The Occupation Cookbook: direct democracy in practice

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The Occupation Cookbook presents the model of the student occupation of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb during the spring of 2009; it is published by Minor Compositions in London, and distributed by Autonomedia in the US. The printed book is for sale, while the pdf format is available as a free download at Minor Compositions; the website of the occupation also includes the text in html format.

But why did the model of this occupation attract international attention? It constituted an impressively open and inclusive process, based on free access; that is to say, it included anyone wishing to participate, regardless of whether they were a student of the faculty or not, and granted them the right to vote in the plenum, the decision-making body of the occupation (pp. 17-18):

First of all, the faculty was not occupied in such a manner that access into the building was physically forbidden to all but the occupying students, as is sometimes done. Therefore, it would be more appropriate to refer to this as ‘student control over the faculty’ than an ‘occupation.’ Only regular classes were blocked, everything else was allowed to function as usual (the administration, the library, the bookshop and other facilities within the faculty building were working normally while the professors could work in their offices as usual). Secondly, the faculty was open to everyone (students from other faculties, regular citizens, journalists etc.). Thirdly, plenums (plenary assemblies) at which all decisions were made concerning the functioning of the occupied faculty was also open not only to the students of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb (FHSS) but to everybody. Anyone who came to the plenum had the right to participate in it and to vote.

The Occupation Cookbook, p. 52

It is equally important to note the effectiveness of the forms of organization themselves; the book provides a detailed account of the ways in which the plenum was organised, including its rules and guidelines. It furthermore discusses the role of teams and working groups, and addresses the occupation's code of conduct, media strategy, and wider social context. The protest lasted for 35 days and the students' demand was "free publicly financed education on all levels available to all" (p. 17).

The book explains the open character of the protest on the basis of its goal: "[s]ince the demand for free education for all is one that concerns the general public and since the university is a public institution, the “open door policy” was considered to be the only consistent one" (p. 27). This is the reason why Marc Bousquet argues in his introduction that the Croatian occupations were not closures of the campus, but radical re-openings via direct-democratic means which provided maximum public access (pp. 10-11). It is in this respect that the student occupation of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb provides an attractive and fruitful answer to a significant question; as Mark Bousquet puts it (p. 7):

What does it mean to "occupy" a school? A school occupation is not, as the corporate media like to portray it, a hostile takeover. A school occupation is an action by those who are already its inhabitants – students, faculty, and staff – and those for whom the school exists. (Which is to say for a public institution, the public itself.) The actions termed "occupations" of a public institution, then, are really re-occupations, a renovation and reopening to the public of a space long captured and stolen by the private interests of wealth and privilege. The goal of this renovation and reopening is to inhabit school spaces as fully as possible, to make them truly habitable – to make the school a place fit for living.