This is a communique from the occupation of a business administration building at San Francisco State University in the fall of 2009. Occupiers were protesting budget cuts and fee increases. In this communique, students connect their movement to anti-racist and labor movements, to the protests against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to the occupation of Alcatraz Island by the Indians of All Nations, as well as to the wider struggle against capital.

“Although occupation, or reclaiming space, is not a historically new idea, it is a new form of struggle for many of those disillusioned with the promises of lobbying, those too tired of petitioning “our” elected leaders, those who have lost all faith in politics as they know it. As direct actions like these redefine socially-acceptable modes of protest, occupations themselves redefine the power-relations at the site of struggle.”