A Brief List of Impossible Demands

While we do not believe in making demands to the University, like a dog waiting at the table for the scraps of the overfed, we do want to explain why we are fighting and what we hope to accomplish. Nor do we form an organized "movement" or claim to make these demands on the behalf of others, although we do expect that a great number of students and workers in the UC system and the larger sphere of public education will share some of our goals, while those invested in the current system of domination will share none of them.

These demands are impossible not in the sense that they cannot be realized, but rather that the current system would come undone if it did realize them. A brief list of impossible demands for this world.

The immediately realizable at all universities:

• The liberation of space for free student use, discussion and organizing. WE ARE THE CRISIS.

• Pushing public discourse to focus on the role of the university within larger economic structures and the impact of cut-backs on low-income people and people of color.

At the University of California with regards to its management, organization, and economic structure:

• The fulfillment and radicalization of the University's promise: absolute, free education for all, regardless of so-called "qualifications," test scores, race, class, gender or orientation.

• The declaration of the entire university as a "free speech" zone. At present, certain universities, such as UCLA, only recognize a certain space and time (Kerkhoff, from 12 to 1pm) as a "free speech zone."

• Budgetary and investment transparency. Full disclosure on how bonds are issued to private investors, backed with student tuition, and used to fuel unnecessary construction projects. An immediate halt on all construction and issuance of bonds until such transparency becomes a reality. Default on all bond payments until educational and workforce goals are met.

• An end to all furloughs and worker lay-offs.

• The removal of all Regents and President Yudof from power, as the students, workers and staff of the UC neither choose them nor endorse them.

• Disarm the university: UCPD cannot carry tasers or pepper spray on campus. The removal of military recruiters and the entire war apparatus from the university.

In the big picture:

• The negation of an economic system that links income to one's so-called level of education. We demand education for those without "qualifications" or the means to afford the ridiculous costs of tuition and we demand social and economic viability for those without degrees.

• The rejection of the role the university plays in funding the war machine, developing new technologies of destruction, and breeding the future's managers, bureaucrats and careerists. Education for social good.

• The expression of our solidarity and support for students internationally and in the US, and especially those in Vienna, UCSC, UC Berkeley CS Fullerton, CS Fresno who are fighting the commodification of education and the transformation of universities into business enterprises for private investors and money-hungry administrators.

• The encouragement of popular struggles among students and workers who are fighting to achieve meaning and autonomy in their lives.

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Based on the New School Students' "What We Want" available here: http://www.newschoolinexile.com/Downloads/details/id=43.html