The below faculty members of California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) hereby express our solidarity with the Occupy movement that began as Occupy Wall Street and has since spread to many cities across the nation and the world, including Los Angeles. Our faculty is a community of artists, writers, and intellectuals who depend upon freedom of speech, thought, expression, and assembly to do our work in the world. We believe the protesters of the Occupy movement are insisting upon—and enacting—such freedoms, and we stand in solidarity with the creative, engaged, and nonviolent spirit that they have shown. We are well aware that the talented and devoted students whom we teach at CalArts have been forced into paying increasingly high tuition for their educations, and into taking on increasingly unsustainable amounts of debt to achieve their goals. We also know that they face increasingly bleak prospects for employment after graduation, and further, that their situation is shared by students across the land. While those at the very top have prospered, the economic situation of the “other 99%”—including that of our faculty and staff—has either stagnated or declined. We deplore this widening gap, and strongly disagree with any political and economic measures that perpetuate or worsen this divide. We thereby stand in solidarity with the Occupy movement’s protest of the profound, brutal, and ongoing inequities of our time; we also share its vision of a more just, sustainable, and joyful present and future for all. We invite other members of the CalArts community to lend their support, and to participate in the movement in whatever ways feel possible.

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