Many people were in the students countersummit in Madrid, working hard to get things done these days. Now everything is over, but there are much things to be done. This is a short chronicle of what happened in the last days.

On Monday, 12th a demo went through the city to make visible the students countersummitin Philosophy Faculty. Around 2000 international people walked the streets to make their voices heard.

On Tuesday 13th in the morning, the ministerial summit took place in the outskirts of Madrid. Students had the aim of blockading the meeting and they tried to do so by making human blockades outside the minister's hotels in the centre of the city. There were two blockade points, one human, in the other, students chained themselves with tubes. Police arrived to both blockades and removed the people from the blockade points after 30 minutes in one case, 20 in the other. There were no people harmed or arrested. The ministerial conference was delayed and the city centre was colapsed by traffic.

“Throughout the day we will have performances, music, poetry, art, work-shops and concerts. We will occupy against funding cuts, decrease of students rights and moratorium on tuition waivers.”

Ocúp(arte): The Humanities Manifesto

The Humanities faculty is yours, his, hers, and ours. Let’s transform it then, into an active and dynamic space filled with participation and collaboration. Let’s modify the State and the Administration-fed attitudes of competition and anxiety, and replace them with cooperation, compassion and youthful jubilation. As existing power structures have already started to crack and shown their anti-humanist agendas; so let today and tomorrow be filled with love and a call to action. Our academic spaces are under siege from the powerful, and must be reclaimed as tools for liberation. As humanists we can imagine and create all sorts of possible worlds. It is time to realize them.

A CALL FOR SOLIDARITY

Dear Comrades!

We are an Independent Student Union, “Priama Dija” (“Direct Action”) andwe ask for your support.

The case is that for over the last six months, the union has been underunprecedented pressure. Everything started with our series of successfulactions (together with other youth organizations) against theestablishment of fees for previously free services in the universities,against cutting funds for scholars and against the plans to suspendscholarships for students who received even a single grade of “3”- (C).Ever since then, the intelligence services, together with theadministration of the National Taras Shevchenko University of Kiev, arecarrying out a whole campaign of pressure against the union's activists.All available measures are used against them, including intimidation andrepression.

In solidarity with the students facing sanctions for recent political activities at UC Berkeley in defense of public education in California. We call for the UC Berkeley administration to drop all charges and disciplinary actions against the students involved in the Architects and Engineering building sit-in on November 18, 2009, the November 20, 2009 Wheeler protest, those arrested in Wheeler Hall on the morning of December 11, 2009, and the students facing sanctions for flyering on campus.

DEFEND STUDENT ACTIVISM

We the undersigned are opposed to the university's disciplinary position regarding the students involved in the Architects and Engineering building sit-in on November 18, 2009, the Wheeler Hall protest November 20, 2009 , the arrests in Wheeler Hall on the morning of December 11, 2009, and the students that are facing sanctions for flyering. Over 100 student activists are facing a variety of charges related to recent protests. UC Berkeley is an institution that widely advertises its activist past and prides itself on its commitment to the principles of the Free Speech Movement, but the university is using the recently revised student code of conduct in a manner that is arbitrary in order to intimidate and punish student activists who continue to challenge the increasing privatization of California public education in the UC, CSU, and community college systems.We reject the accusations that the students involved in the Wheeler Hall protest put the safety of other students and community members into question.