Platypus at Free Cooper Union

 December 3, 2012  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

Video Recording

Sammy Medina, Pam C. Nogales C., and Ross Wolfe gave teach-ins as part of the Free University during the Day of Action against Cooper Union’s unprecedented tuition requirements. Pam did a teach-in on 19-century American history and struggles for emancipation, while Sammy and Ross talked about the sociohistoric project of early modernist architecture.

Architecture  Civil War  Cooper Union  Free cooper union  Karl Marx  Modernist architecture  Students 

Why is it that nobody understands me, yet everybody likes me?

The ambivalence of the current German student movement

Why is it that nobody understands me, yet everybody likes me?

 March 15, 2010  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

“DIESER HÖRSAAL IST BESETZT!” (“This lecture hall is occupied!”) In November and December 2009, signs bearing such slogans were found on doors at over 60 German universities. For the second time that year, a broad student movement managed to gain public attention for its demands. Protests at the University of Vienna kicked off what became a Europe-wide solidarity wave. In Germany, the Viennese protest first triggered occupations in Heidelberg, Münster, and Potsdam, after which students at many other institutions also became involved. [Read More]
Bologna Process  Capitalism  Germany  Human rights  Max Horkheimer  Michael Burawoy  Nationalism  Occupation  Protest  Red-baiting  Reform  Strike  Students  Student politics  Student Left 

Politics of the contemporary student Left

 September 30, 2009  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

AT THE LEFT FORUM hosted by New York’s Pace University in April of this year, a panel discussion was held on the subject of Politics of the Contemporary Student Left: Hopes and Failures. Organized by Alex Hanna of United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS), the panel consisted of Pam Nogales of Platypus, Carlos J. Pereira Di Salvo of USAS, and Laurie Rojas of Platypus. What follows is a transcript of each panelist’s formal presentation and the subsequent Q & A session. [Read More]
Activism  Exchanges  Identity Politics  Left Forum  New York  NYU  SDS  SEIU  Student politics  Students  Unite Here  USAS 

Five questions to the student Left

 October 1, 2008  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

AN INTERVIEW WITH SDS MEMBER Rachel Haut published in the September issue of this publication provoked widespread comment in radical circles.1 We welcome the discussion but worry that it remains ensconced within the sterile jargon and petty antinomies of the actually-existing-Left. More fundamental questions exist than, say, the position of sectarian groups within the SDS – questions that unsettle the comfortable assumptions of radical politics. There’s a temptation to think such of questioning as an irrelevant, academic obstruction to real action. [Read More]
Anti-war  Capitalism  Class  Identity  Ideology  Imperialism  Movement  New SDS  Organization  Politics  Racism  Radicals  Reflections  Society  Students  Transformation 

To the victor, the spoils

Review of Artforum's May 2008 issue May '68'

 September 1, 2008  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

We succeeded culturally. We succeeded socially. And we lost politically… I always say: ‘thank God!’ —Daniel Cohn-Bendit in interview on 1968, conducted by Yascha Mounk for The Utopian (2008) [O]ne asks with whom the adherents of historicism actually empathize. The answer is inevitable: with the victor… Whoever has emerged victorious participates to this day in the triumphal procession in which the present rulers step over those who are lying prostrate. [Read More]
1968  /20th Century  Anti-capitalism  Antonio Negri  Art  Artforum  Barbarism  Capitalism  Critical theory  Daniel Cohn-Bendit  Difference  History  Labor  Marxism  Multitude  Paris  Philosophy  Postmodern  Proletariat  Society  Students  Theory  Transformation  Utopian  Walter Benjamin  Working class 

The Hundred Days campaign: the present and future of SDS

 September 1, 2008  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

FROM JULY 24 UNTIL JULY 28 2008, the new Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) had its third annual national convention in College Park, Maryland. At the convention, national campaigns were presented and voted on by the attendees. A major campaign introduced at the convention was the Hundred Days campaign, which seeks to organize and engage newly politicized Americans in politics beyond the campaign season. During the first one hundred days of the next administration the campaign will organize two nationwide weeks of action to ensure that the people remain involved in politics after the election cycle. [Read More]
Anarchism  Anti-capitalism  Ben Shepard  Capitalism  Chicago  Dave Shukla  Democracy  Democratic society  FRSO  Hope  Hundred Days campaign  Ideology  Left Forum  Liberalism  Maoism  Marxism  Movement  New SDS  New York  Barack Obama  Organization  Power  Process  Protest  Sectarianism  Socialism  Split  Structure  Students  The Left 

Process point

 November 1, 2007  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

STUMBLING INTO THE WARS RESISTERS OFFICE, I found Josh Russell and Madeline Gardner wearing headsets and pacing. It was a week before the convention and they were having yet another discussion as to whether or not the planning committee had the authority to decide whether or not they had the right to make any decisions. In the words of Lisa Fithian, we were processing ourselves to death. The new Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) seem to take their namesake seriously. [Read More]
Activism  Ideology  Marisa Holmes  Micheal Albert  New SDS  Organization  Participatory democracy  Sectarianism  Structure  Students