It was a lazy Thanksgiving 2011 when the dean called. The message went something like, “the Occupy protesters who have encamped in the Parsons Gallery and the Student Study Center are wearing out their welcome, and the president is inviting a small group of faculty to come in tomorrow to consult on next steps.” The opportunity to influence a peaceful resolution outweighed the annoyance at having the holiday weekend interrupted.
The next day, about twenty bedraggled colleagues met with the president in the Orozco room, only to learn that the occupiers had left that morning. There was both relief and disappointment, but mostly relief when it became clear that the president had been in close conversation with the NYPD commissioner and was prepared to act sooner rather than later. We were then invited to tour the scenes of the occupation to see the legacy the occupiers had left in their wake. It was brutal and beautiful, wall after window boldly and hastily covered in colorful words and images of occupy sentiments:
OCCUPY EVERYTHING
BLOOMBERG’S GOT TO GO
DON’T FEED THE PIGS
WE ARE STUDENTS AND ACTIVISTS, NOT CRIMINALS (RE)OCCUPATION; NO CONDITIONS
STOP THE NY POLICE STATE
WHY ARE WE HERE? SOLIDARITY
STOP THE CRIMINALIZATION OF THE POOR
FEED YOUR HEAD
NO SEXIST, NO RACIST, NO HOMOPHOBIC, NO FATPHOBIC, NO TRANSPHOBIC, NO ABLEIST ACTION OR LANGUAGE
POLITICS PRECEDES BEING.
IN FACT, BEING PRECEDES POLITICS
SPREAD THE MUTATION
DARE TO STRUGGLE
WE ARE HISTORY IN MOTION
WE WANT EVERYTHING FOR EVERYONE
THE DIVISION BETWEEN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE IS A BOURGEOIS MYTH
FORECLOSE ON BANKS, NOT PEOPLE
BEHOLD YOUR FUTURE EXECUTIONERS
YOU CANNOT EVICT AN IDEA WHOSE TIME HAS COME
Alas, everything was evicted—every bit of the expressive drawing that covered several thousand square feet had vanished under a quick coat of paint by the time school resumed the following Monday. It was said that some of the painters were students themselves, reclaiming their study center from the unruly anarchists. A rumor made the rounds that former New School President Bob Kerrey had to put in a personal call to Chase CEO Jamie Dimon to persuade the bank to lease the space for student use in the first place, so returning the study center walls to their previous condition had to be accomplished without delay.
I wish I’d had the courage to propose keeping some of the Occupy art intact, but it felt like it would be met with scorn and dismay by the assembled authorities. The irony of this erasure in spaces partly owned by a bank and rented by The New School raises some obvious questions:
Where can dissent rightly live in an educational institution operating in corporate space? In artistic space with public space aspirations?
Can and should we recreate from the photographic evidence a work of art that memorializes the brief existence of Occupy New School?
“You cannot evict an idea whose time has come.” Discuss.
Carol Wilder
Faculty, The New School for Public Engagement