Three Days and Nights in Newark: Tanaisa Brown Tells of the Newark Student Union’s Three Day Occupation
By Tanaisa Brown, Secretary, Newark Students Union.
We went to Cami Anderson’s office on Feb. 17 as an escalation from last Spring’s 17 hour occupation of the conference room where the Business Board Meeting was. This time, after the public participation portion of the meeting, we went to the elevator and went down two floors to the Superintendent’s office.
In the beginning, we posted up our banners and waited patiently. We were demanding that she have a meeting with us students who were occupying her office. We simply wanted her to come into work the next day, make this simple and address us. At that meeting, we intended to introduce to her what the whole community wanted and that was for her to come to the next School Advisory Board Meeting (which is today), since she has not been coming for over 9 months.
The community was amazing through the whole occupation; they provided moral support through social media and were present outside in the cold while we were inside occupying. The community gave us food and when it was not allowed up the second day, the clergy demanded that they be allowed upstairs. The clergy said that if they wanted to stop them, they would have to physically be restrained by security guards. It was amazing to hear of the clergy having our backs and risking arrests to see us and provide our bodies with nourishment.
In the beginning, Cami’s administration was completely ignoring us. But in the 65th hour, she decided to meet our demand and have a meeting with us. We talked to her about the One Newark Plan’s roll-out, the misallocation of funds in public schools and the accommodations that will be made by the district for the PARCC exam coming up in less than 2 weeks.
She responded with much rhetoric and used many literary skills to try and skew the conversation from truth and facts. She said that she wants to restore trust with the community. Therefore, we asked her to attend the next board meeting. She stated that she was not here to fulfill any demands and she has to think about coming to the meeting.
The media coverage has been great. Locally, we have been updating many news channels (4,12,7, etc.) while we were still sitting in, we got calls from Spanish-language channels, we were able to do an interview with Three Days and Nights in Newark: Tanaisa Brown Tells of the Newark Student Union’s Three Day Occupation - Living in Dialogue:
Big Education Ape: The Amazing Students of the Newark Student Union - These Kids Rock! #OccupyNPS #OurNewark http://bit.ly/1JwIXij
