University of California Regents Meeting Cancelled

November 14, 2011 in Students | by | Leave a comment

This week’s meeting of the Regents of the University of California, scheduled to begin in less than 48 hours, has been cancelled due to concerns about student protest.

In a joint statement this morning, the board’s chair and vice chair and the president of the UC system declared that they had “credible intelligence” that “rogue elements intent on violence and confrontation with UC public safety officers were planning to attach themselves to peaceful demonstrations expected to occur at the meeting.”

A few notes on this extraordinary development.

First, we see again the conflation of “violence” and “confrontation” that I discussed this morning. There has, in the last 26 months of student protest in the UC system, been virtually no violence against persons perpetrated by activists. There has, however, been considerable confrontation. Given the notably mild character of this semester’s UC protests even in the face of startling police aggressiveness, the claim that violence was likely is difficult to credit. (Particularly galling is the statement’s claim that the meeting’s cancellation was undertaken out of concern for the safety of “students lawfully gathered to voice concerns over tuition levels and any other issues,” given the fact that the primary threat to such students’ safety in the last two years has been the UCPD itself.)

Second, the statement says that the meeting will be rescheduled for a later date “and, possibly, an alternate venue.” The cancelled meeting, like four of the last five UC Regents meetings — and like five of the six planned for 2012 — was scheduled to take place at UCSF Mission Bay. If the Regents now believe they can no longer hold meetings in their go-to location, where in the UC system are they likely to feel comfortable going?

Third, the joint statement declares that “a tuition increase was never a part of the agenda” for the cancelled meeting, but this is disingenuous at best. A proposal for annual 8-16% tuition increases was debated at the Regents’ last meeting in September, and that meeting was — according to the LA Times — originally slated for a vote this week. The likelihood of that vote occurring at the now-cancelled meeting dimmed as a result of opposition to the plan in September, but it remains on the Regents’ agenda for the current year.

Finally, there are three more meetings scheduled for this academic year, the next one in mid-January. Does UC really believe that the protest climate is likely to become dramatically more hospitable to the Regents in the next sixty days? Is there any realistic possibility that the student activists of California — and indeed the entire nation — will see this as anything other than a victory, anything other than an encouragement to ramp up their tactics in the future?

On Margo Bennett, “Linked Arms,” and Police Violence at the University of California

November 14, 2011 in Students | by | 2 comments

There’s been a lot of attention paid to a comment that Captain Margo Bennett of the University of California Police Department gave to a local newspaper late last week. “The individuals who linked arms and actively resisted, that in itself is an act of violence,” she said of the Berkeley protesters who were beaten by police on Wednesday. “Linking arms in a human chain when ordered to step aside is not a nonviolent protest.”

This is, of course, ridiculous, and so it’s been widely ridiculed. Bennett has been the subject of appropriate mockery and outrage all weekend. But if we’re going to understand what’s happening at Berkeley right now, it’s important to see Bennett’s comments in context.

Three important pieces of that context follow.

First, Bennett’s statement reflects official UC Berkeley policy. Her quote, in fact, was a close paraphrase of a formal message to the university community from Berkeley’s chancellor Robert Birgeneau. “It is unfortunate that some protesters chose to obstruct the police by linking arms and forming a human chain to prevent the police from gaining access to the tents,” Birgeneau said. “This is not non-violent civil disobedience.” Birgeneau was cautious (and academic) enough to use an obfuscating double negative, but the content of Bennet’s statements is essentially identical to his.

Bennett isn’t a rogue cop. She was just repeating what her boss told the entire campus community the day before.

Second, This policy isn’t new. UC has seen a wave of student organizing over the last 26 months, and university administrators and police have responded to that organizing with over-the-top violence, beating and macing demonstrators, pulling guns in non-violent protests, conducting mass arrests of sleeping students. A few months ago activists took the heart-dropping step of occupying a ledge several stories above the ground in an attempted to find a way to protest that wouldn’t result in physical violence or arbitrary charges.

The situation at the University of California is bad, and it’s been bad for a long time.

And finally, Bennett’s justification of police violence is a lie. As bad as Bennett’s argument is, the true story of last week’s protests is far worse. Video of the action against the Berkeley tents shows police, again and again, assaulting activists who were not linking arms, not resisting in any way. Students were struck with batons just for standing on the wrong part of the grass — not once, but over and over.

Celeste Langan, a tenured professor of English, was one of those arrested on Wednesday. Here’s how she describes the incident:

When the student in front of me was forcibly removed, I held out my wrist and said “Arrest me! Arrest me!” But rather than take my wrist or arm, the police grabbed me by my hair and yanked me forward to the ground, where I was told to lie on my stomach and was handcuffed. The injuries I sustained were relatively minor — a fat lip, a few scrapes to the back of my palms, a sore scalp — but also unnecessary and unjustified.

It was not violence that provoked police to throw an English professor to the ground by her hair, not even the “violence” of linked arms. It was disobedience. It was the mere act of standing between a police officer and a tent, wrists extended, on a public lawn in a public university at three o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon.

Meet Mike McQueary

November 10, 2011 in Students | by | 11 comments

Meet Mike McQueary.

He grew up just a mile from the Penn State campus, excelling on the State College High football team. In 1994 he was recruited by Penn State, where he started as quarterback in his senior year. The team went 9-3 that season, with McQueary breaking three school records.

After graduation he signed with the Oakland Raiders, and then the Scottish Claymores of the World League of American Football. When his professional career didn’t work out he returned to Penn State as a grad student and assistant to the football team.

In March 2002 he stumbled across something he wasn’t supposed to see. Jerry Sandusky, his former assistant coach, now retired, was anally raping a ten-year-old boy in the team’s showers. McQueary didn’t intervene. He didn’t go for help. He didn’t call the cops.

He called his father.

He called his father and his father told him to call his coach. So that’s what he did. And when his coach stayed silent, and the athletic director stayed silent, and the university vice president in charge of the campus police stayed silent, Mike McQueary stayed silent too.

Today Mike McQueary is a member of the Penn State coaching staff. And he’s still staying silent.

On Penn State’s Joe Paterno Riots

November 10, 2011 in Administration, Campus Protests, Media, Police, Sexual Violence, Student vs. Student, The Corporate University, Violence | by | Leave a comment

Last night at Penn State thousands of students took to the streets. They tore down light poles. They vandalized cars. They overturned a news van. They lit a fire. They threw rocks at police and at least one bystander.

Why? Because their football coach, Joe Paterno, was fired.

And why was he fired? Because nine years ago, one of his staff witnessed Jerry Sandusky, one of Paterno’s former top assistants, anally rape a ten-year-old boy in the team’s showers. And because when that staffer reported what he had seen to Joe Paterno, he did nothing. No police were called. No investigation was undertaken. Paterno didn’t even revoke Sandusky’s access to the team’s locker rooms.

Sandusky was indicted on forty counts of sexual abuse last week. Two top administration officials were indicted for covering up his crimes. And yesterday Joe Paterno and the university’s president were fired.

Some Penn State students supported the Paterno firing. Others — many others — attended a vigil last night for Sandusky’s victims.

But thousands took to the streets around the campus chanting “fuck the trustees” and “we want Joe” and breaking things and hurting people.

And I honestly have nothing more to say about that.

Occupy Cal Day of Action is Berkeley’s Biggest Protest In Years

November 9, 2011 in Administration, Campus Communities, Campus Protests, Civil Liberties, Governance, Occupy Wall Street, Organizing, Police, Student Bashing, Student Power, Students, The Corporate University | by | 1 comment

Continuing my liveblogging today — Thursday — on the second day of Occupy Cal. Newest updates at the top of the page.

9:30 am | An odd quote from Berkeley Dean of Social Sciences Carla Hesse in the Daily Cal, apparently from comments she made yesterday:

“‘I’d like [the activists] to think about what they’re doing,’ she said. ‘I’m worried if they destroy property, the public isn’t going to be very sympathetic.'”

But the group’s only formal statement, distributed earlier that day, said “We will remain peaceful and non-violent. We will do everything to ensure the campus is a safe space and will not engage in vandalism. We will take care of each other and the space we create.” There had been no indication of any plans for vandalism or property destruction.

The campus administration, however, had at the time Hesse spoke already made it clear that even peaceful, nonviolent, nondestructive protest would not be tolerated on the Berkeley campus if it did not conform to the university’s restrictions in every detail. UC police have for the last two years shown repeatedly that they are willing to engage in physical violence against peaceful protesters, and they did so again yesterday afternoon, not long after Hesse spoke.

9:25 am | Word on Twitter is that all 39 of yesterday’s arrestees have been released. Professor Celeste Langam reportedly sent out an email to friends on the faculty saying that she will make a public statement on her arrest at a later time. Meanwhile, a small group of activists spent the night in Sproul Plaza, apparently keeping one small tent up overnight. Next meeting scheduled for ten o’clock.

6:05 am | Yesterday the Berkeley administration made Occupy Cal an offer they had to know would be flatly rejected — the students and others could stay on Sproul Plaza, but with no tents. And no sleeping bags. Also no sleeping. And they would have to leave in a week. This wasn’t a good faith negotiation or an attempt to reach an accommodation that would — as Birgenau suggested he was hoping to — control “costly and avoidable expenses.” It was a piece of theater, a prelude to the use of police violence against peacefully demonstrating students on an American public university campus.

5:50 am| Lots to cover this morning, including the arrests of 39 people on the Berkeley campus, but I guess this is as good a place to start as any: Berkeley chancellor Robert Birgenau yesterday justified the bust of Occupy Cal with the following statement: “We simply cannot afford to spend our precious resources and, in particular, student tuition, on costly and avoidable expenses associated with violence or vandalism.”

Wow. That’s just … breathtaking.

5:46 am Pacific Time Thursday | I continued to track the events of last night (both Cal and Penn State) on Twitter yesterday evening, but didn’t manage to get back here for an overview post before literally falling asleep at my keyboard. It was a long day. Resuming coverage now.

5:59 pm Wednesday | Good roundup of the day up to now is here.

5:58 pm | Done with dinner. While I was gone the police retreated. Six arrests, apparently dozens of student injuries. All but two tents confiscated, but those two tents are still standing. Activists are requesting that the Berkeley administration explicitly — and publicly — declare that the police will not be directed to roust the encampment.

3:47 pm | Cops in riot gear are wading into the crowd with batons drawn, breaking the student line defending the tents. Activists are chanting “stop beating students” and “what law are we breaking?”

3:45 pm | Okay, I’m going to be late for dinner.

3:30 pm | I’m on the East Coast, and I’ve got dinner plans I can’t break. Back in a bit. I’ll be on twitter at @studentactivism as much as politeness allows.

3:20 pm | Latest tweet: “Police issuing a dispersal order. Against students. At a rally. On campus. At 3:15 on a Wednesday. That’s fucked up. #OccupyCal”

3:08 pm | As I just tweeted, it’s a hell of a lot easier to take down a tent with nobody in it. And a hell of a lot harder to bust someone who’s in a tent. If Occupy Cal succeeds in setting up an encampment, the UCPD situation changes dramatically.

3:05 pm | Have been tweeting rather than liveblogging for the last little while because so much is in flux, but it appears that Occupy Cal students moved immediately to set up tents after the GA vote, and that UCPD immediately swept in to take them down. But then students locked arms in a semi-enclosed part of the lawn to protect their friends, and tents got set up behind their line.

2:49 pm | The vote on the encampment at the GA was 456-1 with 12 abstentions.

2:44 pm | A Daily Cal reporter is tweeting that there are no votes in opposition to the encampment proposal and only a handful of abstentions.

2:40 pm | The initial UC occupations in the wave of student action that began a little over two years ago tended to be “closed,” meaning that students (and others) took over buildings and barricaded themselves inside, shutting them down. As the movement developed, it evolved in the direction of “open” occupations, in which folks occupied spaces but left them accessible to others while the occupation was going on. That shift was not accompanied by a corresponding shift in UC administrative tolerance of the occupations — notably, 66 people were arrested on December 11, 2009 in an early-morning police raid on an open, peaceful occupation of Berkeley’s Wheeler Hall.

It’s now looking like a new occupation strategy is being adopted at Berkeley — the open-air encampment. My hunch is that the administration will find mass arrests of such a group hard to justify, but they’ve never backed down before.

This is going to be interesting.

2:33 pm | Twitter reports say the proposal for an encampment is receiving serious discussion and debate at the Berkeley general assembly. One report from a reliable observer not long ago put the size of the GA at something like 1000 people. The Berkeley administration has said it won’t tolerate an encampment, but it’s hard to imagine them going through with arrests on anything like that scale, particularly if — as I assume it will — this occupation is of a lawn rather than a building.

2:25 pm | From the draft statement: “We will remain peaceful and non-violent. We will do everything to ensure the campus is a safe space and will not engage in vandalism. We will take care of each other and the space we create. We will organize. We will have fun. We will not end our encampment until we are ready.”

2:15 pm | The Daily Cal has the text of a draft statement from #OccupyCal establishing a UC Berkeley encampment.

1:50 pm | The Sproul rally marched to the Bank of America branch and back. Next up: A General Assembly meeting.

1:09 pm | Not much of a surprise, but now it’s official: Occupy Cal will be setting up an encampment today.

1:08 pm | Word on Twitter is that the Berkeley demonstrators will be marching on a Bank of America branch at Telegraph and Durant, just a block off campus right by the Sproul Plaza entrance.

1:00 pm | Just tweeted this: “UC admin has quieted student protest since 2009 with mass arrests. Now there’s 1000s out at Berkeley. What next? #OccupyCal”

12:50 pm | On Twitter @jpanzar says there are a lot of faculty at today’s rally. Given the way that UC profs have distanced themselves from UC student protest in the last year or so, that’s a big deal.

12:47 pm | Sign: “Arab Spring, Chilean Winter: Meet the American Fall.”

12:43 pm | The Daily Californian, Berkeley’s student newspaper, has an #OccupyCal liveblog up here.

12:40 pm | Today’s Berkeley rally began a little over half an hour ago. According to multiple on-the-scene observers, the crowd already numbers in the thousands.

12:27 pm Pacific Time | Today the Occupy movement is coming home to Berkeley, and early reports suggest this is already the biggest action to hit the Berkeley campus since the September 2009 walkout that launched the contemporary student movement nationwide.

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StudentActivism.net is the work of Angus Johnston, a historian and advocate of American student organizing.

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