For Student Power has an interesting post up discussing the tactics of the New School occupiers, who were successful in winning some positive changes at the school through direct action.

Limited negotiation is fine in terms of winning explicit concessions, but in order to have negotiations, you must have bargaining power, and this requires bold direct action. This belief, this mode of resistance, was the reason for our success. Despite the political inclinations of many of our well-intentioned and intelligent comrades in the New School in Exile (and despite their ever-present reluctance), it was the taking of the cafeteria, the blocking of the doors, the control of the building, that was our power. Of course, our aforementioned “political” comrades celebrated each and every direct action vigorously after the fact, realizing the terms of negotiation had just been changed in our favor, despite their initial resistance to it, saying things like “it’s too disorganized; it’s too brazen; it’s too illegal”—it’s too this or that. Even our last action, when we linked the wonderful movement outside to us inside by the opening of a fire door at midnight, changed the status of the ongoing negotiations in our favor. This was said before us by one of our own negotiators, who herself was not necessarily pro-direct action.

I absolutely agree that no one in authority is going to give you anything unless they want to anyway, or you give yourself enough power to make them. And I think that in general, anti-sexual violence activists could use a little of the chutzpah the New School students have. However, students looking to the New School occupiers for tactical inspiration should remember that it doesn’t necessarily follow that any particular form of direct action (like occupation of a building) will be effective. I know of some schools where the type of action the New School students took would not have worked well, for various logistical reasons. Likewise, hunger strikes, tent cities, tree sits, etc. work at some schools but not others. Students who want to replicate the New School success should always take the specifics of their campus into account in building their strategy. It’s particularly important to remember that this action came after a whole lot of other actions, which gradually built pressure. You can’t just take over your cafeteria out of nowhere and expect to get a whole lot out of the administration. Part of what makes for success is the administration’s knowledge that you’re not going away and it’s only going to get worse.

One thing I’d question the New School students on is the repeated use of old school radical terms like “comrade” by the occupiers. Not because I have some problem with someone being radical or Marxist or whatever they consider themselves, but because frankly, I think it’s kind of elitist to throw around words that only people with access to a lot of history and philosophy books will connect with, and because a lot of people have visceral negative reactions to those words—some for stupid reasons, others for legit ones. If you are intentionally choosing to use words that will alienate many potential supporters, you’d better have a good reason. I just don’t see an overwhelming reason to move discourse in the direction of the term “comrade.” (That, btw, is why I don’t encourage students working to improve their sexual assault policies to make the movement about “feminism.”) Do what you need to do to win the concrete, institutional victories, and don’t worry about the labels. You can’t eat words.