Meet the Snakes

Calls for the resignation of UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi have come from the Occupy Davis GA, the online petition which currently has over 110,000 signatures, and numerous academic departments on campus. The English Department has called for not only Katehi's resignation but also, in the interest of student health and safety, the disbanding of UCPD. But some faculty, it seems, are privileged enough to feel differently. They signed a nauseatingly disingenuous letter of support for Chancellor Katehi:

We, the undersigned UC Davis faculty, support the free exchange of ideas on campus and students’ right to peaceful protests. We are appalled by the events of Friday, Nov. 18, on the Quad, but heartened by the chancellor’s apology and her commitment to listen to and work on the students’ concerns.

We strongly believe that Linda Katehi is well-qualified to lead our university through this difficult healing process and oppose the premature calls for her resignation; this is not in the best interest of our university.

Who are these people? How could they be so ignorant about the history of police violence at UC Davis and across the UC system? A quick glance is all it takes to see that they overwhelmingly represent professional schools and the hard sciences, departments which tend to benefit most from the UC administration's privatization agenda. But a compañero went even further and compiled the following list: "Meet the Snakes: Salaries of Faculty who Support Katehi."

It's a long list so we're putting it below the fold, but we recommend taking a look. The bottom line, however, is this: the average salary of the signatories is $151,111.50.

Behind Closed Doors, UC Regents Again Vote to Raise Admin Salaries

From the Bay Citizen:

Regents of the University of California, meeting for the first time since campus police used pepper spray and riot batons to disperse student protests at Berkeley and Davis, listened to nearly three hours of public complaints about those incidents and tuition increases before chanting protesters disrupted the meeting and drove them from the room.

The Regents then reconvened in a smaller room down the hall from the protesters, where they voted to raise the salaries of nearly a dozen university administrators and lawyers by as much as 21.9 percent.

[...]

The regents also approved salary raises for 10 administrators and managers, including a 9.9 percent increase for Meredith Michaels, vice chancellor of planning and budget at UC Irvine, whose annual salary will increase to $247,275 from $225,000.

Six campus attorneys also received salary increases. The largest increase, 21.9 percent, went to Steven A. Drown, chief campus counsel and associate general counsel at UC Davis. His yearly salary will rise to $250,000 from $205,045.

(pic via Daily Cal)

Cops, Or, This Morning at Occupy Wall Street

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

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

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

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

[...]

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