On Violence and Non-Violence, Once Again: Lessons from Recent Political Developments on the Berkeley Campus (Part 1)

In one of his most widely read essays, Louis Althusser made the famous remark that ideology and its subjects never run around saying “I am ideological!”[1] From the perspective of the interpellated subject, there is no such a thing as an “outside” to ideology—because ideology has already profoundly structured the subject’s sense of self-understanding. We’ll ask the reader to indulge us and allow us to paraphrase Althusser’s statement with respect to recent political development on UC campuses after yet another year of protests, police violence, administrative impunity, and repression of political activism: One of the defining peculiarities of state violence today is that it never runs around proclaiming “I am violent!”

In the context of the ongoing prosecutions of student activists and a faculty member who were brutalized on November 9,[2] let us revisit a recent civil court case, in which a graduate student sued UCPD officer Brendan Tinney for breaking her finger at a large protest in support of the Wheeler Hall occupation on November 20, 2009. While silently watching the trial from the back of the courtroom, we learned a great deal. We witnessed how cops lie under oath with arrogance and impunity: we heard improbable accounts of students trying to snatch guns from cops and pull their batons—improbable because these incidents had never been reported up to that moment, even by the officers themselves. We saw—yet again—that the UC administration will spare no expense to crush its own graduates, teachers, students, scholars, and community members; that it will resort to grossly unethical practices and attack the integrity, dignity, and humanity of its own students, scholars, and workers; that, in blatant disrespect for its own professed “community standards,” it will engage in calculated humiliation and disrespect of those same members whose “outstanding academic achievements” it will then take credit for.

But we want to stay on point here, so we’ll focus on one fine yet significant detail from Officer Brendan Tinney’s and Sergeant Donald Jewell’s public testimonies. Why could these two police officers so easily claim, genuinely blind to the glaring contradictions, that what they did on November 20, 2009—by crushing the hand of a graduate student, by thrusting their batons into the stomachs, spleens, kidneys, and ribs of dozens of bare-bodied students in the vicinity of the incident—did not constitute an act of “violence”? How could they deny that their acts were violent?

One thing we learned from Officer Tinney’s public testimony is that police officers are trained to “separate out the injury from the reasonable force the police [have] to use.” In other words, in the mind of an officer who has undergone “proper training,” the causal relationship between the “force” used and the injury or death it inflicts, between the act of violence and the wounded, maimed, or dead body, is intentionally obscured. Their batons don’t injure bodies, they make “contact” with them. In the cryptic, sanitized language of crowd control policies and police training manuals, serious injury and even death are present simply as the collateral effect of maintaining “peace and order,” “health and safety”[3]; they are disembodied, bureaucratic facts that need to be filed away.

Further, the excess of violence (“force” in the idiom of contemporary policing) is never self-evident from the point of view of the police because ”force” is always the preemptive measure deployed against an imagined stable, ahistorical violent subject, projected onto concrete and diverse situations, humans, and realities. Shortly after November 9, 2011, the UC Berkeley Police Association published an open letter to the outraged public to explain their perspective and offer excuses (prefaced by a denial—“by no means are we interested in making excuses”).[4] Compared to 1964, the era of the Free Speech movement on campus, the letter states, “[o]ur society in 2011 has become an extremely more violent place to live and to protect. […] Disgruntled citizens in this day and age express their frustrations in far more violent ways—with knives, with guns and sometimes by killing innocent bystanders.”[5] Unlike the old days, in other words, the world today is a far more dangerous and unsafe place. This is a bizarre statement—the sense of threat could apply to any place and time; it reveals nothing but prejudice, verging on plain indoctrination. It gives us a genuine picture of the collective subjectivity of a “well-trained” cop, in whose imaginary an outbreak of violence is always imminent. So in response to students pitching tents and linking arms, the article continues, “[i]n the back of every police officer’s mind is this:  How can I control this incident so it does not escalate into a seriously violent, potentially life-threatening event for all involved?”[6]

For those of us who do not come from communities where police brutality is an everyday reality, it is worth repeating that the police are trained to “see” violence before it happens, and if it doesn’t happen—to invent it, to interpret every gesture with a prejudiced eye and imagine the aggressive, threatening, “violent” behavior. And then, to unleash a preemptive attack. Again, there is a long history of how many times police have murdered individuals because they have interpreted the gestures of their victims the wrong way. Such prejudice has long been racialized, exposing communities of color to chronic harassment, incarceration, and death. Currently, the state is engaged in promoting a new ahistorical stereotype of the “violent protester,” structured around a logic of prejudice, stigma, and exclusion—where violence against protestors appears a priori reasonable and justified. That the figure of the “violent protester” has become a trope in the liberal media and a target of condemnation in popular liberal discourse is a direct effect and continuation of the logic of the violent state, masqueraded behind the language of peace, order, and safety. We’ll continue this thought in another post.

In the immediate aftermath of November 9, 2011, Chancellor Birgeneau attempted to justify the brutality of the police by claiming that “linking arms is not non-violent.”[7] But the origin of this infamous claim—which Birgeneau reproduced uncritically—should be properly attributed to UCPD Captain Margo Bennet. According to Bennet, “[t]he individuals who linked arms and actively resisted, that in itself is an act of violence […] I understand that many students may not think that, but linking arms in a human chain when ordered to step aside is not a nonviolent protest.”[8] This is also how shaking or holding a barricade, chanting “hold the line,” linking arms, refusing to leave, or even simply being trapped and having nowhere to go after being ordered to leave, becomes an act of violence. Bennet’s and Birgeneau’s dangerous leap of logic has now culminated in UCPD’s sinister tactic of using their legal right of access to the medical records of baton-injured students who sought treatment at the Tang Center, to identify them for the purpose of prosecuting them. It is a classic example of how the police have increasingly turned statutes and laws, initially aimed at protecting the victims from its assailants, against the victims themselves (charging Occupy Oakland activists with hate crimes or lynching is another recent example). Such use of the law was rightly called “perverse” by ACLU attorney Linda Lye.[9] It shows that the state is making a causal link between wounded bodies and violent perpetrators, resulting in a tautological configuration that turns the victim of police violence into a violent subject, into an aggressor, while at the same time victimizing the real perpetrator and erasing from the picture the actual agent of violence.

If, then, one asks what remains in the category of “non-violence” according to the rationality of the police, it is the absolute, uncritical obedience to their authority, especially when that authority violates the rights of citizens or grossly abuses the means of violence and the power to incriminate—in short, “non-violence” according to the police means the uncritical compliance with the growing arbitrary power of the sovereign. This takes us to the somewhat self-evident point that the state has successfully instrumentalized and redefined the slippery term “violence” to repress and criminalize various forms of dissent against austerity measures, and to shrink and eliminate established spaces and practices of constitutionally protected forms of political expression. One may argue that, stripped of its legitimating rationality, this is the creeping logic of authoritarian power. And to a certain extent it is. But this is not the same as the classical expansion of the executive authority of the state, such as, for instance, this year’s National Defense Authorization Act, passed with a provision that allows for the indefinite detention of terrorism suspects on US land, including citizens, without trial. Much more insidiously, the police operate within the juridical regime of the liberal state, while using interpretive tactics to bend definitions of crime and expand their own power to incriminate dissenting subjects.

If we take into account these drastic shifts in the meaning of “violence,” a much less self-evident point emerges—that violence is a discursive rather than an ontological category. Even some of the most astute political thinkers and philosophers who have written extensively on the question of violence have treacherously presumed, or even argued for, the ontological nature of violence. But if we take violence as a discursive construct, we can see how it has become a crucial terrain upon which the state wages a war against political dissent. Currently, it is being pushed to the limits of the intelligible in order to accommodate the expanding authority of the state to prosecute and eliminate different forms of political resistance against deepening austerity.

Trial Against UCPD Begins Today [Update 1, 2]

[Update 2, Friday 2/10]: Closing statements were made this morning; as of about 5:30pm the jury has returned a verdict: not guilty. There will be no accountability through the courts.

[Update 1, Tuesday 2/7]: Today the UCB grad student whose hand was smashed by UCPD Officer Brendan Tinney on November 20, 2009 gave her testimony and was cross-examined by the university's lawyer.

The trial continues tomorrow (Wednesday) morning at 8:30am, same time same place as before [scroll down]. Tomorrow's testimony will be worth checking out: first, Officer Tinney himself, who makes over $97,000 to assault Berkeley students, will take the stand. He will be followed at about noon by star Berkeley Law student Thomas Frampton, who we last saw successfully defending two students from UCB's incompetently nefarious Office of Student Conduct. Finally, the prosecution will call police expert Roger Clark.

Thursday won't be that important for folks to attend (the defense will call their medical expert and their own police expert). But Friday will be the most important day of the trial. That's when both lawyers, John Burris for the prosecution and Claudia Leed for the university's police-impunity machine, will make their closing statements and the jury will start making their decision. Pack the courtroom on Friday morning in solidarity! 8:30am, same time same place.

On November 20, 2009, outside of Wheeler Hall, UCPD officer Brendan Tinney used his baton to smash the hand of a UC Berkeley graduate student who was standing behind a metal barricade. Her hand was smashed to pieces, and she had to be rushed to the hospital for reconstructive surgery -- even so, the attack left her disabled for life. (The above picture was taken just before the brutal attack.) UCPD's internal investigation, not surprisingly, completely exonerated Officer Tinney from any wrongdoing, finding that his actions were "proper, lawful, and appropriate":

The Board’s goal was to look at the actions of the officer and determine if they fit within the parameter of reasonableness. The officer clearly communicated several warnings to you with instructions for you to keep your hands off the barricades. In fact, you initially complied with those warnings and temporarily removed your hands from the barricade. It was only after your failure to heed the repeated warnings that the officer increased his level of force from a verbal admonishment to a strike against the rungs of the barricade. When you again returned your hand to the barricade, the officer applied the next level of force by striking you. The Board determined that the officer used a continuum of force that was within reason and within his authority during these circumstances. The Board’s finding of your allegation is exonerated.

Today, over two years later, a trial against Tinney is finally set to begin. Jury selection will start at 8:30 am in Courtroom 15 (15th floor) of US District Court, Northern District of California, located in the Federal Building, 450 Golden Gate Ave, San Francisco (near Civic Center Bart). We will be bringing you updates from the trial as frequently as we can and posting them here.

UC Davis English Department Calls for Disbanding UCPD

The following statement was read to a crowd of thousands during today's rally at UC Davis and posted on the front page of the UCD English Department's website:

The faculty of the UC Davis English Department supports the Board of the Davis Faculty Association in calling for Chancellor Katehi's immediate resignation and for "a policy that will end the practice of forcibly removing non-violent student, faculty, staff, and community protesters by police on the UC Davis campus."

Further, given the demonstrable threat posed by the University of California Police Department and other law enforcement agencies to the safety of students, faculty, staff, and community members on our campus and others in the UC system, we propose that such a policy include the disbanding of the UCPD and the institution of an ordinance against the presence of police forces on the UC Davis campus, unless their presence is specifically requested by a member of the campus community. This will initiate a genuine collective effort to determine how best to ensure the health and safety of the UC Davis campus community.

Aerial View of UC Davis Today From http://publiclaboratory.org/home

Police Raid Occupy Cal

From the Daily Cal:

At approximately 3:30 a.m., around 50 police officers in riot gear arrived in Sproul Plaza and told demonstrators to begin packing up the tents which were on the Sproul Hall steps.

Police told demonstrators that students would be allowed to remain on-campus but would not be allowed to camp. Non-students were forced off-campus. Demonstrators were told that anyone who camps on-campus would be arrested.

By 4:30 a.m., no tents were left on the Sproul Hall steps. As of 5 a.m., police still surrounded the encampment site and the approximately 35 protesters in Sproul Plaza milled about and shared testimonies via a megaphone. Protesters also tried to rally more support by calling and texting friends.

Two demonstrators, including one UC Berkeley student, were arrested during the encampment’s clearing, according to UCPD Lt. Alex Yao. Yao said the arrests were “done peacefully.” The arrestees were charged with illegal lodging and failure to disperse when given a dispersal order and transported to Oakland’s Glenn E. Dyer Detention Facility for processing.

There is no such thing as a peaceful arrest. Whether or not they draw their batons and "nudge" you, whether or not they spray you with pepper spray or shoot you in the head with a tear gas canister, their every intervention is backed up by the threat of violence. What separates the baton strike from the threat of the baton strike is simply a matter of degree. The ultimate effect on the target -- that she moves back, that she takes down and removes her tent, that she shuts up and goes away so that "business" can go on "as usual" -- is the same.

There will be a General Assembly at 6 pm tonight.

Our Blood is on Their Hands

This piece was written by a UC Berkeley graduate student who was beaten and arrested on November 9.

In September 1964, a group of students at UC Berkeley set up political information tables on Sproul Plaza in defiance of a ban on unauthorized political and religious activities on campus. This act of civil disobedience and the sit-ins, scuffles with police, and arrests that followed, came to be known as the Free Speech Movement. It is a proud moment in Berkeley’s history and one that our community rightly celebrates as a turning point establishing our community’s commitment to protecting and defending first amendment rights.

Sadly, Chancellor Birgeneau, his administration, and UCPD have repeatedly dishonored and tarnished the legacy of the Free Speech Movement over the last three years, most recently in Wednesday’s savage attacks on non-violent student protestors at Occupy Cal. Students once again assembled in Sproul Plaza to voice their concerns about the direction of the university and the nation, and again they committed acts of civil disobedience, defying campus rules on overnight camping and attempting to pitch tents on the lawn.

In a campus-wide email sent Thursday, Chancellor Birgeneau argued that “obstruct[ing] the police by linking arms and forming a human chain to prevent the police from gaining access to the tents…is not non-violent civil disobedience.” True non-violent civil disobedience, according to Birgeneau, includes only the actions of those who “were told to leave their tents, informed that they would be arrested if they did not, and indicated their intention to be arrested,” not the hundreds of students who formed human barricades to “resist arrest or try physically to obstruct the police officers' efforts to remove the tent [sic].”

Chancellor Birgeneau’s attempt to delegitimize Occupy protestors is understandable given the strong public stance his administration has taken against allowing camping. It is also deeply misleading. What Birgeneau lionizes in his email is civil obedience to police – and ultimately administration – authority. Students should do as they are told and submit voluntarily to campus regulations. Failing that, they should make only token displays of dissent while simultaneously submitting to police authority when ordered. Protestors should, in essence, arrest themselves.

In contrast to obedience, non-violent civil disobedience in the tradition of the Free Speech Movement is, in fact, precisely what hundreds of students practiced on Wednesday. Standing together arm in arm, protestors weathered wave upon wave of attacks by police in riot gear who beat and maimed protestors as they bravely stood their ground in what can only be described as a cop riot. Thirty-nine were arrested and scores more were injured by police batons, and yet for all the bloodshed that day police have found only two cases in which they have even alleged protestor violence against police. The video evidence is equally clear: students were overwhelmingly peaceful and non-violent while the police were overwhelmingly cruel and violent.

Truly non-violent civil disobedience is not just symbolic. It is a material act of defiance, a physical challenge to the existing order by bodies willing to absorb the physical violence inflicted by police, all in service to their cause. Occupy Cal protestors have followed in the footsteps of that noble tradition and they have suffered terribly as a result.

Don’t let Chancellor Birgeneau and UCPD fool you: our blood is on their hands.

Public Safety Threats Lead To Regents Meeting Cancellation

"The UC Board of Regents has decided to cancel its meeting this week over fears for public safety, according to an announcement from the UC Office of the President.

The announcement, made by board Chair Sherry Lansing, board Vice Chair Bruce Varner and UC President Mark Yudof, was made Monday because UC law enforcement officials presented the board with 'information indicating 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.'"

+

What "rogue elements" you may ask? UCI PD officer Jared Kemper drawing a loaded weapon on student protestors blocking a parking garage at a "public" 2010 Regents meeting?



Or these benevolent officers outside with their pepper spray, keeping the peace?



How about this concerned university employee "nudging" a student protestor?

"Not Non-Violent Civil Disobedience"

"UCB Chancellor Robert Birgeneau’s statement rationalizing police beatings of unarmed and unthreatening protesters relies on a contentious contrast between those who “chose to be arrested peacefully” and are to be “honor[ed]” because they “were acting in the tradition of peaceful civil disobedience,” and others who “chose to obstruct the police by linking arms and forming a human chain to prevent the police from gaining access to the tents” of their would-be encampment. The latter tactic, he writes, is “not non-violent civil disobedience.” Overnight the discussion of Birgeneau’s letter has focused on its willingness to defend beating in the name of non-violence and its fetishization of non-violence as such. In agreement with those points, I'm also interested in Birgeneau's falsification of the history he references and, positively, in the tensions it suggests when we don’t accept such a cheap edition of it.

...

Closer to home, Mario Savio was among a group of protesters who repeatedly picketed and sat in at the Sheraton Palace Hotel in San Francisco to protest its racially discriminatory hiring policies in 1964. They did so in violation of a court injunction that limited the time they could protest, and on March 7, 1964, were arrested “lying down with arms linked . . . blocking the exits of the hotel” (from Savio’s applications to the Mississippi Summer Project, King Center Library, Atlanta; quoted in Jo Freeman, “How the 1963-64 Bay Area Civil Rights Demonstrations Paved the Way to Campus Protest,” Organization of American Historians, San Francisco, April 19, 1997). Freeman, who participated in the Sheraton Palace protests, remembers how their efforts were almost universally reviled.

In thinking about the reception of African-American civil rights protest and examples like Mario Savio’s together, we re-encounter in its most powerful form Birgeneau’s hoped-for distinction between heroic non-violent activists and undesirable, not non-violent students. It's the convenience of this that is at stake in the question of the incidence of resisting arrest in “classic” African-American civil rights protest. In a recent book on the photography of the civil rights era, Martin Berger and David Garrow ponder the anonymous photograph above, showing a woman in the Birmingham protest fiercely contesting her arrest. Berger and Garrow point out that the mainstream history of the era tends not to reproduce such photographs, and we can see the legacy of that decision in the cliche version of the “tradition” mobilized by Birgeneau. “White publications in the North shunned such complicating photographs,” they note, leaving it to segregationist journals to publish them. The “inactive-active opposition,” they argue, “structured the emotional and intellectual response of whites to photographs of dogs and fire hoses” ( Seeing Through Race: A Reinterpretation of Civil Rights Photography [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2011, p. 119]) and so regulated both their empathy and their understanding of protest. It is this very opposition that Birgeneau complacently repeats, at once narrowing the possibilities for activism and obscuring the complexity of the legacy he thinks he honors."

Original post by Rei Terada here.

An Open Letter to the Administration of the University of California Berkeley

An Open Letter to the Administration of the University of California Berkeley

Dear Chancellor Birgeneau, Executive Vice Chancellor Breslauer, and Vice Chancellor LeGrande,

You should all resign—now.

On Tuesday, you sent a message to students informing us that we would not be allowed to set up encampments or occupy campus buildings. You quoted a passage from the student code of conduct that prohibits “[a]ny activities such as pulling fire alarms, occupying buildings, setting up encampments, graffiti, or other destructive actions that disrupt or interfere with anyone's ability to conduct regular activities—go to class, study, carry out their research etc.” In this same message, you claimed that UC Berkeley shares “many of the highest principles associated with the OWS movement” and aims to provide “a model of the right to free speech, assembly and activism.”

We could not agree with you more: UC Berkeley does share the principles of the OWS movement. In fact, we were instrumental in sparking the wave of occupations—yes, occupations—that is now sweeping the globe. Recall November 20th, 2009: the students who occupied Wheeler Hall that day were not fringe radicals or outsiders, they were students who cared so deeply about the university that they were willing to be dragged away in handcuffs for it. They spoke for all of us, and now we are answering back. The model of activism you refer to: it’s us. We're all occupiers now. Don’t patronize us, then, by telling us how we ought to behave. Time and again, our protests have been met with batons and guns and admin-speak about “protecting us” and obeying the “limits of protest.” After three years of brutality, we now know exactly who is being protected, and from what.

Yesterday, the police force you sent to disperse us beat and maimed several dozen students, faculty, and staff. When UCPD requested reciprocal aid, they were reinforced by OPD and the Alameda County Sheriffs Department—the same officers who shot a young Iraq veteran in the head with a tear-gas canister last week at Occupy Oakland, in violation of their own rules of engagement. He still has not regained the ability to speak. This is how you would protect us: with blood and fear. We are appalled, but not surprised, that your police beat an English Department graduate student so badly yesterday that he was rushed into urgent care. This is how you would uphold the legacy of the free speech movement. Let us remind you: we are the free speech movement. We are speaking, and you are beating us to the ground.

About the “regular activities” of students at UC Berkeley: we do not agree that these activities can be limited to going to class, studying, and doing research. First, because this school is the center of our lives, which are richer and more meaningful than is allowed for by the student code of conduct. Second, because there can be no “regular activity” in a time of crisis. We are not blind to the world; we know that it is falling apart, torn to shreds by the profit-hungry elite of the the 1%. We know that you have been tasked with operating the university in crisis mode; we know this means ensuring that the 1% do not lose their financial stake in the university and its affiliate industries—the student loan racket, for example. We see right through you. It is you, on the other hand, who mistake our purposes: when we occupy buildings and set up encampments, these are our regular activities. The only people interfering with the business of the university are the police; for that, they should be banned from campus permanently and immediately.

You describe UC Berkeley as “a place where the best and brightest youth, staff and faculty from all socioeconomic backgrounds work collectively to solve world problems.” We wholeheartedly agree. However, by this definition, it is you who have violated the code of conduct; you are the ones who should be driven out of Sproul Plaza, not us. Make no mistake: there can be no “regular activity” when a militarized police force is allowed to brutalize students with impunity, nor can there be any peace so long as you remain at the helm of the university. Take a lesson from history (Egypt, for example) and step down now.

Signed,

Students in the University of California Berkeley

Contextualizing Certain Actions that Took Place during the General Strike

Last Wednesday, tens of thousands of demonstrators marched in the streets of Oakland, shut down the center of the city, and paralyzed the Port of Oakland. With so many people, affinity groups, and organizations involved, things are bound to happen that not everybody agrees with. In the aftermath of the day of action, many folks have stepped up on Facebook, Twitter, and even the Occupy Oakland website to criticize and condemn a couple of these actions: the property destruction at banks and a Whole Foods that took place during an anticapitalist march in the afternoon; and the occupation of the former Traveler's Aid Society, which occurred late Wednesday night and was violently repressed by hundreds of riot police with tear gas, flashbang grenades, rubber bullets, and arrests (including a number of journalists and legal observers). What we want to do here is to provide a few important pieces of background as a way of helping to contextualize Wednesday's actions.

To begin with, one of the very first decisions the GA made was to approve a statement on diversity of tactics. As of October 30, it was collected with a series of other decisions (including a statement to the media which we mentioned and started to discuss here), formatted into a single document, and distributed at the GA as the "Occupy Oakland General Assembly Decisions and Practices":

Occupy Oakland encourages diversity of tactics for actions that occur outside the camp. For example, during marches:

• when confronted by police, some people may want to attempt to have calm conversations with them, urging them to be non-violent
• some people may want to sit down in front of lines of police
• some people may want to express their anger by yelling at the police
• some people may want to attempt to remove police barriers
• some people may want to disrupt traffic or banks
• some people may prefer to remain on the sidewalk

We should be tolerant of each other’s approaches and respect different forms of protest, while being aware of our privilege or lack of it, especially when engaging with the police.

The second decision we wanted to share has to do specifically with the building occupation. Many have criticized the occupation for being "secretive," for purposefully "provoking" the police, for circumventing the General Assembly and therefore constituting an "undemocratic" form. Most of these attacks strike us as simplistic and moralistic, although some have laid out much more thoughtful critiques that are worth seriously reflecting on (e.g. zunguzungu). In any case, what is missing in the majority of cases is any reference to the GA's declaration explicitly endorsing and offering material support for autonomous building occupations. It was approved by the GA with a vote of about 95 percent prior to the general strike:

Declaration of Solidarity with Neighborhood Reclamations

Occupy Oakland, in solidarity with the Occupy movement and with the local community, has established the principle of claiming for open use the open space that has been kept from us. We are committed to helping this practice continue and grow. Here in Oakland, thousands of buildings owned by city, banks, and corporations stand idle and abandoned. At the same time social services such as child and healthcare, education, libraries and community spaces are being defunded and eliminated.

Occupy Oakland supports the efforts of people in all Oakland neighborhoods to reclaim abandoned properties for use to meet their own immediate needs. Such spaces are already being occupied and squatted unofficially by the dispossessed, the marginalized, by many of the very people who have joined together here in Oscar Grant Plaza to make this a powerful and diverse movement.

We commit to providing political and material support to neighborhood reclamations, and supporting them in the face of eviction threats or police harassment. In solidarity with the global occupation movement, we encourage the transformation of abandoned spaces into resource centers toward meeting urgent community needs that the current economic system cannot and will not provide.

The occupation of the former Traveler's Aid Society building fits very well into these guidelines. A quick look at the half-sheet that was distributed in the moment, as well as the full statement that was posted later on, is all it takes to understand that the occupation was meant to "transform[] abandoned spaces into resource centers toward meeting urgent community needs."



An interesting question has been raised about the meaning of "neighborhood" or "autonomous" building occupations and likewise what "community" is being referred to in the context of "community needs." Who is this collective "we"? Who falls outside of that category? For an action to be "autonomous" or be associated with a "neighborhood" does that mean it can't be an official part of the GA or of the so-called Occupy movement? That seems absurd, especially given how the movement is framed as one of the "99 percent." Furthermore, even in the overall context of the general strike, much of what took place was organized autonomously. As Jaime Omar Yassin put it, "Even the migration to the port, some two miles away, was a puzzle of pieces of self-directed groups." The march from UC Berkeley to Oscar Grant Plaza, the critical mass out to the port, the anticapitalist march, the flying pickets that shut down various banks, the feminist bloc in the march -- were each and every one of these actions voted on individually by the full general assembly? No. And for good reason. First, there's an issue of effectiveness. From early on the GA has been based on autonomously organized actions. Here's another chunk from the GA's decisions and practices:

3. Encourage autonomous actions.
In order to keep the GA from being bogged down, and in order to allow for diversity of tactics, actions other than major events (like the General Strike) should be announced as actions rather than brought forward as proposals to be voted on.

Second, there's an issue of safety. Zunguzungu writes, "We do things in the open, or I’m not part of that 'we.'" That certainly makes sense for a lot of actions. For example, the general strike would have been impossible to organize in a closed forum. In large part, that's because of the nature of the action itself -- you can't shut down the Port of Oakland with an affinity group of, say, ten people. On the other hand, a small affinity group can do other things that can be very useful and effective. If those things are illegal and require the element of surprise, it becomes very dangerous and counterproductive for people to propose them in a large, open general assembly. There are often undercover cops in the camp and the media often reports on and records the GAs. The idea that every single action has to be planned "in the open" effectively means taking a large set of actions off the table.

Hopefully these statements will help contextualize what went down on the day of the general strike. We aren't trying to present these as absolute answers and agree on the need for some serious discussions of tactics and strategies (though we also think these specific discussions should happen in the context of the GA and not on social media). Overall, it's important to remember that what we organized -- over the course of a single week! -- was amazing, an incredibly powerful show of force, and we shouldn't lose sight of that in the face of internal divisions.

Finally, as a postscript, here are a few more links that we've found helpful for thinking about questions of "violence," property destruction, tactics, and strategies. These interventions are valuable and to some extent model the kind of conversations we need to be having (and are in fact starting to have -- last night's GA was in this respect very useful).

- Statement on the Occupation of the former Traveler's Aid Society at 520 16th Street
- An Open Letter from an Anarchist Participant in Occupy Oakland
- No-one Cares about Property Damage
- For the Fracture of Good Order
- A Night of Violence... against Oakland Protesters
- The General Strike of November 2nd, and How Occupy Oakland Occupied Oakland
- Notes on Oakland 2011
- The Black Bloc, A Hopefully More Interesting Critique
- An Open Letter to the Black Bloc and Others Concerning Wednesday's Tactics in Oakland

Coffin Bloc

When it comes to the nature of the police, Oakland gets it.

Original photo here.

March Against the Police State: Saturday, 8pm

The following statement was made at last night's Occupy Oakland general assembly. It went over really well:

I want to preface by saying that many of you are new to Occupy Oakland, many of you are white and middle class. This means you have most likely not experienced police violence in the same manner as those who are queer, people of color or poor. As this movement grows, we ask for respect of our lifelong experiences and the recognition that self defense is not violent.

This Saturday evening, nearly a year after the murderous pig Johannes Mehserle was sentenced with a slap on the wrist and just days after police beat, gassed, shot, kidnapped and hospitalized our fellow occupiers, we are calling for a march against the police state. We encourage everyone to wear black in memory of all those who have been murdered by the police. In the name of Oscar Grant, Raheim Brown, Kenneth Harding, Charles Hill and our countless martyrs, we will march this Saturday, immediately after the Speak out from 6-8pm.

March against the police state.
Justice for Scott Olsen.

UCPD Is Training To Beat the Shit Out of You and Your Friends

Cops, Or, This Morning at Occupy Wall Street

If, after everything that's happened, you still think the cops are on your side, you will be the next one who gets punched in the face and run over by a motorcycle. Also, this:

Cops will detain you using whatever amount of physical violence they feel like using. It will almost always be wildly disproportionate to whatever crime they are alleging you have committed. (Remember, you don’t have to commit a crime for police to detain or arrest or hurt you. That is how police work. They will hurt you and detain you first, then allege a bunch of stuff later.) In a protest situation, where there are lots of cops and lots of people to be arrested, this any-means-necessary modus operandi is often intensified, cf. macing wildly into crowds, random batoning, etc.

Also, you don’t have to be “committing” a “crime” to be violently arrested and detained. It does not matter what you’re doing (just ask Oscar Grant). Cops make arrests because it is their job to make arrests: in New York it’s an open secret that quota systems are in place among mid-level police administrators, meaning that more arrests = job security. (Which side are cops on in the class war, btw?) You just have to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Police are accountable to basically no one, which makes unfounded arrests not only easy but necessary to the job description.

Whether cops are swinging and spraying into crowds or just hanging out on your block, it’s important to remember that your fourth, fifth and sixth* amendment rights are basically nil. You will not be told what you are being detained/arrested for. You should think of these rights with the same beleaguered cynicism with which you regard all liberal notions of subjecthood (or lol if you believe you have rights maybe you should just leave right now—go get arrested and report back, in fact), and the cop who abides by your constitutional rights to, say, know why you’re being detained or to be detained “without” excessive use of force as the exceptional cop, who goes above and beyond for reasons maybe having to do with your (yes your!) perceived socioeconomic status, or maybe just depending on the cop’s mood.

[...]

Basically, remember that police are allowed to have guns and whoever has guns can usually do whatever. Excessive use of force is what is regular for people who get arrested, as is the routine denial of constitutional rights to alleged criminals.

Harsh Repression Against Student Protesters in Chile

Rough translation of an article from the Mexico City daily La Jornada [more pictures from yesterday's clashes here and here]:

Santiago, October 6. Heavy clashes took place this Thursday in several parts of Santiago between Chilean police and marching students, during a day in which the police fired tear gas and water cannons against the protesters. There were 130 arrests, 25 police officers injured, and dozens of civilians wounded.

After the collapse of the dialogue between the right-wing government of President Sebastián Piñera and representatives of the student movement on Wednesday night, the police attacked an unauthorized march through the Santiago Regional Government Building (intendencia metropolitana) when it was just beginning peacefully at the downtown Plaza Italia and starting to move down Alameda Bernardo O'Higgins Avenue toward the presidential palace of La Moneda.

The violence of the repression was of such magnitude that even student leaders were assaulted, among them Camila Vallejo, who ended up soaking with water and affected by the tear gas, along with various journalists and photographers from the local and international press. Radio Cooperativa de Chile reported that two journalists were wounded and a third was arrested.

The tear gas made it impossible to breathe, and several people who had been affected by the chemical gas and by the police's baton strikes had to be taken to hospitals. Many protesters responded by throwing sticks and rocks against the police, which spread the skirmishes through various areas of the city center.

The police charged indiscriminately, thus resulting in the injury of CNN journalist Nicolás Orarzún and Megavisión photographer Jorge Rodríguez. In addition, Chilevisión journalist Luis Narváez was arrested and "taken for a ride" in a police vehicle along with other arrested protesters.

Against accusations from the regional governor (intendente), Cecilia Pérez, that the student leadership was responsible for the "disorders" and that legal action will be taken against them, Vallejo deplored the way in which the government had confronted the movement.

"The intendencia gave them absolute freedom to repress, in order to not permit meetings in public spaces, and this is unacceptable because it violates a constitutional right," said Vallejo, spokesperson for the Confederación de Estudiantes de Chile (CONFECH). She added that "the government is guilty because they have denied us everything: we ask for permission to march and they refuse, we ask for free education and they refuse again. What is the government trying to do?"

The Minister of the Interior, Rodrigo Hinzpeter, defended the so-called "anti-occupation" law, announced last Sunday by the government, through which it will seek to sanction those who occupy schools, public or private buildings, and those who cause damage during protests. The official said that he was sure that the members of the right-wing government represent the majority of Chileans.

After negotiations with the students and professors fell apart, the Minister of Education, Felipe Bulnes, declared that the Piñera government was "committed to advancing free education for the most vulnerable as well as credits and scholarships for the middle class, but not for all students." He added that they would continue to be open to dialogue.

He insisted that making education free forall would mean that "the poor would have to subsidize the education of the more wealthy." Along these lines, during the second meeting with the student leadership the government only offered the benefit to 40 percent of the student population, which finally lead to the collapse of the dialogue with the student movement.

Camila Vallejo said this morning that CONFECH would only be open to returning to the negotiating table if the Executive presents a new proposal with respect to the demand of free public education. While she affirmed that the attitude of the movement isn't "all or nothing," she emphasized that the will not continue discussions that are based on the government's current plan.

She noted that Minster Bulnes had said that the government doesn't want the poorest sectors to pay for the wealthier ones, and added that "we don't want this either, what we want is for the rich to pay for the [services used by the] poorest and middle class sectors. This will happen through tax reform."

Put It All In Pepper Spray

(pepper spray starts at about 20 seconds)

Chilean Government Criminalizes the Student Movement

This is a very rough translation of an article in Spanish from Página 12. It's especially interesting in the context of ongoing discussions about "violence" and "nonviolence" regarding the Occupy Wall Street movement and, of course, everything that's taken place in the UCs over the last few years. It's worth remembering that in the US these things are already crimes:

Criticism rained down after the right-wing government led by Sebastián Piñera signed a bill that adopts new criminal charges. The law, which seeks to stiffen measures against public disorder, arrives in the middle of intense social protests, especially the marches and mobilizations carried out by Chilean students over the past five months.

Under this law, protesters who participate in illegal occupations of educational establishments, such as primary or secondary schools or universities, could face a sentence of up to three years of jail time, since it criminalizes the "illegal occupation or invasion of property," including homes and commercial, industrial, religious, or educational spaces, whether public, municipal, or private.

The law constitutes an attack against the primary instrument of leverage that the student movement has used, having forced the end of the school semester because of the government's failure to make advances in negotiations. The initiative also aims to punish the lack of respect toward police officers, regulate the sanctions for incendiary bombs, and make it an aggravating circumstance to wear a mask.

"Whosoever attempts to disrupt the tranquility and normal life of citizens or to attack public or private property will face strong and firm legislation establishing punishments that correspond to criminal acts," said Piñera, in an attempt to fulfill one of his campaign promises: to reduce criminality in the country. Polls show that the public continues to judge him harshly in this area.

"We are going to pass this project on public disorders as fast as possible," added the Interior Minister, Rodrigo Hinzpeter, yesterday, generating more criticism from student and opposition leaders. "Public disorders are going to be a crime. And when, with force, with violence, there is looting, occupations of public or private buildings, among them hospitals, educational or religious establishments, streets, or public services, these are going to be crimes... We must keep minorities from kidnapping the rights of the majority," added Hinzpeter.

In this context, the president of the Federation of Students of the Universidad Católica, Giorgio Jackson, said that the measure "responds to a logic of looking at the symptom and ignoring the disease. I feel from what is being attacked that once again what is happening here is a superficial approach to the issue."

He added that he had participated in the occupation of his university and "it was absolutely peaceful, in which students together with workers and professors developed work plans on art and culture. In no way would I think that this represents a criminal attitude. These laws, which will probably lead to repression, have to be carefully reviewed, and each case has to be analyzed separately. The spokesperson of the Confederation of Chilean Students (CONFECH), which organizes traditional universities, insisted on local radio that "occupying schools and stopping classes has never been a hobby. Rather, it's a reflection, a shout and a call to the authorities, and in this case the entire city, to reflect on the issues of marginality, segregation and other social problems that are being experienced in our country."

Judges also entered the fray, after Piñera explained that the bill would call into question the rights of those charged with aggression against police officers. The president of the National Association of Judges, Leopoldo Llanos, declared these statements as "improper," because of the fact that they interfere with "the jurisdiction of other public powers."

Finally, part of the opposition agreed that this yet another sign of the government's failure to understand what is going on, since it once again reiterates its view of the phenomenon as "eminently subversive" just at the moment when dialogue with the students has begun, according to opposition member Pepe Auth.

(picture via)

New Video: Protesters Clash with UCPD at Tolman Hall

(For the record, we know Officer Timothy Zuniga #73 well -- he's the one who lied his ass off on the quote-unquote "stand" during two separate student conduct hearings and was basically laughed off the stage.)

For more coverage of the Tolman Hall occupation, see our previous post.

Notes on the Tolman Occupation [Updated]

From Indybay:

As with the inaugural event of the California occupation movement two years ago -- when students barricaded themselves inside the Graduate Student Commons at UC Santa Cruz -- the occupation of Tolman Hall was both an act of material expropriation (or attempted expropriation) and an act of communication, meant to signal, to warn, to threaten and raise the alarm. . . It was both a declaration of resumed hostilities against the university and a form of communication with comrades here and elsewhere, both inside and outside the university. It was a warning directed at the small clique of arrogant, befuddled bureaucrats who run the university, as well as their armed thugs. But also a message sent to our comrades. For our comrades, the occupation was meant to communicate first and foremost a kind of excitement: Let's do this! Let's occupy everything! But behind the initial thrill it should communicate, also, a few critical lessons:

1) The first lesson is as clear as a geometric proof: Violence works. As with the threat of a two thousand person riot which freed the Wheeler occupiers on Nov. 20, defensive violence works particularly well. Faced with a group of largely passive occupiers, a group which seemed in no way prepared to resist a dispersal order, the police decided to enjoy their own capacity for arbitrary displays of power and bar the doors without giving any verbal warning. The occupiers, correctly, rushed the doors and tried to get out, pushing the cops out of the way and dearresting those whom the police grabbed. With over half of the crowd outside, the police finally secured the doors, throwing one of the last people to try and flee to the floor, bloodying his face and nearly dislocating his shoulder. They had started a riot. Outside, fewer than five officers faced off against a crowd of 30 or more in total darkness. Someone threw a metal chair at the cops. Others threw chunks of concrete and traffic cones. They chanted “Pigs just fucking try it. There's gonna be a fucking riot.” The cops were forced back into the building, at which point it seemed like only a matter of time before the crowd tore down some fencing and smashed open the doors (someone had already smashed one door). Realizing the volatility of the situation, the cops released the detainees on the inside. QED: violence works. Violence, in this case, is one of the most intense forms of solidarity. Only because of the mystification that surrounds the police, can this appear as anything other than an act of mutual aid. When a group of thugs kidnaps your friends and starts beating them, you fight back. This is common sense.

2) Second lesson: the police are the enemy. They cannot be convinced, cajoled, manipulated. They have been given orders to treat every demonstration as a criminal matter, an act of burglary and vandalism. The administration has indicated in explicit terms that only the police will deal with such situations. There will be no discussion, no phone calls or visits from the Deans. It does not matter if we have the support of the inhabitants of the building. Police are the proxy owners of the campus; they will go in and militarize occupations immediately. Unlike other places where the police might wait outside for hours or days or weeks until given orders to attack an occupation, police at Berkeley act on their own initiative, autonomously, attempting to take control of a space even before they contact their superiors. The image of officers rushing into the crowd as if they were running backs pushing through defensive line would be absurd elsewhere, but here it is par for the course. This makes the “open occupation” -- the occupation which attempts to claim space but allow for easy circulation in and out, creating a functioning autonomous space in which all kinds of activities take place -- rather difficult. It is pretty obvious at this point: we cannot be free with cops in the room. There is no struggle against fees and debt, no struggle against austerity that is not, at the same time, a struggle against the cops. We will have to find ways to physically prevent the entry of police into our occupations, unless they are politically prevented from doing so. This is our message to the administration: restrain your attack dogs or expect more riots.

3) A final lesson. This occupation failed for many reasons -- an inability to keep police out of the building, a lack of “planning for success” (ie, having clear ideas about what we wanted to do once we were inside). All of this meant, ultimately, that there were too few people to survive the first night without courting arrest. Still, as brief and disorganized as it was, the number of people entirely new to protest and occupation was incredibly encouraging. These new folks, of course, displayed a naivete that is no doubt frustrating -- wondering, for instance, why the presence of cops in the building was even an issue (they learned the answer quite quickly). But instead of engaging them, and attempting to explain what was happening, instead of attempting to help them understand the practice they were engaged in, many comrades simply left them alone, preferring to congregate with the likeminded. This is a real weakness, one we note in ourselves. It evidences a lack of patience, and a desire to avoid uncomfortable experiences that strikes us as rather prevalent in the Bay Area milieu (and prevalent, we note, in our own behavior). Our contempt for those who stand in our way, and who do so repeatedly, is good and important. But it seems we resort to contempt even when confronted with people who oppose us not out of some deep-seated ideological conviction but out of sheer lack of experience. Let's be clear: insurrection will not occur solely as the result of intentional action by a group of already committed radicals, a group of people who already display the “correct” thoughts and actions. It will occur as the result of transformative experiences -- experiences that always involve new forms of knowledge and political discourse -- and which drive people to do things they never imagined doing before. In short, we need to get better at talking. We're pretty good at fighting. We're pretty good at writing. We're pretty good at taking care of each other. But we're not so good at speaking publicly, it seems, under pressure, at the right moment. As a friend noted to us afterwards, perhaps this is because we hate leaders and fear becoming them, fear the banal acts of persuasion and oratory upon which the left thrives, and despise those who try to dominate others through such proselytizing. But saying what you think is not necessarily domination. Sometimes it's an act of friendship.

[Updated Monday 10:10am]: Check out "A Small Critique on Rhetoric," over at Gazuedro:

Perhaps it’s just rhetorical poisoning that my mind has suffered through the years by the media and the movement police, but it seems reckless to say, carte blanche, that “violence works.” This is not an ethical criticism of the argument, but rather a concern for the lack of clarity portrayed by this rather brief statement. I would take it, the “critical lesson” is that given the imminent political force of the crowd outside, and the aggressiveness of the police, the use of violent force to circumvent further atrociousness from the police was effective, worth the risk, and justified. Perhaps more importantly, that as a tactic, it’s easily justifiable to a community critical of police brutality against students who were merely demonstrating, and was thus something that might help bring a community together. I bring this up only to say that this argument isn’t given a fair chance by the brevity of the original statement (i.e. violence works) or by the dramatic and defiance-infused description of events that took place. In short, does all “violence work?” No of course not, it depends on the situation. It’s clear that this statement is a reaction to the moral condemnation of what happened, but as you realize, the problem with moral condemnation is its outright ignorance of how nuanced the issue is; and how general sweeping statements (i.e. moralisms) are aggravating excuses for failing to think critically. The approach of this argument falls under that same trap of being too general.

Similarly, stating “the police are the enemy,” seems a little extravagant. Certainly they often hold the role as the enemy, and are physically present to disable you from being effective. But the police are not the capitalists. The police are (massive) obstacles that must be dealt with. They are often the racist fuckers that shoot unarmed black men face down on the platform, but they are not the ones that solely perpetuate the system of oppression. If you’re purpose is to explain to the uninitiated that the police are not our friends, then you’re a folly of your own third lesson: failing to engage a diverse crowd the right way. An argument like this won’t reach folks. This kind of message, by far, is a lesson best learned through direct action: through the realization that your attempts to make the world better (and thus by extension communize) will be struck down with a baton every time if you fail to organize yourself to resist. This statement does help justify the event for those who were present, but it stops short of contextualizing the power structure thats at fault. It’s most certainly frustrating to have people constantly defend the police and absolve them of any wrongdoing, but the medium to change that won’t be in a brief communique.

I think generally, insurrectionary rhetoric like this overuses hyperbolic language and exaggeration. It usually comes off as grating rather than evocative of romantic adventurism and adrenaline-infused, humbled righteousness. I really appreciate the perspective and analysis though -- for which y’all should be much lauded.

Today @ 5 pm Powell Bart Station, Police Murder Is Inconvenient

On "Violence" and "Nonviolence" from "First as Tragedy, Then as Farce"
about the Anonymous BART action on August 29
https://twitter.com/#!/frogsarelovely/status/108341614212165633

"There are difficult lessons to be learned from last Monday's operation. OpBART 3 was planned specifically to avoid offending the delicate citizenry of San Francisco, and to remain within the boundaries of what protesters themselves seemed comfortable with. Internal criticism and loss of support around previous events had focused on the perceived “violent” conduct of protesters, in accordance with the shared belief of how nonviolent protest “works”: that said protests are supposed to be “polite”, and avoid “causing trouble”. This ignores the historical context and conduct of other nonviolent movements, whose myths we are taught in primary school--those of MLK and Gandhi see particular focus, using arguments so ahistorical as to make their actual tactics and accomplishments almost entirely meaningless.

“Gray hoodie", a man who stood up at the end of the second event in a plea to get protesters to DO SOMETHING, was widely vilified by fellow protesters for his "violence": this is indicative of willful misinterpretation on the part of the public and of the movement. His repeated insistence that "it's not a protest unless you're causing a disruption; people won't care unless you're causing a disruption" was ignored or shouted down by all but a few, and he was paraded around social networks as "the violent guy" or "the agent provocateur" despite his only action being to peaceably stand in the street. The fact is--and ideally, last Monday's low-energy, low-impact turnout should have illustrated this clearly to those who had doubts--he was entirely correct. Now unburdened and free to go about their day normally, the people and media--with the exception of poorly-written op-eds with a bone to pick--of San Francisco have almost entirely failed to take notice of Monday’s event. Unless people are forced to listen, forced to care, they will continue to be as complacent as they are allowed.

The citizens of San Francisco, far from the paragons of leftist thought they are imagined to be, are both reactionary and authoritarian. They will support societal change if it means dropping coins in a box or buying a coffee in a biodegradable cup, but when civil action (even against a massive, easy-to-understand injustice such as police brutality) threatens to inconvenience them personally, they will lose any pretense of social consciousness. Any minor delay or inconvenience, like having to walk two extra blocks to the next open station, is treated as a barbaric and unjustifiable personal assault--completely ignoring any larger meaning.

The philosopher Slavoj Žižek, in his essay (available in lecture form on YouTube) "First as Tragedy, Then as Farce", illustrates this perfectly: having been presented with so many "tame" ways to assuage both their guilty consciences and partially-formed senses of social justice, people--particularly self-identified liberals--find themselves increasingly able to eschew criticism of a widely abusive system in favor of personal convenience. "I don't need to protest or care about this," the people say. "I buy Free Trade coffee."

Let it be made abundantly clear: The people of San Francisco are more concerned with selfish personal convenience than they are about social injustice. Until the day that they are personally beaten by the police, they are morally and ideologically comfortable with the dismissal and marginalization of a social movement against police murder in favor of not having their commute disrupted. They must be MADE to care, and dragged into consciousness kicking and screaming.

The police are another matter entirely. Now completely secure in their belief that there is a line (both physical and ideological) that the protesters will never comfortably cross, they realize that there is no real threat to the status quo. Remember: police brutality is the status quo. Police brutality is normal, accepted, even defended by American citizens--you can read hundreds of San Francisco residents defending the actions of the police who murdered Charles Hill and Oscar Grant in every single article about the protests. Challenging police brutality means challenging the system itself, everyone who supports it, and the social structures that keep it in place.

Responding with massive force, and confident that no one will truly challenge them past ineffectual sign-waving, the police know it is merely a matter of time before they grind down the spirit of the protest and return to a state of unquestioned hegemony. Backed by a public inclined to automatically believe anything they say (this being America, "if you are killed by the police you must have deserved it" is the majority sentiment), they see that this movement, as it stands, presents no real challenge to their power."

+

For an open letter from the physician who treated Charles Hill:

Charles Hill Was My Patient – I Am Joining the BART Protest in his Honor

Source: The Bay Citizen (http://s.tt/138td)

"Charles Hill Was My Patient - I Am Joining the (August 29) Bart Protest In His Honor"

Charles Hill Was My Patient – I Am Joining the BART Protest in his Honor

Source: The Bay Citizen (http://s.tt/138td)

Charles Hill Was My Patient – I Am Joining the BART Protest in his Honor

Source: The Bay Citizen (http://s.tt/138td)

Dear San Francisco,

I am one of your local physicians and have taken care of many different kinds of people during the past nine years of my appointment as an internist at UCSF, where I have worked at SF General Hospital as well as at the VA and the UCSF campuses.

San Francisco is a surprisingly small town, and when you spend enough time in the health care industry, you come to recognize many of the city's residents. You hold their stories and watch over them, in the hospital when they are ill and in the chance occurrences of running into them on the streets, in the market or painting the town red.

It is an honor and great privilege to take care of the people of this city that I love so dearly.

Last month, I learned that one of my former patients, Charles Hill, was shot and killed by BART police. Per the police, he was armed with a bottle and a knife and had menacing behavior. Per eye-witnesses, he was altered and appeared to be intoxicated but did not represent a lethal danger.

I remember Charles vividly, having taken care of him several times in the revolving door that is the health care system for the people who do not fit neatly into society. Charles was a member of the invisible class of people in SF --mentally ill, homeless and not reliably connected to the help he needed.

While I had seen him agitated before and while I can't speak to all of his behavior, I never would have described him as threatening in such a way as to warrant the use of deadly force. We often have to deal with agitated and sometimes even violent patients in the hospital. Through teamwork, tools and training, we have not had to fatally wound our patients in order to subdue them.

I understand the police are there to protect us and react to the situation around them, but I wonder why the officer who shot Charles did not aim for the leg if he felt the need to use a gun, instead of his vital organs. I wonder if he possessed other training methods to subdue an agitated man with a knife or bottle.

I feel this situation quite deeply. It is hard to watch our civil servants (police) brutally handle a person and their body when I spend my time and energy as a civil servant (physician) honoring the dignity of that person, regardless of their race or social class, their beliefs or their affiliations. I know it is not my job -- nor the police's job -- to mete out justice or judgment of a person's worthiness. It is also hard because Charles has no voice, no one to speak for him now that he is gone. It would be easy to let this slide and move on with our busy lives, as we all struggle to make ends meet in this expensive city during a recession. I believe this situation shows us how powerless we all feel to some degree.

I feel outraged and am trying to find the best ways to express it -- through creative outpouring, through conversations. I would like to lend my voice to the growing protest of the BART police's excessive use of violent force and know that weekly protests are being organized on Mondays until demands are met for BART to fully investigate the shooting of Charles Hill, disarm its police force and train them properly, as well as bringing the officer who shot him to justice.

The media is portraying the annoyance of the protests to commuters more than the unbelievable horror that an innocent man was shot dead by the force that is meant to protect us. I don't want to upset commuters or be a nuisance. I would like to be part of educating and not letting this slip under the proverbial rug -- in honor of Charles Hill and in order to help prevent something like this from ever happening again.

I will be present at the peaceful demonstrations on Mondays in front of the BART Civic Center station, not to prevent commuters from getting home, but to educate a population that may need to pause and think about the value a human life has and the kind of San Francisco we want to live and work in.

Thank you for your time and thoughtful consideration.

Respectfully,

Rupa Marya, MD

Source: The Bay Citizen (http://s.tt/138td)