A New Generation of Freedom Fighters Is Taking It to the Streets - and the World Rachel Gilmer, Christopher Lopez, Kerrina Williams, Lorena Buñi and Adrian Bonifacio - The Nation
go to original September 20, 2016

A protester holds a sign during the 2014 National Moment of Silence in Chicago. (Flickr/Sarah Ji)

Janet Napolitano, former Arizona Governor, Secretary of Homeland Security, and now, President of the University of California has had a controversial tenure. To kick off her first semester in 2013, students across the state handed her votes of no confidence. The following spring, hundreds massed at Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza during her “listening and learning” tour, chanting “No to Napolitano!” and ultimately occupying a building named after one of her top advocates. Why all the shade? To start, there was her lack of higher ed experience and the undemocratic way she was appointed. Then there was her record at Homeland Security, where she militarized local and campus police forces, oversaw millions of deportations, and propped up Mexico’s violent war on drugs, the same one that later led to the “disappearances” of 43 students.

For many, Napolitano is the spitting image of the global, corporate, privatized university, where your connections to the defense industry give you more points than your commitments to campus culture, teaching, or anything having to do with students. At the same time, she’s the perfect foil. By aligning so many forces against her, from Oakland to Oaxaca, she’s planted new possibilities for organizing. If the system can redraw its borders, so can the movement.

Global solidarity was the call of Third World internationalists in the uprisings of the ‘68 generation. In the post-9/11 world, the legacy of internationalism lives on, reframing the issues at the center of student and youth struggle. As one sign read at a protest at Berkeley in 2014, “FROM FERGUSON TO GAZA… YOU CAN’T PAY TUITION IF YOU’RE DEAD.”

In this post, members of four groups discuss joint efforts to think globally while building power locally.

Check it out at The Nation

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