A Call to the Future from In and Around Occupied Wheeler, Nov. 20, 2009

From Anti-Capital Projects:

On Friday, Nov. 20th a brilliant revelation appeared on UC Berkeley campus. Students and workers on this campus held true to their aging chants and actually stood up and fought back. Mocking the days preceding where apathy seemed to reign on campus, when we forced ourselves to mutter “Whose University? Our University,” while shuffling along and doing our duty as concerned citizens, for once, in and around occupied Wheeler we really meant it.

The fight inside Wheeler Hall by the occupiers in order to win their four demands translated into an incredible show of solidarity outside the building. We linked arms with once strangers, surrounded all exits and went as far as to build barricades two buildings away, to prevent the imprisonment of our friends via underground passageways. For 12 hours we shone light on a new horizon in this struggle. The occupiers inside were fighting for us and we were outside fighting for them and for the first time in decades thousands on our campus stood together taking direct action, not passively listening to speakers at a rally and not marching in circles.

The spontaneous organization outside of Wheeler has been criticized for being exactly that, but here we would like to commend it. We saw lines be redistributed to maintain three-deep levels, people dispatching themselves to watch-out for police movements and to bring food and water to those at the barricades. The words “solidarity” and “democracy” have been thrown around and emptied out for far too long. At the Wheeler Occupation we put action back into solidarity and we voted with our raised fists not with raised hands. Ultimately, while we did not win any of the four demands from inside of the occupation, the demand from the multitudes outside was victorious as our friends emerged from the building without cuffs to join us.

Of course the police responded, but we need to make one thing clear: at the Wheeler Occupation we were not victims. Yes we had our fingers smashed and yes we did survive the police batons and rubber bullets but more importantly we stood our ground and did not back down. We provided a glimpse of what is possible when we are united in action and not divided by sectarianism of ideology or rank.

Speaking of sectarianism, at the Wheeler Occupation there were a considerable number of the Cal faculty and others on the higher levels of the university food chain who stood shoulder to shoulder with us and they must be commended for their courage. On the other hand some of the more prominent figures continued to enforce their authority and attempted to talk the occupiers inside into surrendering and those outside into sitting down or leaving. To these faculty, officials in the student government and student organizers we ask that you shed these positions of power and join us horizontally the next time we take action.

Some have criticized our actions on the grounds of depriving students of their sacred class time. Let’s not pretend that education is about robotically copying equations from the blackboard or regurgitating facts on the midterm or final. While this atomized education might have been disrupted for one day, a collective learning experience, far more educational in all respects, was provided to all at Berkeley. This is something to cherish and further, not to shun. In struggling together we learn deeper than in any classroom curriculum.

November 20th was a learning experience in how effective we can be if we stand together. We are not looking for a return to the status quo before this latest financial crisis. The privatization of the university did not start over the summer, it has been implemented for decades and this latest crisis is seen as an opportunity for its furtherance. Although the defunding of public education must be challenged, appeals to Sacramento for more cash will not reverse the activities of the current and past corrupt administrations. Nor will it abolish the prison industrial complex, which stands in stark contrast to public education in terms of funding. There is a deep systemic problem that goes farther than UC Berkeley. Austerity measures of the kind being implemented on this campus are also implemented by the state and federal government and thus the struggle must be expanded beyond the university. But from our immediate position, as long as we don’t subvert the current power structure in the UC system, more state funding will mean more privatization, higher wage differentials and the increased financialization of our futures.

We are calling for more bold direct actions that continue to escalate the struggle and reclaim the university not for what it once was but for what it might actually become. Start organizing with each other, disrupt the zombie routine on campus, it’s time to rise from the dead.

Thank you to everyone who fought on November 20th. See you on the barricades next time.

This call comes from a diverse group of numerous UC students and faculty who have been involved in planning direct actions and occupations on the UC Berkeley campus.

Statement from ASUC/UCPD "Forum"

The ASUC/UCPD "Police Forum" was crashed earlier tonight. As soon as the first cop began to speak everyone in the room stood up and he was interrupted with the following statement. Then everyone walked out.

Behind every fee increase, a line of riot cops . . . 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. As students and workers we are hit first by fees and layoffs, and then by police batons. Privatization closes off the supposedly public spaces of this public university, erecting a wall that grows higher and higher with each passing year. Privatization is the metal barricades that the riot police set up around Wheeler Hall. Privatization and the police are the twinned forces of exclusion.

This violence is not new; it is only that, for many of us, it has remained invisible at UC Berkeley. The scandal is the reapearance on campus of what the Oakland and Berkeley police and the Alameda County Sheriffs do every day to poor people -- without video cameras present, without stories in the New York Times or letters from concerned faculty. But the university has never been autonomous from the violence of society; we will not forget this fact. The furniture in our classrooms -- the furniture with which the occupiers of Wheeler barricaded the doors to protect themselves against the police -- was made by prisoners in San Quentin. This is the truth of the university: it is guaranteed by state violence just as the UC’s bonds are guaranteed by our fees.

No investigation, no review process, no dialogue can change this structural truth.

To put it directly: the police are the antithesis of dialogue. There can be no dialogue under threat of violence, with the police standing in the background grinning, rhythmically slapping their clubs on their palms, telling us to “Get ready for the beatdown.” They provide the assurance that speech isn’t free even when officially promised, as our 14 friends and colleagues who were arrested during the public comment session of the regents’ meeting in UCLA will attest to. There can be no dialogue while the police are on campus; they are the threat. We refuse to smother our outrage, cover our wounds, put on a smile, and exchange pleasantries in quiet voices with those who beat us. The invitation to dialogue is pathological -- they beat us one day, and invite us to share our feelings about it the next.

So we will not give them the satisfaction of participating in this charade. We reject the naive suggestion that “mutual understanding” is possible -- you will never understand us, but we understand you. We understand that you were “just following orders,” that these fee hikes are “necessary measures,” that we all have to “tighten our belts,” that the “rule of law” must be enforced. We understand where all of this puts you: on the other side of the barricades, defending the interests of privatization and capital. We will talk with you once you put down your badges and your weapons and join us on this side. Until then, there can be nothing between us except enmity.

Scared

From: Claudette Begin [cbegin@********.***]
Date: December 1, 2009 3:10:25 PM PST

Building Coordinators
PLEASE DISSEMINATE THIS INFORMAITON TO YOUR BUILDING STAFF
As you may have heard, in conjunction with tomorrow’s planned “Free Speech Rally”, there may be other associated activities around the campus, including potential marches through campus buildings and “sit-ins”. These activities may present some unique challenges for the campus as the majority of our facilities are open to the public.
Although we do not expect any malicious activities, its 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.
It might be good to review standard operating procedures for this eventuality (see below).
**************************************************
Please remind your building occupants of the following 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 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.
**************************************************
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 classrooms or administrative routines, call UCPD (642-6760 or 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 for helping get the word out!
PLEASE DISSEMINATE THIS INFORMAITON TO YOUR BUILDING STAFF

Direct Action Works: UC Davis Edition

Mrak Hall sit-in forces administration to sign onto demands. More updates here.

Occupy Everything!

Remembering and reinscribing the violence of this police response into our collective memory of the occupation is of more than historical interest, however, and consists of more than merely remembering the pain inflicted upon our comrades, however necessary this may be. It is in this violent police response that a strategically correct interpretation of events lies, and this fact makes efforts to conceal the conflict of the day more than merely an effort to prevent further violence. The police response showed precisely what was at stake in the occupation, and what remains at stake in the movement more generally. The police response showed exactly how far the UC Regents, President Yudof, and the local administrations are willing to go in order to drive the privatization of public education down our unwilling throats. It showed us, in short, that we were doing something right, and we can expect more of the same if we ever hope to win.

And that’s not all: the final police and administration response -- that of opting to let the occupiers walk out of Wheeler of their own accord--tells even more of the story. It tells us just how powerful our collective presence was on that day. There can be no doubt that every single occupier would have been arrested, likely beaten and abused to some degree, and hit with the trumped-up felony charges, had the crowd not been assembled outside. And this was not merely because the crowd was bearing witness to injustice or expressing its verbal non-consent.

It was not moderation and negotiation that created and sustained this pivotal moment and generated its outcome: it was the unmistakable show of force that the students gathered represented, a force that was not merely symbolic. As the great revolutionary CLR James once put it: “The rich are only defeated when running for their lives.” The same could be said of today’s privatizers of public education, and those running things more generally. Oakland’s Oscar Grant rebellions taught us this much in January, as it was only the threat of continued rioting that put BART officer Johannes Mehserle behind bars. The Berkeley occupation movement teaches us the same lesson today.

And we have late word of a library occupation at Cal State Fresno, and more are on the way, at Berkeley and elsewhere. Earlier today, marchers occupied the UC Office of the President in downtown Oakland to demand a face-to-face with Mark Yudof. Further, the contagion is international, as the students who have held Austria in a constant state of occupation for weeks on end descended en masse yesterday onto the US embassy in Vienna as a demonstration of solidarity with the California occupations and outrage at the images of police violence that have been broadcast across the globe. This is a force that is expanding as we speak, and will do so as the months pass and contradictions become more acute. The university struggle has turned a crucial corner on the UC Berkeley campus, and a qualitative leap in consciousness has occurred, by weight not of peaceful entreaties but of forceful demands.

Read the rest here.

From the Inside

Baton strike @ Wheeler Hall

Update: Students in solidarity with occupation have surrounded Wheeler Hall, blocking off all the exits so the cops can't get anyone out. It's raining hard, but spirits are high! The occupiers have published a new list of demands... more to come.

California is...

And more to come. Updates here.

(photo)

Update: Wheeler Hall @ UC Berkeley Occupied! Police busting in with tear gas, pepper spray, batons. Big crowd outside in support -- come out and join!

STRIKE NOV. 18-20 @ UC BERKELEY