Occupied Cal Journal, vol. 2

occupied cal journal, vol. 2

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.

Post-GA dance party

On Robert Reich's Mario Savio Memorial Lecture

Robert Reich’s Mario Savio Memorial Lecture drew a couple thousand people to the Savio steps last night — fewer than the numbers who had already been there for hours, for the General Assembly of Occupy Cal. When Clinton’s Labor Secretary arrived, old people were really psyched. And surely he said some things worth saying. He was right to note that “the days of apathy are over, folks,” though he was a couple of years behind the curve. A more attentive thinker would have noted that the walkouts, occupations, and police brutality that shuddered and shuttered his campus (and others) two years before were equally large, equally non-apathetic, and declared the exact same concerns. They were perhaps less to his taste then, before they had been validated by a swelling popular movement that provides not just context but a kind of ideological cover for professional ideologues; the sudden discovery of this new movement is in fact a sterling demonstration of cowardice and belatedness.

Here are just one or two Reichian comments worth remarking upon further. “I will believe that corporations are people when Georgia and Texas execute them,” he said, referring to the Citizen’s United decision affirming corporate personhood. It’s a good line, but I will believe corporations are people when damage to their windows is treated as commensurate with violence against people. Oh, wait. By which I mean, if Robert Reich truly wants to distinguish between corporations and people, he needs to recognize that one exists at the expense of the other, that it is already a violent relationship, and that the laws he upholds — the same laws that murder prisoners in the south — offer corporations protections at the expense of people from the front to the back of the law books. Until then, his witty comment is in fact trivial, and as well an insult to those affected by the thoroughgoing racism (among other things) of the legal institution tout court.

But surely Reich’s most troubling suggestion of the evening was that “Every social movement in the last half-century or more, it started with moral outrage…and the actual lessons, the specific demands for specific changes, came later.” The meaning, we fear, is clear enough. There must be specific demands for specific changes. That is the inevitable passage of your sense that something is wrong, deeply and absolutely wrong, with things as they are. This is just a phase, people. And I am here with my understanding, and my belated recognition, to validate you. And once this sense of outrage has passed — moral outrage mind you — and you are ready to see what kinda deal you can cut, we will have achieved a mature movement.

To which the only adequate response is, go fuck yourself, Robert Reich. The outrage may be “moral” but it is also personal, with that special feeling one has for cops that beat you and administrators who lie about that and everything else. It is also intellectual, based on a clear class analysis and a better understanding of the direction of the global capitalist economy that you seem to have, with your dogmatic presumption of some return to a mildly better degree of wealth inequality that should set things to right. Maybe you should specialize in moral outrage, Mr. Reich, since you don’t seem to have much of a handle on the actual situation.

And more importantly, the outrage isn’t going to pass away into a set of banal, kinder-gentler-capitalism policy prescriptions of the sort you have poured into a series of phenomenally boring books. It isn’t going to wait for the opportune moment to sell itself for some trinkets, a signed apology letter, and three new and perfectly lax regulating agencies. Bargain, bargain — that is Moses and the prophets to your type. The limits of your imagination, Former Secretary Reich, are shocking in their obviousness and in their closeness. We do not require your paternalistic validation nor your liberal blandishments, which pretend to support and even to shared outrage, while buttressing ceaselessly the very world we have set out to undo.

But we do need something from you. Sandwiches. We are going to be doing a lot of camping, a lot or marching, a lot of occupying, and a lot of fighting, and we are going to need sandwiches. Please make yourself useful.

Signed, a hungry comrade

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.

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*** 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. ***

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

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Open Letter to UC Berkeley Administration from 60+ Berkeley Law Faculty

November 16, 2011

Robert J. Birgeneau, Chancellor
George Breslauer, Executive Vice Chancellor
Harry LeGrande, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs

Dear Chancellor Birgeneau and Vice Chancellors Breslauer and LeGrande,

We, the undersigned members of the Berkeley Law faculty, write to condemn in the strongest possible terms:

1. the violence directed against non-violent student, staff and faculty protesters at Sproul Plaza on November 9, 2011;
2. the temporary detention by police of two law students near the law school on the same day; and
3. the Chancellor’s public and explicit defense of the police action of November 9, 2011, which made inaccurate distinctions between violent and non-violent civil disobedience and which he apparently signed without having viewed the videos of the incidents at issue.

Sproul Plaza. The First Amendment enshrines the right to assemble peaceably, to speak freely, and to petition for governmental redress of grievances. Interference with these rights, particularly in the form of violence that was visited upon protesters in Sproul Plaza last week, is inexcusable by any government entity, but is particularly troubling at a public university. While the University may enforce its rules, including citing or arresting those engaged in acts of civil disobedience (such as linking arms and refusing to disband), there is no place for instigating violence in a community dedicated to the free exchange of ideas.

Kroeber Plaza. On November 9, in separate incidents, a group of officers detained two Berkeley Law students who were attempting to return to class after participating in the peaceful demonstration at Sproul Hall. The officers detained each student near Kroeber Plaza, though there had been no protest activity at the Plaza or the law school, and the students were simply walking back to class. Ostensibly, the officers were asking for identification. However, the accounts of these incidents provided by the two students and other witnesses – law students and law school faculty and staff – describe police actions that were unwarranted and excessive.

Going Forward. The police conduct at Sproul Plaza, and the humiliating and frightening police activity at Kroeber Plaza, have caused a number of our students to question whether they can safely come and go from the law school, much less exercise their First Amendment rights at our university. In addition to the urgent need for a thorough review of these events – including holding accountable those parties responsible for any actions that violated the civil and political rights of our community members – we call on the administration to:

1. implement immediately the recommendations of the June 2010 Brazil Police Review Board Report (http://www.berkeley.edu/news2/2010/06/16_prb-report.pdf);
2. publicly support and defend the rights of community members – and especially our students – to engage in non-violent political expression; and
3. take all other actions necessary to reestablish Berkeley’s reputation as a beacon of peaceable assembly and free speech.

[Signatures below the fold.]

Mass Rally and March, Oakland, 11/19