Occupy CUNY (City University of New York) and allied protectors who gathered Monday at Baruch College to express opposition to CUNY tuition hikes, unfair labor practices, and privatization were met with an increasingly familiar response: violent suppression of their basic right to dissent.

Protesters were barred from attending a so-called “public” meeting of the school’s trustees and ordered to disperse. CUNY security and NYPD moved in with nightsticks drawn, turning a nonviolent protest into a chaotic melee.

Protesters later regrouped to occupy a New School building on Fifth Avenue near 14th Street, where banners were hung reading: “Zuccotti’s Virus Will Spread” and “Ⓐnnihilate Capitalism; Retaliate and Destroy Police State.”

As the Occupy Wall Street movement spreads to campuses, dramatic scenes of anti-student violence are becoming shockingly commonplace.

The appalling pepper-spraying of peaceful UC Davis students which made headlines and spawned memes across the world is but one example of the brutal tactics now openly deployed against nonviolent protestors of the Occupy movement, both students and non-students alike.

But the Occupy Wall Street movement remains undaunted. In the words of one unnamed occupier: “The more they attack, the stronger we get. Fuck us, and we multiply.”

Police sure does LOOOOVE using violence against peaceful student and the citizens they’re supposed to NOT attack.

(Cover Photo: Brian Nguyen/The Aggie)

- Article Written By: Anon