Saturday 24 January 2009

Update Saturday evening

Another productive meeting this evening with the general atmosphere relaxed but determined. Our occupied space is becoming ever more organised and even homely, with a recycling system in place, grocery lists on the board, and constant coffee on the go. Tomorrow will be focused on reviewing our response to university management and organising ourselves and our working groups so that come Monday morning, the return of students to campus and the inevitable 8am wake-up call, we will be able to hit the ground running.

We suspect that Monday morning won't be quite so good for David Milliband who can expect to receive 60 letters on his doorstep from the Amnesty International society and other students demanding that the UK government push for accountability for war crimes and an independent investigation. More letter-writing is planned for tomorrow with no lack of suggestions for potential recipients!

And perhaps first among them will be a few editor's-in-chief including Mark Thompson of the spineless BBC. We were happy to see ourselves in the Guardian today, but remain cynically disappointed by the lack of mainstream media coverage of the growing UK wave of university occupations in general. Nonetheless, communications have been made with other occupied universities and we are looking forward to strengthening these links to consolidate our movement across the UK and increase our effectiveness in demanding practical support for Palestine. We also received a positive news from those who attended the national demonstration in London today with reports of a lively march with demonstrators peaceful but no less angry.

Some pictures from Wednesday 21st.






Update Saturday afternoon

It has been a very calm and focused day so far. The absence of lectures and thus our ability to make full use of Arts A2 throughout the day has enabled long and in-depth discussion of our demands, which is still going on at present. This morning many people participated in a workshop on consensus decision making and it seems to be having benefits already with the discussion flowing much more smoothly and time considerations being met. A safer spaces policy was also drafted which will be presented to the group at 7:00 for discussion, and later this evening we will be relaxing with a film screening of Paradise Now.