For All Who May Be Next

Special guest post by Lauren Riot (@laurenriot)



Somewhere in Oakland right now, the next Alan Blueford is doing something innocuous. Maybe he's getting ready for a date or brushing his teeth or watching TV. He has no idea that one day the Oakland Police will murder him. Let's be real, young black men in Oakland live under threat of death from the police every day. Even though the next Raheim Brown, Gary King, Rashan Hill, Joshua Russell, or Terrance Mearis doesn't know he will die, chances are good that he is well aware of the threat looming.

There is a well established pattern by the police when they kill a young black man: shoot, deny medical treatment, then vilify him in the media. "I thought he was reaching for his waistband," is a common refrain. "He has been linked to a sexual assault," is another, which conjures up a history of false accusations of sexual assault against black men to justify lynchings, as if the police have ever cared about sexual violence. "EMS could not enter the scene to render medical aid until we deemed the area secure," is the common excuse for allowing young men to bleed to death in agony, alone on the concrete. This formula is repeated so often, we can practically mouth these words along with the news the very first time the shooting is reported.

Another formula that we see is a grieving family, thrust into the spotlight, simultaneously processing grief and made de facto (if temporary) leaders of a socio-political movement. The media often provokes them with pointed, manipulative questions to get dramatic emotional outbursts for the evening news. Many times the family feels compelled to talk about what a great person their child was, how they went to church or got good grades or fed the homeless. Of course families want to humanize their loved ones to the world, they are likely all too aware of what happens in the comments section on news websites and can rightly guess what's on the minds of a smug and racist white, suburban America, (though of course being an atheist, 'C' student or even criminal does not make a person deserving of execution). The parents of police murder victims often speak at rallies and small marches and demand justice through the traditional legal system for the cop or cops who killed their child. They may meet with the Mayor or City Council or even police chief and demand an investigation or arrest. Quite often, they admonish those agitating for resistance to remain peaceful, respectful of police, to work within the system. In some cases, they are threatened by the Oakland Police Department; if they encourage uprising or don't speak out against violence and property destruction, measures will be taken against them.

The parents of those killed by police are experiencing this loss for the first time. They have every right to experience it in their own way and organize in their own way. There is no doubt that they can and should make whatever demands they want of the police and criminal justice system. They should be respected by the community at all times and the parameters that they set for the actions they organize should be honored. However, the loss of their child is not the first loss Oakland and the Bay Area have experienced, nor will it be the last. When police murder young men in the streets, these are not isolated incidents. They are aspects of a system of terrorizing the community into submission. It isn't just the murders of young black men we rail against, it's public strip searches, beatings, sexual assaults, constant degrading verbal harassment, trumped up charges, planted evidence, denial of medical treatment in police custody, gang injunctions, inflated sentencing, and the smug satisfaction on the face of the police as they exact their violence with impunity.

Whenever the police murder a person and the community responds by organizing actions, they are met by some with an accusation that they are "capitalizing" on the death of someone. First of all, the use of the concepts of profit and capital are incredibly ironic here, given the fact that capitalism is dependent on the repression of people of color through violence or threat of violence. Organizers, agitators, rabble rousers, shit disturbers, whatever you may call them, do not "profit" or gain political "capital" through the deaths of others. By the logic of "capitalizing" on people's deaths to give steam to uprising, people in the community could never respond to any abuse or injustice and remain ethical. This is why people say these things- to neutralize our resistance. Furthermore, this mentality creates a division between the community and the family. If the prevailing viewpoint is that agitators are just using their tragedy to further political aims, the family is being further victimized and those acting outside their parameters are now negative figures and much easier to speak out against in the press. In turn, this stifles momentum and makes the likelihood of public outrage over police repression of uprisings lower. Accusations of "profiting" on the loss of community members are false and work against both acts of solidarity with the family and any popular social rebellion against police violence.

The community of Oakland and the Bay Area can and will rise up to resist police violence, and when they do, they will organize their own actions which probably won't involve working with the system or eliminating swear words from chants. They may organize direct actions against the police, police headquarters or City Hall; there may be riots and looting in the streets; people may organize citywide graffiti campaigns; community patrols may be set up to defend against the police. The point is, the community response to police murders won't necessarily look like the actions the family of the victim plans, and that's okay.

It is not disrespectful to the families of police murder victims for the community to go against their wishes in resistance to police violence. Their child's death alone is worth setting things ablaze for, but their child's death alone is not the reason people respond with the passion they do. Oakland weeps and rages for Alan Blueford and also for every other police murder victim, everyone living under threat of police brutality, for unnamed victims, and for those who die when EMS doesn't come. When Oscar Grant was murdered, we rose up not just because of the injustice of his death, but because we know that this happens all the time, all over America whether there are cameras recording or not, and we know that cops will continue to kill because they know they'll get away with it-- that is, until there is some compelling societal change that forces them to stop. We know it won't come from our appeals to the courts and we know it won't come from our appeals to the government.

There is nothing wrong with families framing their struggle solely in terms of their child who was killed; similarly, there is nothing wrong with the community framing their uprising within the context of police murder after police murder with nothing but an increasingly armed and hostile police force killing more young black men on the horizon. It is possible to honor and support family survivors of police murder without losing sight of the war that is being waged by the police against the community. Families can and should seek justice for the incident of violence against their loved one, and in the way they see fit. However, while they are unlikely to experience another act of violence like this, it is only a matter of time before another young man is bleeding to death on the streets of Oakland at the hands of the police.

There are two distinct and valid struggles here: the family's cry for justice and recompense (such as it may be) and the screams from the community to demand OPD stop killing people. The family's work towards justice as they define it belongs solely to them. The fight against police murders and brutality belongs to all who may be next and all who love them.

UCPD Raids Occupy the Farm

From Occupy the Farm:

Albany, CA - Well over 100 UCPD and Alameda County Sheriffs officers, armed with less-than-lethal impact-force projectiles, 36" batons, and pepper-ball guns, arrested nine people at the Gill Tract Farm near 7 AM on Monday morning. Of the nine that were arrested, two were watering plants on the agricultural land and seven were watching the police from San Pablo Avenue.

The Gill Tract Farmers Collective has called for a reconvergence at the Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin Ave., at 5 PM tomorrow.

More info and updates over at Hyphenated Republic. Journalist Susie Cagle (who took the photos below) confirms that as of a couple hours ago there have been 9 arrests. Arrestees are being taken to Santa Rita jail. The UC Berkeley administration has released a statement about the raid, declaring that "the involvement of law enforcement is required to secure our fundamental property rights and protect a core value that is an indivisible part of who we are: academic freedom." In other words, UCPD is the condition of possibility for academic freedom.

UCR Symposium: Policing and Protest

From a comrade down south: "We've been holding a series of symposiums over the past month here at UCR on policing and state violence. We are holding the third and final event of the series. Angela Davis, Gina Dent, Dylan Rodriguez, Randall Williams and a bunch of other really really good speakers are going to talk about the police, getting cops off campuses, alternative models of community safety, etc."

On "Non-Affiliates" in the Reynoso/Kroll Report

The Reynoso/Kroll Report [pdf] has shed new light on the striking (though by no means unexpected) malice, stupidity, incompetence, and immaturity of the UC Davis administration and police department. Mistakes occurred at every step of decision making, from the senior administrators of the so-called "Leadership Team" to the responses of individual cops on the ground. In reality, though, it's probably too generous to call these command failures "mistakes" -- they indicate something else, a sort of willful antipathy combined with authoritarian paternalism directed toward the student body by Chancellor Katehi, her "Leadership Team," and the UC Davis administration in general.

It is with the specter of the "non-affiliate" that this authoritarianism manifests itself most clearly. To state this argument in stronger terms: the "non-affiliate" is the central element that both shapes the administrative gaze and reveals its operative logic. Structurally, the "non-affiliate" plays a similar role to the "outside agitator" (a figure that has for its part also made some significant appearances in recent East Bay struggles), those excluded bodies that transgress the constitutive boundaries of a particular political formation or community. What is at stake in the definition of the "non-affiliate" is a spatial politics of both inclusion and exclusion, since by defining who is excluded this language at the same time defines who is included. To the extent that the target of protesters at the UC and beyond has been precisely the privatization of public education, these protests -- which have consistently faced repression at the hands and batons of UCPD -- are about redefining the spatial logic of inclusion/exclusion that drives the decision-making of the UC administration.

The Kroll report contains a fascinating set of statements culled from interviews conducted with the high-level UC Davis administrators involved in making the decision to send in the cops:

In planning its response to Occupy-related activism, the Leadership Team discussed the presence of “non-affiliates” in the Occupy group. According to Chancellor Katehi, “We had noticed that this group, this year specifically, has people -- even when they came to Mrak -- who were not students.” “We were worried at the time about that because the issues from Oakland were in the news and the use of drugs and sex and other things, and you know here we have very young students . . . we worried especially about having very young girls and other students with older people who come from the outside without any knowledge of their record . . . if anything happens to any student while we’re in violation of policy, it’s a very tough thing to overcome.”

According to Vice Chancellor Meyer, “our context at the time was seeing what's happening in the City of Oakland, seeing what's happening in other municipalities across the country, and not being able to see a scenario where [a UC Davis Occupation] ends well . . . Do we lose control and have non-affiliates become part of an encampment? So my fear is a long-term occupation with a number of tents where we have an undergraduate student and a non- affiliate and there's an incident. And then I'm reporting to a parent that a non-affiliate has done this unthinkable act with your daughter, and how could we let that happen?” (Kroll, pp. 27-28; emphasis added)

The language of the administration depicts the "non-affiliate" as a highly sexualized, racialized, and criminalized body, a foreign, contaminating body, a body that does not belong, that, like a cancer, presents a clear and present danger, that must be quickly identified and surgically removed. As Elizabeth Freeman writes,

[T]his is a public, land-grant university, whose mandate is to be open and accessible and to serve the people. All California residents, indeed all residents of the U.S., are “affiliates” of the UC system. The Morrill Act, granting the land for land-grant universities, also contained legislation that authorized the federal government to systematically steal Native American lands by interfering with both Native American and Mormon systems of kinship and inheritance. Thus most of us are in the first place the outsiders occupying these tracts, our very presence here legitimated by the government’s enforcement of Protestant norms of gender, sexuality, and kinship. Second, since the Americas were settled, the discourse of rape has been used to terrorize people of color as potential rapists, and to limit the freedoms of white women as potential victims. I imagine that any female participants in the Occupy protests would find Vice Chancellor’s remarks patronizing in the extreme. Third, the rhetoric of “Save Our Children” has been a pernicious part of anti-gay movements since at least Anita Bryant’s 1977 campaign against legislation prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in Miami. It was part of Proposition 8. Anyone knowing anything about the history of anti-gay organizing in this country cannot fail to see that invoking the specter of the violated child is a right-wing tactic.

The specter of the “stranger” raping the young has been used to legitimize all kinds of violence. I cannot accept leaders who would mobilize it to defend the use of force against political protest.

Similarly, Nathan Brown writes,

Ah, once again, “the City of Oakland,” so close to the City of Davis, and yet so far. What sort of people might one find there? But is it not the case that what was actually happening in the City of Oakland and other municipalities was egregious police violence against peaceful demonstrators -- including the near-killing of protester Scott Olsen in Oakland on October 25? And what is it, exactly, that our tepid Vice Chancellor has in mind when he refers to “this unthinkable act” that might transpire between an undergraduate and a "non-affiliate"? Does he mean rape? It seems this is either a concept he does not understand (“with your daughter,” he says) or a word he is unable to use in a sentence. But perhaps he just means “sex and other things”? Perhaps the very notion that an undergraduate -- and a “daughter” no less -- might have sex with a “non-affiliate” is an unthinkable act in the view of our painstakingly upright administrators. Confronted with the cultivated ambiguity of the Vice Chancellor's formulation, I suppose we can conclude that when you don't know what you're talking about, it's best to equivocate.

In brief, all that the pathetic and infantile discourse of the “Leadership Team” has to offer in its defense is the danger of sex and drugs, of “older people,” and the terribly frightening specter of “Oakland.” One needn’t look far to find an identical sexist, paternalist, pseudo-moralistic discourse deployed in the most unbearably racist, xenophobic contexts. It is always the same thing with authoritarian bureaucrats who send in police to guard the young and innocent against those who “come from the outside”: they are more than willing to sanction brutal violence to buttress whatever obscene fantasy of purity serves as their faulty moral compass.

As Freeman and Brown effectively demonstrate, the report points to something that cannot be fixed by implementing some policy or other, clearer guidelines for crowd-control, a more effective organizational structure for the pathetic "Leadership Team," or sanctions of individual police officers for their brutal oversteps. Even in the few cases where they are laid out clearly and forcefully, such policy recommendations would represent piecemeal attempts to manage the symptom of a problem that runs much deeper. The problem has to do, rather, with a particular way of seeing the world, with the administrative gaze. What activates the administration's response, its rapid and reflexive turn to its repressive arm, the UCDPD, is the shimmering and intangible image of students as "very young [white] girls" threatened by outsiders, "older people" from "Oakland." At the same time, it is precisely the student's abstract nature in the eyes of the administration that enables and rationalizes the violent assault against its real, flesh-and-blood counterparts.

This authoritarian paternalism -- Vice Chancellor Meyer even refers to UCD students as "my children" in his statement to the Kroll investigators (p. 39) -- also has a legal significance that so far has received somewhat less attention. One of the most striking parts of the Kroll report is the widespread confusion among UC administrators and their police counterparts about the legal basis for the police action. The report identifies three legal justifications that were given for the raid. The first is a subsection of California Penal Code Section 647, which reads "Every person who commits any of the following acts is guilty of disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor: (e) Who lodges in any building, structure, vehicle, or place, whether public or private, without the permission of the owner or person entitled to the possession or in control of it." Students who were arrested on the day of the pepper-spraying were charged with this, though the DA later opted not to press charges. Not coincidentally, it's the same Section (though a different subsection) with which the Davis Dozen are being charged by the Yolo County DA. (It turns out that this particular subsection was originally intended to "criminaliz[e] African American civil rights protests in the 1960s.") Since the arrests were made in the afternoon, however, the point here is that "it is not clear that the arrestees were, in fact, connected to any of the tents or had in fact 'lodged' on University property" (Kroll, p. 112). Likewise, the second legal basis for the police action was a UCD policy prohibiting "overnight camping" on university grounds. Again, since the arrests took place in the afternoon, this policy is entirely irrelevant.

The third and most significant legal basis for the police action circles back to the figure of the "non-affiliate." The report cites a letter from Senior Campus Counsel Michael Sweeney to the Kroll investigators. Dated January 13, this retrospective letter contains the clearest statement from the UCD administration as to its official position on the legality of the action: "The law that most clearly applies is California Code of Regulations, title 5, section 100005, enclosed, which prohibits non-affiliates from camping on University property." "Thus," the Kroll report continues, "in response to questions about the legal basis for the police action the administration cites legal authority that only applies to non-affiliates" (p. 29).

The "non-affiliate" stands at the heart of the (il)legality of the police operation, whose entire premise was the abundance of "non-affiliates" insidiously dispersed throughout the student body on the day in question. Chief Spicuzza stated that "her officers had told her that 80 percent of the people out there weren't students, that we had non-affiliates here" (Kroll, p. 56); while "Officer F" reported that "through conversation with the occupants, it was determined that the majority were NOT affiliated with the University [but were] part of the 'Occupy' movement" (Kroll, p. 38). The absence of "non-affiliates" -- or at least the administration's incapacity to demonstrate a "non-affiliate" presence -- means that not only the arrests but very nearly everything the police did on that day was illegal: "Without the legal authority to demand that the tents be removed, the police lose the legal authority for much of what subsequently transpired on November 18, including the issuance of an order to disperse and the declaration of an unlawful assembly" (Kroll, p. 110).

Like the "outside agitator," the "gang member," the "prisoner," the "illegal alien," and the "terrorist," the "non-affiliate" marks the limit of the rule of law. But this limit is constantly being contested. Through direct actions like occupations, pickets, and barricades, we generate new lines of care, affinity, and solidarity that reconfigure these boundaries of inclusion/exclusion. On one hand, the UC administration pushes poorer students and students of color off our campuses while replacing them with corporate and financial capital. On the other hand, the anti-privatization movement pushes capital off campus while repurposing and opening up the university's spaces and resources for everyone -- not just for the benefit of the administrators and police who, in this age of austerity, make our lives increasingly miserable, precarious, and violent.

FOR A UNIVERSITY OF NON-AFFILIATES
NO COPS / NO BOSSES / NO CAPITAL

UCPD Pushed Alameda County DA to File Criminal Charges against UC Berkeley Protesters

A quick update on the charges filed by the Alameda County District Attorney against thirteen November 9 protesters -- students, faculty, and community members -- that gives us a better picture about how this whole thing went down. The Chronicle reports that UCPD actively though secretly pressured the DA to go forward with these charges (and, we might reasonably assume, to request the stay-away orders as well) four months after the fact.

Campus police officers . . . took a more private approach to get their message to the district attorney.

They called Ron Cottingham, president of the 62,000-strong Peace Officers Research Association of California, the most powerful police group in the state, and asked him to call the district attorney.

During the subsequent conversation with Chief Assistant District Attorney Kevin Dunleavy, Cottingham was told that no decision had been made, and that, yes, the police would be listened to as well.

Apparently, the cops were pissed off by Chancellor Birgeneau's vacuous letter to the DA, which politely asked the DA to "be sensitive to the context of the campus environment and to the strong feelings this has raised on campus."

No doubt, these are strong words. As is often the case, however, what the letter doesn't say is more revealing than what it does. Birgeneau's letter in no way demanded the charges be dropped. In fact, he goes out of his way to emphasize that the decision rests solely with the DA: "We do not have access to the evidence reviewed by your office showing the actions of individuals, and are not taking a definitive position regarding the appropriateness of individual charges." A convenient suggestion, from the perspective of the administration -- just as they always try to divert protesters' energy by sending them on "a slow boat to Sacramento," their PR strategy is inevitably based on shifting the blame off of themselves and onto other independent actors.

But if we take Birgeneau's words at face value for a second (it's so hard to do, we know, but bear with us just for a second), we are left with the disturbing possibility that UCPD is actually running the show, with literally no accountability whatsoever to the UC administration.

In the end, these details confirm what we wrote last week:

As we've seen recently at UC Berkeley, with the filing of criminal charges as well as stay-away orders against a number of prominent student protesters, UC administrators willingly collaborate with the offices of their respective DAs. In order to do this, the administration sends UCPD to actively search out information ("evidence") against student protesters, which is then forwarded to the DA. At times, this evidence has come from the medical records of students who had sought treatment at University Health Services after being assaulted by the police themselves.

And that's why we say NO COPS NO BOSSES!

Criminal Charges To Be Filed Against UC Davis Bank Protesters

A little over than a week ago, the UC Davis Faculty Association circulated a petition in opposition to the decision of the UC Davis administration to forward information about its students involved in the highly successful US Bank protest to the District Attorney. The petition quotes from an official statement regarding the bank closure:

As of today (March 16), UC Davis police had forwarded six cases to the Yolo County district attorney’s office, recommending prosecution for violating Penal Code sections that make it a misdemeanor to ‘willfully and maliciously’ obstruct the free movement of any person on any street, sidewalk or other public place, or to intentionally interfere with any lawful business.

Mike Cabral, assistant chief deputy district attorney, said March 15 that the district attorney’s office had not yet completed its review of the case files—and that a decision on whether to prosecute is likely to come Monday or Tuesday (March 19 or 20). If the decision is made to go forward, the district attorney’s office will notify the suspects by mail, ordering them to appear in court.

Today, we find that not six but 12 protesters will likely face criminal charges [Update: more from the Davis Vanguard here]:

Misdemeanor charges will likely be filed against 12 people connected to the on-campus U.S. Bank protests, according to an email circulated among UC Davis administration Thursday evening. The protests were part of an effort to get US Bank off campus, which is eventually what happened.

We have a call out to the Yolo County District Attorney's Office and will update when we have more information. Here's the email:

Yolo Co. D.A's office public information rep has confirmed that misdemeanor charges have been filed against 12 individuals in connection with the U.S. Bank protests. Letters are in the mail.

The Yolo County District Attorney's office has notified UC Davis that the D.A.'s office today mailed letters to 12 individuals, ordering them to appear for booking at the Yolo County Jail and then to appear at a later date for arraignment in Yolo County Superior Court on misdemeanor charges related to their alleged activities earlier this year at the U.S. Bank branch at UC Davis.

Starting in January of this year, these individuals frequently obstructed access to the bank branch, located in the Memorial Union at UC Davis. The bank chose to close during many of these events, and, in a recent letter to account holders, announced the campus branch to be "officially closed" as of Feb. 28.

As we've seen recently at UC Berkeley, with the filing of criminal charges as well as stay-away orders against a number of prominent student protesters, UC administrators willingly collaborate with the offices of their respective DAs. In order to do this, the administration sends UCPD to actively search out information ("evidence") against student protesters, which is then forwarded to the DA. At times, this evidence has come from the medical records of students who had sought treatment at University Health Services after being assaulted by the police themselves.

What this means, it appears, is that the Office of Student Conduct (OSC), which from 2009-2011 was charged with the quasi-legal repression of student protesters, is being superseded, its work passed off to the criminal (justice) system proper. This move, of course, is part of a broader trend that is becoming apparent at universities across the country: the militarization of campus space and of university life at large.

(Above video from yesterday's protest at the UC Regents' meeting at UCSF Mission Bay. Police arrested three protesters.)

UC Regents Meeting, 3/29

From the Daily Cal:

SAN FRANCISCO – Three UCLA students were detained by UCPD Thursday morning during the final day of the UC Board of Regents meeting, following an interruption of the meeting during the public comment section that stalled the meeting for about 40 minutes.

The three students — who have been identified by a UCSF press release as Andrew Harkness-Newton, Cheryl Deutsch and Mathew Sandoval — were arrested by UCPD in the hall outside the meeting conference room. The meeting was briefly interrupted when board chair Sherry Lansing attempted to end the public comment section, which started around 8:35 a.m.

Audience members asked for an extension and for additional speakers to speak who were supposedly signed up on a public comment list. When Lansing said she could not extend the public comment period, audience members began a mic check, which then led to some board members leaving the room.

UCPD then arrived and surrounded the group protesting in the audience, asking them to leave the main conference room.

Police officers followed protesters outside the room, where a confrontation between police and protesters occurred and the students were arrested. Charges are pending against the students, according to the UCSF press release.

UC Berkeley Tang Center Cooperates with UCPD [Updated]

We've all seen the video. On November 9, UCPD and Alameda County Sheriffs used batons to beat up and arrest students and faculty who were protesting on Sproul Plaza as part of Occupy Cal. In what has become one of the more infamous examples of violence, one cop grabbed English professor Celeste Langan by the hair and threw her to the ground, where she was arrested. But Langan's were not the most serious injuries -- as a result of the attacks, demonstrators suffered everything from nerve damage to broken ribs.

After being beaten up by UC Berkeley's police force (and invited guests), some of these students went to the Tang Center, the university's health center, for treatment. And then this happened:

In the immediate aftermath of the November 9th protests, the UCPD solicited -- and received -- the medical records of protesters who sustained injuries at the hands of the police. These records were released by the UC Berkeley Tang Center and local hospitals without the knowledge or consent of the patients; they were then used to identify protesters. The fact that medical records can be turned over to the UCPD in order to incriminate victims of police violence raises serious questions about the ethics of medical care on the UC-Berkeley campus. As the many videos taken on November 9th show, students and faculty were beaten simply because they were there. When evidence of physical harm at the hands of the police is immediately read as culpability, our university has effectively criminalized protest. By funneling confidential records to the UCPD and outside bodies, our medical system corroborated this view. What university policies allowed such breaches of confidentiality to happen?

Talk about the administration's favorite bureaucratic expression: "health and safety." We already knew that UCPD works closely with other campus institutions, such as the Office of Student Conduct, and also collaborates, as we've seen from the recently filed criminal charges against November 9 protesters, with the Alameda County District Attorney. But now we know they have a working relationship with University Health Services. And this is not necessarily the result of university policy. According to the ACLU, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), which you would assume would protect the privacy of your medical records, in fact does no such thing:

Q: Can the police get my medical information without a warrant?

A: Yes. The HIPAA rules provide a wide variety of circumstances under which medical information can be disclosed for law enforcement-related purposes without explicitly requiring a warrant. These circumstances include (1) law enforcement requests for information to identify or locate a suspect, fugitive, witness, or missing person (2) instances where there has been a crime committed on the premises of the covered entity, and (3) in a medical emergency in connection with a crime.

In other words, law enforcement is entitled to your records simply by asserting that you are a suspect or the victim of a crime.

This is a very important point, something that anyone involved in any kind of demonstration should keep in mind. By seeking out medical attention, we may be putting ourselves at risk. This is not to say that one should never go to a clinic or a hospital. Not by any means. But it's important to understand the possible consequences. At the same time, this knowledge underscores the importance of street medics, of learning how to heal ourselves and our comrades as best we can.

[Update 1, 8:09pm 3/13]: The ACLU of Northern California has denounced the charges against the November 9 protesters, and further confirms the collusion between UCPD and the UCB health services: "We also know that at least 2 of the students sought medical treatment at a University health facility, which then handed information about them to the alleged assailant, UCPD."

[Update 2, 9:10am 3/16]: And now the Chronicle has followed up: "Tang gave police more than a dozen reports of injuries from Nov. 9, police said. It's what happened afterward that compounded the mistrust, students say. Several of the injured . . . were contacted by police and asked to answer questions about what had happened. Two also received letters from the District Attorney's office that they were being charged with 'resisting' and 'obstructing.'" The Daily Cal has an article too that quotes this post.

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.

UCB Banner Drop

FUCK UCPD
SERVE & PROTECT DZ NUTZ
FUCK CE-"LIE"-A

Cops and Cowards: Reflections on the Recent UC Regent Protests

[Update 1/23: the original post has been slightly edited for clarity; the same changes have been made below]

From anti-imperialist inc.:

The event on Thursday, January 19 at UC Riverside was a strategic experiment for Southern California organizers and nothing that occurred should be taken at face value and assumed useless. What the press hasn’t been showing is the most important point in the entire protest: when students drove the police into a corner and off the campus in the protest’s closing moments. An action that We can most definitely learn from...

i am not particularly concerned with a majority of the activity that occurred Thursday, January 19th at the UC Regents meeting in Riverside, because the energetic ad hoc efforts of the student organizers from all of the participating UC’s speaks for itself. The day represented a solid advancement for Southern California student activism. It is an advancement that has been growing and will hopefully continue to fuel a sense of urgency for Our struggle.

What i am concerned with in this essay, is what has been lacking from the critiques of Thursday the 19th: creativity, tactical analysis and above all: a look into the events that unfolded while the cops still maintained their presence on campus post-meeting. This moment, for me, crystalized an idea that has been floating around the UC community/blogosphere for some time now, the struggle cannot only pertain to austerity and fee hikes, but the opportunity has been widening for making domestic militarization a central focus of Our praxis in the student movement. A decision that has the potential to connect the struggles of students fighting tuition increases and eroding access to education, to the struggles in the prisons, to the struggles anti-violence groups face, with the struggles of immigrants rights groups and with the struggles of communities across the state.

Earlier accounts of police violence at the Davis and Berkeley campuses have been vainly provincialized, described as epic calamities – where moral outrage was merely the result of police crossing the boundaries of whiteness. So with this understanding, i do not want to dismiss the importance of acknowledging the privileged perceptions amongst the liberals and a majority of UC advocates, as a barrier between understanding modes of domination in the US and within the UC community itself. This understanding is the basis of my politics and this essay should be read with an assumed understanding of the context in which it is written from.

It should be also addressed that this is not an attempt towards a superficial inclusion (occupier “semantics”), let alone a crass stab at progressive coalition, it is a call for a genuine movement against domestic militarism, institutional racism, and all that is imbedded within the logic of Western law enforcement. It should be made very clear that a militarized police presence is, nonetheless, the divide between Us students and any dream of completely controlling Our educations. The police were the physical wall between Us and the Regents on Thursday the 19th, they were the lurking force that surveilled organizers prior to the meeting, and outside of the University they are the physical embodiment of all that is so completely fucked in Our society.

South Exit Occupied by Students

Book Block Holdin' it Down

First off, i want to make clear that reflections on the event’s engagement with the police cannot be allowed to fall victim to the same institutional press coverage and useless chronological recaps of events. We are battling on a new terrain. Many of the Southern California campuses have never seen political activity of this magnitude, so Our organizing efforts have to be fresh and creative. As well, Our reflections on actions like this need to be conducted in a manner contradictory to the norm. If We are going to conquer the new terrain before Our oppressors, We must squeeze every drop of creative and theoretical juice possible out of the body of information generated from Our actions. Whether it be strategic, theoretical, artistic or humorous, alternative forms of reflection will always have the potential to breathe new life into the praxis of SoCal student activism.

So in this manner, i do not want to make this piece a summary on the entire event itself, but rather a conceptual analysis on its conclusion and epilogue. Our practice of protest in Southern California is embarking on something this region has never experienced, but with that comes the responsibility of not falling into the patterns of the system inherent in the liberal-conservative SoCalian University atmosphere.

To briefly summarize the conclusion of the protest: During the majority of the meeting demonstrators blocked ALL three possible exits a number of exits the Regents could use and their parking lot entrance/exit as well, shifting from exits to exit throughout the course of the day, unfortunately never occupying them at the same time. However, once further police violence erupted and the riot police began kettling demonstrators, folks got caught up in their emotions and in the spectacle of violence – serving as the initial distraction the regents needed to slip out of the third (least occupied) exit.





Note for further actions: it is an extremely hard thing to do, but organizers must be able to step outside of the moment and see past the short sightedness that everyone else inevitably has when in protest. Constantly preparing for what is going to happen next is key and it is an imperative that organizers try not to get too caught-up in the action itself. Students did an extremely good job of this on the 19^th up until the masses of riot police came trucking in from the north side of the campus (Context: at this point everyone in the event was exhausted, mentally and physically... It was quite understandable).

The distraction only held temporarily, and protestors rushed after the regents as their vans drove away. In the unfolding action, the protesters at UC Riverside organically regrouped. Hundreds of students lined and then cornered the police forces that previously escorted the regents from the meeting.

When the Regent’s presence disappeared completely, the legitimacy of police authority was emptied of all its value. A mere hour after police kettled, shot and arrested demonstrators, the power relation had reversed, and a mass of students cornered the police into a state of tactical retreat.

This was a revolutionary moment – a moment beginning when the chants started changing from rhetorical protest clichés to “Leave Our Campus!” and “Fuck the Police!”

Southern Californian organizers should not take this moment for granted. This is how Our movement will succeed. If We see the police and the Regents as being no different from one and other – two sides of the same coin. The movement towards taking back Our schools cannot physically materialize (literally) into anything unless We confront the issue of the police. Hence, a radical movement that truly believes education is a right. The police are a hindrance on Our ability to speak and learn freely.

One fellow protester and i rationalized the events as they unfolded before Our eyes as “going overboard,” and at face value they did seem likely to be just that. But in reflection, the empowerment this moment gave to a campus on the cusp of mind-numbing political apathy and eternal “fratability,” the final confrontation is not something to be taken for granted. So to clarify what “going overboard” really is: an example would be the regents escalating Our tuition year after year after year after year.

The cornering of the police was a revolutionary moment that cannot be dismissed as anything other. To most, revolution sounds chaotic, and revolution seems messy. To be honest as i reflect on the epilogue of the protest, it is the very sloppiness and chaos of the closing hour, that made this day so beautiful!

Prison abolitionist Ruth Wilson Gilmore articulates power as being not “a thing” but rather “a capacity composed of active and changing relationships enabling a person, group, or institution to compel others to do things they would not do on their own” (247). In this moment the students acknowledged their own capacity for power. In the events that unfolded after the Regents’ cowardly exit, the police lost their legitimacy as a presence of authority on the student’s campus, and proved that when students unite they are a force to be reckoned with.

Instances of police infiltration into privileged environments are as productive of moments, as they are counterproductive. How We reflect on them is the difference between creating a movement against police violence that understands the entirety of the struggle, or having it concede to the coercive forces of progressive politics and liberal who-rah-rah. The student movement must understand that police violence is structural and proliferates daily not even 100 yards away from most University campuses. In fact, a dialogue on real police brutality and real police violence (legalized racist murder per say) can even lead into possible discussions on how the institution of the University is unnatural and coercive in itself (though I’ll reserve that discussion for another time).

Our generation’s student movement is growing, but the structural imbalance of power that the few who make decisions hold; whether it is in the realm of the pedagogical, economic or the state’s monopoly on violence, entails a Praxis that must involve more than hikes and cuts. Want to knock power off its pedestal? Then aim at its pillars to get to the top.

Not one person who confronted the police that day can say the events on the 19^th didn’t change their perception of the University. For a display of anger to occur at this magnitude, in the historical and geographical conditions in which they existed: a campus on the remote outskirts of the geographical and ‘Political’ UC system, should be seen as a catalyst for activist organizing on Southern California campuses. And above all it should serve as the beginning of the dismantling of the historical and physical walls that divide Us and the possibilities of controlling Our own education. Walls which encompass the Regents, the Police, the bloated salaries of administration and the fee hikes/loans (*cough* chains) that hold us down.

The goal is not “thoughtful” piecemeal reform with the Regents, which of course is going to garner national media attention Chancellor White... um duhh... calls for reform always fit in well on propaganda networks. It is total control of Our educational opportunity and the means for learning that we want. On January 13th there was no loss in the real struggle to defend education, because the real struggle isn’t to defend it, but to revolutionize it. Wanting “engaging” and “provocative” discussions with the Regents can only get so much. The goal is to end the hierarchical control of education and the defeat the family structure of Our higher education system, that as UCR’s student body president once said (roughly paraphrasing): “students should be the children, and the administrator should be like their parents.” Having someone telling you how to learn is a little different then someone teaching you how to learn. So don’t blur the two prez. Free education! Free the UC’s! Embrace radical pedagogy! And ftp.

Statement from the Anthropology Library Occupation

[Update 1/20 9:02 am: Check out Zunguzungu's reportback from the library occupation.]

Via Occupy Cal:

We love our libraries and are here to protect them. Libraries are critically important for excellent education for all. We students, faculty, and community members collectively have decided to occupy the Anthropology Library at UC Berkeley to protest the dismantling of the library system on campus and public education as a whole.

We chose to occupy this space because the Anthropology library is a recent victim of extreme service cuts. The hours of operation are being cut from the previous, already slim, 9am-6pm to the current 12pm-5pm, because the university has not taken the necessary steps to sufficiently staff the library. The multiple attacks on campus libraries are a reflection of privatization and the devaluation of the public education system.

We are here to reverse this process. We call on the administration to take immediate action to hire another full-time librarian to ensure full access to this valuable resource.

The administration may claim that there are insufficient funds, but in reality these resources exist, but their allocation by UC administrators and the state does not adequately reflect the values of excellent public education. Why have the UC Regents continued to approve 21% increases in administration salaries, while students are being denied access to their libraries? Why are the taxes of the 1% so low while essential social services are being cut across the state and country?

We stand in solidarity with the Occupy movement as a whole and the protestors at UC Riverside who were met with violence in their attempt to protest the austerity policies of the UC Regents, Sacramento, and Washington D.C.

Defend our libraries and schools. Occupy together.

--- The Anthropology Library Occupation
January 19, 2012

The Getaway + Other Videos

UCR Book Bloc Disrupts Regents' Meeting

A beautiful book bloc, appropriately featuring Foucault's Discipline and Punish, faced off today against the cops called in to defend the UC regents. The LA Times takes a good picture, but writes a terrible article:

Two demonstrators were arrested for crossing the police lines at the Student Union Building, according to UC Riverside spokesman James Grant. No one was reported seriously injured in the incidents, although one campus police officer suffered minor cuts on his hand from a demonstrator’s sign, Grant said.

One campus police officer suffered minor paper cuts on his pinky. Certainly, there were no students beaten with police batons or shot with rubber bullets.

Clearly, UC officials did not want a repeat of the controversial incident in November when UC Davis police pepper-sprayed student demonstrators at that campus.

Clearly, UC officials told the police to forgo the pepper spray and go straight to rubber bullets.

Fuck the police and their stenographers in the mainstream media. The real reporting's from our comrades at UC Rebel Radio:

The UC Regents' Meeting at UC Riverside began early today. Most mainstream media were inside the HUB building in which the Regents gathered. While we waited outside, reports from inside were telling that the public comment session was often interrupted by the Regents in their failed attempts to appease the student protesters who only had 1 minute each to express themselves. One comment was that regent Sherry Lansing tried to address the students by the usual means of misdirecting the students efforts towards the capital. The reports were that her comment was "useless and boring". After the public comment session was done with, the students offered their own meeting via mic check. But the Regents did nothing but hide in another room with very few people allowed in from the public. Police remained inside but did not move to arrest anybody. At around 1 p.m. everybody was running from the front doors of the HUB to the back doors through which the Regents were supposed to make their quick escape. Students took over a staircase and then another as police in riot gear blocked their way. Administrators were seen at the windows and balconies of the buildings while talking on their cell phones, taking video, and laughing at the people below them.

The police issued several orders to disperse and every time the students booed them and asked them "Why do we need to disperse? Give us a reason!" But the police only managed to repeat the same statement over and over. At one point the Chancellor of UC Riverside, Timothy P. White was seen on the balcony and was confronted by students asking to be allowed into the building and to the meeting. Upon being recognized, he quickly left the balcony and went back inside the building to never be seen again.

Later in the day, at around 3:30 p.m. the students were notified by scouts that the police were gathering in the back to make way for the exit of the Regents. Students split their ranks and took both exits, but no Regents were seen. At 4:30 p.m. (give or take) the Riverside Police Department sent in re-enforcements and the police line started their push back on the back side of the HUB building next to the parking lot.

Rubber bullets and pepper balls were fired. The police was chased over to the other side of the building. Over 5 people were arrested and there was a rumor that a fence was thrown at the riot police.

Word is that this face-off is still on-going.

We will keep you updated.

[Note: most the videos that were originally posted below have been moved to this post.]

[Note #2: for a more detailed analysis of the day from a comrade down south, check out these reflections.]

Oscar Grant Memorial March, 1/1

From Indybay:

January 1st, 2012: Oscar Grant 3rd Anniversary Memorial March and Rally

Stand Up to the Watchdogs of the 1%--Your Local Police Department!

1pm March from Oscar Grant Plaza at 14th & Broadway to Rally at Fruitvale BART

A major political movement was launched on January 1st 2009. Its catalyst was the police killing of Oscar Grant, a young, unarmed Black father executed by the BART police. This murder awakened a sleeping giant—Bay Area residents angry and frustrated at the continued abuse of power perpetrated by law enforcement. Oscar and all the young people that were attacked and terrorized by the BART police that night, in addition to the many victims of police brutality in the greater Bay Area, have become ingrained in our collective memory. Their lives are the unspeakable price we pay to live in a society based on racial injustice.

Not only do police serve the needs of the 1%, they have always existed to put down resistance in communities of color. But when other BART riders posted their video recordings of the murder of Oscar by BART officer Johannes Mehserle, the internationally-viewed footage led to a new form of resistance: Community Copwatching. Cellphones, cameras and a popular upsurge brought the first arrest, trial and conviction of a white officer for killing a Black man.

The movement that touched ground in January 2009--the organizing to address police terrorism--laid the ground work for the movement against the 1% here in Oakland. The polarizing disparity of wealth and the numerous police killings in our communities are inextricably linked. To unravel a system that forecloses homes, pushes our families into poverty and criminalizes our youth while gentrifying our neighborhoods, we need to not only address a system based on greed but a system that needs police brutality to survive and thrive through state terror.

On this 3rd anniversary of Oscar’s murder, lets take to the streets to show that Oscar Grant is gone but not forgotten. Oscar lives on in the memories of his family and friends and in our resistance to the police.

For more information or to speak contact: oscargrantcommittee [at] gmail.com

Sponsors:

Oscar Grant Committee
Occupy Oakland
Bring the Ruckus

On the UCPD's 5150 detention of Alex Kim (Update: Alex has been released)

Update (11:31, Sunday evening): Alex has been released from Alta Bates.

***

Last Wednesday evening, as I sat on the Mario Savio Steps in front of Sproul Hall waiting for the Peoples’ Police Review Board meeting to begin, Alex Kim greeted me and silently handed me a small flower. Each time I visit the site of our Occupy Cal encampment, I look forward to seeing him and hearing him play the violin or just adding a bit of friendliness to our little community. Alex has continuously occupied our encampment since the day it was erected, and beginning in late November, he took a voluntary vow of silence as a means of nonviolent protest.

At 4:38 p.m. on Sunday afternoon, Alex was approached by UCPD officers who grabbed and handcuffed him before taking him away. According to several witnesses, police officers responded that he was arrested under Section 5150 of the California Welfare Institutions Code, which states, “When any person, as a result of mental disorder, is a danger to others, or to himself or herself, or gravely disabled,” he or she can be taken to “a facility designated by the county and approved by the State Department of Mental Health as a facility for 72-hour treatment and evaluation.” In other words, as a result of his choice to remain silent, Alex was deemed mentally unfit. But we understand that this was not the real reason for his arrest; rather, Alex was targeted for his dedication to the Occupy Movement.

As someone who knows Alex, I believe that this is a truly abhorrent abuse of police power—one that threatens all of us with arbitrary and psychologically damaging detentions under the auspices of public safety. Not only have our freedoms of assembly and speech been repressed, but now, even our constitutional right to remain silent is being actively undermined.

-Beezer de Martelly

image from the daily cal.

Yudof's Privatization of the UCPD Investigation

From Rei Terada (on fb):

In appointing LA Police Chief William Bratton to investigate UCPD police brutality and Berkeley law school's Dean Christopher Edley to "to lead an examination of police policies in handling student protests at all 10 UC campuses" (LA Times), Mark Yudof travesties the independent thought and autonomy that students and faculty are now calling for. Bratton has made his career as an advocate of less physically violent police tactics that control and diminish public space in precisely neoliberal terms. The last thing the UC system needs right now is advice on how to make UCPD even more like a contemporary municipal police force. Similarly, Dean Christopher Edley is one of Yudof's closest companions, best known for his end-run against the expansion of online classes in the face of faculty governance policies. A commission run by Edley is the opposite of an independent commission. Everyone who signed the petitions of outrage against the police violence at Davis and Berkeley ought to mobilize against this. (I hope the owners of the petitions can use any emails attached to the petition process to re-contact literally everybody.)

There is one thing that is good about Yudof's move: it makes in the most public of circumstances the same move that he has made throughout his career as a privatizer of public goods. Yudof has done to the UC at every level and in detail the same thing he is doing now: passing off as reform what is actually vulgar cronyism on behalf of the 1%. Now this will be visible to everybody, even far outside the UC -- if we make it so.

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.