By Masa Nazzal
At 8pm on 17th March 2022, I gathered with 20 other activists in the basement of the Edinburgh building I was living in. It was the final meeting before our direct action to occupy a university building the next day.
Our group was a coalition formed out of a climate activist group, the university staff union solidarity group, and a Palestinian activist group. Together we formed the idea of occupying and reclaiming a university building.
We were not trying to make demands from the university administration, who seldom listen to us anyway. Rather, we occupied the building for ourselves. We didn’t need the university’s validation, we didn’t need them to meet our demands. Our goal was to re-imagine what our education could look like without the power struggle of fighting the administration.
We wanted to create an alternative radical education system to counter the hierarchical bureaucratic university system. To make a “new” university, a reconstruction built on what the university was not teaching and powered by the knowledge that was being denied by our curriculum.
Once I arrived, my flatmate told me that my brother had been trying to call me, saying there was a family emergency.
By Masa Nazzal