[Newleaf] Open forum to launch an “Occupy Hampshire”

[Mary Goldman]

Hi, my name is Mary Goldman and I'm a member of the Hampshire College
International Socialist Organization. We are trying to get as many groups as
possible to help build this open forum this weekend, we need to see students
from New Leaf there! We need your help in building this huge!


*Open forum to launch an “Occupy Hampshire”*

*Sunday, October 30th*

*7-9 PM FPH East Lecture Hall*



Over the course of the past month, an estimated over one million people have
become involved with occupy movements across the globe. The movement
presents an enormous potential to develop that is profoundly disturbing to
current political leaders and heads of corporations. Excitement and energy
around this issue is palpable with conversations that are heard on this
campus among students and during classes. The global occupy movement
presents an amazing opportunity to reenergize and strengthen activism on
this campus.

            As activists, we all have different focuses. The global occupy
movement draws links between these various causes and identifies them as
common struggles of the global 99%.  As activists devoted to various issues,
we have common causes and common goals for broader struggles in social and
economic justice that have the potential to build and strengthen one
another.  The occupy movement is an opportunity for the Hampshire College
activist community to renew its vocal, radical, activist tradition, and to
engage the broader student body in this exciting movement.

            As students, we are constantly faced with the challenge of
financing our education. Many of us hold summer jobs and on and off campus
work-study jobs in order to continue our education at Hampshire College. The
college presents us with financial aid packages that attempts to package
loans, borrowed money that accrues interest overtime and burdens us with
debt after graduation, as *aid* when it is in fact an expensive stand in for
actual need-based financial aid. There are numerous accounts of
condescending financial aid officers at Hampshire College telling students
to simply ask parents for 2,000-40,000$ sums that simply do not exist.
Hampshire College’s financial ‘aid’ policy is something that could attract
the broad support of the wider student body beyond Hampshire College
activist and affinity groups.

Whether you are angry about the cuts to the James Baldwin program and
financial aid, want to launch new divestment campaigns against Hampshire’s
ties to the Israeli occupation, want to kick Sodexho off our campus, support
staff rights on campus, change our sexual assault policies and the culture
around sexual assault on campus, build the local movement against mass
incarceration and racism, or have any other demands for this campus and
community, you should bring them to this forum! This is an opportunity for
us to launch coalitions on this campus and win real demands.
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