Your Voice | Occupy Wall Street solidarity statement

As faculty members at the University of Pennsylvania, we wish to express our solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement now underway in our city and elsewhere.

This movement expresses widespread anger with the economic and political disenfranchisement of the great majority of the American people. Occupy Wall Street is protesting a system that provides increasingly few opportunities for the majority –– the 99% –– while generating vast profits for a tiny minority. Along with the demonstrators, we are demanding an end to the extreme inequalities that structure our society.

We share with many Americans acute anger at the government’s unconditional bailout of bankers and Wall Street firms that drove the economy to disaster. Our country urgently needs to address not the problems of Wall Street but the problems of the 99%: massive unemployment of the American people, the erosion of our social safety networks, our decaying infrastructures, social and education programs, and workers’ wages, rights, and benefits. We oppose the undemocratic collusion of big business with government at all levels.

We join Occupy Wall Street in calling for urgent action to increase employment and to protect programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, in part by requiring the wealthy, the investment bankers, and the large corporations to pay their fair share of taxes. We also join the protesters in decrying the disastrous effects of the costly, unjustified wars that the United States has been conducting overseas since 2001. Only by identifying the complex interconnections between repressive economic, social, and political regimes can social and economic justice prevail in this country and around the globe. We applaud the efforts to keep the protests peaceful and democratic.

As teachers we express our conviction that without social justice, education is a shell game. And as scholars we celebrate the creative and intellectual work of Occupy Wall Street as an essential partner to our own efforts to facilitate the emergence of a better social order and a smarter commitment to its lively perpetuation.

We join our colleagues in the labor movement, especially teachers unions, and at other universities and colleges, in supporting this movement. We call on all members of the Penn community to lend their support to this peaceful and potentially transformative movement.

Ania Loomba, English
Suvir Kaul, English
Anne Norton, Political Science
Charles Bernstein, English
Toorjo Ghose, Social Policy and Practice
Robert Vitalis, Political Science
Zachary Lesser, English
Deborah Thomas, Anthropology
Max Cavitch, English
Andrea Goulet, French
Jed Esty, English
Timothy Corrigan, Cinema Studies, English, and History of Art
John Richetti, English Emeritus
Marcia Ferguson, Theater Arts
Chi-ming Yang, English
Nicola M. Gentili, Cinema Studies
Eve Troutt Powell, History and Africana Studies
Katie L. Price, English
Rita Barnard, English
Lisa Mitchell, South Asia Studies
Salamishah Tillet, English
Thadious Davis, English
Kathleen Hall, Graduate School of Education
Amy Kaplan, English
Herman Beavers, English
Jim English, English
Phyllis Rackin, English Emerita
Jean-Michel Rabaté, English
Heather Love, English
Marie Gottschalk, Political Science
Bob Perelman, English
Andrew Lamas, Urban Studies
Karen Beckman, History of Art and Cinema Studies
Nancy Bentley, English
Nancy J. Hirschmann, Political Science
Demie Kurtz, Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies
Shannon Lundeen, Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies
Michelle Taransky, English
David L. Eng, English
Michael Leja, History of Art and Visual Studies
Tsitsi Jaji, English
Yin-Ling Wong, Social Policy and Practice
Mark Stern, Social Policy and Practice
Dennis Culhane, Social Policy and Practice
Tukufu Zubeiri, Sociology
Nina Auerbach, English Emerita
David S. Roos, Biology
Tulia Falleti, Political Science
Projit Mukharji, History and Sociology of Science
E. Ann Matter, Religious Studies
Jamal Elias, Religious Studies
Toni Bowers, English.
Devan Patel, South Asian Studies
Julia Lynch, Political Science
Ezekiel Dixon-Roman, Social Policy and Practice
Roberta Iversen, Social Policy and Practice
Michèle Richman, French
David Kazanjian, English
Tamara J. Walker, History
Christopher Nichols, History
Andrea Doyle, Social Policy & Practice
Sharon Ravitch, Graduate School of Education
Cheikh Babou, History
James Ker, Classical Studies
Emily Wilson, Classical Studies
Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, History of Art
Nuzhat Ahmad, Medicine
Bethany Wiggin, German
Josephine Parks, English
Steven Hahn, History
Devin Griffiths, English
Lydie Moudileno, French
Virginia Chang, Medicine
Margreta de Grazia, English
Emma Dillon, Music
Rahul Mangharam, of Electrical and Systems Engineering
Damon Freeman, Social Policy & Practice
Karin Rhodes, Social Policy & Practice
Paul K. Saint-Amour, English
Peter Stallybrass, English
Betsy Rymes, Graduate School of Education
Deborah Burnham, English
Howard C. Stevenson, Graduate School of Education
Michael Weisberg, Philosophy
S K. Gill, Anthropology & Africana Studies
Joan Goodman, Graduate School of Education
Deborah Luepnitz, Department of Psychiatry
Al Filreis, Department of English
Danny Snelson, Department of English
Parvati Ramchandani, Radiology, School of Medicine
Michael Gamer, Department of English
Ann Farnsworth-Alvear, Department of History
Dan Berger, Annenberg School for Communication
Christine Poggi, History of Art
Eric Jarosinski, Germanic Languages and Literatures

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.