We have occupied the top floor of Bramber House, University of Sussex, Brighton. There are 106 of us.

The decision to occupy has been taken after weeks of concerted campaigning during which the university management have repeatedly failed to take away the threat of compulsory redundancies and course cuts.

We recognise that an attack on education workers is an attack on us.

The room we have occupied is not a lecture theatre but a conference centre. As such, we are not disrupting the education of our fellow students; rather, we are disrupting a key part of management’s strategy to run the university as a profitable business.

They’re occupying everywhere in waves across California, New York, Greece, Croatia, Germany and Austria and elsewhere – and not only in the universities. We send greetings of solidarity and cheerful grins to all those occupation movements and everyone else fighting the pay cuts, cuts in services and jobs which will multiply everywhere as bosses and states try and pull out of the crisis.

But we are the crisis.

The Union of Polish Syndicalists (Zwiazek Syndykalistow Polski - ZSP) member of International Workers Association decided to support this struggle and edit an informing bulletin about it in a context of theglobal campaign for free and emancipating education, which will be infree distribution at the University of Wroclaw and other schools in Poland.

We ask you to send us some articles about situation in the educational sector in your countries and about a struggles performed there (in English please, but if there is no such possibility we can try to translate it also from Russian, French, German and Spanish). Please remember that majority of PhD students in Poland haven't even heardabout the International Students Movement and about the actions abroad,so try to start from the very beginning of movement in your country anddon't forget about background. We will translate your article to polishand put it in our bulletin together with news and articles aboutsituation in Poland. We also will translate our articles about Poland toEnglish and send it back to you, so you will may use it according to thecopyleft license. We are in a hurry a little bit, so we are waiting foryour texts till 12th February. Please don't write more than 1 500 words (short forms are welcomed).

This morning at 7:05 a group of students occupied the main building ofthe University of Utrecht. The students are protesting against theuniversity's board decision to stop publishing the paper version of theUniversity Newspaper. The action is the first of a series of nationalinitiatives to stop budget cuts in education.

Communiqué: University of Utrecht, the Board of Directors building, February 1st 2010

The Board of Directors crossed the line this time, and this isunacceptable! Despite all efforts to save the paper version of the Ublad(the University newspaper) with the support of thousands of students,professors and the complete U-raad (Council of representatives of the University community), they continue to impose their controversialpolicies. In the meantime, the quality of our education is at risk andour student grants are about to be cut. This is why we, the occupiers ofthe building of the Board of Directors at the University of Utrecht,feel obliged to take action and take a stand in favor of an independent,paper version of the Ublad, for the democratization of our Universitygovernment, and against the cuts on our education imposed by the Dutchgovernment.

Toronto School of Creativity & Inquiry event
In collaboration with Edu-factory and Autonomedia
Labour Struggles in the Edu-factory: Discussion and book launch for Toward a Global Autonomous University,
edited by the Edu-factory collective

Tuesday, January 26
7:30-9:30pm
Toronto Free Gallery
1277 Bloor Street West (by Lansdowne Ave)

Occupations in the United States and Austria, mass demonstrations of students in Italy and France, labour organizing drives across North America, strikes in Ontario: After decades of university restructuring, recent years have seen a surge of struggle in the sphere of post-secondary education. How have these struggles played out locally? How do they relate to the broader transformation of labour under cognitive capitalism? What is the role of trade unionism within these movements? How do we build up an international network of struggles in and around the ongoing crisis of higher education? Join us for a discussion of these questions to launch Toward a Global Autonomous University: Cognitive Labor, the Production of Knowledge, and Exodus from the Education Factory, an edited volume recently published by Autonomedia