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Early this morning, as a thousand students and other activists protested at the capitol, New York’s state legislature passed a budget for the coming year that includes deep cuts to education — and a tax break for the wealthy.
As demonstrators chanted, yelled, and negotiated with Albany police over pizza delivery, the two houses of the legislature made their way through the long list of votes required to approve the state’s spending structure. There was no drama in the chambers to match the drama outside, and final approval came without any surprises at about one o’clock in the morning.
A fascinating breakdown and analysis of the demonstrators’ tactics can be found here.
Video footage shot in Fortnum & Mason’s Saturday while the store was being occupied by UK Uncut protesters appears to show police asking activists to remain inside the store, and assuring them that they will be allowed to disperse peacefully once outside. The protesters were later arrested en masse as they left the premises.
Of 201 arrests made in connection with Saturday’s demonstrations, at least 138 came at the Fortnum & Mason’s occupation, despite the fact that police and store officials agree that property damage at the action was minimal and violent disruption to the store’s operations non-existent. Police made few arrests at the far more aggressive “black bloc” actions that day, in some cases being videotaped standing by as masked protesters vandalized shops and offices.
Last night students at UC Davis went back to Mrak Hall, where 52 people were arrested last Thursday, and launched the week’s eighth UC building occupation.
This takeover was shorter than several of its predecessors, but dramatic — it was the first in this wave of occupations to end with a written commitment by the administration to honor a set of protest demands.
The students began the occupation with a lengthy list of demands, but negotiated a suspension of the occupation on the basis of five: the university committed to conducting a review of one previous campus arrest, to urging the district attorney to “strongly consider … not filing charges” against the 52 Thursday arrestees, to dropping any disciplinary action against those students, to pursuing “further discussion” about co-op housing on campus based on “a mutual desire to promote sustainable, affordable cooperative living facilities,” and to holding “further discussions on all other demands with a representative group, as early as Monday, November 30.”
There’s nothing earth-shattering here, of course, but it’s still significant in at least three ways.
First, it gives students throughout the UC system a precedent for negotiated settlement of an occupation. There has been some resistance to that approach from both sides in the last week — from students who conducted “demandless” occupations, and from administrators who refused to enter into dialogue. Last night’s agreement affirms that negotiation is a live option in this series of actions.
Second, it provides a template for such negotiations. The Davis administration’s biggest concession was its agreement to forego disciplinary action against the Thursday demonstrators (and, implicitly, against last night’s demonstrators as well). That concession sets up amnesty as an achievable demand in future occupations.
Third, it opens up ongoing negotiations on local campus issues. A single university’s administrators have no direct power to roll back fees or reform the UC board of regents — such demands are aimed at off campus targets, and winning full victories on them is not a project for a single day. But local concessions can be won in a single action, and ongoing negotiations are a mechanism for refining and sharpening such demands to the point that more substantive victories become more likely.
In the NYU and New School occupations of 2008-09, those universities’ administrations shifted away from negotiation and toward punitive legal action as the students’ campaigns developed. The resolution of yesterday’s Mrak Hall occupation is the strongest evidence yet that the University of California is now moving in the opposite direction.
Update | Here is the UC Davis administration’s official statement on the occupation. Note that it describes the takeover as beginning with a study-in at eight o’clock yesterday morning, that it says that 150 demonstrators were present in Mrak at the end of the night, and that it strikes a conciliatory, respectful tone throughout. Note also that it binds the university to a new commitment beyond the five agreed to last night — the presence of Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi at a meeting with students next Monday.
Second Update | Commenter Cynthia D. notes that the Monday student meeting with the chancellor is actually a long-planned, regularly scheduled event. She also has a perspective on the administration’s behavior during the occupation that’s worth reading, so click through and read it.
Third Update | The Yolo County District Attorney announced on Friday that charges against 51 of the 52 Mrak Hall demonstrators have been dropped, with the only exception being the student charged with assault and resisting arrest. This is obviously a further victory for the second occupation.
Fourth Update | The third update above, based on a report from a local news station’s website, is inaccurate. Charges against the Mrak 51 have not been dropped, they’ve just been set aside, and they can be re-instated at any time in the next year.
This post is a way for me to keep track of the arrests in the current wave of student protest at the University of California — for my own reference and for others’.
As of the morning of December 12, there have been 220 arrests in just 23 days. Students have occupied buildings at six California campuses in that time.
Wednesday, November 18
14 at UCLA: twelve students, two non-students, all arrested for refusing to leave the regents meeting.
52 at Davis: one for assault and resisting arrest, 51 for trespass. Fifty-one students, one professor.
2 at UCLA: UCLA website mentions just one, a student arrested for obstructing an officer.
Friday, November 20
44 at Berkeley: three arrested in the morning for burglary, 41 in the evening for trespassing.
Monday, November 24
1 at Irvine: a student arrested for attempted vandalism and resisting arrest. (As a commenter notes, the “attempted vandalism” charge was apparently based on the student banging on a closed door.)
Thursday, December 10
33 at SFSU: Police broke up an occupation on the San Francisco State University campus, arresting 23 inside and ten outside the building.
Friday, December 11
66 at Berkeley: UC police raided the peaceful open occupation of Berkeley’s Wheeler Hall shortly before five o’clock in the morning, arresting 66 people, more than 40 of them Berkeley students. The occupation had been going on for four days, and was scheduled to end voluntarily approximately 24 hours later.
8 more at Berkeley: Eight people, including two UC Berkeley students and two UC Davis students, were arrested near the university chancellor’s home on Friday night, accused of vandalizing the residence and attacking police.
Update: A commenter reminds me that there was an arrest at UC Santa Cruz more than a month before the earliest one listed here.
It’s seven thirty on Sunday morning in California, and news is beginning to roll in from the two building occupations at UC Santa Cruz.
There were reports last night that the UCSC campus had been locked down, and claims that the police were planning to retake Kerr Hall and Kresge Town hall at midnight, but that deadline, real or imaginary, came and went without incident. Twitter reports this morning suggest that preparations for police action may be underway, though.
Another tidbit recently posted on Twitter is the news that UCSC professor Bettina Aptheker is planning to enter occupied Kerr Hall. No confirmation on that one either, yet, but Aptheker has made public statements in support of the activists. “I don’t understand why we’re afraid of students,” she said on Friday, reminding the university the protesters are committed to nonviolence.
Kresge Town Hall has been occupied since Wednesday night, and Kerr Hall since Thursday. The occupiers initially released a flamboyant 35-point list of demands, but on Friday they trimmed that back to a more moderate — and shorter — list.
Administrators turned off internet access to Kerr Hall on Friday evening, but communication with the outside world, previously minimal, picked up on Saturday anyway. One student on the scene kept up an ongoing liveblog Saturday evening, and as many as half a dozen Twitterers on the campus have been providing updates — you can find those feeds in the Student Activism UCWalkout2 Twitter list.
7:45 am | Multiple sources, including the UCSC student newspaper, confirm new police activity at Kerr Hall. One unconfirmed Twitter report says riot police have stormed the occupation.
8:05 am | Twitterer @geoffwildanger says the Kerr occupiers have rejected a request from police on the scene to remove the barricades they have set up.
8:25 am | Fifteen minutes after tweeting that the Kerr occupiers had chosen to hunker down behind their barricades, rejecting an offer from the police to end the occupation peacefully,@geoffwildanger tweets that the Kerr occupation has ended without arrests. I’m going to hold off on making any more updates until I get reliable, detailed new info.
9:05 am | New updates at Occupy California and Indybay shed light on the situation. According to OccupyCA, police breached the barricades at Kerr, but occupiers were then allowed to leave without charges. The group — of about fifty — marched en masse to Kresge, which is still under occupation. Indybay tells a similar story, adding the detail that an anthropology professor, Marc Anderson, “fell off a 12 foot staircase as police were forcing students and faculty off of the Kerr patio” and was removed from the scene by emergency personnel.
9:25 am | A new Santa Cruz Sentinel article quotes history professor Emily Honig, who was at Kerr since five o’clock this morning, as saying that “the way in which police force was called out in full gear and weaponry” was “regrettable,” and that she didn’t “think the situation demanded it.”
2:45 pm | The Santa Cruz Sentinel is reporting that Professor Anderson has been released from the hospital and has no major injuries. The Associated Press reports that students involved with the demonstration may still face criminal or disciplinary charges.
4:10 pm | The Kerr hall occupiers have released a statement giving their account of the end of the occupation. They say that the professor’s fall from the balcony was caused by “the administration’s use of force,” and that it took place at a moment when “students and neutral faculty observers were cornered by riot police on an outdoor balcony.” Responding to administration claims that Kerr Hall was left damaged or dirtied, they say that “over 75 students have already volunteered to help clean the space.”
studentactivism.net 
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