Peace Studies professors in collaboration with Occupy Albuquerque protesters will hold teach-in sessions next week designed to give the community an idea of what Occupy Albuquerque stands for.
Organizers held the first teach-in, “Intro to the Occupation,” on Tuesday.
Desi Brown, who is pursuing a graduate degree in the Peace Studies program, helped coordinate the event.
Brown said Peace Studies faculty were asked to help mediate talks between protestors and University administration last week, but he said the relationship between protesters and UNM officials fell apart when officials kicked protesters off campus at midnight Sunday.
“They totally broke a trust that had been established in the mediation process,” he said. “There were understandings and compromises, the protesters held up their end of communication, but President Schmidly’s office did not.”
Brown said the University made a renewed effort to accommodate the movement by allowing protesters to speak in the SUB.
“The change isn’t going to happen overnight; it’s conversations like this that start that,” he said. “I’d like to see corporations held to ethical standards and institutions like this University address social issues on campus and in the greater community.”
Brown said UNM should make restroom facilities available for the homeless in the community and move away from the corporate structure the University has adopted, which he said has contributed to high tuition rates for students and low pay rates for employees.
Student Albert Guillen spoke at the teach-in and said student participation is imperative.
“I feel as though it’s our responsibility to be here,” he said. “It’s important that we stay active in a system that doesn’t want us to stay active.”
Anthropology professor Les Fields said the movement provides a unique educational opportunity.
“It’s a teachable moment about how to communicate with those in power,” he said. “Those in power make demands, they don’t listen to our requests, they tell us what to do. … And there is no way to hold them accountable, yet we get in trouble when we don’t do what they want.”
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UNM community member James Buchannan was one of about 60 people who gathered in the SUB for the teach-in on Tuesday and said he thinks the movement is all hype and no substance.
“They have no clear goals,” he said. “They talked about nothing.
There was a whole lot of talk of revolution and of a new social order and of how corporate America is evil, but when it comes down to it, it’s a bunch of hippies who want to camp on the grass outside UNM and feel like they are part of something bigger because they can’t be bothered to go to work for a living like normal people.”
Protester Ruby Daunch said she thinks the movement is about uniting people rather than satisfying demands.
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“Our goal is to disorganize corporate America and to unite people for the revolution,” she said.
Occupy Albuquerque Teach-in forums
next week
Monday thru Friday
SUB atrium
11:30 a.m. – 2 p.m.
