Solidarity with UC Davis and UC Berkeley Protesters Facing Criminal Charges

"We Won!": Reflections on Two Occupations of the Same Library

Guest post by our comrade @repoliticize...

With so few “concrete” victories since the wave of student uprisings swept California in the fall of 2009, it’s a pleasure to stop for a moment, open up a beer, and say it: we won.

For the second time, a “study-in” occupation at the UC Berkeley Anthropology Library has yielded measurable—and surprisingly swift—results. I’d like to think for a moment about what it means to say, “we won,” whether or not we actually did “win,” and what this means going forward, but first, the background on the library occupation.

A much-loved and well-used library on the southeast corner of campus, the George and Mary Foster Anthropology Library was the first to suffer the disastrous consequences of a university policy that aims to eliminate 20-30 library staff positions over the next two to three years via a process of attrition. When the Anthropology Library’s only permanent staffer left his position over winter break, no interviews were set up to replace him. As a result, that library’s head librarian—herself in an interim position since 2009—had no choice but to sever the library’s hours by nearly 50 percent.

As of today, the library has returned to its Fall 2011 schedule. Faculty from the Anthropology Department have agreed to staff the library until a student can be found for a temporary position, and interviews for a permanent staff member will begin within 30 days.

Moving in last Thursday, the occupiers of the Anthropology Library threatened to extend their occupation until their demands were met and the library hours were restored with full staffing, and this was accomplished in just two nights, or about 50 hours of occupation. This is not an unprecedented success: two years ago, the Anthropology Library was occupied after its Saturday hours had been eliminated, and in less than a week, the library hours were restored.

One lesson we may take from this is that direct action works. In fact, in the case of the Anthropology Library, it has consistently worked. And we should take this moment to celebrate the significant manner in which direct action has restored part of the basic functioning of the university and—at least in this one case—reversed the terribly damaging policy of an increasingly profit-oriented administration.

But moving forward, we should be weary of overstating our success in the Anthropology Library. I write this from a re-opened library in its restored hours. One banner remains, hanging from a balcony outside until the rain stops and the department chair deems it “safe” enough to recover it. Twice now, we have made the extraordinarily reasonable student demands of keeping the library open, and twice now, we have achieved these demands—at the expense of the long-term indefinite occupation (or in 2009, a rolling, recurring occupation).

In short, this occupation is as much of a success as we allow it to be. In 2009, restoring the libraries' hours meant the end of the library occupations, but the library “study-in” model became enormously successful in its own right, being reproduced across the state on countless occasions. On the UC Berkeley campus, the library occupations took a pause, but the success bolstered organizing on campus for the November 20, 2009, occupation of Wheeler Hall—the largest and best-remembered event on campus in recent memory.

In 2009 we had no “Occupy”—we were, for a time, alone in that game. We were the California occupationists, the crazies at the marches with the U-locks in our backpacks and the “Occupy Everything” banner overhead. Winning at the library, at that moment, was cause for escalation. It confirmed for us the effectiveness of our tactics and reminded us to keep moving, keep organizing, and to keep taking what was already ours, returning and reshaping public space for the public.

In the nearly three years of student uprisings, the library occupations have earned us our only concrete, measurable successes. But the wrong lesson would be that by keeping our demands small, and by staying “reasonable,” we may achieve our goals. What we have won here is a band-aid for a university system suffering from hemophilia. Don’t get me wrong: we need band-aids—we need lots of them—but our small, reasonable, achievable demands will fail to produce either the university or the society for which we fight. They will simply bandage up the tools of class reproduction.

Our greatest successes over the last three years have been neither concrete nor measurable. And although a good deal of thought must be put into what “Occupy” is and represents, there can be no doubt that at the beginning of 2012, we stand on an entirely different ground from where we were a year ago. This shift has been effected not by policy enacted or reversed, but by on-the-ground organizing and a growing consciousness of and a willingness to act—to take direct action—against the structures of domination of which we have become a part.

This victory is only a victory if we use it as a springboard for further escalation and further growth. The policy we’re witnessing at the libraries is symptomatic of a larger shift at the university towards temporary, underpaid, and underemployed labor, which in turn reflects changes beyond the university as well. We must make these connections, and recognize that what it is at stake is, yes, the library, but it’s also the university, the public space, and the terms of our own subsistence. If we fight only for policies, then we have already failed.

Back to the Anthro Library!

One of the first direct actions during the fall 2009 cycle of anti-privatization protests was the "study-in" at the Anthropology library. Due to budget cuts, or so the administration misleadingly suggested, the library's hours had been cut back to the point that it would no longer open during the weekends. As midterms were coming up, students were desperate for places to study. On October 9, 2009, a group of about 300 students, workers, and faculty moved into the library and refused to leave at its 5pm closing time. UCPD initially attempted to remove them but in the end opted not to intervene -- most likely out of the administration's fear of the photos of cops dragging struggling students from the library -- and the library was held for a full 24 hours. During that time, there were study spaces, teach-ins (including a presentation by Bob Meister in which he presented for the first time his groundbreaking findings that would be published the following day as "They Pledged Your Tuition to Wall Street"), spoken word, free food, and lots of sleeping bags and pillows. On leaving the library, organizers vowed to liberate one library every week and designated the Ed/Psych library the next target. In the interim, and notably without any demands having been made, the administration miraculously found the money to keep the libraries open. Not student government, not lobbying in Sacramento, not signing petitions, not even holding rallies -- it's direct action that gets the goods.

But now, they're trying to cut the hours again. They think we're not paying attention. But we are. And we're going back:

Defend the Anthropology Library!

Occupy Cal is calling for a ‘Study-In’ encampment inside the Anthropology library, Kroeber Hall, for Thursday, January 19 at 3pm. The Anthropology library is a recent victim of harsh service cuts caused directly by the university’s mis-management of funds and privatization. The hours are being cut from the previous, already slim, 9am-6pm hours to the current 12pm-5pm hours. This is part of the story of how university administrators are failing the educational mission of the UC, part of the corporatizing and privatizing movement. The UC regents recently raised selected salaries by 21%, yet we are still experiencing the cutting of extremely valuable resources for our education. Bring Your Own Tent, sleeping bags, and pillows for Occupy Cal’s first encampment of the Spring 2012 semester. Let’s keep the library open as a shared public space!

Join Occupy Cal in a Study-in and Encampment to protest these cuts!

January 19th, 2012
230 Kroeber Hall
Study-in: 3pm-5pm
Encampment: 5pm - ?

This action is in solidarity with the Regents' meeting protest at UC Riverside.

Occupying Education: The Student Fight Against Austerity in California

[from the November/December 2011 issue of NACLA Report on the Americas; download the PDF version here]


(photo by Andrew Stern)

By Zachary Levenson

On November 18, University of California (UC), Davis police attempted to raid a student occupation on the campus. When a line of UC Davis students refused to move out of the way, Lieutenant John Pike covered their faces with military-grade pepper spray. He returned for a second round, making sure to coat everyone’s eyes and throats.

“When students covered their eyes with their clothing, police forced open their mouths and pepper-sprayed down their throats. Several of these students were hospitalized. Others are seriously injured. One of them, forty-five minutes after being pepper-sprayed down his throat, was still coughing up blood,” described Assistant Professor of English at UC Davis Nathan Brown.[1]

Within 24 hours, a video of the incident had gone viral on YouTube, and the media feigned outrage. UC Davis chancellor Linda Katehi apologized for the incident, and UC president Mark Yudof announced a task force to address the police violence. UC Berkeley chancellor Robert Birgeneau was also forced to apologize after campus police clubbed UC Berkeley students and faculty while they also nonviolently defended an encampment on their campus two weeks before.

This is hardly the first time that California students have faced brutal police repression in recent years. This sort of authorized police violence has been a constant feature of campus administrations’ response to students as they have continuously mobilized against the privatization of their public universities over the past two years.


***


Early in the morning of November 20, 2009, 43 students from the UC Berkeley occupied Wheeler Hall, the building with the most classrooms on campus. When police arrived a couple of hours before classes began for the day, they found the doors barricaded and a small contingent of supporters gathered outside. Within a few hours campus unions were picketing, and students and workers had surrounded the building, chanting in solidarity. By midday, the number of supporters outside Wheeler Hall had grown to over 2,000, now actively defending the occupation in an impassioned standoff with hundreds of riot cops sent in to enforce order. Hanging from a second floor window was a spray-painted banner reading, “32% HIKE, 1900 LAYOFFS,” and the word “CLASS,” circled with a line through it. Purportedly in response to state funding retrenchment, the UC Regents had approved a 32% tuition hike for UC students across the state the day before. Students were livid.

In fall 2009, across the state, students launched dozens of occupations, sit-ins, marches, rallies, and blockades against the tuition hike and austerity measures. The police responded with repression, using batons, rubber bullets, tear gas, and even Tasers. During the Wheeler Hall occupation demonstrations, one student was shot in the stomach with a rubber bullet at point-blank range, another ended up in the hospital after her fingers were nearly amputated by a police baton, and dozens reported being beaten.

“Behind every fee increase, a line of riot cops,” read a graduate student nearly two weeks later, standing atop a chair, at a forum organized by the UC student government in conjunction with the UC Berkeley Police Department (UCPD). “The privatization of the UC system and the impoverishment of student life, the UC administration’s conscious choice to shift its burden of debt onto the backs of its students—these can be maintained only by way of police batons, Tasers, barricades and pepper spray. These are two faces of the same thing.”[2]

When he finished reading the statement, the students rose to their feet and followed him out of the room.

Before the Raid

Occupy Cal raided; Occupy UCLA set up

Last night, Occupy Cal was raided by UCPD. Two people were arrested, and they bulldozed all the stuff that people didn't take away. There will be an emergency GA to plan next steps tonight at 6pm, but already, we're back in force.

Having rescued the library last night, a group set up this morning a massive field of book tents on the steps. And since noon, there's been dancing and drumming at the foot of the steps. As I write, danza -- a campus dance troupe -- is out on the impromptu stage. And everyone is talking about tonight's GA, which promises to be big. Occupy Cal isn't going away.

And not only is Occupy Cal back in force, but we just learned that Occupy UCLA set up tents and got going today! As we say: Screw us and we multiply.

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.

Decisions of the Nov. 15 Occupy Cal General Assembly

Reposted from berkeleycuts.org.

On November 15, 2011 thousands of students, faculty, and staff filled Sproul Plaza to participate in the Occupy Cal general assembly. (Crowd total estimates range from 5,000 to 10,000.) The GA discussed and voted on three proposals, all of which passed with over 80% consensus.

1) Organize a Public Debate with Jerry Brown, Mark Yudof, the Chancellor, etc. on How to Stop the Cuts and Refund Public Education at UC Berkeley in the First Week of December, 2011

2) Issue an Open Letter To the Authorities To Meet Our Demands Before Feb. 1, 2012 Or Face a Wave of Actions and Strikes (Letter Copied Below)

3) Peacefully but Firmly Reestablish Occupy Cal’s Tent Encampment (Last night, Occupy Cal succeeded in camping out. Despite multiple threats, the police did not end up raiding the camp.)

Open Letter to the State Government, UC Regents, CSU Trustees, & All Education Administrators

Quality public education is a basic human right, not a privilege. We call on you to publicly declare your support for the following:

1) Stop cuts to public education. Reverse the fee hikes, layoffs, and cuts in all levels of public education to at least their 2009 levels.

2) Refund education and public services by taxing the rich and the corporations.

3) Fully implement affirmative action to stop the re-segregation of public education. Overturn Proposition 209.

4) Respect free speech and free assembly. No use of force against protesters on school sites.

If you fail to issue such a statement, and if you fail to take concrete actions in this direction, we will begin a wave of actions, up to and including striking, beginning on February 1, 2012 to ensure that our demands are met.

We call on all California students, teachers, workers, and their organizations to sign this Open Letter and to organize and mobilize around it at their sites and in their communities.

—–

*** We call on the UC Regents to immediately sign this Open Letter and join us on our Nov. 16 march on the banks and the State Building beginning at 1pm in San Francisco, Justin Herman Plaza. ***

—–

Donate to Occupy Cal via Paypal:
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=AMJ9CKVLHXRR6

To receive updates about Occupy Cal text “follow caloccupation” to 40404 . For more information contact caloccupation@gmail.com

-----

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.

Call for Open University Strike and Solidarity Actions on November 15th

Adopted by the Occupy Cal General Assembly

After a mass rally and march of over 3,000 people, and repeated police assaults on the Occupy Cal encampment, the general assembly at UC Berkeley decided on the night of November 9th -- with over 500 votes, 95% of the assembly -- to organize and call for a strike and day of action on Tuesday, November 15. We ask that all classes be cancelled or held at Sproul Plaza.

The Open University strike is both a response to the University’s violent raid on the encampment, and an action against the defunding and privatization of public education in California.

We will strike to reassert our collective right to freely assemble, both at the University and elsewhere, so that we are able to build public spaces where we can discuss and counter the various crises affecting our communities. We stand in solidarity with the Occupy movement, and especially with Occupy Oakland, which has been, and may again soon be, repressed by the city of Oakland and the Oakland Police Department.

We will also strike to reaffirm our determination to fight for a truly public and free University, and for the refunding of all levels of public education and public services. Since the crisis of 2008, the UC Regents have accelerated their push to privatize the University, subjecting students to unsustainable levels of debt, excluding increasing numbers of students, and further resegregating public education in California. The policy of privatization also subjects workers to layoffs, work speedups, and drastic benefits reductions. All these regressive transformations are forms of structural violence, which the police enforced against the assembled students, faculty, and workers on November 9th.

We call upon all sectors of public higher education in California to take actions on Tuesday, November 15th, up to and including strike actions, and to join the mass convergences on November 16th at the UC Regents meeting and the CSU Trustees meeting. We also call upon workplaces and K-12 schools to join us, either by taking actions at their sites or by converging on UC Berkeley and helping us to open up and transform the University from which most Californians have been systematically excluded.

We do not think that property destruction is a useful tactic and we ask those who join the Open University to respect this sentiment. At the same time, we do not think that it is a good strategy to use physical force against those who might engage in such acts.

Please join us on November 15th as we stop business as usual at our University in order to open up and transform our campus, and as we reestablish the Occupy Cal encampment.

Schedule for November 15 Open University:

8am-5pm: All day open university activities (teach-outs, workshops, public readings, installations, etc.) at Sproul Plaza and surrounding areas.
Noon: Mass convergence at Sproul Hall and formal inauguration of day-long open university.
Noon – 2pm: Teach-outs in Sproul Plaza.
2pm: Rally against police violence and other, related forms of violence, including dispossession, privatization, and debt.
2:30pm: March to Berkeley High and Berkeley City College.
5pm: General Assembly at Sproul Plaza.

Occupy Cal’s Demands:

Local Demands
- Respect Free Speech, Including the Right to Set Up Tents.
- Immediate Resignation of Robert Birgeneau, George Breslauer, Harry LeGrande, and Mitch Celaya. Democratic Election of their Replacements by Students, Faculty, and Staff.
- Charge the Police Responsible for Brutalizing Protesters. No Use of Force Against Protests on Campus.
- Amnesty for All Protesters.
- Make UC Berkeley a Sanctuary Campus for Undocumented People. Pass the UC-wide Dream Act.
- Equal Benefits and Retirement Security for UC Union Workers.

Statewide Demands
- Reverse the Fee Hikes, Cuts, and Layoffs To At Least Their 2009 Levels.
- Refund Public Education and Public Services: Tax the Banks and Billionaires. Repeal Prop 13.
- Full Implementation of Affirmative Action. Overturn Prop 209.

Nationwide Demands
- Stop the Privatization of Public Education.
- Bail Out Schools and Public Services. Redirect Military Funding to Education.
- Immediate Forgiveness of All Student Debt.
- Repeal Race to the Top.
- Stop the Attacks on Teachers Unions.

Endorsing Groups:
Occupy Cal, UC Berkeley Faculty Association, UCSF Faculty Association, UC Davis Faculty Association, UC San Diego Faculty Association, UC Council of Faculty Associations, AFSCME 3299, Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, California Nurses Association, Communities for a New California, UAW Local 2865 (UC), UAW 4123 (CSU), UC-AFT.

Occupy Oakland March to Support the Strike at UC Berkeley

Support Occupy Cal and its fight against police brutality and the privatization of the UC system.

After their attempted encampment was brutally attacked by police November 9, thousands of UC Berkeley students, faculty and staff gathered for a general assembly and called for a university strike on November 15. Tuition at Berkeley has doubled in recent years. In calling for a strike, activists realize that the university’s function in society is to create a division between haves and have-nots. Therefore, this is meant as a special kind of strike, one where all those who have been excluded from the UC system converge on the campus and help occupy it. At the same time as we shut the university down, we open it up to all who have been excluded from it.

We must recognize that the very same OPD officers and Sheriffs who attacked us here were sent only a few days later to brutalize people at Berkeley. And, once they are finished at Berkeley, they will return to attack us again. Furthermore, in one of its very first decisions, Occupy Oakland agreed to support all strikes in the Bay Area, including student strikes.

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=259797034071707

Solidarity Strike Rally at UC Davis, 11/15

From the Bicycle Barricade:

When they raised tuition, they told us they had no choice. When they cut our programs and majors and increased our class sizes, they said they had no choice.

When we protested, they told us to go to Sacramento.

When we refused to be misdirected, they beat and arrested us.

When they told us we couldn’t change anything, some of us believed them. After all, the fees kept going up. But some of us kept fighting. We occupied buildings and highways, we confronted the cops they sent to hurt and intimidate us, and we kept talking to our friends.

And some of our friends listened. The nationwide Occupy Wall Street movement draws inspiration from the California student movement begun in Fall 2009. The slogan “Occupy Everything,” once derided as absurd or vanguardist, is now on everyone’s lips. And when the Occupy movement came back home to the University of California last week, the administration responded with violence, sending sheriff’s deputies onto the Berkeley campus to beat students engaged in non-violent protest. A student was hospitalized, and several others came out with bruised and broken ribs.

Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau justifies his actions by claiming that the students, when they linked arms to counter the threat of violent dispersal were themselves “not non-violent.” In other words, the forming of a human chain is now declared to be an action which forces police to break students’ ribs with batons. This is the familiar logic of the authoritarian mind employed by abusive parents to justify the harm they inflict on their own children—”You made me do it. I had no choice.”

But we are not children, and we will not stand for this. We know by now that the only thing that has restored state funding, even temporarily, to the University of California has been the threat of student protest. We know that the only reason the regents have tabled their planned mid-year tuition increase is the threat of student protest. And we know that what the mis-managers of this institution fear most is when we stand together and put our bodies on the line to say “Stop!”

Last Wednesday, after being brutalized by the police, 3000 students and faculty at Berkeley rallied and called for a system-wide strike. This Tuesday we will walk out of our classes and strike in solidarity with our friends and colleagues across UC campuses. We demand an end to police violence and an end to the systematic looting (privatization) of our public universities.

For two years we’ve been chanting “Our University!” It’s time for us to prove it. Faculty, students, and workers: Join us at noon this Tuesday, Nov 15th, on the Quad, to renew the fight to take it back.

Stephen Colbert and Democracy Now on Occupy Cal

Stephen Colbert

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Occupy U.C. Berkeley
www.colbertnation.com
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Democracy Now

On the coming general higher education strike

On November 10th at 1am, the following proposal was adopted by the Occupy Cal general assembly:

After a mass rally and march of over 3,000 people, and repeated police assaults on the encampment, the Occupy Cal general assembly decided on the night of November 9th -- with over 500 votes, 95% of the assembly -- to organize and call for a strike and day of action on Tuesday, November 15 in all sectors of higher education. We will strike in opposition to the cuts to public education, university privatization, and the indebting of our generation.

We also call for simultaneous solidarity actions in workplaces and k-12 schools. We will organize through daily, 5pm strike planning meetings at our encampments, followed by general assemblies.

The following is meant as an analysis of the context, aims, and possible effects of the general higher education strike and day of action.

What occurred yesterday on campuses around the state, including at UC Berkeley, made real the antagonistic relations that shape the lives of students and academic workers. When university administrators and police repeatedly brutalized assembled workers, students, and debtors at large, such relations -- of exploitation and precarity -- were cast into sharp relief.

We did not back down, nor did we shy from an encounter with the forces that manage our lives and profit from our indebtedness. We held our ground when the police attacked our assemblies and encampments; then, after securing a space for assembly, we decided collectively to counter the Regents and the financial industry -- those responsible for privatizing our educational commons and resegregating our schools -- with one of our most effective tactics: our refusal to work and to attend classes.

We know that our relatively local acts of resistance and refusal will only have transformative force if they are embedded in a larger political disruption, a strike and day of action across all sectors of higher education, tied to sympathy strikes and actions in workplaces and schools. This is why we have called for a general higher education strike -- a strike throughout an entire economic sector and sphere of public life.

We understand that a fully realized general higher education strike is not likely to materialize next Tuesday. And yet, we take inspiration from last week's general strike in Oakland, and believe that a relatively generalized work stoppage and walkout is possible. By pushing for widespread mobilizations next Tuesday, we will build support for the convergences of the 16th and will further expand and strengthen our bonds of solidarity and mutual care.

****

For an account of how the Regents and financial industry profits off our indebtedness, see the recent pamphlet from Reclamations: "Generation of Debt."

Occupy Cal strike call

After a mass rally and march of over 3,000 people, and repeated police assaults on the encampment, the Occupy Cal general assembly decided -- with over 500 votes, 95% of the assembly -- to organize and call for a strike and day of action on Tuesday, November 15 in all sectors of higher education. We will strike in opposition to the cuts to public education, university privatization, and the indebting of our generation.

We also call for simultaneous solidarity actions in workplaces and k-12 schools. We will organize through daily, 5pm strike planning meetings at our encampments, followed by general assemblies.

The Administration Tries Desperately to Prepare for Occupy Cal

Emails from the belly of the beast. The first one is from Stephen Stoll, of UCPD and Homeland Security (yes, that Homeland Security):

SPROUL HALL

As you may be aware the OCCUPY CAL organization has planned a number of events for November 9 which call for a walkout and noontime rally on Sproul Plaza and setting up an encampment in support of the national Occupy Wall Street movement. We have information Sproul Hall may be one of the designated buildings for “occupation”

To ensure the safety of our staff and the continuance of routine business throughout the day, we will be locking down the building beginning at 1100am for the remainder of the day. Entry will ONLY be from the SOUTH first floor entrance. Please ensure your department staff are aware of this and have their Cal ID’s available for entry. If student workers or employees  do not have their ID’s they will have to call someone in their Department to come down and vouch for them.

We apologize for the inconvenience, but this is a precautionary measure to ensure everyone’s safety

Stephen Stoll

UCPD

642-1258

The second email is more general, but no less hilariously alarmist:

From: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Sent: Tuesday, November 08, 8:47 AM

Subject: Nov. 9th - OCCUPY CAL - Events

Dear All,

Please read the following message from the Office of Emergency Preparedness concerning tomorrow’s “OCCUPY CAL” events.  

As you may be aware the OCCUPY CAL organization has planned a number of
events for November 9 which call for a walkout and noontime rally on
Sproul Plaza and setting up an encampment in support of the national
Occupy Wall Street movement. While it is unknown how these events will
unfold over the course of the day, these activities may present some
unique challenges for the campus as the majority of our facilities are
open to the public. These actions may cause some disruptions to the
everyday routine, including erroneous "fire alarm" pulls or other
associated activities around the campus, including potential marches
through campus buildings and "sit-ins". Although we do not expect any
malicious activities, it’s possible your building may be marched through or
even have minor disruptions, so it is best to be a little more vigilant
for those who may be roaming our halls.

For those buildings that have been the target of occupations or
"erroneous" fire alarm pulls in the past, it may be worthwhile to have an
"extra" presence in the hallways and common areas.

*********************************************
Please follow these procedures should
marchers enter your building:

If marchers enter your building, let them. Try to carry on business as
usual. If the noise becomes too great, or the crowd too large, feel free
to close and lock your office doors - this is a departmental decision. Do
not close your buildings unless the Police advise you to.

As a reminder, in the past, some of these activities have included
repeated fire alarm pulls. If a building fire alarm sounds, follow your
normal procedures and evacuate the building. Do not re-enter until given
the “all clear” by a Campus official. We are working with the Campus Fire
Marshal’s office to address these types of situations and if your facility
is involved we will be contacting you.
As always, if you have questions please feel free to contact the UC Police
department at 642-6760 or call via cell phone to 642-3333.

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From an informational perspective, if you observe any unusual gatherings
or activities in your building/facility; if you observe any suspicious
activities or if you experience actual disruptions to classroom or
administrative routines, call UCPD (911 or Cell phone 642-3333) and we
will provide the appropriate support.

We will be utilizing the BC email as a conduit for campus-wide specific
information we need to disseminate, so please check your email regularly.

Thank You,
The Office of Emergency Preparedness

Occupy Cal solidarity statement and list of events

On November 9th, an outdoor encampment, modeled after the encampments in New York, Oakland, and other cities worldwide, will be established at UC Berkeley in order to protest the privatization of public education. We write to express our support for the project of Occupy Cal, and to state publicly that we view outdoor encampments as a legitimate and potentially transformative form of political activity. The occupation at UC Berkeley—like other occupations established this fall—constitutes an instance of free assembly and should be allowed to persist and reproduce itself free of police interference.

We understand that the occupation at UC Berkeley will be organized through daily general assemblies; will enable important political discussion and debate over contemporary social conditions; and will provide for the material needs of students, workers, and wider community members, offering emergency medical care, food, basic supplies, legal support, and a place to live. The encampment will also allow for the emergence of creative and other effective responses to the interrelated crises we’re living through, including those that threaten public education.

UC Berkeley should be a place where political expression and assembly are encouraged. Public fora, as envisioned for Occupy Cal, should be able to convene free of police violence, and there should be no temporal restrictions on assemblies or encampments. The University should not arbitrarily restrict the right of the public to assemble on its grounds, and certainly not when such assemblies contribute to the education of the campus community, and when it is possible for such activity to take place alongside of, or as a supplement to, formal teaching and research regimens. Furthermore, in no way will this encampment disrupt or restrict any student’s ability to attend classes.

If University administrators decide to arbitrarily restrict or repress public assemblies on campus, including those associated with Occupy Cal, they would do so ostensibly in the name of policy and public safety. In truth, however, they would be acting in violation of the sentiments of representative student bodies including the GSA and ASUC, the appeal of the undersigned organizations, and the promise of the public university. They would enforce, through blunt force, the enclosure of our educational commons—a privatizing turn the UC Regents are also imposing through layoffs and fee hikes. By calling on the police, University administrators would subject students, workers, and community members to potentially traumatizing police violence and incarceration—a reality that we will not allow to be papered over by cold, bureaucratic discourse about policies, finances, and purported public safety concerns.

We stand with the encampment.

The Public Education Coalition

Occupy Cal newsletter

From the text, composed and laid out by a comrade in the encampment working group:

And that is how the university system is governed: through the dictatorship of the Regents. There is little, perhaps zero, democracy involved in the administration of our universities. The Regents have the power to set policies throughout all UC campuses and they also determine the UC budgets. Basically, as stated before, they have total authoritative control of the UCs. Most interestingly, though, I don't remember voting these people into positions of power, and neither should you because they are not elected public officials. Instead, the 18 voting members are handpicked by the Governor of California and approved by the State Senate. Since the Regents control all the money and property under the UCs, which is valued at roughly around $53 billion, the position of Regent is one of the most prestigious appointments the Governor can give. As a result, those that tend to give the Governor hefty campaign donations tend to also become Regents.

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