Closing Statements in the Irvine 11 Trial

From UC Rebel Radio:

Santa Ana, California - Today court resumed with closing statements in the Irvine 11 10 case. After the jury walked in, the judge took over 45 minutes to instruct the jury as to the procedure of trial and the law including a statement that pertained to "bias", declaring that it shouldn't influence the jury's judgement. The judge also read some of the statements made by the accused during the event in which they protested Israeli Ambassador, Michael Oren's Speech, but curiously the only statements read by the judge where those which called Oren a "murderer" or implied that he was akin to one.

Thereafter, the Prosecution took the stage and proceeded with their sports metaphors as usual (read previous post), arguing that the Irvine 11 had conspired to commit a "heckler's veto" of the Ambassador's Speech in order to "shut down" the event, a word that was used in a fancy overhead display in bold red letters to persuade the jury. The Prosecution then continued to lay out the case as they saw it, declaring that the Irvine 11 were guilty of violating "the rules that apply to society" since they did not heed the admonishment from Prof. Petracca of UC Irvine as he was heard to say the words "Behave yourself" in a video shown from the event. The Prosecution argued that Petracca's words (as well as Chancellor's Michael Drake's brief commentary) were in fact the "implicit customs" and "rules" of the meeting which were supposedly violated by the defendants. The Prosecution stated that the protest was "not freedom" but an example of "Anarchy". The prosecution added, "when you don't follow the law, our community breaks down" and "permitting censorship of ideeers [sic] destroys the marketplace". The Prosecution discussed that the accused could have effected their protest during a Q&A section at the end of Oren's Speech, but that the accused chose to violate the law instead.

Among other statements by the Prosecution, they argued that what happened to President Obama when someone yelled out "You lie" during an address to Congress was a very different case since what happened in Congress was "only two words" by an "individual". Other "evidence" presented by the Prosecution included several pie charts that depicted in black and red the "time" that they believed the protest lasted (as opposed to the time that Oren spoke) in order to show that the accused "substantially" disrupted the meeting. Also, a debriefing video of an unidentified person saying "we pretty much shut them down" was shown as evidence of the "intent" of the protest. Lastly, the Prosecution argued that the accused did "not resist" arrest, because it was part of their "plan" or "conspiracy".

After the Prosecution delivered their closing statement the court went to recess. During this intermission there was a Press Conference outside the courthouse with local leaders from the community in support of the Irvine 11, (See video of press conference, coming soon).

In the afternoon, the court resumed with the closing statements from Defense attorney Dan Mayfield. In his statement, Mayfield expressed that the Prosecution was leading the jury to believe that "when people are arrested they are guilty".Mayfield also argued that the pie charts presented by the Prosecution were inaccurate given that they counted the time "attributable to protesters" in which the crowd was shouting as well as when UC-Irvine Professor, Petracca chose to "hear his own voice" by expressing his "personal embarrassment" to the crowd. Upon this last reference there was the first incidence of clapping in the courtroom. Then laughter came as Mayfield introduced one of the accused as the "world's biggest teddy bears" during the part of his presentation dedicated to show that the protesters indeed had planned to "not resist" the police. Mayfield explained that the accused were very carefully planning to "abide" by the law, a word that was later emphasized by the other defense attorney in closing statements, Reem Salahi. Mayfield argued that if the planning that took place by the Irvine 11 was enough to convict them of "conspiracy" then the planning of the UCPD was also a "conspiracy" as Mayfield recalled a witness testimony from Police Chief, Hennesy stating the fact that there were "metal handcuffs" at the scene prior to the protest. Mayfield added that "Oren himself believed that he was not substantially interfered with" as he recalled Oren's statement "wishing those students" had "remained" in the room (See our previous post on the Irvine 11). Lastly, Mayfield argued that the "rules" or "customs" of the meeting were uncorroborated arguments since neither Petracca nor Drake ever took the stand to verify the meaning of their statements in court. Then Mayfield went on to have a mock witness examination of Drake and Petracca to demonstrate why it was important for them to testify to the accuracy of their statements by asking an empty chair if he [an imaginary Drake] had "other bosses" and whether they interpreted the "rules" and "customs" in the same fashion, as well as an imaginary Petracca, asking him whether he "had something to drink that evening". More laughter filled the packed courtroom (which had to employ over 5 bailiffs by the end of the day). Mayfield closed with a famous e.e. cummings poem to emphasize the importance of language.

Thereafter, Defense attorney Reem Salahi took the podium to address the jury. In her closing statement, Salahi emphasized Mayfield's argument that the UCPD's "plan" to counter the protest was planned in the same fashion as the accused "plan" for the protest. Salahi added that the statements given by UCPD Chief Hennesy were contradictory to evidence since he stated having no "prior knowledge" of a protest, when in UC-Irvine's Dean of Students, Edgar Dormitorio's statement, he mentions having found out about the plan for the protest from the Chief of Police himself. Salahi also mentioned that the Prosecution was relying on other testimony from an unknown subject since the person in the video presentation from the prosecution saying the words "we pretty much shut them down" (in reference to the meeting) could never be identified or ever brought to the courtroom. Salahi also stated that in Dormitorio's own words "no disruption would be allowed", thus violating the right to protest. Salahi then showed a series of videos which portrayed several protests taking place at the UC Irvine campus which were disrupted in the same fashion and in which "police" and "administration" "were present" and no arrest took place, thus emphasizing the disproportionate attention that this case has garnered. To close, Salahi was going to tell a personal anecdote, but the Prosecution objected as to its relevance and the judge sustained the motion. Salahi looked perplexed at first, but then she said, "I guess I can't tell you the story. I got shut down" and the crowd in the courtroom erupted in clapping and cheering.

After she sat, the judge declared a brief recess. When he returned (10 minutes late from the time he set), he admonished the crowd while the jury was still out, saying he would not permit anymore "gesturing". Then he let in the jury and told the crowd to leave and that the case would continue tomorrow morning...

For more information, check out Nora Barrows-Friedman's coverage at the Electronic Intifada.

Some Links from Yesterday's BART Protest

The SF Appeal has a pretty decent roundup of mainstream media links, but an even better one by SFSU journalism student Katherine Grant is here. By far the best report is at the SF Bay Guardian (the worst, as usual, is the drivel from the Chronicle):

Before the banners and bullhorns came out, BART spokesperson Jim Allison told the Guardian that if BART police deemed a gathering inside the unpaid area of the station to be dangerous, "we would ask people to disperse." If they didn't disperse, "we would declare an unlawful assembly." Allison said protesters were free to exercise their first amendment rights to protest inside the areas of the station that don't require a ticket to enter. He said people could do that as long as they were not "interrupting or interfering" with regular service. When the Guardian caught up with Allison after the protest by phone to find out why his statements about the dispersal order were contradicted by police activity, he refused to answer our questions, directing us instead to watch a press conference on the BART website.

"I'm going off duty," he said after calling the Guardian in response to a page, after being asked several times why BART police had not issued a dispersal order before surrounding people and arresting them. "I simply cannot devote the rest of my night to answering your questions."

[...]

Before police closed in, the protest featured some 60 protesters chanting things like, "How can they protect and serve us? The BART police just make me nervous." One banner, from a group called Feminists Against Cops, read, "Disarm BART, Arm Feminists."

Things heated up when the protest got closer to the fare gates, at which point police may have determined that protesters were interfering with service. At one point, police tackled a masked demonstrator to the ground. However, when people were detained, they were not standing directly in front of the fare gates.

Police did not make any public statements indicating that the situation had been deemed unlawful before surrounding the group of detainees, nor did they issue a dispersal order. We were told that we were not free to leave.

While I was detained along with Luke Thomas, a reporter from the popular political Fog City Journal, and freelance reporter Josh Wolf, an officer told us that we were being detained on suspected violation of California Penal Code 369-i, which prohibits interfering with the operations of a railroad.

Thomas phoned Matt Gonzalez, former president of the Board of Supervisors and now a chief attorney with the Public Defender's office, to ask about that law. Gonzalez looked it up and told him that there was an exception to that law which "does not prohibit picketing in the adjacent area of any property" belonging to a railroad. So it would seem that the protesters, along with more than a dozen journalists, were being unlawfully detained. When we put this question to one of the officers who stood holding a nightstick and blocking us in, he refused to address the issue directly, repeating that we weren't free to leave.

Members of the press with San Francisco Police Department issued credentials were made to line up and present their press passes to San Francisco police officers, who had been called in to assist. The police officers took away media's press passes, saying it was SFPD property and could be retrieved later -- which meant that if journalists had opted to stay and cover any further police activity, we would have had no way of presenting credentials to avoid arrest. We were issued Certificates of Release and ushered outside of the station, where it was impossible to see what was happening, and therefore, impossible to do our jobs as reporters.

Meanwhile, over at the Glen Park BART station:

BART spokeswoman Luna Salaver says about a dozen men wearing black hoods smashed fare gates with hammers at the Glen Park station Thursday night. Eight gates were damaged.

The vandals also scrawled the name of Charles Hill at the station. Hill was a transient who was fatally shot by BART police after he allegedly lunged at them with a knife on July 3.

Salaver says BART police are investigating whether the vandalism is tied to a protest earlier Thursday at the Powell Street station — the latest in a series of protests that began after Hill's death.

Here's a statement posted by "Some Bay Area Anarchists" at Indybay:

On the evening of September 8th, 2011 we sabotaged the fare machines, turnstyles and facade of the Glen Park BART station in South San Francisco. Just as we have been inspired by comparable actions of anarchists world wide, we hope to act as a catalyst to incite similar actions against the state and it's apparatuses of control.

Our spray cans dispensed slogans and our hammers shattered screens and ticket readers. We look to each other to find meaning and reject the limiting discourse of rights and free speech as a vehicle for our rage. We communicate this now to denounce the authority of a society that violently represses us every time we step out of line.

All police are the enemy. We articulate this when we choose to honor the lives of Oscar Grant, Charles Hill and Kenneth Harding by fighting for our own lives. This same passion for freedom can be observed from Seattle to Greece to Chile. As anarchists we understand that the social control of transit fares exists in harmony with the deadly enforcement of the physical, emotional, and social desolation of our everyday lives. We aim to interrupt this concert at every feasible opportunity.

The police and the media will spin this event as petty vandalism. Some will condemn us and suggest that violence against property promotes state repression, but we have lost our fear. We do not seek approval from any authority and for this reason we abandon the tired structure of demand.We look to explore our capacity to exemplify our collective abilities and to encourage others to resist in ever more autonomous and uncontrollable ways. Freedom to those arrested at today's Powell Street action. See you at the barricades.

PS: mad props to the wildcat longshoremen of washington. keep it wild

Civil Disobedience and Direct Action

As we emerge from the longest period of mass political demobilization in American history, it would be good to remember some basic, non-electoral forms of dissent which previous generations took for granted and which are currently being employed around the world in places like Chile, Greece, Spain, and Puerto Rico.

After a year of breathless coverage of the Arab Spring, we have seen how most US commentators find it easier to idealize social movements in other countries rather than in their own backyard. As crippling austerity measures take hold in the US, we believe it will be important to open a conversation about forms of political resistance which do not rely upon lobbying, the ballot box, or one more petition on Change.org.

We have collected together some links to online resources which offer basic definitions of civil disobedience, direct action, and beyond. The precise meaning of these terms is the subject of much debate, but please take a moment.



What is civil disobedience?

Why would people engage in civil disobedience in the first place instead of simply voting?



How have mainstream liberal and conservative critics distinguished civil disobedience from other forms of non-electoral political resistance?



What is direct action?

"Spare the Fare"

More info at No Justice No BART.

Update on Chilean Education Protests

Roundup of Links from Tuesday Demo, Etc.

A detailed participant reportback posted on Indybay: Notes Concerning Recent Actions Against the Police. This is by far the best write-up we've seen on the demo:

On Tuesday July 19th, hundreds of people took to the streets of San Francisco in order to demonstrate their rage against the recent murders of Charles Hill and Kenneth Harding in the city by BART police and SFPD respectively. We marched behind a banner reading “they can’t shoot us all; fuck the police” as an expression of our intention that police murder will be met with resistance and retaliation every time they rear their ugly heads in our city.

A statement written by an anti-state, anti-capitalist feminist bloc was distributed during the march:

Women in poor urban communities are often both breadwinners and housewives. They are the ones left behind in the wake of these murders, beatings, and incarcerations, to hold the funerals, pick up the pieces, and fight the fight against their sons’, husbands’, fathers’ murderers... all while still being subject to patriarchal violence, sexual assault, and the de-funding of social services, the cutting of the public sector particularly where it employs or supports women of color. The police targeting of young men of color is a phenomenon that ripples outward and effects the gendered structure of poor communities, that affects women as well as men, but in a different form.

An open letter to SFPD and BART police, from Surf City Revolt:

Dear SFPD and the BART Police,

Please do not consider yourselves special. We hate you this is true, but it does not come from our hearts. It comes from the entirety of our beings. Our lives our antagonistic to yours in every way shape and form. We did not develop a feeling of disdain for you over time but under capital and the state apparatus we were born enemies. This is why San Francisco was shaken like an earthquake on Tuesday. As police you exist to protect the relations of capital, the dominance of the state, the reproduction of apparatuses meant to enforce our subservience and docility. Capital depends on your existence for its protection. However we exist to see your total elimination. We are the ones who produce value for capital. Who work for others. Who pay rent. Who are unemployed. Who are students. Who are women. Who are queers. Who are brown. Who are hooligans looking for fun. Who evade fare and die trying. Who black out on BART platforms and get killed for it. Who are unarmed and executed on New Years just trying to get home. Who have nothing in this world. We are the elements you either must be scared of, prepared for or both. Confrontation is essential to our relationship. You stand between what is possible and what is horrible in this world of capital. And it is not just you, but all like you, police everywhere. We say this with the utmost seriousness and lucid consideration. This is not childish rage nor a mosh pit at a punk show, this is fact. You do not defend nor protect us, but kill us in cold blood for reasons out of individual officers control. There are no good cops and bad cops, only a social relation of submission, domination, and enforced value extraction. You are the material line of defense between us and another world beyond the tragedy we live in.

Stop playing stupid. You know exactly why paint, hammers, and fireworks were thrown. You know why 200 people from all over San Francisco and the Bay Area took to the streets angry. Why passersby stopped to yell obscenities at you in a fit of rage. There is no mystery - this is war. This is only the beginning, trust us there is more to come.

sincerely,
an autonomous working committee at Surf City Revolt!

Last night, a townhall meeting took place in Bayview where the SFPD Police Chief Greg Suhr was going to (once again) present the official story of the shooting and take questions from the community. It didn't go so well:

Police Chief Greg Suhr was met with a hail of boos, jeers and curses by members of the Bayview community Wednesday night, prompting an early end to a planned dialogue about Saturday’s fatal shooting of an armed parolee by officers.

From another report:

Barely anyone tonight asked about Saturday's shooting. Plenty of people asked about previous incidents they say amounted to police brutality -- often, incidents involving them directly.

And another one:

After Harding’s shooting, the street filled with 20 cops carrying semi-automatic weapons, [community activist Geofrea Morris] said. “Nobody burned anything or caused civil disobedience. Why would they send so many cops?”

She said she was happy that people had gathered in the Mission District on Wednesday. Even though the protest led to 43 arrests, police in the Bayview are much harder than cops in the Mission, she said.

“I am glad they did that in the Mission,” she said. “They are not scared, like us.”

Two articles on the murder have been published at Counterpunch in the last day or two. First, a longer analysis by UC Santa Cruz grad student Mike King, "A Life Worth Less than a Train Fare":

Another young, unarmed black man, Kenneth Harding, has been gunned down, shot numerous times in the back as he fled, his empty hands in the air in broad daylight. His crime had been a simple train fare evasion for which San Francisco police executed him in the street. Dozens of witnesses saw a sight that has become commonplace in US cities, capturing images with cell phones of police surrounding the man and watching him struggle and writhe from a distance, in a swelling pool of his own blood. Without either offering the severely wounded man assistance, searching him, or otherwise looking for the supposed weapon, the police, most of whom had their backs turned to the suspect, would later try and say that he had fired at the them and randomly into the crowd that had assembled. No one in the crowd said anything about him having or firing a gun. Police would later say one had mysteriously appeared, via an informant. The police publicly named Harding as a "person of interest" in a Seattle killing, a day after he had been shot dead by police. They are using a criminal conviction to attempt to further devalue his life. This piece is not about previous convictions, or the "official story" which the police are constructing as I write, about post-mortem murder suspicions and mystery guns. One thing is clear, as far as police knew he was a simple fare evader. As far as multiple witnesses could see, Harding had no gun and the shots all went one way.

Whether BART police, Oakland PD, or SFPD, the stories have been very similar. Suspects are gunned down in the street, no weapon, usually shot in the back as they ran, almost all men of color, a homeless or mentally-ill white man here or there. We get a similar story each time. One that is weak, lacks probable cause for lethal force, and is based on the opinion of the offending officers whose word is unquestioned by superiors, city officials, or the corporate press. Unless there is a video. Mehserle, the cop who shot Oscar Grant, thought his glock was a lighter and larger and fluorescent tazer, though it had a completely different grip. An exception to the rule, Mehserle did time for his crime – a few paltry months. He was recently released. The OPD shot Derrick Jones in the back, he was carrying a scale. No charges were filed. Several killings of unarmed men of color in Oakland have yielded temporary suspensions, followed by reinstatements with back pay. Some acting, individual OPD officers have killed more than one unarmed man on separate occasions and still patrol the street, guns loaded, and ready to go.

The root causes of these murders by the police are multiple and far too complex to be fully discussed here: insulated and unaccountable police power committed to upholding a particular racial and economic order; psychological fear-turned-violence or plain hostility among the police; white supremacy at several levels of society from the motivations of suburban law-and-order voters to the historical legacies of the police in this country; to geographies of segregation, of which the Bayview is a prime example.

And a shorter piece by Patrick Madden, "The Police Murder of Kenneth Harding":

The Hungarian-Marxist Philosopher Georg Lukacs once remarked that economic crises have a demystifying and revealing effect on the class relations of a capitalist economy. Capitalism is predicated on the indirect domination of the majority of people in society by a relatively small minority of the owners of the means of wealth; the indirect-ness of this domination results in a situation in which the domination itself doesn't necessarily appear as such. In a crisis, the violent social relations that undergird the system are laid bare.

Of course the truth of this observation has recently been on display worldwide, almost since the beginning of the economic crisis that erupted in 2008. From Greece to the UK, from California to the Arab world, street battles and their necessary consequence, state murder, are on the rise. The scale of them may be different but the problem is the same: capitalist social relations, the social relations that determine who gets what, who lives and dies, who is free and who is incarcerated, are ultimately backed up by extreme violence. When the "ideological apparatuses" that maintain the normal reproduction of social relations fail, the cops step in.

Finally, a powerful piece by Tiny a.k.a. Lisa Gray-Garcia, in the SF Bay Guardian, "Killed for Riding While Poor":

For the last few years, police presence on Muni has increased — as have attacks on poor people and people of color whose only crime is not having enough money to ride the increasingly expensive so-called public transportation known as Muni. From fare inspectors working for Muni to fully armed officers, they form a terrifying mob waiting menacingly at bus stops in the Mission, Ingleside, Bayview, and Tenderloin, and then enter buses to harass, eject, and cite anyone too poor to ride.

The police said the man pointed a gun. That's what they consistently claim when rationalizing involved shootings. Several eyewitnesses said otherwise.

But before we get caught up in whether he had a gun or not, let's stay with the real point: this young man was shot for not having a transfer. He was shot for not having $2. How did we get here?

Some pictures are up at Indybay; we expect more to follow.

Cops Kill Again in San Francisco

From occupyca:

SAN FRANCISCO, California – Around 4:45pm today, police shot and killed a MUNI passenger in the Bayview district of San Francisco. The police claim they spotted a gun on the passenger and chased him down; then the passenger drew his gun and shot at the police. The police have provided empty bullet casings they found on the street as evidence, but have yet to recover a weapon, suggesting the passenger either threw it away or the weapon was taken by a passerby. Witnesses, however, claim that the young man had no weapon, but was being chased for fare evasion for the light-rail. One witness said, “It didn’t even make sense what-so-ever, honestly. A young man running, he didn’t even have no gun out at all, with his hands up in the air, and you’re still shooting?” (KTVU). This shooting comes only a few weeks after the killing of Charles Hill at the SF Civic Center BART platform, where police claimed Hill wielded a knife, and where witnesses claimed he had no knife.

Last night, folks congregated at 24th and Valencia and marched through the Mission District of San Francisco to show their rage at the killing. No arrests were made. The following statement was posted on Indybay:

Yesterday, hundreds of enraged people took to the streets of San Francisco in response to the murder of a 19 year old by SFPD in the Bayview neighborhood. He was killed for running from the police after not paying his MUNI fare. Immediately people in Bayview responded - confronting the police, screaming at the murderers and throwing bottles. At Midnight, another group called for a last minute march against the police. About 100 marchers took the street and attacked ATMs, banks and a cop car.

----

Whether we like it or not, this city is a fucking war-zone. For the second time in as many weeks, police officers have murdered someone in cold blood. Yesterday, they murdered a 19 year old in the Bayview district. For the crime of not paying his $2 bus fare, he was executed by SFPD; shot ten times in front of a crowd. On July 3rd, BART police responding to a report of a man too drunk to stand, arrived at Civic Center Station and shot Charles Hill within a minute of their arrival, killing him as well. His crime: being broke and homeless in a city that fucking despises us.

And so, within a few hours of hearing word of SFPD's latest atrocity, we called for a march against the police in the Mission District. About 100 of us gathered, donned masks, and marched down Valencia St. toward the Mission Police Station. We attacked the first pig car that approached. We attacked ATMs and a Wells Fargo as well. We upturned newspaper boxes and trash bins, throwing them into the streets at the encroaching riot cops. We screamed in the pigs faces and confronted them at their front door. By 1AM we had dispersed without arrest.

This march comes on the heels of Monday's attack on the BART system in response to the murder of Charles Hill. Again, over 100 of us clogged the BART system, blocking trains, vandalizing machines and bringing the rail system to a grinding halt. For over three hours BART suffered system-wide delays and the BART police were forced to close several stations throughout the city. After being forced out of the system, we took the streets in an impromptu march. Causing havoc and avoiding two attempts by the police to kettle us. The march ended in a heated stand-off with SFPD in front of hundreds of tourists at the Powell St. plaza.

In reporting this we hope to make it obvious: we will no longer allow the police (regardless of what badge they wear) to murder us in the streets. When they kill, we will respond with force. These two marches along with the burgeoning revolt in Bayview are only a beginning. We do not care about their attempts at justifying themselves. In each of these killings they claim that their lives were in danger. We say they lie, but honestly don't care either way. As the State has removed any illusion that it exists to serve or protect people, we can see clearly that it exists only to push us into prisons and to shoot us in cold blood. Two single dollars are worth more to them than our lives. The very existence of the police clearly endangers all of us, and we won't be safe until they are destroyed.

WAR ON THE POLICE
WAR ON THE BART SYSTEM
WAR ON THE MUNI SYSTEM

Stay tuned,

some anarchists in the Bay Area

There is no better example of how tightly austerity and police are woven together than this: a homeless man murdered on a BART platform, a black youth murdered for fare evasion on MUNI. Austerity means that folks -- especially those who are already most marginalized -- are increasingly pushed into precarity and desperation. If the politicians are responsible for implementing austerity, then the police are its necessary enforcers, operationalizing the extraction of profit (rent, fares) from the poorest while rushing to defend corporate interests and private property at the slightest provocation.

A call has gone out for an action to take place on Tuesday, meetup at Dolores Park, 5pm. More information here.

[Update Monday 9:27am]: Also check out "Why should you die for a transfer?" over at the SF Bayview:

None of the many witnesses I spoke with yesterday saw the young victim either holding or shooting a gun and firmly believe he was unarmed. ABC7’s Carolyn Tyler balanced the police claim that they shot the youngster in self-defense by interviewing Trivon Dixon, who said: “He was running. How could he be a threat in retreat? And he wasn’t running backwards, turning around shooting. He was in full throttle, running away from the police. I don’t see in any way how he could be a threat to the police.”

Books, Banks, & Pigs: A Report on Anticut 2

Check out the full write-up at Bay of Rage.

Anticut 2 Tomorrow!

The latest updates on tomorrow's action from Bay of Rage:

Take the streets of Oakland this Friday, June 17!

• mobile blockade & march against austerity plans in Oakland:
3:00pm @ Telegraph & Broadway in downtown

• ending in a gathering and street party in solidarity with the fight for the Oakland libraries:
5:30pm @ 14th & Oak, in front of main library branch

+ Food Not Bombs will be serving at the 5:30pm street party
so even if you can’t make the 3pm action come join us afterwards!

bring your banners, propaganda and friends to manifest the second in a series of counterausterity marches and events planned for the summer

the statements that will be handed out during this action are now available online! check them out here and here!

“The city itself is a bank, a dazzling accumulation of wealth, increasingly withdrawn from our lives and stashed in broad daylight, policed with public funds for the enrichment of a few. Join us in jamming, temporarily, these circuits of dispossession.”
read the full invite here

“Austerity is not just cutting a school budget. It is not just closing libraries. It’s filling prisons and killing poor people, as the alternative to the libraries, schools, and services they cut. It’s a whole system of “crisis” that makes the poor pay for the problems caused by the rich.”
read the invite handed out during protests against Mehserle’s release

Anticut 2: Let's Block Everything!

From Bay of Rage:

This is the second in a series of counterausterity marches and events we have planned for the summer, in order to begin assembling an anticapitalist force capable of combating the current age of budget cuts and economic violence. This second event is a disruption -- a mobile blockade -- meant to interrupt, temporarily, the business as usual which economic crisis ever more desperately imposes as the public face of private wealth. For every library and school closure, ten ATMs spring up overnight, circulating ever more swiftly the wealth, looted via predatory lending and home foreclosures. This is not news. Just as globally the US seeks to prop up brutal plutocracies and autocrats in order to maintain its grip on oil reserves and military outposts in the face of popular revolts, so, too, in Oakland we daily confront mechanisms meant to insure our passivity in the face of dispossession: pernicious sit-lie laws, skyrocketing tuition, mounting layoffs and rising unemployment. The city itself is a bank, a dazzling accumulation of wealth, increasingly withdrawn from our lives and stashed in broad daylight, policed with public funds for the enrichment of a few. Join us in jamming, temporarily, these circuits of dispossession.

The action will start at the intersection of Broadway and Telegraph in downtown Oakland on Friday, June 17, at 3 pm. Anticut 2 flyer here. Also worth checking out: during last Sunday's protest about the release of Johannes Mehserle, the BART cop who murdered Oscar Grant, an invitation to Anticut 2 was distributed as well.

A Message to Occupied Oakland in a Time of Cuts and Crisis

The following statement was distributed last night during the Anticut 1 action last night:

Now that the banks have been bailed out and the rich treated to yet another tax cut, our libraries and schools, already devastated, are once again on the chopping-block, while our elderly and poor are turned out on the street. Heavily armed cops with increased powers roam our city’s streets, threatening anyone who steps out of line. Times have never been better, in other words, for the rich.

It’s not as if things weren’t already pretty bad. Each one of us is a casualty of the economy, in one way or another -- jobs that pay next to nothing or no jobs at all, rent that keeps increasing, gas prices that double overnight, student loans we’ll never be able to pay back. But what is most distressing of all is how little we are able to do about this, how little control we seem to have over these things. Perhaps, though, our lack of control is not so complete. On nights like this, with all of us in the street together, we remember that when people number in the hundreds and the thousands they can do nearly anything. Laws, it seems, apply to individuals, not crowds.

In Oakland, of course, the legacy of Black Panthers remains inescapable. The Panthers, we remember, were not merely indignant. They did something about it. They organized themselves. They did not simply petition the ruling powers for more resources but took what they needed, as necessary. And what the state couldn’t provide, they would. This is the meaning of their Free Breakfast programs for school children, their Free Clothing programs, their libraries and crossing guards. So, we understand that the decision-makers will never give us what we want because it’s not something they can give. And although the street is merely a small portion of what we must reclaim, it’s a crucial start. Without this public space for us to meet each other and organize, outside of our homes and jobs, nothing could even begin to happen.

So, tonight, we are in the streets in resistance. We will be here until we no longer need to be.

Our second march, Anticut 2, meets on June 17th in the afternoon. For more specific info, check out BAYOFRAGE.COM

Here's a halfsheet PDF version for printing.

[Update Sunday 7:34 pm]: For more information about the action, check out this reportback which includes some photos.

Update on the Irvine 11: Gag Orders and Free Speech

Via UC Rebel Radio, we wanted to update folks on the prosecution of the Irvine 11. As you know, these students from UC Irvine and UC Riverside are currently facing criminal charges -- not just the bullshit charges associated with the arbitrary student conduct process -- for participating in a protest during a speech given by Israeli ambassador Michael Oren. They are accused of conspiring to interrupt and then interrupting Oren's speech, charges which could carry a sentence of up to six months in jail if they are convicted. The trial is scheduled to begin on August 15.



This kind of protest happens all the time, and to political figures who are far more significant than Ambassador Oren. For something like this to lead to a criminal prosecution -- let alone the convening of a grand jury! -- is stunning.

In any case, the recent update is that the judge has issued a gag order in order to prevent "potential jurors [from having] preconceived ideas about the case." The gag order applies to both prosecution and defense, but oddly is not retroactive:

Attorneys for the defendants objected to a protective order against them, with one attorney saying their clients "are not similarly situated" with the district attorney's office and therefore should not be subjected to the same limitations.

Attorneys for the 11 also requested that the court mandate the D.A.'s office remove other information relating to the case from its website, including removal of press releases and emails among the defendants that could be submitted to the court later as evidence. The judge denied the request, saying that there is no need to "go back and sanitize" what has already been released.

Obviously, it's impossible to go back and erase what people have already heard. But there is nevertheless something strange about the disproportionate effects of the gag order -- it silences the present while entirely overlooking the past. There's also something interesting here about the way that "free speech" operates. In a case where college students are facing half a year of jail time for allegedly violating the right to free speech of an Israeli politician, the logic of "free speech" demands that (some) speech be silenced, and (other) speech effectively reinforced. It redistributes speech, spatially and temporally. This is where technologies like "free speech zones" and "time, place, and manner restrictions" come into play.

It's also interesting how the politics of free speech often turns on or the legitimation of racism, with regard to both speech and practice. The LA Times article cited above takes a weird turn toward the end:

The defendants also have critics, including prominent Jewish leaders who say they support free speech but believe the students' behavior crossed a line.

Among those who were in the Santa Ana courtroom Friday was Jim Gilchrist, founder and president of the Minuteman Project. Gilchrist, whose organization places civilian patrols on the U.S. border, said he was interested in the case because it related to 1st Amendment free speech rights.

"We need to set ground rules," Gilchrist said, adding that he was "victimized" by people interrupting speeches he's given across the country.

"Louis Farrakhan could speak [to me]," Gilchrist said. "You don't stop people from speaking. I want to talk to the accused and see their point of view."

There's so much going on here. Even if we totally leave aside the claims of white victimization and the odd tokenization of Louis Farrakhan, what's interesting is how the politics of free speech renders some utterances speech and others non-speech. Apparently, Gilchrist recognizes that the protesters have a "point of view," a political argument they want to express. In reality, Oren's speech wasn't prevented, blocked, or suppressed (in other words, the protest was less "effective," in absolute material terms, than the gag order) -- rather, it was delayed, or temporally displaced. And, insofar as all speech is contextual and situated, the protesters' can only make that particular argument in the way they did. It is a fundamentally different speech act to denounce the Israeli occupation while the Israeli ambassador is speaking than it is to denounce it outside the building, or the following day.



Now compare the argument Gilchrist lays out above with this interview he did on Democracy Now. The interview -- well, partial interview -- took place following a speech he tried to give at Columbia University that was interrupted when a group of students rushed the stage and unfurled a banner denouncing anti-immigrant racism. This, it seems, is the sort of thing he calls victimization. (Notably, at one point in the video a minuteman kicks one of the students in the head.) Anyway, what happens in the interview is a sort of back and forth between Gilchrist and student organizer Karina Garcia, except it ends abruptly when Gilchrist bails after Garcia begins to confront him. He just gets up, pulls out his earpiece, and walks off camera.

In this case, of course, Gilchrist doesn't want to talk with the other side and "see their point of view." The point here is obviously not that the head of the Minutemen is an asshole -- it sort of goes without saying -- but rather that the tension in his militant desire to simultaneously hear and silence speech precisely mirrors the logic of free speech more broadly.

One final image: this is what pops up on the screen after Gilchrist cuts the camera in his studio (which is located, notably, in Irvine, CA). Somehow, it's extremely appropriate.

[this post has been edited for clarity]

Anticut 1: Friday, June 3

From Bay of Rage, a new anti-capitalist initiative in the Bay Area:

This is the first in a series of counterausterity marches and events we have planned for this summer, in order to begin assembling an anticapitalist force capable of combating the current age of budget cuts and economic violence. This initial event -- a roving street party ending in a guerrilla film-screening -- coincides with First Friday and Art Murmur because we want to draw attention to the fact that while the gentrification of certain areas of Oakland continues via mechanisms like First Friday, the majority of Oakland residents will face a new round of punishing budgets cuts, staggering levels of unemployment and an increasingly militarized police force. This is no accident. Just as on a national level the money cut from education and public assistance reappears as bank bailouts and tax cuts for the rich, the wealth squeezed out of certain parts of Oakland reappears in other parts of the city, in the form of art galleries and expensive restaurants, new condominiums and police weapons. So come take the streets with us on Friday night as we show our power.

We expect this to be a disruptive but relatively low-risk event. Our intent is to build up momentum, energy and intensity over the course of the summer.

Get your flyers for Anticut #1 here

Also, mark your calendars now. Anticut #2 will be taking the streets on the afternoon of June 17 at the same location. More info to come.

Also, check out these thoughts from Socialism and/or Barbarism and this killer analysis of austerity:

The only possible response to the antinomies of anti-austerity politics -- which breakdown all too often into a fight between anti-tax and pro-welfare populisms -- is to say that if we had direct, immediate access to such things, we would need neither state provision nor its powers of taxation. Only when capital is a natural, unsurpassable horizon does this appear as a real problem.

Musical Interlude in Solidarity with the #SpanishRevolution

Pienso Luego Estorbo: Massive Mobilizations, Public Spaces Occupied Across Spain

["I think, therefore I obstruct"]

Since May 15, massive mobilizations have taken place across Spain in the lead-up to regional and municipal elections scheduled for Sunday, May 22. In Madrid, the main plaza, called the Puerta del Sol, has been occupied by tens of thousands of protesters, holding general assemblies and even spending the night, in an action that is being compared to the protests in Egypt's Tahrir Square.


Protesters have specifically singled out the PP (Partido Popular, the more right-wing party) and the PSOE (the "socialists," which occupies the supposed center-left) for their fundamental agreement regarding the economic austerity measures and structural adjustment that are currently being imposed. The political classes have run the country into the ground -- currently, unemployment is 21 percent in general and a stunning 45 percent for people under 25. Some are calling for a complete boycott of the elections; while others are calling for a "voto nulo," that is, to vote with a "null" ballot that can't be counted; others call for blank ballots, in other words, that will be included in the final count (full explanation here, in Spanish). Because the protests are so large, spontaneous, and apparently horizontal, there aren't clear, overarching demands -- nothing is being filtered through major political parties or organizing structures. They want everything. (We've copied below the fold a list of some of the concrete demands that have come out of the popular assemblies held in the plaza in Madrid, to get an idea of their diversity. One of the key demands has to do with the Plan Bolonia, an austerity program that targets the public education system and re-structures it in the image of the U.S. Obviously, youth and students are playing a major role in the mobilization.)

Today, Spain's electoral committee officially declared the protests illegal, arguing that the right to vote outweighed the freedom of assembly. It remains to be seen whether the government will actually send in the riot police to evict the occupation in Madrid -- a deputy prime minister has now stated that it will not use force. However, at least 500 riot cops are currently stationed around the square. We'll try to keep the updates coming as the election approaches.




Check out more photos here, here, and here, and some of the demands below the fold.

[Update Saturday 12:07am]: An interesting take on the #spanishrevolution from an anarchist in Barcelona here.

Ethnic Studies Struggle Continues in Tucson

We're a little late here, but on April 26, students took over a Tucson school board meeting and chained themselves to the seats of the board members to prevent the meeting from going forward. They were protesting a resolution that would remove ethnic studies from the core curriculum of the schools in the Tucson Unified School District as a result of a bill passed by the anti-immigrant legislature at the state level (HB 2281). Despite differences in terms of the political context, there is a certain resonance with the restructuring happening at UC Berkeley, where the administration has decided to consolidate three departments -- Ethnic Studies, Gender and Women's Studies, and African American Studies -- as part of the austerity program "Operational Excellence." Then, on May 3, when students and allies returned to the follow-up board meeting, they found that had been effectively militarized with over 100 riot cops and a canine unit. Nevertheless, they were able to intervene effectively and shut down the meeting. The Arizona Daily Star reports that the school board decided that the vote would be delayed until a public forum could be held on the issue:

The TUSD Governing Board decided Tuesday night to delay making changes to the ethnic studies program until it holds a public forum on the controversial proposal.

Board President Mark Stegeman made the recommendation to hold off on the vote on his proposal to make some ethnic studies courses electives, capping a tumultuous four-hour meeting that included numerous interruptions, the removal of at least seven audience members and an armed police presence.

After the forum is held, Stegeman said he plans to bring the proposal back to the board. Details on when and where the forum will be were not announced.

Wonder why they're not saying when the forum will be...

(video via the Real News).

Open Occupation at UAW Statewide Office [Updated]

There are currently about 15 union members in the UAW statewide office, located at 2070 Allston way, suite 205 in Berkeley. A rally is scheduled for 11:30 on Sproul Plaza, and will turn into a march over to the union office to support and/or join the occupation. We will continue to provide updates as the day goes on.

Here's an email from Mandy Cohen, current head steward for UAW 2865 and running for recording secretary on the AWDU slate, announcing and explaining the action:

This weekend I witnessed one of the craziest things I've ever seen in my life. On Friday the counting of votes in our union leadership election began in LA. I drove down with other Berkeley and Santa Cruz AWDU members when we heard that all of Berkeley's votes had been challenged (meaning they might be invalidated). We arrived in the early hours Saturday morning and were able to help count the votes for Santa Cruz, Davis, Irvine, San Diego, Riverside and Santa Barbara. by 5pm all of those campuses were almost complete--and AWDU actually seemed to be breaking even.

The elections committee called an hour recess--and three hours later came back to say that the count was suspended, the results so far calculated were certified, and the rest of the count (including all 1500+ votes from LA and Berkeley) and all of the challenges were passed on to the Joint Council--which doesn't meet until July! The elections committee then immediately fled the building and abandoned the ballots.

All the members at LA sat down in the union office to make sure the votes were secured and to start lodging our protests with media, union officials, etc.

Late last night we drove back to Berkeley, had a meeting, and are now sitting down (in good UAW fashion) in the statewide union office until the elections committee agrees to resume the vote count. We have one demand: COUNT OUR VOTES.

We cannot let our votes be thrown out! This is exactly why we were forced to form the Academic Workers for a Democratic Union more than a year ago, though these actions are almost incomprehensible in their disregard for union democracy and members rights. Please join us at the office as soon as possible (2070 Allston Way, Suite 205) or come to the rally at Sather Gate at 11:30 and march to the office.

A call is planned at 1pm today between incumbent leadership, AWDU members, the elections committee chair and our international representative from UAW. We need to show that our members will not allow their votes to be thrown out, that the count must be finished and new leadership instated.

For more info, including our responses to the attacks that have been emailed by Daraka Larimore-Hall, see: http://www.awdu.org/ and http://berkeleyuaw.wordpress.com/

[Update Monday 1:49pm]: Occupiers just voted unanimously to remain in the office indefinitely until their demand -- that all the votes be counted -- is met.

Sit-In at Rutgers

About 20 students at Rutgers University have taken over the administration building to protest tuition hikes and the anti-democratic decision-making of the Board of Governors (like the UC Regents). They've released the following demands:

1. We want President McCormick to FREEZE tuition so Rutgers students do not have to take out excessive loans to pay for a PUBLIC education.

2. We want SCHOLARSHIPS for underprivileged / first generation college students.

3. We want Rutgers to provide FREE transcripts for its undergraduate students.

4. We want support for the rights of ALL University affiliated workers.

5. We want the Rutgers University population to have a voice in decisions made by the Board of Governors—INCLUDING TUITION COST! THREE voting Student Members, ONE voting Staff Member, ONE voting Faculty Member—all elected by their respective constituencies: NO APPOINTEES!

Police are in the building and are apparently preventing friends and supporters from sending food and water into the building, but protesters say that at least nobody will be arrested tonight. Follow their Twitter feed here and send solidarity messages to their email address: keepRUpublic@gmail.com.

[Update Wednesday 9:56 pm]: Protesters are still in the building. The New York Times has an article up. Here's the key quote:

Last year, a cap limited the increase in tuition to 4 percent, but this year, public colleges are likely to have the ability to set their own rates, meaning the rise could be higher. At a recent legislative budget hearing, [Rutgers President Richard L.] McCormick predicted that tuition increases at the state’s public colleges would be less than 10 percent.

The Rutgers University Board of Governors typically sets tuition and fee rates in July, after the State Legislature has determined the state budget and financial support for higher education.

Sacramento State Occupation Continues

The occupation at Sacramento State continues into its second night, after 18 students slept there last night and kept the building open. Check em out on the blog and the twitter. Here's the demands, as of this morning:

1. A moratorium on managerial raises and salaries; Funding must be focused on instruction and student services.

2. Publicly support AB 1326. The oil extraction fee for higher ed bill.

3. Publicly support SB 8. The transparency bill.

Their full communiqué is after the jump:

CSU Steps Up

From occupyca:

Students and faculty at around 4 California State University campuses held sit-ins today in administration buildings. Sit-ins and marches to administrative offices took place at: CSU Fresno, Monterey, Sacramento, East Bay, Long Beach, Pomona, Northridge, San Francisco State University, and San Jose State University. Rallies, marches and teach-ins were scheduled at all 23 CSU campuses today as a part of a day of action. AP estimates more than 10,000 participated.

According to AP, around 1000 students and faculty at CSU Sacramento marched from the library quad to an administrative building to deliver a set of petitions, and around 100 demonstrators staged a sit-in demanding the resignation of the CSU Chancellor. Around 800 demonstrators at CSU Long Beach marched to the student services administrative building, but the building was already shut down. These actions take place in the face of the $500 million budget cut to the CSU system (out of a total of $1.4 billion in cuts to CA higher education).

UPDATE 7:30pm: Reportedly, Sac state students inside their administrative building are staying overnight.

(map from thosewhouseit)

[Update 1:38 am Thursday morning]: Sounds like the occupation at Sacramento State is going all night. They're calling for support at 7 am: