occupied the Kimmel Center.

The administration falsely agreed to negotiate, only to detain and suspend the students’ representatives. It then forcibly removed the remaining protesters — some of whom were assaulted by NYU security — and evicted them from their dorm rooms.

These students’ nonviolent protest rightly demanded that NYU serve its student body, and that the University be financially transparent and accountable. It is particularly honorable that they demand that NYU support the people of Gaza and end all University complicity with the Israeli apartheid regime.

Their action is in the finest tradition of the civil rights, Vietnam antiwar and anti-apartheid movements. We are very proud of them.

We therefore join in demanding that NYU administration immediately:

1. Rescind suspensions, housing evictions and all other disciplinary action against the student protesters.

2. Meet the students’ demands.

Michael Letwin
Co-Convener, New York City Labor Against the War; Former President, Association of Legal Aid Attorneys/UAW Local 2325

By: Jeremy Perks

Jeremy Perks — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 22:33:59 +0000

Farah Khimji is being paid to organize these rallies, check her bank info. She has discussed this with me on several occasions and has a vested financial interest in this “protest”. She had a relationship with a friend of mine who was not very nice to her, and became radicalized overnight. As for Charles Barrons after winning his City Council seat in 2001, Barron quickly advanced a sectarian political agenda based largely on the perceived grievances of his black supporters. As one of his first official acts, Barron urged the removal of George Washington’s portrait from Borough Hall in Brooklyn on the grounds that Washington was a slave-owner. Barron next denounced Thomas Jefferson, whose statue was housed in the chamber of the City Council, as a “slaveholding pedophile.” On another occasion he called Jefferson “a slaveholder, a hypocrite, and a rapist.” That Barron delighted in his race-conscious demagoguery was evident from the start: “We’re bringing the ‘hood to the Hall!” he proclaimed in 2002.

By: UPDATED - NYU Revolt Watch: It’s Over « The Rhetorican

UPDATED - NYU Revolt Watch: It’s Over « The Rhetorican — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 20:19:19 +0000

[...] UPDATE: “they have the support of Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky.” [...]