They Can't Kill Us All

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From 1968 Revisited, created by Amy Surak and presented by the NYU archives:

President Richard Nixon's announcement of the U.S. invasion of Cambodia and the need to draft more soldiers for an expansion of the Vietnam War effort provoked massive protests on campuses throughout the country. At Kent State University in Ohio, demonstrators occupied buildings and destroyed the ROTC offices. In response, the governor of Ohio dispatched hundreds of National Guardsmen to the campus. On May 4, the guardsmen open fire on a crowd of protesters, killing four student and wounding nine others.

News of the Kent State massacre spread across the country, provoking more unrest. As a result, hundreds of colleges were shut down or disrupted by protests. At NYU, students plan their own demonstrations.

They Can't Kill Us All was a weekly class and discussion group working on shared interests surrounding Free Education at Bruce High Quality Foundation University from Casey Gollan, Joe Riley, and Victoria Sobel.

The entire course, meeting notes, video and audio documentation of the discussions, as well as ongoing conversations are all on hackpad.

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Class description:

This isn't so much your garden-variety, free, experimental, continuing-ed, art class as it is a weed-patch in a vacant lot. Before us, we have this tangled, suffocating mess that is higher education today. We'd like to begin clearing it out, burning it down, or whatever else works. They Can't Kill Us All is an effort to do just that. We'd like to take out little patch of weeds that has somehow managed to avoid the lethal blight, of tuition, student debt, standardized testing and indoor rock-climbing walls, and we'd like to cultivate something that's both free and nourishing — in an educational sense. Food for thought, and thoughts for regurgitating up on anyone, or anything, that tries to kill free education.

Each Wednesday evening for the fall semester at BHQFU, we'll hold an open meeting and a roundtable discussion on free education, to be followed by whatever, or wherever, that may lead us. We'll have guest speakers, partners in crime, and all manner of the educationally-minded join us for these sessions. These meetings will be both a call to action and a space to produce knowledge (not legumes) for the advancement of the struggle for free education. The results could be anything and everything, including, but not limited to: forging educational credentials; researching and writing a free education wiki; working in public; modeling a radically transparent organization; connecting different groups; mapping resources; and organizing lectures, workshops, trainings, and skillshares.

Meanwhile, you can check out the Meeting Notes document and for more date-based planning as well as a mapping of people we'd like to work with check out the Lecture Series document. This Hackpad site (specifically this page and the BHQFU collection) will serve as an evolving outline. Having come up with a bunch of ideas, we decided to intentionally leave the structure open but punctuated by regular meetings. Things could either get more or less organized throughout the semester. Either way, we hope it does.