Corpses in the Mouth

from occupyca:

BERKELEY, California – A California Public Records Request has revealed a 300+ page pdf of email correspondence between UC Berkeley deans, chancellors, public relations officers, cops on how to stop the building occupations in Fall 2009.

Read up here.

Choice quotes below the fold. Feel free to add your own findings in the comments.


p. 99

On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 3:06 PM, George Breslauer wrote:

Dear Chris [Kutz],

I hope you will reconsider the idea of a public or Senate meeting this week. (The Chancellor will be out-of-town all week, by the way.) As repulsive as the U-Tube broadcasts may be, you, as a member of the Police Review Board and a professor of law, must be aware that incidents such as these are best followed by an internal investigation to ensure that all the facts are on the table before reaching conclusions. A public or Senate meeting is certainly not likely to achieve that goal. Moreover, as you discovered recently, such meetings can take on a dynamic of their own, inconsistent with avoidance of jumping to conclusions.

For example, can U-Tube postings be edited before posting? Do they show just the police behavior or also the prelude to that behavior? What do the videos taken by the UC police show? (At a meeting with the SAVE leadership on Friday, an assertion was made about a specific incident of alleged brutality, which led Jonathan Poullard to state, with muted anger, that the videos he watched of that very incident supported the opposite conclusion.) Further, how is it that one police officer had to go to the hospital and (at least) two others were injured? I have no ready answers to any of these questions, but I am sure that a balanced assessment of the evidence is not likely to emerge from a public or Senate meeting called on short notice. Moreover, there are broader philosophical and tactical issues about the requisites of crowd control under such circumstances, to be discussed at a calmer moment. There are analogous questions to be raised about the level or type of responsibility incurred by those faculty who rile up the students to "take back their university.

(...)

Thanks,

George

p. 131 -- Birgeneau is so obsessed with those fire alarms

At 12:40 PM 11/27/2009, you wrote:

Hi Judith [Butler],
Thank you providing [sic] further documentation on some of the horrific events which occurred last Friday and thank you for your advice. The issue of what constitutes a legitimate exercise of free speech in the current circumstances is an interesting and complex onee.g. [sic] clearly the community must be free to agree or disagree publically [sic] with actions of the administration. However, disaffected individuals are not free to pull fire alarms. I would welcome your insights on this subject and specifically what you think should and should not be allowed. The issue of public safety is not complex.

Bob [Birgeneau]

p. 158 -- it's just hard to imagine Birgeneau and especially Brostrom reading this

From: Christopher Kutz
Sent: Wednesday, December 02, 2009, 12:58 AM
To: Robert J. Birgeneau; George Breslauer; Frank D. Yeary; Claire Holmes; Nathan Brostrom; Catherine Koshland; divco@bspace.berkeley.edu
Subject: "Anti-capital projects blog"

Dear all,
You may find this website interesting: it seems to be written by (some of) the Wheeler occupiers:

http://anticapitalprojects.wordpress.com/

--Chris

--
==========================================
Christopher Kutz
http://www.law.berkeley.edu/faculty/kutzc/

Professor of Law
Jurisprudence & Social Policy Program
www.law.berkeley.edu/jsp

p. 165

From: Christina Gonzales
Sent: Friday, December 04, 2009 4:31 PM
To: 'Harry Le Grande"
Cc: poullard@berkeley.edu
Subject: protest arrest ??
Importance: High

Hi Harry
I spoke today with the DA's office and with Lt. Decolude and Susan Trageser regarding the arrests of the protestors. We received all of the police reports so will begin sending out letters on Monday. I wanted to check-in with you that you would be ok if we do ask for some sort of restitution. As it stands now we have a large dollar amount of damage but if I went with the lowest number (doors/furniture in Wheeler) it comes to just over $4,000 which would mean about $100 each. I know there has been some debate about the direction we went with the protestors so I wanted to keep you in the loop.

cg

p. 229 -- the words "ASUC President" are redacted in other copies of this email, but they must have missed it here. Looks like Smelko was talking shit.

From: Harry Le Grande
Sent: Wednesday, December 09, 2009 4:37 PM
To: mjc@berkeley.edu; 'Janet Gilmore'; 'Amanda Carlton'; 'Claire Holmes'; 'Dan Mogulof'; 'Linda Williams'; 'Margo Bennett'; 'George Breslauer'; 'Robert J. Birgeneau'; 'Beata FitzPatrick'; 'Ron Coley'
Cc: 'Assoc. Dean of Stds Christina Gonzales'
Subject: RE: Wheeler tweets re Friday concert

I don't think we should let this go forward. Studying and sleeping is one thing but I am not certain a concert in that facility before final's begin is something we want to chance disrupting the end of the term. In speaking with the ASUC President today he feels that the group is really less about the issues now and more about partying. It seems like students who actually wanted it for studying could not use it as such so we should move for closure.

p. 243 -- written the day before the arrests

From: Janet Gilmore [jangilmore@berkeley.edu]
Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2009 6:45
To: Claire Holmes
Cc: mjc@berkeley.edu, dmogulof@berkeley.edu, jangilmore@berkeley.edu, Margo Bennett
Subject: Draft Wheeler brief for web

Claire,
Take a look, change as needed and please get to California Hall OK, as needed. We will need UCPD to fill in the blanks asap Friday morning.
--Janet

DRAFT

University of California, Berkeley, police arrested xxx trespassing student activists and other protesters this morning (Friday, Dec. 11), hours before the group was set to hold an unauthorized concert inside a classroom building.

According to UC police, xxx individuals were arrested and cited for XXXXXX at XXX {time} this morning {XXX and taken to XXXX jail/Or cited and released!}. The group included xxx students and xxx individuals not affiliated with UC Berkeley.

The activists, who have been protesting against student fee increases and other issues, had maintained an illegal though largely nondisruptive 24-hour presence inside Wheeler Hall since Monday.

However, by week's end the group began announcing plans for an unauthorized concert featuring guest artists and a DJ -- an event that threatened to disrupt final examinations scheduled to take place in that same building on Saturday.

Campus staff spoke with the organizers about the issue, but the activists vowed to go forward. Their publicity materials stated that the concert would begin Friday night and would end "8 a.m. Saturday" and until "the cops kick in the doors." Final examinations are set to begin inside Wheeler Hall at 9 a.m. Saturday.

"Once the activists refused to reconsider plans to hold an unauthorized all-night concert in an academic building we had to take steps to ensure that finals could go forward," said Dan Mogulof, campus spokesman. "Our primary responsibility is to the campus's core academic mission and the 35,000 students who are not participating in the activists' efforts."

Campus police are currently monitoring access to Wheeler Hall to ensure that only authorized faculty and staff are allowed in. Classroom review sessions that were scheduled to take place inside Wheeler today will instead take place in XXXXX and as indicated on fliers posted outside of XXXX.

Wheeler Hall is one of the campus's largest classroom buildings and is open for campus business daily until 10 p.m. The trespassing group, which ranged from a dozen to several dozen at any given time this week, were not authorized to hold events inside the building; nor to sleep in the building overnight. Police cautioned activists every night this week -- including Thursday night -- that they were subject to arrest and student conduct code sanctions for their actions.

The activists entered Wheeler Hall on Monday and since then had set up information tables inside the building, stashed food and refreshments, posted banners, strummed guitars, played late-night music and declared the building an "open university." Early in the week they appeared to be taking steps to ensure that their activities would not conflict with classroom review sessions underway inside the building.

p. 245

From: Robert J. Birgeneau
Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2009 8:59 PM
To: 'Claire Holmes'; Beata Fitzpatrick'; George Breslauer'; 'Phyllis Hoffman'
Cc: 'Janet Gilmore'
Subject: RE: DRAFT text for Wheeler story

Hi Claire,
I agree with the basic message. However, we need to find a new word other than "activists" to describe the protesters; that descriptor gives them too much gravitas. I prefer: intruders, occupiers, and/or protesters. Also, assuming that everything goes according to plan, I would like a quote expressing my admiration for the very professional way in which the police managed to apprehend and remove the illegal occupiers.

Bob