Last week, students from a group called Take Back NYU and their supporters occupied the Kimmel Center university cafeteria in an attempt to establish direct dialogue with the NYU administration and pressure them to meet demands for NYU to have financial transparency, lend aid to Gaza and Palestinian students, freeze tuitions and open up their library to the general public. On the first night of the occupation about 30-40 people ran past the security guards and joined the occupiers barricaded inside. 28 hours into the occupation, there was a riot of about 500 people in Washington Square Park, where a small group of black bloc rumbled on the barricades with the police. The student occupation ended after 40 hours , when the administration duped the students by agreeing to negotiate and then surreptitiously having them all suspended.

The white noise of commentary of the blogosphere on the occupation has been largely dismissive and knee-jerk conservative, tacitly supporting the administration in the dispute. They have been widely commented on as “spoiled rich kids” with “ridiculous” or “pro-Gazan demands” who are “going about it the wrong way” and “deserve to be expelled.” NY Daily News published a  reactionary opinion editorial on Friday that sounded like it was written by a cobwebby racist grandfather, calling the students “whiners, wusses and wheenies” and starting with the line, “What’s the matter with kids today?”

Ben Barnes of NYU’s Washington Square Daily wrote that it was “baffling” that Graduate Teaching assistants should “want a living wage” (maybe he’s never been one?) and concluded his piece sounding like a crew-cut square from the 1960s by saying that the protesters should “Get a student loan, quite whining, and let NYU do its job of administering a first-class education.”

Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan mocked the students titling his belittling post “Revolution in the food court” and Ryan Tate, writing from sunny Berkeley, attempted to insinuate a conflict of interest with the New York Times city reporter, Colin Moynihan, who covered the occupation, based on something he read on Twitter (Moynihan is a 20-year veteran at the Times city section and unlike Gawker, is a staunch believer in journalistic ethics.)

I get that Barack Obama ushered in the age of establishmentarianism where we’re all working within the system now, but who knew that it would be so that anyone who decided to take direct action after being unsuccessful with “working from within the system” would now be maligned as  “going about it the wrong way”? Some thoughts:

1) It’s wrong to classify everyone that actively opposes NYU policy as a “spoiled rich kid” when people that go there work really hard and take out ridiculous loans, which will be virtually unpayable in our new economy-less economy, to go there. And if you or your parents pay that much money, you shouldn’t be told to sit down and shut up and be glad that you got into a prestigious university and shuffle yourself along into a career (what careers, anyway?) You have a right to fight for transparency and justice and organize with your fellow students. This protest was obviously an exercise in student power, and its disconcerting to see how much people have made the most predictable denouncements that have always been made of radicals.

2) The students demands about helping rebuild the Islamic University of Gaza and giving scholarships to 13 Palestinian students have been focused on specifically as “ridiculous” or “ludicrous.” The students are shooting the moon with their demands and they are of a timely news-oriented character–but is it really that ridiculous to ask that from the behemoth NYU? The Israeli army decimated the Islamic University of Gaza, a civilian institution, saying that it was a Hamas training facility-it was also a place where average Gazans got an education–it would actually be a great act of anti-terrorism to help rebuild it and invite Gazan students to study in New York, a capital in the secular world.

3) Its been said that these occupiers are a fringe group who don’t represent the NYU majority. Change doesn’t always come with a colorful and gigantic “mass movement” as our largely ineffective anti-war movement was. Sometimes it takes radical individuals to light the wick and spark a conversation to happen. It is better than silence. Universities are no longer just for learning. They are businesses, crafted to crank out students and rake in money with their myriad sketchy investments. Students and their parents deserve to see what companies and governments their schools are supporting with THEIR money.

When the occupiers were released from the cafeteria after being suspended, I went down and watched them give an impromptu press conference to the International media. Many of these kids were Philosophy majors–they struck me. They were smart, passionate, uncompromising and positive. And now suspended.

Big mistake, NYU.

Now these kids are now free to become full-time revolutionaries.

Drew Phillips, 22, an occupier, formerly an Honors Philosophy major, shouted at the cameras of at least 5 major news organizations,

“OCCUPY THE SCHOOLS! OCCUPY THE FACTORIES! OCCUPY EVERYTHING!”

I applaud them for widening the vistas of possible realities. Read Noam Chomsky’s letter of endorsement, here