Defend Northwestern High School Students

From the Defend Northwestern Facebook page:

Thursday, March 1st was a National Student Day of Action in which students around the country organized demonstrations protesting education budget cuts, educational inequality, and advocating for quality and affordable education for all.

Students at Northwestern High School in Prince George’s County Maryland planned a walkout and rally as part of the National Student Day of Action. Over 300 students planned to walk out to protest unsanitary conditions in their school, enormous class sizes, cuts to the ESOL program, and denial of promised pay raises for their teachers. The students also were asking for more teacher/parent/student input in the curriculum and demanding an apology for a group of Filipino teachers who were fired and deported after not having their work visas renewed.

The Administration at Northwestern discovered the walkout plan early in the day by trolling Twitter and put the school on lockdown. Police blocked the doors and canine units waited in the school's parking lot. They held student leaders in the Principal’s office all day, threatened them with expulsion, and at the end of the day suspended four students for 5 days requiring that when they return their parents must accompany them to classes all day.

Northwestern is a high school where a majority of the students are Black and Latino. The student organizers' mission was to walk out for a better school and a better education. Instead the Administration violated their civil liberties, squashed these students' free speech, and punished them for wanting to improve the school environment for themselves and their teachers. Instead of having a dialogue with students, the Administration at this school chose to make an example of several students and punish them harshly knowing this could affect these students ability to get into college.

Due to public backlash, the school's administration has called a forum next Monday at 5 pm at the school site to discuss their handling of the situation and community concerns. Please come and support your fellow students.

For more information, please contact studentsforjustice1@gmail.com.

March to the DOE

Last Thursday's march was a success. Over 100 students and former students joined together at McPherson Square to protest growing concerns over our nation's educational infrastructure. Many issues, from the student debt crisis to the unequal funding in public primary and secondary schools.

After protesting at Sallie Mae, students headed to the Department of Education and presented their list of demands to Tim Tuten, the director of events in the Office of Communications and Outreach, who promised to voice our concerns directly to Arne Duncan, who would deliver a response by March 9th.

Since last Tuesday, the Dept. of Education, in conjunction with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, have rolled out a streamlined process to cover complaints about privatized student loans, in conjunction with our third plank.

Media attention on the issue of student debt also dramatically increased, both on a local and national level.

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DC Indymedia and TheFightBack have some excellent coverage about what happened on the DC march and why holistic educational reform is so important. A video of the march here.

Occupy DC protester Sara Shaw's livetweets (@sara_jeans) and a picture of the DC protest were used in the Huffington Post as part of an article on the nationwide actions.

#OccupyDoE

Georgetown University Occupy Presents: the Occupy Wall Street Teach-In

In response to the Wall Street Training Bootcamp coming to campus the weekend of February 25th and 26th, we offer an alternative: An Occupy Wall Street Teach-In. Come join us Sunday to reclaim Georgetown in the spirit of an education we can all embrace, constructive of a better future and faithful to our university’s Jesuit and ethical commitments to social justice. Unlike the bootcamp, this teach-in will promote people over profits, peace and equality for all, and will be free and open to the public at large. The teach-in will take on a participatory learning approach led by experts, professors, occupiers, and students. We will conclude by hosting the weekly Students Occupy DC General Assembly.

Sunday, February 26th: 9 am - 3 pm, Red Square (outside ICC building)

Contact gu-occupy@googlegroups.com for more information, or if you have any questions you’d like to be addressed in the teach-in. See our Facebook event. Georgetown University is located at 37th and O Streets NW-- the Intercultural Center is the red brick building past the lawn. Find directions here. See you there!

Informal Schedule of Topics (Subject to change and spontaneous modification; there will be breaks, food and fun)

9-10:30: Welcome Rally; Barbara Wien and GU Occupy kick things off
10:30: Morning Meditation
11:00: Universities’ Connection to Unjust Labor Practices and Alternatives
11:30: The Occupy Movement and Gender
12:00: Universities' Relationship with Wall Street: Targeting Investment Practices
12:30: Wall Street and Foreclosures; Occupy Our Homes
1:00: Georgetown and Jesuits on Social Justice
1:30: Radical Education—led by DC Learning Collective’s Activist Sunday School
2:30: Weekly Students Occupy DC General Assembly

Students’ Declaration of Grievances and Demands

We the students hold these truths to be self-evident: that education is a fundamental right; that education is intrinsically valuable; that all persons must have equal access to high-quality education; that education is a core component of a healthy society; that students, parents, and faculty must have authority over the direction of the education system; that education must be a democratic space; and that education as a system is currently broken in that it does not meet these criteria.

1. Democratize Education

The educational system and the educational reform process has become undemocratic and is controlled by those least connected to the educational process.

Therefore:
a. The students, parents, and teachers should be the primary influence in the educational system and reform process;
b. Improve budget transparency in educational institutions, public and private.

2. Improve Students’ Access to Higher Education and Citizenship

The inability to access higher education due to socioeconomic status systematically curtails students’ abilities to claim their right to an education:.

Therefore:
a. Reassess the formula that determines the amount a family is expected to contribute to their student’s education cost because the current formula gives an inaccurate picture of what a family is able to afford;
b. Provide a path toward citizenship to all undocumented persons who earn a degree in post- secondary education
c. Gradually replace loans as a means of financing higher education with grants, beginning with student of lowest incomes, moving upwards
d. Call upon states to prioritize their budgets to serve students' financial and academic interests at all levels of education.

3. De-Privatize the Student Loan Industry

Privatization of and abusive policies regarding student loans leave students drowning in debt and often result in their inability to pay with lifelong damaging effects of loan default.

Therefore:
a. The federal government should reclaim sole authority in financing student education;
b. Maintain and improve upon the federal income based repayment and federal loan forgiveness programs;
c. Improve regulations and cap loan interest rates;
d. Make lending policies transparent and put student loan contracts in terms that are understandable and accessible to students.

4. Remove Corporate Influence from Education

The outsized influence of capitalist economics in the educational system undermines the pursuit of knowledge and social development as the equally-important goals of education.

Therefore:
a. Facilitate the development of curricula that are connected to the needs of the community and promotes an increased, multi-perspective understanding of existing social, economic, and political paradigms; (eg. Gender, Ethnic, and Alternative Economic and Governance Studies)
b. Redefine the measures of success throughout the educational system in a way that gives equal weight to all goals of education;
c. Eliminate standardized testing as a measure of success throughout the educational system.

5. Improve Funding for Education

The poor quality of education resulting from the use of the property tax system to finance public education, which perpetuates cycles of inequality and creates a lack of opportunity amongst impoverished and marginalized communities.

Therefore:
a. States should fund their educational system through a means that provides adequate resources to all schools and is equitably shared;
b. All educational institutions should eliminate corporate influence and remain exclusively zones for education, not advertisement;
c. Eliminate all costs associated with attendance in public primary, middle, and high school, including, but not limited to, those costs associated with textbooks, lunches, busing, and writing materials.

Education is a right accorded to all persons, not a privilege. We the students stand to lay claim to this right. We demand the state take responsibility for providing for all its residents. Our demands for a better education are a first step in a larger struggle for a better social order. This greater struggle has begun with a new Great Awakening, a realization that we must radically alter our
social, political, and economic institutions. Be certain that once we reach our full level of consciousness, we expect to take back education into our own hands—free, fair, and accessible to all those who seek it. We the students hold the power and plan to exercise it.

-The Students

Welcome!

Welcome to the Students Occupy DC website.

We are a coalition of students in the DC area in solidarity with the Occupy movement looking to change the problems with education that stem from income inequality and other causes.

We meet Sundays at 3 at different DC college campuses on a rotating basis.