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NYU Occupation

Reading about the NYU occupation takes me back to December 1966 when NYU was the site of the first student strike in the New York area. The issue was the third tuition increast in a year and a half, as the US economy was being subject to inflation due to the War in Vietnam.

After a week or so of masss meetings at Loeb Student Center, the predecessor to Kimmel, a large contingent marched across the park and occupied Main Building. During the night of the occupation, Richie Havens, a black folksinger who was, I think, the opening performer at Woodstock, came over from one of the Greenwich Village folk cluds and entertained us.

The occupation led to a one-day student strike, which was honored by local unions who refused to deliver to the school.

Although the issue was, ostensibly, the tuition hikes, the radical philosopher Paul Goodman addressed the students and insisted that they face the fact that the war was causing the inflation and the hikes.

NYU didn't rollback the increases, but the occupation and strike led to the election of a radical student government and the creation of NYU as one of the centers of radical student politics in the late Sixties.

Several of us from the ISC, a predecessor organization of Solidarity, including myself, were extremely active in the actions. It's good to remember what happened back then, but it's even better to see that students following in our footsteps.

RED DAVE

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