The general organisational meeting will be back to the usual time of 4pm on Wednesday this week after last week's meetings were disrupted by the Free Education demo. We've got lots to catch up on and make sure that we keep the ball rolling so please come along... meet Falmer common room.
Just before that at 3pm will be the boycott and divestment working group meeting in Falmer Common Room (or outside in the concrete square if the weather is nice). Some excellent research has been done and it is now broadening to ethical investment more generally (which everyone seems to agree is a natural progression). Come down to find out what we are up to ... there's a few plans afoot, although progress is quite slow. We are assessing the companies which the university invests in and assessing how best to pressure the uni administration to form an ethical investment policy.
This Friday lunchtime there will be a talk with Tamar Katz, a 19 year old Israeli student who was jailed for 51 days last year for refusing to serve in the army. 12-2pm Arts A5. See http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/event.php?eid=54315469230 for details.
Huge solidarity to Manchester uni, who after nearly a month of creative and energetic occupation which saw them take several different rooms on their campus and despicable threats and intimidatory strategies from their VC are still going stronger than ever! They say:We in Manchester have been in occupation for almost four weeks now, yet the University has so far refused to negotiate with us. The University still invests in the arms trade, leading to some students having to disrupt a DSTL stall (an agency of the MoD) at an official graduate recruitment fair.
The Vice Chancellor Alan Gilbert has threatened expulsion for students who are involved.
Our demands are in line with current Union policy having received an overwhelming majority at an Emergency General Meeting, attended by over 1,100 students.
They have called for a national demonstration of support at 2pm this Wednesday 4th March (see http://manunioccupation.wordpress.com/). This is a critical time for the occupation: please support them by sending an email to VC Allan Gilbert demanding that he negotiate with occupiers: president@manchester.ac.uk.
Indymedia are putting together a feature page and article on the occupations and have put a call-out for occupation-related writings that people have done. Post your article to the Indymedia newswire (make sure you tick the'University occupations for Gaza' action topic when you post it) and then send an alert to baylott@riseup.net so that it can be linked into the main article. See the current occupations news page here: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/actions/2009/occupations/.
