California University Approves 32 percent tuition increase

[The Author]

California university regents approve 32 percent tuition increase

By Alan Duke, CNN

Los Angeles, California (CNN) -- Despite intense student protests, the California Board of Regents on Thursday approved a 32 percent undergraduate tuition increase over the next two years.
Hundreds of students marched and chanted outside UCLA, where university officials were meeting. School officials argued that a fee increase and deep cuts in school spending were necessary because of the state government's ongoing budget crisis.
After the vote, students rushed the parking decks and staged a sit-in to block regents officials from leaving. Campus police and California Highway Patrol officers were nearby and on the ready clad in riot gear.
Students and others say the cuts will hurt the working and middle classes who benefit from state-funded education.
"We're fired up. Can't take it no more," students chanted as they marched and waved signs. "Education only for the rich," one sign read.
Dozens of students lined up early for seats inside the regents meeting, hoping for a chance at the microphone during the public comment time before the vote. Campus police with riot gear lined up between the loud but peaceful protesters and the entrance.
The University of California's (http://topics.cnn.com/topics/university_of_california_system/) Board of Regents approved the plan a day after the regents' finance committee approved the 32 percent increase.
Some faculty members and campus workers -- worried about furloughs and layoffs to come -- joined the protesting students.
"Stop cuts in education and research," a sign carried by a teacher said.
Fourteen people were arrested Wednesday morning after they disrupted the regents' meeting with chanting, police said. Other protests -- including "tent cities" -- were under way on other University of California campuses across the state.
About 26 percent of the $20 billion spent each year by the system comes from the state's general fund and tuition and fees paid by students, according to a summary on the regent's Web site.
The first tuition increase, which takes effect in January, will cost undergraduate students an additional $585 a semester. The second increase kicks in next fall, raising tuition another $1,344.
The fee increases would be balanced by a raise in "the level of financial assistance for needy low- and middle-income students," according to a statement from the Board of Regents.


http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/11/19/california.tuition.protests/

[bcbm]

UC Santa Cruz: over 500 students are occupying the Kresge Town Hall as of 3:45pm, Wednesday.
the details: hundreds of students rallied at the two entrances to campus shutting it down for several hours. Another group of 300 students entered into the Kresge Town Hall to create an organizing space around the budget cuts. Later in the evening, students at the entrances joined the others in the Kresge Town Hall. Currently, the space is being used to plan further actions.
UPDATE: As of 3pm, Thursday, UC Santa Cruz’s main administrative building, Kerr Hall has been occupied.
http://occupyca.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/novemberucscoccupation.png?w=300&h=168 (http://occupyca.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/novemberucscoccupation.png)
UC Berkeley attempted occupation. Students have been organizing massive actions through out these three days as well.
UCLA, 14 students arrested earlier. UPDATE (8am Thurs): UCLA IS OCCUPIED
the details: students at UCLA held a “crisis fest” on Wednesday night. At 12am, students go and occupy the campbell hall and rename it the Carter-Huggins Hall, after two black panthers that were murdered in the building. As of this morning the building is still occupied.
-see website (http://uclaresists.blogspot.com/)
-info from LA Times (http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/11/ucla-protests.html), LA Indymedia (http://la.indymedia.org/news/2009/11/232467.php)
SFSU held a sit-in, that has now ended. See Indybay (http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/11/18/18629093.php).
City College of San Francisco, 500 students walked out in solidarity
…more updates upcoming


http://occupyca.wordpress.com/

[leggy leftist]

Students took over Wheeler Hall this morning on the UC Berkeley campus:

(Sorry, I can't post the link, but it's at sfgate.com.)

UC Berkeley students took over a campus building in protest this morning, a day after the University of California regents voted to raise tuition by 32 percent.
An undetermined number of protesters barricaded themselves at about 6 a.m. inside Wheeler Hall, which houses the English department.


Several demonstrators wearing bandanas opened a window, displayed a sign reading "32% Hike, 900 layoffs" with the word "Class" crossed out in red. They used a bullhorn to denounce the regents' decision and to rally support from a group of students chanting outside.

University and Berkeley police cordoned off the building, located just north of Sather Gate, with yellow police tape.

[bcbm]

UPDATE: As of 3pm, Thursday, UC Santa Cruz’s main administrative building, Kerr Hall has been occupied. Check out this indybay article (http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/11/19/18629337.php)!
Thursday 5:45pm: still occupied, discussing the night.
Thursday 6:30pm: Alma Sifuentes, Dean of Students has arranged to not call the police (the time frame is unclear) as long as students remain non-violent and do not create physical barricades.
Thursday 6:50pm: The administrators refused to provide a written-copy of the previous agreement.
http://occupyca.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/kerr-hall_15_11-19-09.jpg?w=450&h=337 (http://occupyca.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/kerr-hall_15_11-19-09.jpg)
Friday 12:00am: Students are still in Kerr Hall (~200-300) and another 50 students are in the Kresge Town Hall watching revolutionary films. Kerr Hall is absolutely packed, there is very little space to even sit down in!
Friday 9:00am: All is well. A rally at noon is planned in front of Kerr hall
see Demands in english below (http://occupyca.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/uc-santa-cruz-kerr-hall-occupied/)! Demandas en Español (http://occupyca.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/demands-in-spanish/)!

UC Berkeley attempted an occupation on Wednesday. Students have been organizing massive actions through out these three days as well.
UPDATE:
Friday ~5:00am: 40 Students occupied Wheeler Hall
some students, all demonstrating peacefully/without weapons, have been beaten by police!
Friday ~7:50am: see indybay videos (http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/11/20/18629439.php)

Friday ~8:00am: Students are barricaded in a classroom or floor, while police attempt to pepper spray through the doors. Students are making announcements from the windows. They need outside support!
Friday ~9:15am: About a 100 students have gathered outside to support the students inside. They need more supporters! The police are responding violently against the occupiers!
http://occupyca.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/0_0_msg_tmp__jpg.jpg?w=450&h=360 (http://occupyca.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/0_0_msg_tmp__jpg.jpg)

(from inside Wheeler Hall, UCB)
UCLA, 14 students arrested earlier. UPDATE (8am Thurs): UCLA was occupied

the details: students at UCLA held a “crisis fest” on Wednesday night. At 12am, students go and occupy the campbell hall and rename it the Carter-Huggins Hall, after two black panthers that were murdered in the building. As of this morning the building is still occupied.
Thursday 7:00pm: UCLA has ended their occupation, with 100 people, peacefully.
-see website (http://uclaresists.blogspot.com/)
-info from LA Times (http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/11/ucla-protests.html), LA Indymedia (http://la.indymedia.org/news/2009/11/232467.php)
SFSU held a sit-in, that has now ended. See Indybay (http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/11/18/18629093.php).
City College of San Francisco, 500 students walked out in solidarity on Wednesday. See Indybay (http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/11/20/18629467.php)
UC Davis was occupied!

Thursday ~6pm: UCD is still occupied. However students are not being allowed enter. Mrak hall is being surrounded by police and helicopters.
Thursday 7:10pm: UCD police are coming into the occupation. Students have linked arms
Thursday 7:48pm: UCD police are arresting approximately 100 students. This has been confirmed. This was their message to us as they were being arrested:
“This is the end of the beginning. We’ll get out of county lock up and come right back!”



from occupyca

[Kléber]

The building occupations are an adventure by anarchist cliques that have (in all the cases I've heard about) disrupted mass meetings, alienated workers, and ruined strike plans.

Basically it is easy for an anarchist clique to have a secret pre-meeting away from everything, then walk into a mass meeting and yell "FUCK THESE LIBERAL REFORMIST ORGANIZERS! LETS FUCK SHIT UP! WE WANT A BUILDING!" and mislead 100 or so newly-arrived kids away from progressive activism, and off the cliff of getting arrested. This polarizes students along racial and class lines because working-class students and immigrant students and students of oppressed nationalities can not afford to risk arrest in the with the readiness of a bourgeois white student. Hence the anarchists hypocritically become everything they hate about an "intellectual vanguard" while the actual worker-students and oppressed students are left mystified, or just plain unable to participate. This strategy has alienated two for every one it has successfully made say "oh? they occupied a building? cool." Activism can work and attract big numbers if it accomplishes something (like the library sit-ins at UCB, UCSC and CSU Fullerton, those were good). Getting people beaten up and arrested and therefore hating the cops is not accomplishing something except in the sick mind of a police spy or an ultraleft adventurist.

If you have some urgent need to occupy a building, go ahead, but the undemocratic means of putting these policies into effect is really upsetting. There is no need to heckle people with opposing views at mass meetings, trying to claim that anybody who has ANY ideas other than OCCUPY BUILDINGS ALL THE TIME is some kind of liberal reformist capitalist, or worse, a "SNITCH" waiting to happen! As if they aren't handing people over to the cops by the hundreds with these adventures. Also the "occupyca" anarchists, despite the name of their website, have an intense latent hostility toward taking politics outside the university. their leaders (oh sorry, did i say leaders? i meant that one "autonomous committee" that speaks on behalf of everybody else) have mostly graduated a long time ago but they have no taste for community organizing so they hang around the student scene for all kinds of reasons

[Jimmie Higgins]

The building occupations are an adventure by anarchist cliques that have (in all the cases I've heard about) disrupted mass meetings, alienated workers, and ruined strike plans.

Basically it is easy for an anarchist clique to have a secret pre-meeting away from everything, then walk into a mass meeting and yell "FUCK THESE LIBERAL REFORMIST ORGANIZERS! LETS FUCK SHIT UP! WE WANT A BUILDING!" and mislead 100 or so newly-arrived kids away from progressive activism, and off the cliff of getting arrested. This polarizes students along racial and class lines because working-class students and immigrant students and students of oppressed nationalities can not afford to risk arrest in the with the readiness of a bourgeois white student. Hence the anarchists hypocritically become everything they hate about an "intellectual vanguard." This strategy has alienated two for every one it has successfully made say "oh? they occupied a building? cool." Activism can work and attract big numbers if it accomplishes something. Getting people beaten up and arrested and therefore hating the cops is not accomplishing something except in the sick mind of a police spy or an ultraleft adventurist.

If you have some urgent need to occupy a building, go ahead, but the undemocratic means of putting these policies into effect is really upsetting. There is no need to heckle people with opposing views at mass meetings, trying to claim that anybody who has ANY ideas other than OCCUPY BUILDINGS ALL THE TIME is some kind of liberal reformist capitalist, or worse, a "SNITCH" waiting to happen! As if we're the ones handing people over to the cops by the hundreds like the occupiers love to do. Also the "occupyca" anarchists, despite the name of their website, have an intense latent hostility toward taking politics outside the university. their leaders (oh sorry? did i say leaders? i meant their "autonomous committee" that speaks on behalf of the ignorant masses) have mostly graduated a long time ago but they have no taste for community organizing (you have to talk to ordinary people ew) so they hang around the student scene for all kinds of reasons

I don't know if this is true in all these campus occupations - some of these actions seem to have more support and organization behind them. UC Santa Cruz, UC Berkely, UCLA and now UC Davis - I don't think a small cliques alone are behind all these actions - there is truly a level of anger that makes the conservative tea-party protests look like... well, tea-parties.

However, I agree that adventurism does not help these protests. At UC Berkeley during the last big protest of thousands of students last month, yes a small group of people tried to lock the doors of one of the buildings and create an occupation even though people had not agreed to it beforehand - this alienated and scared many of the students who were not prepared for this and had not agreed to it.

What I find most unfortunate about that tactic at UC Berkeley is that if that had not gone down, I bet the campus groups could organize 100s of students for a building occupation now because of the increased level of anger.

Let's keep this in perspective - these attacks on education (as well as all sorts of state services) are going to go on for a long time and it's a good thing that 1,000s of students have begun fighting back. That being said, I think we can expect a lot of mis-steps and clumsy moves because really this level of anger and radicalization of students has not been seen for a generation. Meetings over the summer and right after school began were about a dozen people - now there are many groups working to fight the cuts and hundreds of students coming to meetings for the first time ever.

This is just the beginning. In a country where the media and the Democrats and Campus Administrators tell us: "We want to help you, we want universal healthcare, we want to see an end to the war, we wish that the schools were better funded, but you have to be realistic" hopefully before too long students can revive the May 68 slogan that is really needed in American politics: "Be realistic: demand the impossible".

[bcbm]

The building occupations are an adventure by anarchist cliques that have (in all the cases I've heard about) disrupted mass meetings, alienated workers, and ruined strike plans. hearsay isn't admissible in a court of law, i'm not sure why it matters more here. i don't claim to have any idea what the situation is on the ground, but i know a lot of people from all over the country are following the situation in california right now with interest. occupations don't happen very often and, even if ill thought out and executed, they're exciting to see. if the accusations you level are true, than an effort should be made to get to the bottom of it and try to dialogue with the anarchist groups to prevent future errors. my guess is that a lot of these people are new to this and they're excited, so errors are going to happen. let's work to make it stronger instead of just immediately launching down the shit-talking road, eh?
This polarizes students along racial and class lines because working-class students and immigrant students and students of oppressed nationalities can not afford to risk arrest in the with the readiness of a bourgeois white student. this accusation is brought against almost every militant action and i know the working class, poc, queer and immigrant individuals i've been in the streets with find this sort of view really patronizing.

[pierrotlefou]

If you have some urgent need to occupy a building, go ahead, but the undemocratic means of putting these policies into effect is really upsetting.
If you want to talk about undemocratic, look at the reason all of those kids are out there in the first place! The students are obviously not a part of the "democratic process" as far as the school budget or tuition goes or any matter like that. Some people feel standing outside of a building with a sign does not usually work by itself. Sometimes more radical actions are necessary to go along with mass protest.

[bcbm]

regarding anarchist adventurism without democracy, from occupca comments:
today there was a general assembly at occupied kresge where 3-400 people decided “let’s go occupy something!” really, it was that simple. we marched around campus for about 20-30 minutes chanting. hahn and the bookstore were both on lockdown. then suddenly we were descending on kerr hall. they locked the doors inside as the swarm approached. we started runnning. someone finds an open window and a door is propped open from inside.

then there are 300 people running through kerr hall, chanting, screaming, pounding on the walls. such a tremendous feeling of collective-being. into the stairwell, but the doors are locked; someone hops in an elevator and then we are pouring up into the second floor, where the main entrance lobby and the chancellor’s office both are. HOLY FUCK! we just occupied kerr hall!! sounds okay to me?

regarding all occupiers being white, bourgeois students:

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/11/20/18629553.php
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/11/20/18629574.php
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/11/20/18629531.php

looks pretty diverse.

[Rusty Shackleford]

There are plans for protests at the state capitol. its going to be organized by junior college and community colleges.

My campus is on the brink financially. we had cut 11% of next falls classes, and 5% of springs classes.
60% part time workers are not going to be working here anymore.
fees rose by ~20% (from $20 to $24)
and now, the city police department is patrolling out campus, sometimes in unmarked cars. students have been harassed by them too. now, at this point, i would prefer a PSC because at least they integrate with the students better. and dont have cars with AR-15s and Shotguns in them.

If i find out any more information of the capitol(Sacramento) protests (most likely happening in the spring) ill let you all know.

[bcbm]

below the general update post on occupyca, there are a lot of specific reports from the various campus marches and occupations that are pretty interesting, as well as some solidarity statements from all over the world. it sounds like the police have been getting pretty violent at a lot of the occupations, beating and macing the people inside and out.

[redasheville]

hearsay isn't admissible in a court of law, i'm not sure why it matters more here. i don't claim to have any idea what the situation is on the ground, but i know a lot of people from all over the country are following the situation in california right now with interest. occupations don't happen very often and, even if ill thought out and executed, they're exciting to see. if the accusations you level are true, than an effort should be made to get to the bottom of it and try to dialogue with the anarchist groups to prevent future errors. my guess is that a lot of these people are new to this and they're excited, so errors are going to happen. let's work to make it stronger instead of just immediately launching down the shit-talking road, eh? this accusation is brought against almost every militant action and i know the working class, poc, queer and immigrant individuals i've been in the streets with find this sort of view really patronizing.

Hearsay is admitted in a court of law.

Gravedigger is right, and there is an anarchist, adventurist, ultra-left current in the student protests. However, militant actions such as this are widely supported beyond that circle.

[bcbm]

Hearsay is admitted in a court of law.



Unless one of about thirty[1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearsay_in_United_States_law#cite_note-0) exceptions applies, hearsay is not allowed as evidence in the United States.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearsay_in_United_States_law

[bcbm]

Statement from the occupiers - please disseminate to all media contacts:
A certain small group of students is doing what it can to slander the occupation that occurred at Campbell Hall. CYNTHIA, a junior politician careerist bent on control, has helped to spread rumors that the occupation was carried out by mostly "older white males." This rumor is absolutely without truth - the occupation was in fact planned and carried out by more minority students than whites -- but is that important anyway?

The building was liberated and barricaded to keep the police and administration out while opening the space for student and youth autonomy. The building remained porous and was in fact, for the first time ever, under complete autonomous student discretion. Prior to the final meeting which destroyed the occupation, a rush of students had come in to the building creating an incredible energy of activity, excitement and anticipation. Friends were made, the building re-decorated, and the bathrooms were declared gender-neutral: while there was a general feeling of defeat on the outside from the day's protest, inside Carter-Huggins Hall there was a revolution.

A meeting was called to discuss the occupation and was held in the building's stairwell. It was derailed by student leader saboteurs who were threatened by the autonomy granted to students by the liberated space. It was and remains a concern that the building chosen for occupation provides services to minority students (whom the saboteurs condescendingly view as societal handicaps). Well, this concern is actually quite ridiculous - the space was opened to all students and youth regardless of their status as UCLA customers, and for 24-hours too, without the old hourly limitations of the building under university control. It is important to check race, class and privilege, we don't deny this, but this is not what went on - the meeting devolved into mere race-baiting in an attempt by the saboteurs to take power of the occupied building. And they succeeded.

The student government leader, CYNTHIA, left the meeting 1/2 way through after using all of her time inside to change the positive horizontality of the building in to a hostile-bureaucracy. On her way out of the building CYNTHIA desecrated the legacy of Bunchy Carter and John Huggins by tearing down for the second time the banner declaring the hall Carter-Huggins Hall. After she tore down the banner, it was brought to our attention that she and her cronies had earlier sabotaged an attempt at direct action by a separate autonomous student group. The group had planned for months to storm the regents meeting at Covel Commons. CYNTHIA and her gang of movement-police linked arms in DEFENSE of the regents meeting, taking a load off the police, and thwarted the student group from rushing in to Covel.

These so-called student leaders swear they know the correct and objective form of protest. There is no respect for a multiplicity of tactics. By the time of time of the meeting, power had already been taken away from the university without asking permission from administrators or student leaders (are these even different categories?) and was redistributed horizontally. Unfortunately this freedom brings about the possibility of usurpation by those used to power, used to hanging above everyone from their ivory tower. These people thrive on the status quo, its their realm, and they always want to drag back those who escape.

There are CYNTHIA's everywhere who make up and direct the movement-police to be encountered at any site of struggle. Occupation takes power and immediately destroys its concentrated form. Beware of bureaucrats, occupy everything!
http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20091120163523853

[Kléber]

Well I shouldn't lump all the occupations together, the tactic isn't necessarily bad and I don't know what happened at every school.



We’ve got the vision
We’ve got each other
Now let’s have some fucking fun.
We are with those barricaded in buildings, throwing rocks in the
streets, and drinking their Chancellor’s champagne.
From now on, this is all solidarity means.
It's more this type of bs that made me lose interest. "Let's have some fucking fun" is a reference to the dance party they threw the night we heard about the 32% increase.


today there was a general assembly at occupied kresge where 3-400 people decided “let’s go occupy something!” really, it was that simple.not really. it was half as many people, they cut the meeting short early when they riled up the crowd. anybody who opposed it was getting heckled by the occupationists throughout the building. as for your comment about the racial makeup, kresge town hall is still occupied as a safe space for the few "less arrestable" who haven't already been disillusioned while the hell-raising white folk are down at kerr hall.


As for the ridiculous thing about CYNTHIA.. well, if everything they say is true, she sounds like a nasty menshevik piece of work, but she did get elected, and not everyone has the same postmodern disillusion with voting that the anarchists do. Also, "movement-police" is a very unpleasant term, it sounds an awful lot like "social-fascist." If they keep calling everyone who opposes them a police spy, I might start to develop my own suspicions.


while there was a general feeling of defeat on the outside from the day's protest, inside Carter-Huggins Hall there was a revolution.That's the problem, it's isolated and confusing to everyone outside. Quiet flows the Don. The library sit-ins at UCB, UCSC and CSU Fullerton were good tactics, they link the radical occupation idea to something that impacts the lives of ordinary people for the better, and that unpoliticized people might want to take part in. That tactic also builds the strength of the movement whereas hopeless confrontations with police don't make people want to come back next time.

[bcbm]

It's more this type of bs that made me lose interest. "Let's have some fucking fun" is a reference to the dance party they threw the night we heard about the 32% increase.

it sounds like they're trying to experiment with different tactics and ways of raising awareness, occupying space and building relationships. i don't see anything wrong with that if its also coupled with other activities.


not really

you have another account?


As for the ridiculous thing about CYNTHIA.. well, if everything they say is true, she sounds like a nasty menshevik piece of work, but she did get elected, and not everyone has the same postmodern disillusion with voting that the anarchists do.

i think an elected bureaucrat actively sabotaging autonomous projects and attempting to recuperate/destroy them is pretty much par the course. hopefully people will grow more way of them in the future and work to build a movement they can't ruin.

and "postmodern disillusion?" anarchists have opposed voting since at least the modernist era. :rolleyes:


Also, "movement-police" is a very unpleasant term, it sounds an awful lot like "social-fascist." If they keep calling everyone who opposes them a police spy, I might start to develop my own suspicions..

movement police refers to their role in calming down situations and siding with the enemy to protect their positions of power, not inferring that they actually are from/working for the police.

[Os Cangaceiros]

http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc97/Alaskan99/ucdavis-11-19_35-1.jpg

^Judging from the look on his face, that guy might have been arrested for something other than occupying a building...

[Schrödinger's Cat]

Other university students around the country have faced a 32% hike in tuition; it just was much more incremental over the years. I guess this will just show postsecondary boards of regents that if you're going to live by a system of passive endowments, hitch things up each year.

Makes me wonder what would go down if the shit hit the proverbial fan when it comes to social security and medicare/caid.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Other university students around the country have faced a 32% hike in tuition; it just was much more incremental over the years. I guess this will just show postsecondary boards of regents that if you're going to live by a system of passive endowments, hitch things up each year.Well, this is just this year - fees have been going up in CA all along too. Tuition in the UCs has be raised 8 times in the last 7 years.

I graduated in 2000 and my tuition was $4,000 and some change - now it's more than twice that! Not to mention that in the 60s, you could go to Berkeley for a couple hundred dollars - even considering inflation, that's a fucking ridiculous increase.

[La Comédie Noire]

Education is not purely the domain of "white bourgeois students" it is a working class issue especially in the junior and community colleges. The community college I attend is literally over flowing with people who can't find jobs, we've had to park on the baseball diamond its gotten so bad. even though enrollment has exploded, tuition is still being hiked and federal aid is being cut, closing paths for many of us. The nursing program is already backed up 2 years.

Education is becoming a class privilege and social mobility is slowing down. If you can't move up in this world you have no choice, but to view yourself in a fixed position and that fixed position is what we call class.

But, I guess any attempt to struggle against that would be "middle class adventurism" or "kids just being kids." You ever notice some leftists think political action is dominated by middle class white kids and the "real oppressed people" by which they strongly imply poor people of color are being led around by their noses?

I wonder where they get that idea from... :lol:

[MarxSchmarx]

This is not going to end with any meaningful changes.

For several reasons. First and foremost, the press doesn't care. Second, the students involved are either being arrested en masse or leaving on their own accord. In a few places they are holding out, but the failed examples elsewhere are less than encouraging. Finally, the system is so thoroughly corrupt, and california so thoroughly bankrupt, that there is no viable end game except for the students to accede.

Actions like these come up from time to time by well-meaning and otherwise dedicated individuals. But they are frustrating in part because they highlight why we can't take advantage of these situations to advocate for broader social change. There are several problems:
First. These actions have no staying power, in large part because they have no viable end game. Are they planning to occupy the buildings indefinitely? Do they really think that their stunts are going to stare down the state with millions of dollars at stake?
If this were the only problem, I wouldn't be so disparaging. After all, part of any struggle is taking risks against more powerful opponents. But their problems are more systemic.

They are not based on a strong effort to organize in periods outside of the crisis. Therefore, when the SHTF, they are impotent. They are perceived to only affect a narrow segment of the population. Most high school students in Los Angeles, for instance, never finish high school, much less attend college.
All this leads to a broader problem.
Such actions lack popular support. They lack popular support because insufficient groundwork is done, action is taken for action's sake, and little attempt is made to communicate to the community why these actions are important for people who don't attend the university. In short, there is little relevance for the majority of Californians, much less the average American. The protesters appear ever more self-righteous, which feeds a vicious cycle. And the worse part is they're not even trying to explain why this is a problem beyond their own "But I won't be able to continue my elite education". Of course that's a problem and a grave injustice, but if you're an ex-con or an undocumented worker or even just somebody who works at the local supermarket I don't see why you should really care.

In a few weeks (or less), this will be a missed opportunity, yet again.

Fuck capitalism.

[Jimmie Higgins]

This is not going to end with any meaningful changes.

For several reasons. First and foremost, the press doesn't care. Second, the students involved are either being arrested en masse or leaving on their own accord. In a few places they are holding out, but the failed examples elsewhere are less than encouraging. Finally, the system is so thoroughly corrupt, and california so thoroughly bankrupt, that there is no viable end game except for the students to accede.

Actions like these come up from time to time by well-meaning and otherwise dedicated individuals. But they are frustrating in part because they highlight why we can't take advantage of these situations to advocate for broader social change. There are several problems:
First. These actions have no staying power, in large part because they have no viable end game. Are they planning to occupy the buildings indefinitely? Do they really think that their stunts are going to stare down the state with millions of dollars at stake?
If this were the only problem, I wouldn't be so disparaging. After all, part of any struggle is taking risks against more powerful opponents. But their problems are more systemic.

They are not based on a strong effort to organize in periods outside of the crisis. Therefore, when the SHTF, they are impotent. They are perceived to only affect a narrow segment of the population. Most high school students in Los Angeles, for instance, never finish high school, much less attend college.
All this leads to a broader problem.
Such actions lack popular support. They lack popular support because insufficient groundwork is done, action is taken for action's sake, and little attempt is made to communicate to the community why these actions are important for people who don't attend the university. The protesters appear ever more self-righteous, which feeds a vicious cycle.

In a few weeks (or less), this will be a missed opportunity, yet again.

Fuck capitalism.

Well, this is just the burst of anger that signals the potential to build a larger and possibly more organized and radical movement. It's like the initial protests at the start of the Iraq war or the immigrant marches in response to the racist anti-immigrant bill or the protests in response to the passage of prop 8 in California.

This explosion shows the anger and frustration with the status quo and the potential to build some fight-back, but it is just the beginning and could go any number of ways. It could get diverted by a liberal concilatory approach that stresses peace on campus and cooperation with UC regents, it could be a series of radical actions that do not build or connect with larger groups of students and eventually fizzles and leads to a sense of defeat, it could generalize and become an example of the right way that working people and students can and should fight back against these cuts.

How it goes down at this stage of the game depends a lot on how students and campus workers organize and if they can build the type of sustained movement that has been missing for the last 10 years. We've seen 10 years of sudden and seemingly spontaneous explosions of protest, but really only the anti-globalization protests were able to build their own momentum.

That students are largely seeing this as a class (and race) issue (the fact that the UC regents had to go on TV to assure people that working-poor families wouldn't have to pay the full tuition is a sign of the pressure they are under) and building solidarity with workers and reaching out to Cal State and Community Colleges is encouraging. It is also encouraging that people are seeing this as not just an isolated "campus issue" but part of the larger world of fucked-up and pro-rich priorities that are the status-quo in local and state and national governing.

Another thing I think these protests have going for them is that other issues over the past decade were funneled into liberal and "acceptable" channels because of large liberal movement organizations like Moveon or whatnot. Really, only the radical groups were prepared and expecting anger like this (well, we always do but it doesn't always materialize) and that means that radical ideas have a better than normal chance of having a major influence in this if it becomes a real movement.

[Rusty Shackleford]

i remember at the beginning of this year the teachers union decided to hold a pink slip protest. at least thats what i heard.

i know many students who are in the UC system, and in the CC system. but, very few are talking about the budget issue besides "this sucks."
my campus has been staging small scale protests on "social justice days" including a campus sleep out in cardboard boxes for homelessness awareness. i attended it but got the feeling of just attending a weak liberal action. The honors society at my school is also doing some actions about global hunger but only 20-50 students attend them.

one of the major issues for my campus is that it is in a highly conservative area.

im sure that if the campuses all start coordinating their efforts better it may become a stronger movement. next year will be worse for sure.

this is also a class issue to an extent. at CCs more than not, its mostly attended by lower class people. not just young but old. the steady rise in fees and the continuing unemployment strangles those who cannot afford education.

i think there also needs to be a general line for students too besides "continuing their elite education." i think education should be fought for as a universal right.

[bcbm]

And the worse part is they're not even trying to explain why this is a problem beyond their own "But I won't be able to continue my elite education".

almost every list of demands i've seen has included demands regarding cuts to workers wages, loss of jobs and other problems beyond simply education, and many of the demands relating to education seem to be about access for the non-elite, so i don't think this criticism is fair.

[redasheville]

i remember at the beginning of this year the teachers union decided to hold a pink slip protest. at least thats what i heard.

i know many students who are in the UC system, and in the CC system. but, very few are talking about the budget issue besides "this sucks."
my campus has been staging small scale protests on "social justice days" including a campus sleep out in cardboard boxes for homelessness awareness. i attended it but got the feeling of just attending a weak liberal action. The honors society at my school is also doing some actions about global hunger but only 20-50 students attend them.

one of the major issues for my campus is that it is in a highly conservative area.

im sure that if the campuses all start coordinating their efforts better it may become a stronger movement. next year will be worse for sure.

this is also a class issue to an extent. at CCs more than not, its mostly attended by lower class people. not just young but old. the steady rise in fees and the continuing unemployment strangles those who cannot afford education.

i think there also needs to be a general line for students too besides "continuing their elite education." i think education should be fought for as a universal right.

The struggle is being fought over education as a universal right. There was a conference on Oct. 24th with about 800 people representing all levels of public education in CA. The conference decided, democratically, to call for a sector wide strike/day of action on March 4th.

The reason why the struggle is more advanced on the UCs, as opposed to the CCs or the CSUs, is that the campus unions (UPTE, mostly) are stronger and more willing to fight. The fight is on all levels of public education in CA, and the struggle isn't going to stop at the UCs. UTLA (the K-12 teachers union in LA) has endorsed the March 4th action, which is huge. My union, the United Educators of San Francisco, has yet to take that step (we're working on it). There is no reason NOT to see the struggle at UCs as a step forward for our side.

Plus, what bcbm said.

[bcbm]

how much communication is occurring between student groups and the unions? i recall some talk of general assemblies during the initial round of ucsc occupations, has this idea been put forward and pursued more concretely across the system as a whole? i think some collaboration between high school and university students and workers would give a lot of momentum to the movement.

[redasheville]

how much communication is occurring between student groups and the unions? i recall some talk of general assemblies during the initial round of ucsc occupations, has this idea been put forward and pursued more concretely across the system as a whole? i think some collaboration between high school and university students and workers would give a lot of momentum to the movement.

I think all of this varies from campus to campus. And I'm not a UC student so I don't have first hand knowledge. That being said, at Berkeley there is a coalition called "Student Worker Action Team" (I think that's what the acronym stands for) which brings together campus workers, faculty, and students. I agree that the key to winning this struggle is the unity of all students and workers across all levels of education.

[Kléber]

the initial round of ucsc occupations neither sought nor got worker support. i heard some horror stories about custodians getting trash thrown at them but i think reactions were mixed. as for the ongoing one, i have heard campus workers say positive things about it because they like the list of demands. afscme members also came out to a rally supporting the occupation.

the general assemblies are a mixed bag. they started in berkeley as mass outpourings of dissent around an open mic with thousands of people. in different places there is different representation in them by union reps, liberal student govt, trotskyist groups, or anarchist collectives. i heard someone compare them to the soviets in russia, hehe.

also looking forward to march 4.

[redasheville]

the initial round of ucsc occupations neither sought nor got worker support. i heard some horror stories about custodians getting trash thrown at them but i think reactions were mixed. as for the ongoing one, i have heard campus workers say positive things about it because they like the list of demands. afscme members also came out to a rally supporting the occupation.

the general assemblies are a mixed bag. they started in berkeley as mass outpourings of dissent around an open mic with thousands of people. in different places there is different representation in them by union reps, liberal student govt, trotskyist groups, or anarchist collectives. i heard someone compare them to the soviets in russia, hehe.

also looking forward to march 4.

I haven't heard those horror stories (not to say they didn't happen). There are a wide range of politics being put forward in the student movement, and I wouldn't be too surprised if something like that did happen. It points to the need for socialists involved in student bodies and campus unions to push for TRUE solidarity between campus workers and students.

I know that during the library occupation at UCSC, the library workers ended up supporting the occupiers.

All out for March 4th!

[bcbm]

is there nothing planned between now and march 4th? obviously something massive takes awhile to build, but i would think some actions to maintain momentum in the meantime would be necessary?

[redasheville]

is there nothing planned between now and march 4th? obviously something massive takes awhile to build, but i would think some actions to maintain momentum in the meantime would be necessary?

There are no state-wide plans of action, to my knowledge. Some folks at San Francisco State are pushing for more actions on campus, locally. I am all for continuing to have speak-outs/teach-ins etc. until March 4th, but the main task is building for March 4th.

[bcbm]

i think actions at various campuses (sit-ins, educational events, occupations, rallies, groups going to talk to different student groups and workers, etc) would probably help build for march 4th as much as anything else.

[redasheville]

i think actions at various campuses (sit-ins, educational events, occupations, rallies, groups going to talk to different student groups and workers, etc) would probably help build for march 4th as much as anything else.

Yes, that is a good point.

[Kléber]

just as a side note, the word occupation was strictly not used to describe the ucsc "library study-in." ;p

[redasheville]

Ahem:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zj7fZqoG2f8

[Kléber]

So do you guys think the best idea for March 4th is an even bigger "exemplary action" where we storm the state capitol and get arrested?

[Schrödinger's Cat]

Well, this is just this year - fees have been going up in CA all along too. Tuition in the UCs has be raised [/FONT]8 times in the last 7 years.

I graduated in 2000 and my tuition was $4,000 and some change - now it's more than twice that! Not to mention that in the 60s, you could go to Berkeley for a couple hundred dollars - even considering inflation, that's a fucking ridiculous increase.

Does the UC system have land rights? That's a very small amount considering virtually all of UCs branches are highly esteemed, but I'm aware of some systems like the University of Texas that own valuable land and resources (in UT's case, oil) - so I'm wondering if the state supplements costs by a large amount? With some exceptions like TWU, almost every public university in Texas is roughly $10,000, and I know for a fact the cost of living in Texas is significantly less than what you find in California. The idea Berkley costs just as much as A&M is a little amusing, but I can definitely sympathize with the students and faculty. I don't have any hope for this boiling over into something larger (unfortunately), but there may yet come a solution.

I wonder if there's any legal recourse to liquidate some of the assets in the endowment funds earlier than allowed.

[bcbm]

So do you guys think the best idea for March 4th is an even bigger "exemplary action" where we storm the state capitol and get arrested?

so do you have any ideas, or do you just talk shit?

[redasheville]

Check out this video for footage of police violence: http://www.ktvu.com/news/21674608/detail.html

I have heard some rumors of the next course of action is a protest of the police violence.

[redasheville]

Letter from UC Berkeley AFT President Denouncing the UCB Administration

Subject: Re: Wheeler Hall Protest Ended Peacefully
From: [email protected]
Date: Sat, November 21, 2009 11:49 am
To: "Robert J. Birgeneau, Chancellor" <[email protected]>

Dear Chancellor Birgeneau,

I would like to respectfully disagree with your statement that "[t]aking over our classroom buildings is not a productive way in which to advance our shared interests in gaining support for public higher education."

When I think of the time and effort that students, staff, and faculty have spent over years trying to bring their grievances and constructive suggestions for remedies to UC administrators, and the way in which their concerns have been ignored and sidelined, I think that an action such as the student occupation of Wheeler Hall is highly productive if, as it seems to have done, it brings awareness of UC's dire situation to the general public, and exposes the incompetence, non-transparency, and
cronyism which characterize the UC administration's decisions.

In April 2005, you called a meeting of leaders of all the campus unions in the conference room in California Hall. We shared our concerns and hopes with you, and at the end of the meeting you said you had found the session productive and planned to do it again every year. To my knowledge, you have never followed up on that plan. You have occasionally met instead with representatives of single unions, and have heard student concerns only in public fora in which your office carefully controls the flow of events. This has not established the relationship of trust which seemed possible after that April 2005 meeting. The result is all too obvious. When you ask all of us to go forward together, we see that as disingenuous, even a co-optation and dilution of all the organizing we have done and the sacrifices we have made in recent years.

In the minds of many of our campus community members, the administrators of the University of California are taking over far more than a building. You are turning the public's greatest educational asset into a huge research park increasingly controlled by private interests. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, Woody Guthrie sang that "Some will rob you with a six-gun/Some with a fountain pen." The students who occupied Wheeler Hall used no weapons except the power of their convictions and willingness to take the consequences of their actions. You and your administrative colleagues, on the other hand, most assuredly continue to wield your "fountain pens" in a cynical, hypocritical, and greedy way as you use your power to bypass the intent of the charterers of the University of California and the formulators of the Master Plan for Higher Education.

Respectfully yours,

Kathryn A. Klar
Lecturer in Celtic Studies

[Kléber]

I don't think a demonstration is a failure if there is no police crackdown or confrontation. I believe in strikes and demonstrations where we don't "escalate" (provoke) anyone, but make our voices heard and hold our ground. Taking over an impressive building is no substitute for impressive numbers. Not everyone wants a violent struggle. Most workers still believe that their vote can make some difference so we should organize outside the two-party system and exhaust all legal means of taking over Sacramento.

[bcbm]

who has said anything about violence? who has said we shouldn't pursue legal means? who doesn't support strikes and demonstrations that don't end in a police crackdown?

you're arguing with yourself.

[MarxSchmarx]

almost every list of demands i've seen has included demands regarding cuts to workers wages, loss of jobs and other problems beyond simply education, and many of the demands relating to education seem to be about access for the non-elite, so i don't think this criticism is fair.

OK, they are trying, but I don't think very hard. At best it comes across as lip service. At the end it's about access to an elite education. All these furloughs, lack of access for "middle class families" are about getting an elite education. Where were the building occupations when furloughs were announced over the summer? All we saw was a meager "walk-out" for one day, with limited student participation.

Moreover, the protestors are not getting this wholistic message across except to outlets that are already inclined to be supportive (like indymedia). That may be the nature fo teh beast, but in their orchestration of all of this, the focus is overwhelmingly on issues of education.

[Schrödinger's Cat]

What do you mean by "elitist?" Academically elitist or financially elite? A 32% hike in tuition is a lot, but over 91% of the student body at Berkley comes from California. $10,000 a year in tuition is not a good indicator of a school being "elitist." The average indebtedness at graduation for Berkley is less than what you would find at Harvard, interestingly enough. That tells me a lot of "rich" families are still grasping for the Ivy League.

[Jimmie Higgins]

OK, they are trying, but I don't think very hard. At best it comes across as lip service. At the end it's about access to an elite education. All these furloughs, lack of access for "middle class families" are about getting an elite education. Where were the building occupations when furloughs were announced over the summer? All we saw was a meager "walk-out" for one day, with limited student participation.

Moreover, the protestors are not getting this wholistic message across except to outlets that are already inclined to be supportive (like indymedia). That may be the nature fo teh beast, but in their orchestration of all of this, the focus is overwhelmingly on issues of education.

Yes where were the protests in the past? I don't think you can fault students currently building a student/worker based movement right now, for not having built this movement 6 months ago. In my opinion, these protests are at the very least 10 years overdue in regards to the de-prioritizing of public education in the US. But 10 years or 6 months too late is better than none at all.

At a time when public sector unions, education, parks, social programs, etc etc are under an intensified attack by a ruling class that is trying to restore profits on the back of the working class - students, so far are the only group that has begun fighting back along class interests in a generalized way. Teachers unions and the BART (subway) union and the auto unions have all accepted "shared sacrifice" cuts or lowered demands, so I think we can hardly criticize students for only now beginning to fight. Hopefully their example will help give other public sector unions confidence to also fight back and that may encourage the industrial and service unions to follow suit.

If we are LUCKY, this is the beginning and if that is the case, I'm sure there will be plenty of things to critique or debate about this potential movement. But for right now I think we can all be supportive an optomistic about the first explosion of class anger of this recession to be coming from our side about the real effects of the econ. crisis rather than a bunch of right-wing populists for hire fear-mongering about secret communist takeovers.

[Revy]

If the movement develops further, it can become more broad. the Russian student uprising of 1901 began with academic demands, so did the uprising in May 1968 in France, but both broadened into political struggles going beyond the insular student movement.

I don't have illusions, I am merely providing some historical background. The California students are forging their consciousness without our leadership! And for that, what are they, anarchists? Heh.

I can't wait until tiny sects¹ show up trying to claim hegemony and "lead" the workers. Decades of their "leadership" have produced little that the proletariat can call a struggle, in fact, most of the "worker-led social and political struggle" has taken place in contexts where Democratic Party politics plays a hegemonic role.

The students are in an excellent position to provide intellectual fortitude to a fatigued, cultish, and opportunist "revolutionary" Left.

The mass revolutionary party of the proletariat will come from not to the struggle.²

-notes-
1. If the ISO is the one taking advantage of this from a perspective that isn't patronizing, it may cause them to grow. After all, the ISO is criticized for being too "student-friendly". They may already have supporters amongst the students.
2. "Social Democracy cannot artificially create a revolutionary mass movement; but, circumstances permitting, it can certainly cripple the finest mass action through its wavering, feeble tactics." - Rosa Luxemburg

[Kléber]

Can we define "mass action?" I thought a mass action was an action involving the "mass" (50% or more right) of a workplace, community, etc. These actions involve 50-150 in schools of 10,000-20,000 students. 1% of the student body is involved and 2-5% are actively supportive. The historical student movements you were talking about mobilized majorities of the student populations IIRC.

Also, if anyone saw the news coverage of the UCSC occupation that just ended (can't post links yet), the footage of custodians hunched over picking up the students' trash gives pause to the maxim "any press is good press."


The mass revolutionary party of the proletariat will come from not to the struggle.Um, that isn't what Luxemburg said? As for her quote, I don't think building occupations will artificially create a mass movement either. You are bringing up quotations and examples from periods when socialism and workers' power were actually discussed among much of the working class. In that context, the student actions could inspire the already class-conscious workers to do what they had been talking about. Today in the USA though, I think the distance between the working class and these students is too great for the tactic to be effective. A "public option" is too radical an idea for many workers still. Workers are not all some stereotypical football players who only respond to "action." It is not only possible, but preferable, to raise their class consciousness by intellectual means.



we can all be supportive an optomistic about the first explosion of class anger of this recession to be coming from our side about the real effects of the econ. crisis rather than a bunch of right-wing populists for hire fear-mongering about secret communist takeovers.I'm not running around criticizing the occupations in public! I thought revleft was a place to debate revolutionary theory and practice, but apparently it's not okay to criticize something (even though I am apparently the only one here who actually took part in these occupations and saw how lame they are) or else I'm on the same level as FOX News.



Hopefully their example will help give other public sector unions confidence to also fight back and that may encourage the industrial and service unions to follow suit.That's the best argument for the occupations, but I think it is also possible to discourage the working class with spectacular failures. My criticism here isn't of single actions but of occupation as a regular, constant policy, where the leading progressive activists at a school decide that from this point on they will try their hardest to turn every protest into a building occupation.

The adventurists running these occupations are in a leadership position whether they like it not. These are not spontaneous actions, there is a group behind them. The reason I'm pointing that out is not because I'm Glenn Beck or "CYNTHIA," but because it is impossible to have an intelligent discussion about strategy here unless we first hammer down that these occupations are the conscious strategy of an actual political faction. The occupationists have legal reasons to keep themselves secret, but their secrecy has an added bonus, it lets them hide behind their ideology and avoid critical discussion by blaming all failures on "autonomous" individuals, committees, or the spontaneity of the moment. I would rather a revolutionary leadership that is not only honest about its existence but takes responsibility for its failures as well as successes.

[redasheville]

If the movement develops further, it can become more broad. the Russian student uprising of 1901 began with academic demands, so did the uprising in May 1968 in France, but both broadened into political struggles going beyond the insular student movement.

I don't have illusions, I am merely providing some historical background. The California students are forging their consciousness without our leadership! And for that, what are they, anarchists? Heh.

I can't wait until tiny sects¹ show up trying to claim hegemony and "lead" the workers. Decades of their "leadership" have produced little that the proletariat can call a struggle, in fact, most of the "worker-led social and political struggle" has taken place in contexts where Democratic Party politics plays a hegemonic role.

The students are in an excellent position to provide intellectual fortitude to a fatigued, cultish, and opportunist "revolutionary" Left.

The mass revolutionary party of the proletariat will come from not to the struggle.²

-notes-
1. If the ISO is the one taking advantage of this from a perspective that isn't patronizing, it may cause them to grow. After all, the ISO is criticized for being too "student-friendly". They may already have supporters amongst the students.
2. "Social Democracy cannot artificially create a revolutionary mass movement; but, circumstances permitting, it can certainly cripple the finest mass action through its wavering, feeble tactics." - Rosa Luxemburg

I'm not trying to be a jerk here, and with all due respect, but you clearly don't know much about this movement. Your post also comes off a little pretentious and condescending, especially considering that you're on the opposite side of the country. The one making commentary from outside, is you*.

Radicals (of all stripes, including anarchists, Trotskyists [a lot of them in fact] and some Maoist leanings folks) and rank and file union militants have been at the heart of this struggle from the beginning. Radicals have been playing a LEADING role and this will likely continue.

*I don't mean to state the obvious, but many of these radicals ARE workers and/or students. I am a worker, in a union, and I also happen to be in a socialist organization.

[Comrade Ian]

As someone who was in the occupations at Santa Cruz from the beginnings of 400-500 students shutting down campus and then marching onwards from there, with maybe ~300 occupying Kresge Town Hall, followed by the occupation of Kerr Hall that started with probably about ~150-200 and then had a group of people of about 400-500 come in and out at various time with a core of 50-60 that were there the majority of he time, I can say a few things.

First off, the very first night of the occupation, one of the unions bought us all Pizza, then the next day the local leader/public speaker of AFSCME who is also a janitor btw not a union beauracrat, spoke at our rally about how passionately the workers supported our action and ended his speech with us all forming together into one massive chanting/raised fists block. So you can take your talk of us alienating the workers with the actions of a radical crypto-anarchist clique and shove it up your ass.

I have personally witnessed through the Library Study in and then especially in this last occupation, ordinary people beginning to radicalize through mass action, through feeling their own power and the vacillating imcompetence of administrators in the face of people who refuse their authority.

A thousand books and study groups and absolutely pure theoretical lines and programs cannot substitute for the way in which mass action transforms conciousness. What is neccesary in this period of new struggle is the creation of actions, of protests, which do not fall into an irrelevant show for the benefit of media and legislature, but which reveal in the process of taking those actions, of committing the illegal and unthinkable and getting away with it by sheer force of numbers, that the real power in this country lies with the mass of workers and people. People must be made to feel their own power to have the kind of personal experience that convinces them of the possibilty of a Socialist Society and of the irrelevance of the beauracratic and capitalist structures which constrain them.

As a side note, the chant/song we used most as we watched Riot Cops come down with pellet guns, canines and as they tossed me and several others acting as a human barricade out of the way, was Solidarity Forever.

[redasheville]

OK, they are trying, but I don't think very hard. At best it comes across as lip service. At the end it's about access to an elite education. All these furloughs, lack of access for "middle class families" are about getting an elite education. Where were the building occupations when furloughs were announced over the summer? All we saw was a meager "walk-out" for one day, with limited student participation.

Moreover, the protestors are not getting this wholistic message across except to outlets that are already inclined to be supportive (like indymedia). That may be the nature fo teh beast, but in their orchestration of all of this, the focus is overwhelmingly on issues of education.

First of all, all major local media outlets covered the actions. Local TV news stations had some of the most dramatic footage of police violence. I'd say that most of the local media has been surprisingly sympathetic to the actions on campus. It made it into the NY Times.

Second, you bemoan the students for not mobilizing more effectively. How effective do they have to be before you'll benevolently bestow your gracious support?

Third, your argument about it protecting elite education is a strange one. Why would affluent students be angry about RAISING fees? Shouldn't they just be able to afford it? Can you take a guess to what kind of students are going to be SHUT OUT of the UCs (and the CSUs and the CCs)? Can you take a guess as to what kind of programs are cut first?

[La Comédie Noire]

I don't expect student demonstrations to be anything, but more radical in the future. This is just the beginning of something that as someone stated "should have been happening ten years ago."

It's not an elitist education if all you can do with your MBA is become a manager at Papa Gino's. Sad to say, you have to pay yet more money to get an education worth something these days and that price is only going to go up.

[bcbm]

bringing the crisis to the capital of capital in santa cruz (http://likelostchildren.blogspot.com/2009/11/bringing-crisis-to-capital-of-capital.html)

http://www.indybay.org/uploads/2009/11/20/kerr-hall_15_11-19-09.jpg

on the end of the kerr hall occupation: from the occupants (http://occupyca.wordpress.com/2009/11/22/press-release-end-of-kerr-hall-occupaton/) and the admin (http://www.ucsc.edu/news_events/messages/text.asp?pid=3403)

* * *

A little less conversation, a little more action...

EVERY TIME a building has been occupied at UCSC, the administration has responded by moaning publicly (and into every @ucsc.edu mailbox) about the monetary costs of alleged damages, as if by beating this drum to insist we focus only on what is important to them – property – rather than the present and future of our lives or any other issues that are at stake here. We’ll admit it, we felt a cruel pleasure as the cables screamed and cried when they were parted from the conference room tables; the tables begged for mercy as we broke their legs, jumping up and down on them with malicious glee; and we could only chortle as the filing cabinets complained loudly that we had not had a 4-hour long democratic process before strapping them across doorways. We imagine that the same bureaucrats who normally use the building, and who piously denounce our acts of collective negation must feel a similar thrill as they ransack our futures.

Seriously, they should be glad we didn't burn the fucker down.

For around 60 hours we seized control of the driver’s seat of UCSC, the main economic power and site of social reproduction in the local metropole. In the aftermath, heading towards another seven-day unit of capitalist commodity-time, we feel the deadening of our existence especially sharply in contrast to the fullness of hours spent behind barricades, fighting for our right to our own destinies. It’s clear that the momentum we are part of has grown by leaps and bounds and as the crisis ramifies, we are forming new bonds and new complicities. Young people confronting an absent future are finding each other, recognizing ourselves in others as far away as Greece and Vienna, as near as the streets of LA. We are getting a taste of the power we want and it feels amazing.

There are a number of aspects of the Kerr Hall event that we as participants would like to illuminate.

http://www.indybay.org/uploads/2009/11/20/kerr-hall_11_11-19-09.jpg

AN OCCUPATION IS A VORTEX, NOT A PROTEST. People will go on and on about their ideologies and what "we should do", but consciousness is determined by one’s experiences, one’s material conditions. Most people have never experienced much besides the life of a docile subject within capital, endless spectacular reiterations of commodification. It was rarely talking that changed anything, but rather the moments we gave in to the seduction of the vortex of collective power and desubjectivization – the vortex which leads towards anarchy and communization. Politics as such can only be a barricade against this process. A number of things have happened in the past few days which would have been almost too ridiculous to expect, almost right up til the moment they happened (see below), and a number of individuals underwent transformations in terms of their consciousness, their orientation to struggle and their relations to others. The most potent moments were those of collective illegality and subversion, the becoming-powerful of a we that defies precise naming.

First, the storming of Kerr Hall on Thursday. The taking of administration buildings had been raised before and dismissed as pie-in-the-sky unrealistic. It was, for the small groups of people who planned and carried out the GSC and Humanities occupations. But those bold actions got the ball rolling in a way that began to have clear ramifications by the Science Library soft occupation and by the actions being carried out by comrades on campuses elsewhere. The storming of Kerr became possible because of the occupation of Kresge Town Hall in order to hold a general assembly – organizers had been charged $400 to hold one there previously. The logic of occupation became very clear to people in the sense that the school wanted to rip us off over having a place to talk about the fact that they’re ripping us off. And it turned out that most of the people in that room were down to occupy an administration building, immediately, so in a great raw burst of species-being, we did.

Second, that on Saturday night the occupation democratically decided to escalate the barricade tactic in response to the deceptive, manipulative, bad faith farce that the administration tried to pass off as a negotiation process. This came after a day in which the pacifist-liberal faction had been threatening to dominate utterly, through rambling, circular meetings about how “barricades will prevent the administration from negotiating with us” (even when the agenda item was the upcoming negotiation meetings), "barricades mean every single person will eventually have the shit kicked out of them and get felony charges" and so on; it came at the end of a long, bitter, stressful, and contentious evening meeting of about 150 occupiers falling in a spectrum ranging from almost evenly-matched liberal to radical camps, that most of us on the “ultra-left” had gone into expecting that the majority would want to either remove the barricades entirely, or send us off to barricade another floor. When the decision was (narrowly) made to make the space as tactically secure as possible, we were all a bit shocked: the democratic faction dissolved itself out of the occupation via its very insistence on democracy. (Reminds one a bit of the line about capitalists selling you the rope to hang them with.) There was an immediate and intense change of energy, much like the surge we’d felt on Thursday (or on Friday when the door to the Chancellor’s wing was taken down). All of a sudden, we were bumping Justice, we were dancing on tables, we were pulling on masks, pushing the heaviest pieces of furniture we could find to new homes chanting “This means war!” People who minutes earlier had been telling us that building more barricades was a violent and foolhardy act and they would leave if we did so suddenly felt that surge of collective power and realized they wanted it, and they stayed. And some of them started helping us move tables and thanked us for sticking to our guns.

Third, that at 6am there were around a hundred people outside the building who faced off with a huge force of riot police armed with chemical weapons, and stood their ground with linked arms. It was incredibly moving to see our friends and people we didn’t know on the other side of a plate glass window being steadily driven back underneath a hail of baton blows they were taking for our sake. There were faculty, parents and staff in the crowd as well (a professor was hospitalized).

Fourth, what happened when the fire department ripped off the doors and cut the barricades. The cops asked us to come outside to be arrested one at a time and we refused. They then offered us a written guarantee that if we left the building voluntarily through a side door within ten minutes, we wouldn’t be IDed, detained, or arrested. Instantly all the anti-barricade arguments were shown to have been completely meritless. We all realized more or less instantaneously that we had won as much as we were going to win and that there was no point in symbolic, sacrificial arrests. Again: the cops asked us to walk outside and let them arrest us, and when we said "no," they just fucking let us go. This is in many ways a testament to the fact that the occupation enjoyed widespread support from faculty, staff, unions, students, community members and even some of the administrators. It completely blew our minds. We had all been sure that we were going to jail, and all of a sudden we were outside with our friends and allies, everyone hugging, crying and cheering, stunned, chanting “We’ll be back!” as we marched off to Kresge.

Fifth, another aspiration articulated earlier and dismissed as a pipe dream – the obtaining a permanent organizing space – has also been realized. The occupation of Kresge Town Hall nearly collapsed as the focus of energy moved to Kerr, but the Kresge provost is so supportive of the movement that he has offered to waive all fees for use of the space for General Assemblies or related activities.

* * *

NOTES ON BARRICADE ARCHITECTURE for the benefit of other aspiring radical interior decorators. Kerr Hall was an extremely difficult place to thoroughly lock down due to the great number of possible entry points; hence the occupation of only one floor. Most of the doors were secured using the “bold new method” of c-clamps and truck tie-downs described in the imaginary committee (http://theimaginarycommittee.wordpress.com/)’s occupation guide. This method was battle-tested for the first time at UCLA and UCB in the past few days. At Kerr's north entrance, the barricade was effective enough to require the fire department to actually rip the doors off of the building. At the front, the barricade gear had not been set properly and it proved embarrassingly easy for them to pry open a door with a bar and cut the strap. This was because the push bars were secured by only one clamp each, and at least one of these was too close to the hinge (thus allowing give at the other side). Really these kinds of doors should have two clamps each, toward the opening side of the door. Everything needs to be cranked down as tight as possible. Strapping more than one piece of furniture separately to a door also is good. Some pushbars are flimsy and break under too much pressure. Also, we would like to emphasize the idea of using the burliest clamps and tie-downs available, and webbing to keep clamps in place frictively on pushbars.

And more to the point, those who have knowledge on these matters should be double-checking each other’s handiwork. We all need to become architects. These technical details could have been corrected; we could have done a lot better on the front door. If they had not been able to open that door so easily, they would have been put in the position of having to smash windows to get in. We might still be in there now; who knows.

A few more points: Sleep deprivation was also negatively impacting many people by this point. It was pointed out by some that the final lockdown happened sooner than it needed to and more people who wanted to could have been inside. We re-affirm the importance of permeable doors and outside support, when possible.

* * *

OCCUPY THE CRISIS. Some criticism has been leveled from anarchist circles that the emerging student movement is a reformist movement, or that contrasted the statements issued from Kerr Hall with those from the GSC and Humanities. It’s true, there was a different rhetoric, a quite different tone, pace, and constituency of the events. There were way more people involved this time, a lot of them were liberals who occasionally went on awful power trips, and a lot of them were either tremendously radicalized by this or forced to clarify their narrow and normative positions. We only learn by doing.

We recognize that this struggle has limits. It’s true. This struggle is nothing on its own. So is any struggle, hence, the point of transcendence, the “swerve”. The concept of an “imaginary party”: there is no vanguard or formal organization at the helm; we are connected because it is evident that we are (as proletarianized and precarious). Actions do not ramify simply because of courteously patronizing attempts at “outreach” and bureaucratic coalition-building, but because they have consequences. TPTG, a group of Greek anti-state communists with whom some of us are in touch, observed in response to our early communiqués and the GSC occupation that demandlessnesss is usually not a starting point of struggles, but a point of transcendence that occurs when they reach critical and concrete frustration. When Bangladeshi garment workers who will never see their back wages riot and loot, they are entering the vortex. When French workers threaten to blow up the bankrupt Fabris factory, it’s not because there is an easier way out of it for the boss. It’s because the society of capital is in crisis. When young people, docile-capitalist-worker-subjects-in-training, confront the negation of their future via massive tuition hikes, whether in California, Greece, Austria, or Mexico, it’s not because that is a “single issue” that would be “good enough” to fight on its own, but because people begin where they are.

We have begun. Connections have formed between agitators across the state and the increasingly pissed off students, workers and student-workers who make up the educational system. We are not occupying anything as a protest, as a means to simply meet demands: we know now that they are also spaces to experiment with new forms of social relations and self-organization that could lead us beyond the utterly impoverished future on offer within this decaying social order. We also are increasingly confronting the fact that there is no point in demanding anything anyway; those who rule us cannot give us what we want; we have found it instead in each other. We are forming relationships and something like a force, something born out of many, many people’s resentment of the cheats and failures of everyday life in capitalism; born just as much from our experiences of the vortex of becoming powerful together, of sharing of our difficulties and of our needs. The result is a diffuse force which may continue to become more so as the crisis deepens. Remarkably few among us know the story of Mai 68 and how student struggles in a period of economic decline ramified into the greatest general strike in history, but we know it. And all of us are learning how to organize and struggle together, which is the only education worth fucking having, anyway.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_k8lljYg8f28/SwnRgc7ZiNI/AAAAAAAAAB4/0sCGGNis4HA/s320/conferenceroom.jpg

Never be alone again...

http://likelostchildren.blogspot.com/2009/11/bringing-crisis-to-capital-of-capital.html

[Kléber]

This is the admins' spin on it which is reflected across California news networks, which were initially favorable to the actions (lol at 4 truckloads, the profaned waiting room and a breached next-gen door pusher):

http://www.kionrightnow.com/global/video/flash/popupplayer.asp?clipId1=4327038&flvUri=&partnerclipid=&at1=News&vt1=v&h1=Crews%20Clean%20UCSC%27s%20Kerr%20Hall%20after% 20Protest&d1=95100&redirUrl=&activePane=info&LaunchPageAdTag=homepage&clipFormat=flv&rnd=96780186

In the occupation's defense, they asked for a 30 minute grace period for cleanup before being forced out, and 75 people volunteered to clean up afterwards, but this was also rejected.


This came after a day in which the pacifist-liberal faction had been threatening to dominate utterly,from what i hear there was no such "faction," just people scared of marginalizing the whole thing and inviting a police crackdown


All of a sudden, we were bumping Justice, we were dancing on tables, we were pulling on masks, pushing the heaviest pieces of furniture we could find to new homes chanting “This means war!”._.

[bcbm]

In the occupation's defense, they asked for a 30 minute grace period for cleanup before being forced out, and 75 people volunteered to clean up afterwards, but this was also rejected.

of course it was. the administration will always do everything they can to cast a negative light on the occupation and the movement as a whole.

[bcbm]

Behind the Privatization of the UC, a Riot Squad of Police


From Counter Punch (http://counterpunch.org/) - by GEORGE CICCARIELLO-MAHER

Occupy Everything!

Berkeley.

This was bound to be a big week in California regardless, as the threat of a 32 percent tuition and fee increase across the University of California system made a crashing entrance into reality with Wednesday’s vote by the UC Board of Regents. Perhaps the Regents and UC President Mark Yudof expected that their diversionary tactics--lament the crisis and direct blame to Sacramento’s budget cuts--would pay off. But this was not to be.

Aided in no small part by the explosive exposé published by UC Santa Cruz Professor of Political Science Bob Meister, the student, faculty, and workers’ movements the length and breadth of the state were no longer willing to accept privatization disguised as crisis-imposed budget cuts. As Meister explained in no uncertain terms, the proposed (and now passed) tuition increase has nothing whatsoever to do with budget cuts, but the cuts merely provided the pretext for a long-planned drive (and Reaganite wet dream) to privatize public education in California once and for all.
Anti-Capital Projects

A statewide day of action on September 24th generated mass walkouts and sporadic occupations, both successful (at UC Santa Cruz) and not (at UC Berkeley). A UC-centric assembly called for a month later yielded mixed results: a plan to build for a March 4th action, but only the vaguest of decisions regarding what such actions would entail. This sporadic guerrilla struggle, however, would yield a full-scale war of maneuver once the stakes of the November 18th UC Regents meeting became clear.

A coalition of organizations at UC Berkeley endorsed a three day strike in which the third day, contingent upon the expected Regents’ decision, called simply for “Escalation.” On Thursday the 19th, UCLA protestors seized Campbell Hall (now renamed “Carter-Huggins Hall” after the slain Black Panthers who lost their lives between those very walls in 1969). Across campus, protestors confronted the Regents themselves as they voted for the fee hikes, with the militarized atmosphere sparking first clashes on Wednesday and then a veritable state of siege in Thursday from which the Regents were forced to flee the angry crowds.

Just a few short hours later, UCSC students marched from the already-occupied Kresge Town Hall to Kerr administration building, gaining unexpected access to and holding the building until Sunday. Also on Thursday, hundreds of UC Davis students occupied the Mrak administrative building on campus, clearly touching a nerve and prompting 52 arrests. Less than 24 hours later, students again occupied: this time in Dutton Hall, where they remained until being dispersed by police. As this goes to press, Mrak is again in the crosshairs.

At Berkeley on Wednesday afternoon, after a rally and march of some 1,000 students, workers, and faculty at UC Berkeley, a group of more than thirty surreptitiously gained access to the diminutive Architects and Engineers Building, nestled between Sproul and Barrows Halls and which hosts UCB’s capital projects. Responding in part to Meister’s revelation that it was capital projects rather than budget cuts that were driving the cuts and fee increases, activists responded with a communiqué and website aptly entitled “Anti-Capital Projects”:

The arriving freshman is treated as a mortgage, and the fees are climbing. She is a future revenue stream, and the bills are growing. She is security for a debt she never chose, and the cost is staggering… No building will be safe from occupation while this is the case. No capital project but the project to end capital.

The occupation of the Capital Projects Building, however, would be short-lived, as police soon gained access and occupiers negotiated a strategic withdrawal on the promise that they would not engage in any other unlawful activity for a week. But a week is a long time at moments like these.

Lines of Force are Revealed

At around 6am on Thursday morning, UCPD became aware that Wheeler Hall, a prominent and massive building at the very heart of the Berkeley campus, had been occupied by more than 40 protesters. Police quickly gained access to the lower floors of the building, arresting three occupiers, who were immediately and vindictively charged not with trespassing, but with felony burglary. By 6:30a.m., an already surprising number of supporters, in the dozens, had received word of the occupation and gathered on the west side of Wheeler to show their support. By mid-morning, the number had increased to hundreds. As the crowd grew, UCPD responded with a mutually-reinforcing combination of aggression and fear: aggressively smashing into the growing crowds to install metal barriers where caution tape had proven insufficient, and calling desperately for backup first to Berkeley PD, then to the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department, and finally to Oakland PD.

Around 1pm, the skies opened up in a downpour that might have, in other conditions and other situations, dispersed the crowd entirely. But instead, umbrellas popped up like mushroom caps, tents were erected, and plastic bags distributed as makeshift ponchos as the crowd of hundreds persisted. Had the police gained access to the occupiers during the storm, the day would have ended much differently. But as it turned out, the occupiers held strong, the skies cleared, and as evening fell, the crowds began to swell further. One demonstrator confessed nostalgia at the sight of the umbrellas, and the reminder they offered of another seminal moment in trans-sectoral unity: that of the 1999 anti-WTO demonstrations in Seattle that sparked the alter-globalization movement.

The occupiers, visible through a series of windows on the west side of Wheeler, relayed their demands to the gathering crowds by megaphone:

1. Rehire all 38 AFCSME custodial workers recently laid off;
2. Drop all charges and provide total amnesty to all persons occupying buildings and involved in student protests concerning budget cuts;
3. Maintain the current business occupants of the bears lair food court and enter into respectful and good faith negotiations;
4. Preserve Rochdale apartments leased to Berkeley student cooperative for $1 a year in perpetuity.

It became clear that the police and university administration were in no mood to negotiate on these terms: this much they communicated non-verbally with their pepper spray under the door, with their battering rams and wedges, and verbally with their promises of violence, as occupiers were told to “get ready for the beatdown.” Some of the occupiers, overtaken by the unmistakable candor of such threats, sought a last-minute compromise that would allow them to leave unscathed.

For a while it seemed as though such negotiations had failed dismally. Demonstrators outside could hear the police making a final offensive to smash down the door, and the occupiers could be seen as dusk fell, back to the window, visible only in outline with their hands raised to be arrested. But the atmosphere was tense, and the swelling crowd had no plans to let the police carry the arrestees out without a fight. Hours earlier, tactical groups had been preemptively dispatched to all possible exits from the network of underground tunnels that connect Wheeler to the neighboring buildings. Students who, by all outward appearance, could have been members of sororities or fraternities, demanded to know where bodies were most needed to maintain a strong and impermeable perimeter.

Let this be clear: if the students were arrested and carried out, there was going to be a fight. A riot? Perhaps (this much depended on the police). A fight? Mos def.

A “Victory”?

As with all massively important political moments, the rancid stench of opportunism was never far off, emanating from some student leaders and faculty alike. While many faculty members performed admirably during the standoff (some, like Professor of Integrative Biology Robert Dudley even being arrested for their efforts), some skillfully substituted their own voices and their own demands for those of the students engaged in the occupation.

Particularly egregious in this respect was Democratic Party “framing” strategist and self-styled movement guru George Lakoff. Visibly angered by the occupiers’ refusal to leave Wheeler voluntarily (without any of their demands having been met, of course), Lakoff seized the megaphone to spew the morally bankrupt argument that since the students knew they would be met with police violence, they would themselves be responsible for creating that violence if they chose to remain. No more repulsive a phrase was uttered that day. And were this not sufficient, Lakoff was even heard lying repeatedly to the occupiers, insisting that there had been no police violence, no rubber bullets, and no injuries outside the building, all in an effort to manipulate those inside into abandoning the occupation.

In speaking with more than a dozen of the occupiers, one sentiment above all was expressed regarding the role of many faculty that day: a deep sense of betrayal. As one occupier told me: “we asked the faculty to mediate and to negotiate with the administration as a way to get our demands out, but apparently they interpreted this as a call to negotiate with us so that we would leave the building.” In fact, many of those mediating--be they faculty, ASUC officials, and leaders of student organizations--were self-appointed and drawn almost unanimously from the ranks of those who had opposed the tactic of occupation to begin with. And this would show: according to many of the occupiers, these mediators, in focusing their attention on calming the crowds outside and encouraging the occupiers to leave, had effectively performed a “policing function” that protected the administration from the protesters.

Ali Tonak, a UC Berkeley graduate student, summarizes the feeling that many expressed:

They have a warped understanding of how power works. They think that calming people outside was keeping the people inside safe, when it was really the opposite: the only thing that was keeping the folks inside safe was people being rowdy outside. In the end, the negotiators were doing the job of the state.

And this opportunism was not limited to faculty. As word came down that a deal had been struck to allow the students to walk out the front doors of Wheeler with nothing but misdemeanors, those who had spent the day attempting to calm the angry crowds shifted their demobilizing efforts into full gear, shutting down any and all possible debate regarding what had transpired. The crowd was urged to sit (ironically, while chanting that they were “fired up,” and that students should “stand up” for their rights), and self-appointed student leaders, most of whom had opposed the occupation plans from the very beginning, set about explaining that the day had been a “victory.”

Of course, in a sense it had been a victory of sorts, but not in the sense that it was presented to the crowd. It was no coincidence that all interruptions from the crowd, from those who wondered aloud, “What about the demands? What about the layoffs? What about the fees?” were quickly and summarily dismissed and silenced by self-appointed “mediators” whose only common feature was their previous opposition to occupations.
A recent statement from the UCLA occupation of Carter-Huggins Hall sets its sights on student body president Cinthia Flores, “a junior politician careerist bent on control,” and in so doing provides an acute diagnosis of the more general danger of political opportunism, a danger which must be fought tooth-and-nail if the movement is to move forward:

These people thrive on the status quo, it’s their realm, and they always want to drag back those who escape. There are CINTHIA’s everywhere who make up and direct the movement-police to be encountered at any site of struggle. Occupation takes power and immediately destroys its concentrated form. Beware of bureaucrats, occupy everything!

A “Peaceful” Ending?

And the claim that the occupiers had emerged victorious erased more than their unfulfilled demands. It also concealed the aggressively violent response that UCPD and its imported proxies had unleashed that day. As mentioned above, this violence began early on, as UCPD attempted to install metal barricades by wading into the growing crowds and attacking anyone standing their ground. As the day progressed, police from various forces were seen ruthlessly pounding any and all protestors who disobeyed the momentary absoluteness of their sovereignty, with one such protestor being shot in the chest with an unidentified projectile.

The pettiness of such sovereignty and the repulsiveness of its executors were in no case so clear as that of UC Berkeley graduate student Zhivka Valiavicharska. As this video shows, an unidentified member of (what appears to be) the UCPD suddenly found his authority called into question by the fact that Zhivka’s hands were on a police barrier, and found it necessary to threaten her and strike the barrier with his baton. What the video does not show occurred just a minute later, when the officer again approached the barrier and smashed Zhivka’s hand with full force, breaking two fingers and nearly reducing one to pulp so that it was hanging by threads.

As Zhivka herself describes the attack:

I was holding on to the barrier with one of my hands, and this cop came up and started rudely shouting at me, telling me to take my hand off and threatening me. My hand remained there. The cop made me withdraw my hand by hitting the rail right next to it. When I leaned it again on the rail, he smashed it with full force. It was very deliberate, very skillful, and extremely excessive, since no one was challenging the barriers where I was at that moment.

Who was the officer that maliciously and intentionally attacked a member of the student population with the intention to do serious bodily harm? What of the witnessing officer, J. Williams, Badge #93, who is clearly identifiable in the video? Will UCPD and Chancellor Birgeneau immediately begin an investigation into the officer’s identity, suspend him immediately, and press criminal charges?

Former Berkeley undergraduate Yaman Salahi was present to witness the police violence, and immediately penned a thoughtful and necessary letter to the UC Berkeley community in which he heaps responsibility, quite rightly, onto the shoulders of Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, for not only loosing these various police forces onto the campus community, but also for attempting to cover up the violence he himself had unleashed in an email dispatch later sent to the entire campus community. Despite the many instances of documented violence by police, the Chancellor nevertheless insisted that the situation “ended peacefully” and thanked the police for playing a positive role.

Salahi demands a “statement against the deployment of non-UCPD personnel against students on this campus in the future,” adding that “In addition to students’ limbs, something has been broken, and Chancellor Birgeneau’s cover-up will not fix it.” But while I agree with Salahi’s general concerns, it is worth noting that it was not OPD, BPD, or the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department that smashed Zhivka’s fingers. It was UCPD, a force which remains as alien to the university community as OPD is to East Oakland. When we challenge their privatizing efforts, they will meet us with whatever force is at their disposal and with whatever violence is deemed necessary. As I write this, however, it appears as though Salahi’s call is meeting some receptive ears, and a group of prominent faculty members have begun an investigation into the police brutality deployed against students all across the UC system.

Remembrance the Past, Realizing Our Power

Remembering and reinscribing the violence of this police response into our collective memory of the occupation is of more than historical interest, however, and consists of more than merely remembering the pain inflicted upon our comrades, however necessary this may be. It is in this violent police response that a strategically correct interpretation of events lies, and this fact makes efforts to conceal the conflict of the day more than merely an effort to prevent further violence. The police response showed precisely what was at stake in the occupation, and what remains at stake in the movement more generally. The police response showed exactly how far the UC Regents, President Yudof, and the local administrations are willing to go in order to drive the privatization of public education down our unwilling throats. It showed us, in short, that we were doing something right, and we can expect more of the same if we ever hope to win.
And that’s not all: the final police and administration response--that of opting to let the occupiers walk out of Wheeler of their own accord--tells even more of the story. It tells us just how powerful our collective presence was on that day. There can be no doubt that every single occupier would have been arrested, likely beaten and abused to some degree, and hit with the trumped-up felony charges, had the crowd not been assembled outside. And this was not merely because the crowd was bearing witness to injustice or expressing its verbal non-consent.
It was not moderation and negotiation that created and sustained this pivotal moment and generated its outcome: it was the unmistakable show of force that the students gathered represented, a force that was not merely symbolic. As the great revolutionary CLR James once put it: “The rich are only defeated when running for their lives.” The same could be said of today’s privatizers of public education, and those running things more generally. Oakland’s Oscar Grant rebellions taught us this much in January, as it was only the threat of continued rioting that put BART officer Johannes Mehserle behind bars. The Berkeley occupation movement teaches us the same lesson today.

And we have late word of a library occupation at Cal State Fresno, and more are on the way, at Berkeley and elsewhere. Earlier today, marchers occupied the UC Office of the President in downtown Oakland to demand a face-to-face with Mark Yudof. Further, the contagion is international, as the students who have held Austria in a constant state of occupation for weeks on end descended en masse yesterday onto the US embassy in Vienna as a demonstration of solidarity with the California occupations and outrage at the images of police violence that have been broadcast across the globe. This is a force that is expanding as we speak, and will do so as the months pass and contradictions become more acute. The university struggle has turned a crucial corner on the UC Berkeley campus, and a qualitative leap in consciousness has occurred, by weight not of peaceful entreaties but of forceful demands.

George Ciccariello-Maher is a Ph.D. candidate in political theory at U.C. Berkeley. He can be reached at gjcm(at)berkeley.edu.
http://www.anarchistnews.org/?q=node/10138

[MarxSchmarx]

Yes where were the protests in the past? I don't think you can fault students currently building a student/worker based movement right now, for not having built this movement 6 months ago. In my opinion, these protests are at the very least 10 years overdue in regards to the de-prioritizing of public education in the US. But 10 years or 6 months too late is better than none at all.

At a time when public sector unions, education, parks, social programs, etc etc are under an intensified attack by a ruling class that is trying to restore profits on the back of the working class - students, so far are the only group that has begun fighting back along class interests in a generalized way. Teachers unions and the BART (subway) union and the auto unions have all accepted "shared sacrifice" cuts or lowered demands, so I think we can hardly criticize students for only now beginning to fight. Hopefully their example will help give other public sector unions confidence to also fight back and that may encourage the industrial and service unions to follow suit.

If we are LUCKY, this is the beginning and if that is the case, I'm sure there will be plenty of things to critique or debate about this potential movement. But for right now I think we can all be supportive an optomistic about the first explosion of class anger of this recession to be coming from our side about the real effects of the econ. crisis rather than a bunch of right-wing populists for hire fear-mongering about secret communist takeovers.

Yes I agree wholeheartedly. My main criticism isn't that these sort of actions are happening. It's that they're not going far enough.

Put another way, I fear this is too little, too late.

[DreamWeaver]

Ah, good old University occupations. As we speak a university in Holland is occupied due to the board not consulting students on issues, and just last week over 50 were occupied in Germany. Hmmm, anyone up for some solidarity chaos in Nijmegen ?

[Rusty Shackleford]

I found an organizer's tools PDF (http://againstcuts.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Organizers-Tools-to-Fight-the-Cuts.pdf) for CA students.

Information Packet PDF (http://againstcuts.org/downloads/organizing_packet.pdf)

Flyers for Campuses (http://againstcuts.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/general-cuts-flyer-four.pdf)

The website i found this at www.againstcuts.org (http://againstcuts.org/)

From Billy Bragg's version of The Internationale


So comrades, come rally,
For this is the time and place!

[Antiks72]

Well, this is just this year - fees have been going up in CA all along too. Tuition in the UCs has be raised [/FONT]8 times in the last 7 years.

I graduated in 2000 and my tuition was $4,000 and some change - now it's more than twice that! Not to mention that in the 60s, you could go to Berkeley for a couple hundred dollars - even considering inflation, that's a fucking ridiculous increase.

If that tuition were adjusted for inflation, then that would be around $1200 dollars in 1968 dollars. So, a little less than 4 times the inflation rate? Someone's getting rich.

[Floyce White]

The 32% hike on high-income students was supposed to pay for a 100% elimination of fees for students whose families made less than $60,000 a year.

I expected the egalitarian half to die in committee, which it seems to have done.

Low-income families have long been priced out of the market. If it weren't for "financial aid," few poor students could attend. Long gone are the days when a price increase might be manageable for some working poor.

Thus, the 32% increase is not directly felt by the poor. For them, Federal and State financial aid programs pay all costs.

The real problem is that the number of class offerings are cut drastically, while bureaucratic methods are used to reduce the number of enrollees. For instance, application and registration deadlines are pushed further back. Prospective students at the patrician "University of" system for fall 2010 had to apply only in November 2009. Another example is that spring 2010 transfers to the plebian "State University" system were banned, which put 40,000 students in limbo. CSU Web sites suggested that affected students "stop out" (that is, go away and do nothing) or "get a job" (as if students were not choosing to go to college precisely because of current difficulty in finding entry-level employment).

[Rusty Shackleford]

i currently rely on financial aid and federal funding to go to school which proves that the less well-off are not as affected by the fee hikes as the "more well off" students who cannot actually get the aid due to their parents income.

the problem with the cuts is that classes are being cut. Like you said Floyce White, State Universities are prohibiting applications for the spring '10 semester. It pushes more students to the CC system and limits options across the board in terms of class selection.

im biased towards the CC issue because i am a CC student and i think this sort of sums up the reason why CCs are a tad bit more important to the greater community than UCs or CSUs (though all tiers of education should work together and work for the betterment of educational conditions and quality respectively)
http://againstcuts.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/CCs-HUB.jpg


with the way things seem to be heading, education will be restricted to people partly by costs, but mostly due to room for students.

[Floyce White]

Community colleges are badly failing. They have far too many academic classes. There is no reason why students in academic majors should not spend all four undergraduate years at the university of their choice. Meanwhile, CCs have far too few vocational classes. My local CC has a greenhouse, but no courses in landscaping, botany, or nursery work. It has online courses in various computer programs, but none in computer assembly or repair. CCs also fail to have enough courses of general interest. The exercise and fitness classes are popular, but the swimming pool is empty most of the time. Also, the college is closed Friday through Sunday. The burden of remedial courses is there, but adult education in California happens mostly through "ROP" free classes. So CCs basically exist to shunt poor youth away from the mainstream academic institutions. Students who start at CCs might wind up attending a different college for every level of degree. That makes no sense. Additionally, commuter teachers are nominally "part time" at several different institutions while being paid from the same State fund.

College should be free. It works fine for high school. The number and type of courses should depend on the number of students who sign up, not the other way around. Rich kids can take their "5.0" GPAs to Stanford and USC. We won't miss them. They add no "diversity" while demanding so much from the rest of us.

[Liberateeducate]

Spread the word

http://hphotos-snc3.fbcdn.net/hs028.snc3/11532_1299093518296_1259153021_30876474_2693909_n. jpg

[Rusty Shackleford]

Just got back from a Board of Trustees public meeting at my campus, i left early because 75% of those who went to speak spoke about saving the vocational system at the college. there are now 2 clubs participating in both the March 22nd and March 4th protests on my campus. one of those groups is solely for student activisim, and the onther one (the Sociology Club) also organizes events but is not dedicated to that.

What i had learned from that meeting though was that Community Colleges are instrumental in training workers to work. now, im not there to learn welding(though i might actually do it because i do enjoy welding) my main goal is more academic.

Saving any form of higher education is also about helping workers. this has some slight potential to gain worker,union and even petit-bourgeois support imo. (the "small business owners" american politicians adore need these types of places to train their employees)

dont call this support for the petit-bourgeoisie but support for workers. the small business owners have as much interest in this as we do.

Academics are just as necessary to save because if people want an actual functioning society, then they need a cheap and quality way to educate the masses. preferably this would be FREE but the government here wont give us that...

Also, i think criticizing board members and administrators as the sole cause of the problems or even the general economic downturn as the cause is shortsighted. the government MUST be challenged and we MUST demand an increase in progressive taxation to fund social programs like education.


of course if there were a revolution, after all things settle this wouldn't be a problem. but this is what we have to work with.

at least this is what my opinion on this is.

[maskerade]

hey guys, this is my first post :)

Just wanted to say that something very similiar is happening in Germany and Austria, where students have even gotten to the point where they are handing out leaflets which link the problem to capitalism. In Germany the students are protesting against high costs, and they are demanding an education based on their demands. I've even heard of universities in France being occupied.

A few days ago there was also a protest in Scotland against the cuts in funding for teaching departments at Scottish universities, and just a few days ago it was declared that funding would be cut for all English universities, drastically reducing the amount of places for next year's application cycle.

Is this the second 1968? I hope so.