An audio recording from last night’s pre-concert rally has been released, and it’s well worth listening to. It’s a female student who was arrested yesterday morning at Wheeler Hall talking about the arrests, the occupation, and the larger movement. She’s incredibly angry — you should know there’s a lot of cursing, if that bothers you — but she has every right to be.

The university should be held accountable for the decision to shut down the Wheeler Hall open university early, without warning, and in violation of previous understandings. They should be held accountable for the decision to arrest the students at Wheeler. They should be held accountable for the decision to give no dispersal order. They should be held accountable for the decision not to cite and release the arrestees locally. They should be held accountable for the decision to cart them to a jail thirty miles away, in another county, where they were held for more than eight hours.

Audio is here, and a full transcript, edited very lightly for clarity, is below.

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As I posted earlier, during the course of a march on the home of UC Berkeley’s chancellor last night, some of the marchers broke windows, lights, and planters at the residence. Some are also alleged to have thrown burning torches at the home and at police.

I’ve posted some general thoughts on the question of property damage and violence against individuals as protest tactics, but someone at Occupy California has put up a defense of last night’s rioting that I want to respond to directly.

Here’s the relevant passage:

The Chancellor, although not the sole contributor to the crisis we face now, was directly involved in the unjust arrests of Wheeler Hall in the morning and continues to threaten the futures of the stakeholders of the University of California, Berkeley. He is … a powerful and influential individual that refuses to accept both the project that Live Week attempted to create and the fact that he shares a part of the blame, no matter who he can point his finger at. … As the events unrolled during the evening, it was clear that many are aware of the lack of faith the Chancellor has for the students and many have become aware of the power that individuals have, due to promise that Live Week fulfilled, to create a space for people to come together.

Although some may attempt to paint the evening as a night of petty violence, this event reveals a refusal to accept the university’s actions and the physically violent police repression in passivity. The property damage incurred may seem ruthlessly aberrant and scarring on a university already suffering budget woes, but the damage incurred by the silencing of stakeholders Friday morning exceeds beyond any value the university can place on some broken glass and ceramics.

Two things.

First, throwing a planter at the window of someone’s home while there are people inside is not merely an act of vandalism. It is an act of assault. The person or people who attempted to break the chancellor’s windows could not have known whether the glass would hold or whether there was someone on the other side of the glass.

Attempting to smash the windows of someone’s home is not just “property damage.” It is not just “scarring on a university.” It is an attack on the people inside that home.

Second, the question of whether the chancellor “shares a part of the blame” for the arrests at Wheeler or the university’s budget crisis is not the issue here. He obviously does. The question is whether attacking his home with him and his wife inside it is an appropriate response to his misdeeds.

Again, this was not just a matter of some spray-paint or a few broken planters. The chancellor said this morning that he and his wife feared for their personal safety last night, and I believe him. He had reason to fear. There were people with torches outside his home, smashing things against it, trying to break in. That’s not just “some broken glass and ceramics.” That’s a violent attack, and it’s outrageous.

Update | In an earlier version of this post, quoted at Inside Higher Ed, I described the attack on the chancellor’s residence as the act of “a violent mob.” That characterization was based in large part on the account posted at Occupy California, but information has since come to light that calls that version of events into question. See this follow-up post for more.

Eight people, including at least two Berkeley students, were arrested last night near the residence of university chancellor Robert Birgeneau.

A university statement claimed that a group of more than forty people stormed the residence, smashing windows, lights, and planters. Officials also said that “incendiary objects” were thrown at the house and at police.

Photographs posted at the Daily Cal, Berkeley’s student newspaper, showed several broken planters and a shattered window. An Associated Press report said that four lights had been smashed and that a second window was boarded up this morning.

In the statement released this morning, Birgeneau said that those arrested last night would be “prosecuted to the full extent of the law, and urged “the majority of the group who have been expressing their point of view in nonviolent ways to condemn the actions of these few individuals.”

I posted some thoughts on the use of vandalism as a protest tactic earlier today.

2:00 pm | Someone at Occupy California has posted a lengthy account of (and defense of) last night’s riot. I’ve written a separate post in response to it.

6:00 pm | Several leaders of the UC Berkeley student protest movement are quoted in the Daily Cal repudiating the riot.

6:20 pm | The LA Times reports that four of the eight arrestees were UC students — two from Berkeley and two from Davis. All eight are reportedly still in custody on bail of $132,000 each.

6:45 pm | A press release on the events of last night has been posted at liveweek.net, the website of the Wheeler Hall open university. The whole thing is worth reading, but here are some highlights:

A Live Week organizer is quoted as saying that “regardless of what one thinks about the events of last night,” they must be understood in “the context of the physical violence inflicted by police on student activists and the broader assault on public education.” The press release quotes witnesses as saying that police arrested individuals who were “trying to leave because things were getting out of hand,” and that some arrestees were simply “in the wrong place at the wrong time.” It also says that one arrestee is an independent journalist who was filming the demonstration and police response when he was taken into custody.

Last week I got a heads-up about a budget teach-in at the University of Massachusetts Boston that was put together by the folks at Massachusetts Students Uniting (Facebook and Twitter).

I asked for links so I could add it to the map, but there wasn’t any media coverage so one of the participants wrote up an account just for us. Here are some excerpts, lightly edited:

Longtime readers of this site have probably noticed that I don’t often offer negative judgments of the organizing efforts I cover here. If I’m impressed by a project, I’ll sometimes say so. If I’ve got specific constructive criticisms, I’ll occasionally offer them. If I disapprove, I’ll usually keep my opinions to myself.

There are a few reasons for this. I’m usually observing events at a distance, and I’m well aware of the perils of relying on second-hand data. I also recognize that situations are complex. I’m not quick to judge, even privately, and I figure you’re all capable of making up your own minds.

Having said all that, though, I do want to talk briefly about some of the judgments I do make.

The last three and a half weeks have been an extraordinary moment in the history of American student activism. Buildings have been occupied, and often barricaded. More than two hundred campus activists have been arrested. Police have used violence against students with a frequency and intensity that are deeply troubling.

The fall semester is almost over, but the spring is coming soon, and there’s little indication that it will be a quiet one. We’re most likely going to be seeing some turmoil on the campuses in the months to come, and I’m most likely going to be reporting on it, so I want to make a few things about my position, and this site’s position, clear:

First, I’m morally opposed to the use of physical violence as an activist tactic. I don’t believe in throwing things at cops. I don’t believe in manhandling security guards. Hell, I don’t even believe in pie-ing people.

Second, I think that destruction of property is usually a really bad idea. It’s clear that vandalism is deeply unpopular among students and non-students alike. If an action causes significant property damage, that fact will be used as an effective weapon against other activists. Is destruction of property immoral? Buy me a beer and give me a specific example, and we’ll debate it as long as you like. Is it stupid? In almost every case, yes, I believe it’s deeply stupid.

And if you damage property in such a way as to risk causing physical harm to someone, that’s both stupid and immoral, in my book. If you throw a rock at a window in the course of a protest, you’re telling me that you’re willing to put shards of glass into someone’s face, because there’s no way to throw a rock at a window in the heat of a protest without risking someone getting hurt.

And if you’re willing to take that risk, you and I aren’t on the same side.

Edited for clarity after posting.