See this FoxNews story.. Also, this KARE11 story. These stories each excerpt from a longer statement that was read by polisci grad student, Isaac Kamola. Here’s an earlier draft (written by the umn student strike solidarity group):

We, the students, are here today to express our frustration at the inaccessibility of the administration at our University. We are here to say “no” to the silence and exclusion from the decision making process that affects our whole university community.

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During the impending strike of the AFSCME union at my school, I’ve been collaborating with some grad students to support the workers by organizing A People’s Conference: Rethinking the University of Minnesota within the Moment of Crisis.  This forum will facilitate discussion about how workers, students, and faculty can take back the soul of their university and downsize the greedy administration.

This AP news story does not make the connections, but we should. The privatization of air safety in Brazil, as dictated by neoliberal governance policies, is directly responsible for this crash. Someone should do a study (not just of Brazil, but of all countries that have undergone neoliberal structual adjustment programs prescribed by the World Bank and IMF), a study of how much accidents have increased in frequency since privatization has been implemented in the administration of safety in the transportation, as well as in the workplace. From the AP story:

“It’s been 10 months since the last worst air accident in Brazilian history and now we’ve had an accident worse than that,” said David Fleischer, a political scientist at the University of Brasilia. “If you look at what’s happened since September, the answer is nothing.”

“It was a tragedy foretold,” said political commentator Lucia Hippolito. “The government has done nothing because of administrative inefficiency and simple incompetence.”