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We are women and non-binary free education activists occupying a set of rooms in Senate House, University of London for free education.

On Sunday March 8, we will celebrate International Women’s Day. Across university campuses and women’s groups, there have been panel discussions, tea parties and dinners to build up to this. We want to remind everyone of the origins of International Women’s Day: a socialist celebration of working women and the fight for equal rights. Now The Guardian celebrates Thatcher and we are told that more women in high places means that all of us are better off; that women Vice Chancellors must therefore be exempt from underpaying their cleaners.

The fight for women’s rights is part of the fight for a fair and just society and that fight is not over. On International Women’s Day we should not just celebrate our long past victories but fight for more. We know this will not be won in the boardroom, it will be won on the streets and in occupations.

Free education is a clearly feminist demand. When you argue for the redistribution of wealth from highly paid university executives to low paid cleaners, you benefit migrant women. When you argue for a liberated curriculum, you benefit overlooked women theorists and academics. When you argue for true living grants for all who study, you benefit the 92% of carers who are women and state living costs as one of the major factors that put them off education. Free education is a demand for liberation, and too often this is forgotten – or worse, name-checked and not acted upon – in the mainstream student movement.

We are not in the University of London by accident. Senate House is the administrative heart of the University, and yet it is a University that does not actually teach anyone directly, it is a service provider to its constituent colleges. This service- and branding-based model is the epitome of the neoliberal model of marketised education. What good is a University that only provides a brand, not education?

You could ask further – what good is a university that not only provides no education directly, but also treats its lowest paid workers appallingly? We stand in solidarity with Nuvia, an outsourced cleaner sacked without warning when six months pregnant and call for fair working conditions for all staff here. The majority of all minimum waged work is undertaken by women, and women are more likely to work part time or on precarious zero hour contracts. The rights of women workers, and of migrant women workers in particular, cannot be ignored by the mainstream feminist student movement any longer.

You could ask even further – what good is a University which not only does not provide education, and treats its lowest paid workers appallingly but also calls the police on its own students? In December 2013, the violent eviction by the Met of an occupation of the University Vice Chancellor’s offices kick-started #copsoffcampus and bought the demand into the student movement. When you demand that the university is a space free from harassment and police intimidation, you benefit women – and black women in particular.

Over this weekend we will be using this space as it should be used: for education. We will be discussing and debating free education and feminism throughout the weekend, in a space where non-binary students’ and women’s voices can be clearly heard.

We offer this to the University of London: if you allow us free access in and out, without fear of victimisation, we will give you back your space on Sunday evening. If you wish to persecute and violently evict us for nothing more than trying to learn in a university, expect repercussions. The choice is yours.

#occupySH #ReclaimIWD

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