"Occupation Turned Free University in Pavia, Italy"
Anonymous Comrade

Here you find a call, addressed to researchers all over Europe, to support the student movement in Pavia (Italy) that is trying to create a mutualistic self-organized space in their city. On Friday 28th of January, students occupied a structure of the University abandoned since 2003. The aim of this action is to create inside that building a range of self-organized autonomous welfare services for students and precarious young workers: a copypoint, a library, a dining hall, a consultancy centre addressed to student (in particular immigrant ones) and precarious workers and a residence hall able to provide them low price housing. Furthermore the aim is also to create an alternative space to organize conferences, seminars and lectures promoting free culture and critical thinking.

Now students in Pavia are involved in a difficult negotiation with the academic institution. In order to help them in realizing this interesting and meaningful venture, some local scholars have written down this call. You can subscribe it sending an e-mail to studentincrisi@gmail.com containing your name and affiliation.

To support a new space for the diffusion of free knowledge:

The permanent reform process of the education system in Italy has produced a great damage for all who work, study and are involved in the research world. In particular, italian University is more and more becoming an institution unable to take care, in an genuine way, of knowledge and free thought (and maybe this was never the case, actually).

We strongly support the action of the student movment in Pavia that has occupied an abandoned building (belonging to the local University), trying to build a new experience of self-learning, capable of producing critical thinking and contrasting the free-falling of the whole academic system. Furthermore, in order to stop the outsourcing process of public services and welfare structures, and to contrast the widespread tendency of reshaping the right to education into a private commercial dimension, students in Pavia are building an experience of mutual aid that we consider desirable and urgent, even in light of the precarious conditions that affect in a deep way a costantly increasing share of the society.
many undersigned, including Negri and Caffentzis

http://cuapavia.noblogs.org/to-support-a-new-space-for-the-diffusion-of-...