We are closely following the breaking news at the student-occupied NYU food court, where protesters are fighting for Palestinian solidarity. The most important issues so far: vegan lunches and cigarette breaks. Things are getting tense!

Intrepid reporters from NYU Local are embedded right there in the barricaded student center with the insurgents, and have, at risk of life and limb, been issuing updates to the world on the tense negotiations going on therein. This morning, the mood was already ugly:

10:11 - The smokers are going crazy. They haven't been able to smoke since around 9 last night. One guy just said to me, coffee in hand, "When I get a cigarette in me, I'm gonna pass out from ecstasy."

As if that wasn't bad enough, the fascist NYU administration is trying to starve out the wayward revolutionaries by denying them their right to have friends bring them non-prison-labor vegan meals as they occupy the building:

10:43 - Sounds like this is more technical stuff - not broad demand negotiations. Aramark (NYU's dining service contractor) is willing to supply food, but a TBNYU protester just told me that some people aren't OK with that because "Aramark uses prison labor." So they are trying to find a way to have friends be allowed entrance to deliver food.

SITUATION CRITICAL. Food and nicotine are precursors to, not products of, Palestinian educational achievement. The latest development, according the insurgency's Minister of Information:

2:05 - So before all hell broke loose, I sat down with Emily Stainkamp (CAS ‘11) to talk about how food was going to get in here. She told me that NYU made a "bizarre" and "paternalistic" move by "[offering] to bring [them] food." TBNYU said that the food would have to be vegan and NYU agreed. But then TBNYU decided that it couldn't accept food from Aramark because the "outsource to prison labor." Stainkamp said, "Why can't our friends just bring us food?…Our food, our space."
NYU said "they would talk to their people." So there is currently no food, and with the added development of people breaking into the occupied area and breaking through the balcony door (dead bolt!), it seems unlikely that there will be any.

Chaos!

[NYU Local. NYU protesters, feel free to email us the inside story. And here is some spoof blog about this, so please stop emailing us the link.]