WE stand in solidarity today with the students, staff, and faculty members at the University of California campuses who have been occupying campus buildings in protest of the 32% fee increase, budget cut, laying off of the workers, and loss of quality public education and those who are engaged in the similar struggle at Michigan State University. Your movement not only makes visible the demand that the public university be valued and maintained as an important site in society for the redistribution of wealth and privilege. The occupations of the buildings at UC Davis, Berkeley, Santa Cruz, and San Francisco State University–along with other acts engaged in solidarity–have proved that the students can free time and space in the midst of today’s corporate university. It is the time and space stolen from that university that matters, the kind of university that is so bent upon making profits while sacrificing our desire to learn and think, exploiting its workers, especially the vulnerable ones such as the non-tenured faculty members and the non-teaching workers on campus, and, worse still, demanding that its students must pay money for the kind of education that teaches us to be a “competitive labor,” a euphemism for a calculative, lonely individual subjected to the forces of capital and shackled to student loans. In many ways, if we may quote from the Zapatistas, we are you here in Okinawa. Our budget has been cut annually, our part-time language teachers lost their jobs or teaching hours, our curriculum began to include classes on job search, job interviews, and individual psychological health. “Hell no,” (“jodan ja nai” in Japanese or “yukushi” in Okinawan) has been our response, so we pitched tents on campus last winter to make visible the same tension, to steal time and space on this island. It is in this spirit that we show our support and solidarity to the students, faculty, and staff members at the UC and Michigan State University.
You and we are the beginnings!
November 27, 2009
Concerned Students at the University of the Ryukyus
Project Disagree
Bob Meister was interviewed on the latest “Behind the News with Doug Henwood.” The interview begins around 25 minutes, and is available on KPFA’s website.
I speak as one of many involved in the UCSC protests, the occupation of Kresge Town Hall, and Kerr Hall. I’ll admit that when the rally began, in addition to my outrage over the Regents’ 32% fee hike, I felt deeply skeptical. The tuition increase makes it impossible for me to continue attending UCSC. Still, I thought that perhaps it was better to proceed without radical action, that we could play by the rules and still get our message out. I walked away from Kerr Hall convinced otherwise. These protests have not been the random acts of a relative few, intent on causing havoc. Rather, we are a community of students, faculty and workers who have taken direct action because we refuse to speak with a quiet voice and allow ourselves to be overlooked. The administration has refused to acknowledge our concerns and has forced us to use any means possible of conveying our message.
I know students across campus share this skepticism. I know even many of those who support our cause believe that we are wrong to fight for it in this way. I have heard that all we are doing is pointlessly breaking the law, interfering with classes and student life, and causing costly damage. I have heard that we are being counterproductive, that the administration is less likely to listen to student concerns as a whole, if this is how we go about voicing ours. I have heard that we are rabble rousing criminals who stand for nothing.
In the eyes of the administration, direct action represents a serious threat. We are encouraged to express our dissent in discourse, but expressions of dissent through action are criminalized. Action demands to be noticed, and commands a spotlight that is not attainable through discussion. Action provokes discourse. We occupied the main administrative building on UCSC campus, and we held it for three days. This might seem like a minor achievement, or a fruitless display of discontent. But through this, we forced the administration to pay attention. For those three days, our voice was heard directly. And now, our voice still echoes.
Our actions are, if nothing else, a pebble tossed into quiet water. If we accomplish ‘nothing,’ as we have according to many students I have spoken to, at least we have sparked a ripple. And long after the ripple fades, the surface is only deceptively still. The next pebble tossed, the next action started, sparks a bigger ripple, building off of any earlier disturbance, and escalating. Enough pebbles, enough small disruptions to the quiet, gather momentum of their own accord, causing still water to become dynamic.
The end of the Kerr Hall protest was not the end of the struggle to reclaim Our University. All I can hope is that each student, those inside and outside, makes their own stand. We are in solidarity with you, regardless. I support any voice, brazen or quiet, that makes its discontent with the current situation known.
This statement from the Worker Solidarity Alliance:
Defend and Expand the Campus Occupations!
The campuses of California have been occupied. Last week, the California Board of Regents decided to impose a 32% tuition increase across the University of California system. The Workers Solidarity Alliance extends its full support and encouragement to the students and workers across the state of California in their struggle against astronomical tuition increases and other measures intended to make workers pay for a crisis deliberately manufactured by the state’s governing elite.
We take inspiration from your fight and the militancy of your struggle and wish to offer any support and solidarity we are able. We are not directly present in your struggle, and as such, we do not have the understanding of what is happening that you do. However, as an organization of working class militants engaged in struggles across North America over the last 25 years, we would like to humbly offer not only support, but also analysis based on our own experiences as you move forward in your fight. We welcome communication from you about ways we can support you, about lessons you suggest we take away from your struggle, and above all about how to extend this struggle further.
As news reaches us, we find it encouraging to hear that the struggle so far has been waged in a largely libertarian and confrontational manner – through general assemblies and direct actions, such as occupying buildings or physically preventing the departure of the UC Regents from their meetings. We believe that it is vital to avoid efforts by politicians and other opportunists to mislead the students and workers into narrow reformism or accommodation into existing channels for dissent that demobilize social movements, such as lobbying, waiting for the next election cycle, or waiting for a bailout from the federal government. Your time is now.
While we applaud the bravery of those who risk life and limb confronting the forces of the capitalist state on the picket lines and behind barricaded doors, we also feel we must soberly acknowledge that this is a defensive struggle. Unless the struggle rapidly grows, it will succumb to repression and dissipate in the face of meager concessions.
It is therefore necessary to expand the struggle, building on the already impressive participation in the struggle by working class students. We lack specific first-hand information, but it seems that the racial and ethnic composition of the movement fairly closely parallels the composition of California’s working class. Workers of color have once again taken the lead in advancing the class struggle in the United States. It is unclear to us if white workers and students are participating in the struggle in proportional numbers, but we hope that white activists play a role in building class unity across racial lines- encouraging participation by working class whites and actively combating any attempt by the bosses to offer a white supremacist sweetheart deal to white workers or students in order to split the movement. The involvement of large, diverse working class base of previously “unpoliticized” students and workers is the only hope for success in the struggle, and also the only real defense against the repression of the movement.
One urgent task facing the movement is the extension of the struggle to the California State University campuses. If resistance to the longstanding efforts by California’s owning classes to shrink and privatize both university systems is to be successful, the students and workers of all the state’s educational systems must stand united.
Beyond broadening participation in the struggle amongst students, it is necessary to expand the struggle to other sectors of the class that are impacted by the crisis. We are heartened by the level of collaboration between students and workers in the current struggle. We understand that this has been possible because of years, if not decades, of committed organizing between these two groups. This sort of solidarity is critical if we are to avoid co-optatation as an “interest group” grasping for benefits from the bosses. Capital can shift resources around to buy off and pacify one particular group. It cannot deal with one big union of all the workers, all in support of each others’ demands. The long, slow work of mass organizing must continue even in the period between mass mobilizations to build this solidarity and prepare for the next upsurge.
In discussions among ourselves based on your struggles and our own experiences, we brainstormed a few possible ways to expand the struggle to other sectors of the class. Some of the ideas we discussed are for working students to mobilize their coworkers around workplace demands, for masses of students to shut down businesses in areas around the universities that depend on students as customers, or for workers to stage job actions in workplaces that employ large numbers of students. You could also seek out workers currently on strike in other sectors of the economy, or ask your parents to participate by coming to campus or organizing their coworkers in support of your demands. Another option would be to bring non-student coworkers to assemblies on occupied campuses, as was common in the 1968 uprising in France. You might also look for inspiration to the 2004 Quebec student strike, in which student unions shut down university campuses and then went on the offensive by creating “economic perturbances”- student occupations of critical sections of the highway system, the port, and the stock exchange. The Quebec students won their demands with broad support from unions and workers across Canada.
If steps are taken to deepen and expand the struggle, the student-worker movement will be able to extract more favorable concessions from the California capitalist class, hopefully leading to the removal of some of the burdens they seek to foist on UC students and workers. However, we believe that it is only through a national, if not international, unification of campus struggles that the worker and student movement will be able to move from a defensive position against Neo-liberal cutbacks to more radical changes in the education system such as democratic self-management of the universities by the staff, faculty, and students.
We ask respectfully if the California students in action consider it a useful step to form a national student union to coordinate solidarity not just between campuses and across states, but with students and workers around the world. We see this as a potentially useful tool for advancing your struggle, the struggle of working class students, and of our class generally. We welcome response on this suggestion from the students in action now, and would be happy to collaborate to the best of our ability on such a project.
The protests and occupations of the students and workers in the UC system have captured the attention of the nation. Such actions speak louder than our words ever could. We hope that your example will find its echo on campuses and workplaces around the world as university managements and governments seek to further immiserate workers and students in the wake of the economic crisis. Furthermore, we hope that your fight in turn inspires workers in other sectors across the world to organize and fight their own bosses, building the unity and strength of the workers movement in preparation for the long years of struggle ahead, and setting the stage for the eventual global workers revolution.
All charges have been dropped against 51 of the 52 protestors arrested in Mrak Hall on Thursday 19 November. Unfortunately the charges have yet to be dropped against the student who suffered police brutality. Absurdly, she is still being charged with a felony.
Why occupation? Why barricades? Why would an emancipatory movement, one which seeks to unchain people from debt and compulsory labor, chain the doors of a building? Why would a group of people who deplore a university increasingly barricaded against would-be entrants itself erect barricades? This is the paradox: the space of UC Berkeley, open at multiple points, traversed by flows of students and teachers and workers, is open in appearance only. At root, as a social form, it is closed: closed to the majority of young people in this country by merit of the logic of class and race and citizenship; closed to the underpaid workers who enter only to clean the floors or serve meals in the dining commons; closed, as politics, to those who question its exclusions or answer with more than idle protest.
To occupy a building, to lock it down against the police, is therefore to subtract ourselves, as much as possible, from the protocols and rules and property relations which govern us, which determine who goes where, and when, and how. To close it down means to open it up – to annul its administration by a cruel and indifferent set of powers, in order that those of us inside (and those who join us) can determine, freely and of our own volition, how and for whom it is to be used. The university is already occupied—occupied by capital and the state and its autocratic regime of “emergency powers.” Of course, taking over a building is simply the first step, since our real target is not this or that edifice but a system of social relations. If possible, once this space has been fully emancipated, once we successfully defend ourselves against the police and administrators who themselves defend, mercilessly, the inegalitarian protocols of the university, the rule of the budget and its calculated exclusions, then we can open the doors to all who wish to join us, we can come and go freely and let others take our place in determining how the space is used. But we stand no chance of doing so under police watch, having sat down in the building with the doors open, ready to get dragged out five or six hours or a day later. Once our numbers are sufficient to hold a space indefinitely, then we can dispense with locks.
Our goal is straightforward: to broadcast from this space the simple truth that, yes, it is possible to take what was never yours, yes, it is possible for workers to take over their workplaces in the face of mass layoffs; for communities where two-thirds of the houses stand empty, foreclosed by banks swollen with government largesse, to take over those houses and give them to all who need a place to live. It is not just possible; as the current arrangement of things becomes evermore incapable of providing for us, it is necessary. We are guided by a simple maxim: omnia sunt communia, everything belongs to everybody, as a famous heretic once said. This is the only property of things which we respect.
If possible, we will use this space as a staging ground for the generalization of this principle, here and elsewhere, a staging ground for the occupation of another building, and another, and another, for the continuation of the strike and its extension beyond the university. Then we can decide not what we want butwhat we will do. If we fail this time, if we fall short, so be it. The call will remain.
Why Now?
It is true that the upcoming vote at the Regents meeting – an almost certain ratification of the 32% fee increase proposed by Mark Yudof and the UC Office of the President – is merely the latest in a long litany of insults and injuries. But it is also the moment where the truth of the UC is undeniable, where its ostensible difference from the violence of the larger society vanishes. The hijacking of student fee money for construction bonds tells, in capsule form, the larger story of our enchainment to debt: credit card and mortgage debt, student loans we will spend our lifetime paying off.
We want students to see this increase for what it is: a form of exploitation, a pay cut from future wages at a time when widespread unemployment already puts those wages in jeopardy. Let’s be honest: aside from all its decorations, university study is a form of job training. We pay now in order to attain a better wage in the future. It is an investment. But the crisis of the university and the crisis of employment means that, for many, the amount they pay for a degree will far exceed the benefits accrued. We could, at the very least, conclude that it isa bad investment.
But stepping back for a minute, what would it mean to restore the public university to its former glory as an engine of class mobility, as a sound investment in the future? It would mean the restoration of a system which, while ensuring that some individuals, here and there, ascend the rungs, also ensures that the rungs themselves remain immovable. The best we can hope for is that different people will get fucked next time. There is no escape from this fact. The university can’t be made accessible to all without the absolute devaluation of a university degree. To save the university means to save poverty, pure and simple. It means to save a system in which some people study and some people clean the floors. . . The same goes for the entirety of the education system – there is no way to reduce the inequality in K-12 education without a total transformation of society. The schools are designedto produce this inequality. If they were equally funded and equally administered and we still lived in a class society, then the education received there would be meaningless as a claim on future livelihood. There has to be an underclass. This is the truth of education. And it is the one thing we are supposed to never learn in school, the one thing which, despite all the gestures of solidarity, divides the campus student movement from the most exploited university workers.
This is why we must seize these spaces – spaces that were never ours – and put them to new uses. If there is any value to the university it is its centrality as a point of transmission, an instrument of contagion, in which struggle is broadcast, amplified, and communicated to the society at large. If we achieve this or that reform along the way – save wages and salaries, lower fees – this will make us happy. We understand how meaningful such achievements are for the people who work and study here. But we also understand how meaningless they are for the society at large. Sometimes saving the university is a stop on the way to destroying it. There is no insoluble contradiction, then, between us and the larger movement. We are one face of it.
Why No Demands?
First, because anything we might win now would be too insignificant. Countless times past student struggles have worked months and years – striking and occupying buildings and mobilizing thousands upon thousands of people – only to win back half of what they had already lost, a half that was again taken away one or two years later. But in any case, we are as yet far too small to win anything on a scale remotely close to the mildest of demands – a reduction or freeze of student fees, an end to the layoffs and furloughs. Even these demands would mean only a return to the status quo of last year or the year before – inadequate by any but the most cowardly measure. If we set our horizons higher – free education, a maximum salary differential of, for instance, 3 or 5, a university managed by faculty and students and workers – then we must realize, immediately, that nothing short of full-scale insurrection could ever achieve this. And if we were strong enough to bring the existing order tumbling down around us, why would we stop short and settle for the foregoing list?
The process of negotiation – the settlement of demands – is a dangerous one for a movement. It often signals its death. We have no illusions about this. We understand that, if we were to become powerful enough, and if we remained steadfast in our refusal of all negotiation or settlement, someone, some group, would step in and begin negotiating for us. There is no avoiding that. Once we become a threat, then the bargaining will begin. If the first or second set of demands seems a worthy terminus, then we have a piece of advice. Become a threat first. You just might win something. But you’ll never become a threat by determining to fight over the crumbs.
The whole theory of demands as it currently exists seems to rest upon a fundamental misconception. The demand is never really addressed to the existing powers. They can’t hear us – everyone knows that. And, in any case, they’ve never responded to petitions or requests, only force. The real addressee of the demand is on our side, not theirs. A demand defines those who utter it; it sets the limits of the struggle, determining who is and who is not in solidarity with a given fight. And such demands are, invariably, bound to exclude some party or group. We recognize, of course, that they can be useful in this respect – useful as a means to constitute and unify body in struggle, but this body can only be partial, fragmentary, divided from further support. Some groups attempt to get around this problem by making their demands an eclectic laundry-list, but such solutions always end in absurdity. This is why we make no demands. Because we want to be in solidarity with all who are oppressed and exploited. We will not say who they are in advance. They will define themselves by rising up and standing with us.
Why This Building?
Well, it’s perfect, isn’t it? As the UC levies students with ever-steeper fees and drives workers further into poverty in order to continue with its inglorious expansion – football stadiums, high-tech research centers, new administrative buildings, $1.35 billion in new construction during a supposed crisis – we can see no better target than one of the nerve centers of this strategy of accumulation, one of the routing points of this logic which privileges buildings over people. Capital Projects indeed. Even if the university is not, in a strict sense, profit-seeking like a capitalist corporation, the leveraged transformation of ever-greater levels of personal debt into new buildings, the congealation of our living activity into dead matter designed to react back upon us, to become the newest labyrinth of our unfreedom, is nothing less than a little blazon of the project of capital itself: capital which is nothing if it is not growth, expansion, multiplication, investment, and which continues along this path without the slightest regard for human needs. This is no less true of the UC, which will grow and build at any cost. Any growth is good growth, as the front page of the Wall Street Journal tells us. Gross Domestic Product knows no qualities. A pile of guns is the same, to it, as a pile of anti-malarial drugs. It is a system whichmust grow or die, which requires more and more resources and energy, more and more workers, regardless of what this work is doing. This is why no patchwork of reforms and technology and consumer morality could ever address the growing ecological crisis – a crisis, at base, of a system which knows no limits. And so we take our stand here, at the Office of Sustainability, Real Estate Services, Capital Projects. We will not create more of what people do not need. Not today. Here, in this building which coordinates the acquisition of property and the optimization of real estate assets, we refuse to be subordinate to the logic of accumulation. And we call upon all of those in solidarity with us to take over other spaces on campus, in their communities, to take over their workplaces, to refuse the rule of things, the rule of dead matter. It is easy enough. Countless buildings lie ready for the taking. We can, all together, chant Whose university? Our university! And we can really mean it.
Here is a statement in support of mobilization at UC, started by Peter Hallward (Middlesex University, London), which is currently gathering signatures:
We the undersigned declare our solidarity with University of California students, workers and staff as they defend, in the face of powerful and aggressive intimidation, the fundamental principles upon which a truly inclusive and egalitarian public-sector education system depends. We affirm their determination to confront university administrators who seem willing to exploit the current financial crisis to introduce disastrous and reactionary ‘reforms’ (fee-increases, lay-offs, salary cuts) to the UC system. We support their readiness to take direct action in order to block these changes. We recognise that in times of crisis, only assertive collective action – walkouts, boycotts, strikes, occupations… – offers any meaningful prospect of democratic participation. We deplore the recent militarization of the UC campuses, and call on the UC administration to acknowledge rather than discourage the resolution of their students to struggle, against the imperatives of privatization, to protect the future of their university.
This was bound to be a big week in California regardless, as the threat of a 32 percent tuition and fee increase across the University of California system made a crashing entrance into reality with Wednesday’s vote by the UC Board of Regents. Perhaps the Regents and UC President Mark Yudof expected that their diversionary tactics–lament the crisis and direct blame to Sacramento’s budget cuts–would pay off. But this was not to be.
Aided in no small part by the explosive exposé published by UC Santa Cruz Professor of Political Science Bob Meister, the student, faculty, and workers’ movements the length and breadth of the state were no longer willing to accept privatization disguised as crisis-imposed budget cuts. As Meister explained in no uncertain terms, the proposed (and now passed) tuition increase has nothing whatsoever to do with budget cuts, but the cuts merely provided the pretext for a long-planned drive (and Reaganite wet dream) to privatize public education in California once and for all.
One thing that is more amazing than the expansion of the strategy of occupation from school to school is the remarkable similarity in the rhetoric of our opposition across terrains. And I don’t mean Capital or university administrations, I’m talking about our most fervent opponents within our own ranks: particularly among the “build the movement first” leftists.
Rather than enter the discourse over the effectiveness of the “demand and march” model of campus activism or movement building as preceding any action, these opportunists and proceduralists have resorted to calling students who take the initiative to liberate buildings and spaces “adventurists.” This same term has been repeated to such a degree between New School and UC-Santa Cruz that it appears that our detractors maintain networks parallel to our own.
[Somewhat ironically, these factions of the "left" have repeatedly sought to co-opt student initiative, breaking and entering into spaces and situations of adventure merely to augment their dwindling memberships while marginalizing our rage. But in so doing, they are presenting a dead end avenue for venting. In fact, these self-proclaimed "revolutionary" organizations are nothing but the parasitic pygopagus conjoined twin of Capital and the State and will die upon the liquidation of both--attaching themselves to any sites of revolutionary adventure like leeches and sucking them dry. In this regard, they are no different than our student governments.]
But while they use the term pejoratively, we actually see it as a compliment. Perhaps the fact that they see adventure so distastefully sheds some light on the impotence of the contemporary Left, that they are so willing to self-castrate the only appendage that has historically been effective in staving off Capital.
But adventure is what is ultimately appealing to the disaffected masses, and what is necessary. The ability to find some excitement, to find a rupture in the daily anesthetized routine of life, is at the root of sports riots, affairs, shoplifting, and amusement parks. Television even fulfills this need when there is a lack of access to rupture or genuine adventure.
This also explains why no one comes to our meetings and rallies. We are tired of work and school, why would we choose to emulate those prisons elsewhere? Why must our “organizing” projects such model replicas of the greater mundanity of alienated life?
Adventure is self-defense, self-learning, mutual experience. We find ourselves and each other in adventure, in life-altering occurrences which tear apart the fabric of the status quo and give us a blank canvas upon which to paint our future.
We can never liberate others for them. We can never impart all of our correct consciousness upon workers, nor can we with words alone convert students to our particular brand of Marxism or Anarchism. What we can do is generalize conflict, and create situations of adventure. Remember how we ourselves came into our own individual politics: most likely through a series of life-changing experiences, through situations of adventure. With this in mind, if we are truly interested in “building the movement,” we have to understand that we can only draw our peers into the politics of liberation through the spaces of liberation and the politics of adventure as well. “Movement” implies a continuation of action; any real movement must move to grow.
Whether we are already cognizant of its existence or not, there is a global subterranean civil war. We are all unwitting participants; our choice is not whether to fight or even who to fight, but how and where to fight. It is up to us to open new fronts, discover new weapons. Others will join the struggle as they pass through these fronts. This war cannot be won with words, guns, or members. Victory in this war depends on the generalization and expansion of adventurism, via the tactics of temporary occupation, expropriation, sabotage, and guerrilla action. If we refuse to fight, we die. If we become content with our victories and refuse to expand and generalize, we die. Only in a constant state of adventure can we experience individual and collective liberation, which inevitably recedes the moment we capitulate to authority or return to the dull, lifeless drawl of the endless meeting.
Rather than condemn adventurism, we must come to recognize the necessity of creating spaces and situations of adventurism and developing a politics of adventurism. Until then, those of us already engaged in clandestine and adventuristic action will continue to do so, as we watch the rest of the “movement” atrophy.
I first want to thank everyone for your continued support during this ordeal. I have never seen the UCI community feel so strong and empowered than in the past few days. I only hope that my personal fight can be used constructively and positively by students in furtherance of our movement against budget cuts, administrative secrecy, and police violence.
I was present at the rally yesterday, November 24, which I think 700-1000 students attended. At the beginning of the rally, I was asked to give some introductory remarks about why we were there. I spoke about the attacks by police against students at UCLA and by administrators against AB540 students (I have since learned that administration is no longer classifying AB540 students as “undocumented alien” or “undocumented student”). I also stated my belief that this campus belongs to students, that we shouldn’t put up with the administration continually taking from us through tuition and cuts in services and classes. I concluded by saying that we will need to take the campus back, “building by building if we need to.” I was asked later to briefly MC. Between speakers, I drew students’ attention to police putting on riot helmets and carrying batons and tasers, saying that the administration was so scared of us having a voice that they needed police to intimidate us.
We then marched around Ring Road, with a number of riot-ready police tailing us. I’m referring to these police as “riot-ready” because they were not formally equipped as riot police; that is, they carried batons, tasers, and helmets, but didn’t have the full Stormtrooper costume. As we proceeded around Ring Road, students negotiated with professors to cancel class, and in others got students to walk out of class. When we arrived back at Aldrich Hall, the UCI administration building, we encountered police barricades erected, and behind that, 2 lines of UCIPD and IPD officers wearing helmets and holding clubs. The officers held and played with the batons in such a way to suggest that they were ready to use them even if unprovoked. Police–especially UCIPD–each had a handgun on one side and a taser on the other. It should be pointed out that the murder of Oscar Grant by BART police in Oakland happened because the cop mistook his gun for his taser. These tasers, yellow X26 models, have been denounced by the ACLU and Amnesty International and are responsible for a number of deaths.
Students showed a great deal of strength in approaching their barricades, standing within tasing and beating distance of police to hear speakers. The police would not budge, and students retreated to Ring Road… only to reapproach Aldrich Hall from a different entrance. This entrance in particular, on the first floor across from Starbucks, was designated by signs on all the other entrances that this entrance would be open to the public. As we got near, police grabbed the door and quickly shut it. A group of students approached the door, and began banging on it. One officer verbally threatened to tase students. On three occasions, officers opened the door to pepper spray or mace students. The third time, about 6-8 officers rushed outside and the students closest to the door quickly retreated into the crowd.
At this time, I left the protest to find a bathroom, because my ear and arm were burning from the chemical agent. I felt irritation in my eyes and throat as well. When I came back a few minutes later, the police had agreed to let 2 students into the building to speak with administrators. This showed just how disingenuous the police and administrators are, as the students reported back that Vice Chancellor Gomez was in his office but wouldn’t see them, and Chancellor Drake as always was out of his office. His chief of staff, Ramona Agrela, said she could see about setting up a meeting with Drake, but wouldn’t promise anything or provide a timeline; Ramona asked the students to submit a list of names for the meeting via email. I have tried to schedule meetings with Drake since February and have yet to receive an appointment. The administration at UCI is particularly adept at giving students the run-around and avoiding accountability. After this was announced, I encountered a student reporter from the New University (the campus paper) who asked me about the pepper spray incident. As I was speaking to him, about 8 police rushed around me. They grabbed me hard, said “John Bruning, you are under arrest,” and forced me up the hill and into Aldrich Hall. The entire time they were moving me, they were twisting my arms up behind my back and twisting my wrists to subject me to pain. I saw a number of my current and past students, and some friends; I heard at least one student say, “hey, that’s my TA!” As I was walking, I repeatedly asked why I was being arrested and told them they were hurting me. I was taken past the line of riot police and into Aldrich Hall, where I was thrown to the ground, lightly kicked in the head (though this may have been incidental), and handcuffed. They tightened the handcuffs to the extent that later that evening I still had red lines around my wrists and red marks on my right hand from where circulation was cut off. I also have a pain in my right bicep from my treatment that persists 24 hours as I write this, and some tingling in my right hand. One of the officers told me, “nice performance out there.” When I told him I was really in pain, he just laughed.
I was taken to the first floor of Aldrich Hall, where I was searched and had all of my belongings taken out of my pockets. The officer that searched me was Officer Chon or Chan (I didn’t get a good look at his nametag), who was involved in the beating of students at the Regents Meeting a week ago at UCLA. I was instructed to sit down. I began coughing as the chemical agent from earlier began to irritate my throat and lungs more. Another officer who was also involved in the violence at UCLA, Monsanto or Monsato, in photos next to the previous officer, gave me water. I repeatedly asked officers why I was arrested, and the most helpful comment was that I wasn’t arrested, only detained. Funny, considering I had already been placed under arrest. After some time, I’m not sure how long, I was moved down the hallway, past the entrance where students were. I noticed they had a set of doors closed with paper over the windows to keep students from seeing that I was being taken out of the building. I also heard the chants of “Free John!” outside, and those gave me a lot of courage. Knowing then that so many were supporting me kept me going through the remainder of the ordeal. I was moved farther down the hallway to a stairwell. The police were about to put me in there, and I was worried they might try to inflict more pain upon me there. Instead, a woman came down, and seemed completely flustered by the presence of the 4 or 5 police grabbing me. The police let her out into the hallway. I told her that I had been arrested and that they weren’t telling me what for. She responded with something along the lines of “oh dear!” and scurried down the hallway. One officer told me, “don’t fucking talk to her” and “don’t ever try to pull that shit again.”
I was taken by squad car to the campus police station, on East Peltason Drive by the Verano housing complex. There I was put in a cell. I whistled some old revolutionary songs, like Solidarity Forever, Bandiera Rossa, and A Las Barricadas to pass the time and give myself strength. One officer came to ask me questions for booking. Later, the arresting officer, I think his last name was Arnold told me my charges: attempted vandalism and resisting arrest. This was the same officer that maced students earlier, and who warned me not to talk to anyone. When I asked what I tried to vandalize, he told me it was for banging on the door to Aldrich earlier. Both charges were misdemeanors. He read me my rights. I asked to see a lawyer, and he denied my request, saying I couldn’t speak to counsel until my arraignment. He said I would likely be sent to Orange County Jail. The Orange County Jail is by far one of the worst jails in the world, and apparently worse than even LA County. The number of neo-Nazis and institutional power of white supremacist gangs would have posed a major risk to my safety. He asked me a few questions, to which I answered only in vague terms and generalities about the intent of our movement, not with my own personal involvement. I finally told him I wouldn’t answer any more questions without a lawyer present. He left. More waiting. Then more booking questions. I was asked to show the officer my tattoos. I asked the processing officer if I could have my personal belongings released to another student. They told me they would try, but no promises. A little while later, my partner Cristina came to the station with a few other friends asking about me. the officer asked if I wanted my property released to her, and they gave her everything. More waiting. Then I was taken out to get fingerprinted. Then back to the holding cell and more waiting. More exchanges happened with the police. I was finally asked to come outside by a new officer, Sloan, to fingerprint and sign my citation for the two misdemeanors. The citation also listed my court date for January 26, 2010. I was given my copy and my shoes and he opened the door for me to leave. I was released around 4:30pm.
I walked back to campus, where I met up with Cristina and other students. We quickly ate, I called a journalist friend at Santa Cruz to update him, and then called my mother to let her know I had been arrested. We then went to an emergency meeting in the Cross Cultural Center to discuss the day’s events and look ahead to the future. As we were meeting, the same officer from earlier, Monsanto/Monsato, drove up in a police SUV. A few students from Black Student Union, Muslim Student Union, and Umbrella Council approached him outside to see what he was doing there. He then asked them a number of questions, most if not all concerning me: did they know me? was I associated with their group? did they know anything else about me? The students went back inside without answering the questions, and informed the group about the exchange. At the meeting, we discussed the possible meeting with the Chancellor and who would represent the group. We selected seven students and one union representative to meet with the Chancellor.
I think there is enough evidence through the series of events yesterday to suggest that I have been singled out as an organizers by UCI Administration and UCIPD. I also believe that this arrest was intended to keep me out of commission for the Langson Library study-in next week, as well as to further intimidate students from organizing.
This morning, I was informed that a rumor is circulating that I was arrested for punching a police officer. This is categorically untrue, and obviously untrue given the charges. I believe this is the result of a deliberate attempt by the UCI Administration to smear my credibility as I fight these charges, bring bad press to the movement, and undermine outrage against these ridiculous charges.
Ramona also responded to us this evening about the meeting. A meeting with Drake has been scheduled for Friday, December 4, at 3:30pm. Out of the list of five individuals sent to Ramona, per her request, only three were “approved” for the meeting. Two individuals involved in the ongoing workers’ struggle were explicitly banned from meeting with Drake. A request for a New University reporter to be present was also ignored. Apparently Drake pre-screens students to see which ones he thinks he can manipulate, either through personality or institutional pressure, such as club funding. I know that the students who do meet with him will hold it down in the meeting though, assuming Drake doesn’t pull out at the last minute.
What we have long understood but which is now more apparent, is that the UCI Administration completely lacks any semblance of accountability or moral leadership, and the UCIPD has enjoyed total impunity for their actions. This needs to change; but protesting can’t change this. We will always be locked out of Aldrich Hall and Drake will always be gone for the day. We need to explore other venues for creating the university we want to see, rather than just begging for change. And since our pleas have thus far fallen on deaf ears, we need to find ways to take for ourselves what we need.
The California State government already spends more money on jails than on schools, and three times as much to house a single inmate as to educate a UC student for a year. But the lines between student and prisoner, while rarely distinct, are becoming more blurry. Over one hundred UC students have been arrested in the past week for protesting the disastrous 32% tuition increase. Our police are also becoming more militarized, and function more as prison guards than as peacekeepers. As the number of building occupations around the state nears 20 and our protests have turned into skirmishes and are growing ever closer to riots, it is clear that we are nearing the cusp of ungovernability. UCOP, the Chancellors, and the UCPD are beside themselves trying to figure out how to control us.
The tactics of UCPD have quickly escalated in the past week. The last political arrest at UCI was a few years ago, during the struggle to insource workers. In my time at UCI, there has not been an incident where police pepper sprayed students, especially not at a peaceful protest. The use of tasers is troublesome given their lethality, and I would not at all be surprised if sometime this year police shot a student dead or killed them another way. Looking into the eyes of the police yesterday, in all but a few cases, there was the appearance of outright contempt for students and their safety. A few looked as if orders were the only thing keeping them from clubbing skulls. My arresting officer carried a look of hatred on our face, as if students’ needs were the only thing keeping him from happiness. One has to wonder, with all of the rage these men contain where their souls should be, how they take care of their aggression when there aren’t protests. At home, on their families? I hope not, for their sake. Maybe they have a nice hobby, like playing baseball.
I doubt I will be the last arrest, even at UCI. The way that the police are escalating the struggle, we need to be prepared for them and their weapons and find terrain where we have the upper hand. If we are honest with ourselves and truly want to create a better society, we need to become increasingly comfortable with the risks associated with victory. We will lose comrades and friends to a variety of things, whether it’s the cold steel of the jail cell or the gun. This is becoming our reality. In the coming months, we need to stand strong together, as a community, because only as a community can we construct something better.
I am humbled by the outpouring of support I have so far received, and will continue to draw on that for strength as my legal fight continues. I also encourage all of you to stand in solidarity with the 52 students arrested last week at Mrak Hall at UC Davis, the 41 arrested at Wheeler Hall at UC Berkeley, Doug G., and Brian Glasscock, and Olivia Egan Rudolph from UC Santa Cruz, and the 14 students arrested inside the UC Regents meeting at UCLA.
I do not believe I have done anything illegal or unjustified. Even if I am prosecuted for these charges, I will never give up the struggle. They may beat us or jail us but they will never stop our movement.
John Bruning
Graduate Student, Sociology
University of California at Irvine
Wednesday, November 25th, 7pm. SubRosa Infoshop (Pacific & Spruce).
Doug “G” and Rene Buonarroti, two non-students caught up in the week of occupations and facing charges from the state, are coming out to read a text they have prepared on the revolt and discuss the actions at UC Berkeley. Donations go to cover legal costs. Please come out!
DAVIS – Tuesday, November 24th in UC Davis, students entered the Mrak Hall administration building for a sit-in. Five days earlier on Thursday, 51 students were arrested inside the building during a prior sit-in (+1 outside). Again, students refused to exit during closing time (see video below).
Tuesday, November 24, 6:22 p.m.
About 60-70 students are in Mrak now, it’s past “closing hours” and we were asked to leave by an administrator who identified himself as “Bob” at about 5:30. We’ve made a commitment to stay the night. Food, more instruments, and many new voices have arrived to keep this party going, we invite you to join us!
THE DOORS ARE STAYING OPEN.
Last Thursday police locked the doors of Mrak at 5 and no new students were let in after the building was “closed.” We are learning and tonight we’re leaving the doors open all night. It’s time for us to reclaim this space entirely, we’re here for the night and we’re not leaving.
There was rumor that the police had been called about 20 minutes ago but they have yet to show up. Administrators have attempted to pull a few students aside to discuss terms of leaving, staying, etc and have been told that any discussion must take place with the entire group.
More updates to come, for now, dance on UCD!
Tuesday, November 24, 6:38 p.m.
We’re beginning to talk through a potential list of demands. The pizza’s here, yummmy.
Tuesday, November 24, 7:00 p.m
Janet Gong (Senior Associate Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs) and Lora Jo Bossio (interim assistant vice chancellor for enrollment and academic support services) are attempting to discuss with students our leaving the building. We have made it clear that we will not be leaving.
Tuesday, November 24, 7:00 p.m
Police here. Attempting to close the doors. Students are keeping the doors open.
Gong and Bossio attempting to distract students with conversation while the doors were getting closed. We noticed and called them out. Now students are keeping the doors open.
Tuesday, November 24, 7:13 p.m
Discussions of safety. Students are confronting administration about the brutal treatment of students last week and on other campuses. We are demanding that all police leave campus before we will have a discussion. They are asking 10-15 minutes to regroup and then continue to discuss. They want us to come up with a time that we may leave.
“We can’t have a dialogue with you while the police surround the building, that’s not a dialogue, that’s a threat.”
Tuesday, November 24, 7:36 p.m
Distraction and lies! Administrators disappeared upstairs about 15 minutes ago. Now they’ve been followed by two cops in riot gear. What are they discussing up there? We doubt that it’s their commitment to ongoing dialogue. In preperation for conflict, some students have already sent their bags/ belongings to the co-ops on campus for safe keeping. Chants of “Whose University” are cut short to practice:
“I do not consent to a search…
… I am going to remain silent and I want to speak to a lawyer.”
Let’s hear it for knowing your rights.
Students commit to refusing to identify their gender so we can’t de divided by the gender they assume we are and to declare we’re vegetarian in solidarity with those who are (last time we were in jail for over 12 hours and those who do not eat meat were not given a food option. Plus a cop threw a sandwich… I’m just sayin’)
8:09pm – The administration is blocking the bathrooms.
8:37pm – Students are negotiating with 2 administrators and the chief of police. They are demanding an apology from the university for the treatment of one of the students that suffered police brutality last week. The students have been given two choices, either leave now or stay with the doors locked & police 100 yards away (meaning no one new can enter)
8:41pm – The students refuse the offer. The administrators are trying to get out of the room to talk more in secret. The administrators still will not allow students to use the bathrooms
8:44pm – The administration has refused to apologize for any brutality. The police chief has stated that she has only see one video from that night and has talked to the officers involved, but will not make a real investigation into what happened.
9:13pm – 150 students are committed to staying in the hall. 15+ “peace officers” are outside, but that’s not all of them. The students are keeping the doors open with a bike lock
10:04pm – Students in negotiations off and on, the numbers inside are ~100.
10:56pm – Success. The administration promises to lobby on behalf the charges being dropped. This is, however, only a partial success. We still need the fees dropped!
Your “assessment” of the state of Kerr Hall is laughable. The claim that it will be unable to open on Monday is patently exaggerated.
With a few exceptions, the Administration’s own photographs of the “damage” show little more than some leftover food and a bunch of paper products in need of recycling. Perhaps you have never engaged in this type of manual labor; however, as someone who funded portions of his earlier education by working for a janitorial service, I can assure you that the cleanup at this site would take a small crew no more than one or two hours. It would be quick and easy work indeed, considering that a large number of sympathetic students have volunteered to do the cleanup themselves (thus taking the pressure off of UCSC janitors who, we should note, cannot possibly provide their traditional level of outstanding service to the rest of the campus thanks to the deep cuts imposed by your administration).
As for the rest of the “damage”:
–two strong people will be necessary to upright the overturned refrigerator. Should I drop by with a friend?
–a closer examination of the photograph of the “ripped out” teleconference equipment reveals that it was merely disconnected. I’m sure there are any number of student volunteers who would be willing to plug it back in. Even I could probably do that–especially if you still have the manual.
–a collection can be taken up at the next General Assembly for replacement cost of the broken table. Or alternately, I wonder if there may be an underutilized table somewhere else on campus–I could post a few flyers or check craigslist.
Of course, I recognize that your earlier message is an attempt to engage in a certain type of “spin.” But has it occurred to you that emails of this type are one of the primary reasons for the widespread distrust of you and the UCSC Administration among students, faculty, and staff?
IRVINE – Students at UC Irvine are rallying at their main administration building. According to the facebook event, over 2,100 people are attending (it should be noted that facebook is typically inaccurate). Reports from on the ground will periodically be updated. Here are the event details at occupyUCI:
The UC has voted to raise tuition by 32%! Students were brutally assaulted at UCLA for using their right of freedom of speech! Cuts are coming from the bottom not the top, while the administrators are getting raises workers are getting fired and student class sizes get larger. It is time that we as students come together in solidarity to tell the UC it’s our UC!!!
Come out and hear stories from those affected and find out what we can do from here! Please invite at least 10 others. This is our time in history will we live up to the responsibility?
We stress that this is a peaceful rally, however, we as citizens of the United States can and will exercise of First amendment Rights of free speech!
Updates:
12:33pm – Riot cops surrounding UCI admin hall to keep out students
12:45pm – Several hundred students are marching around campus, going through classes garnering support.
12:50pm – Approximately 500 students walking out!
1:00pm – 10 police officers in riot gear are following the students rallying support/marching through out campus
1:12pm – close to 1000 people are now outside UCI’s main administration building
1:14pm – hundreds of students are still marching around campus clearing out lectures!
1:22pm – riot police have barricades outside Aldrich Hall (administration building). Students are trying to get in.
1:24pm – riot police appear to have tazers.
1:25pm – students chanting, “We want Drake!” (the chancellor of UCI). No reports of tazer use.
1:29pm – police are carrying handguns!
1:48pm – students are being pepper sprayed. The building is on lockdown, no one can enter.
2:10pm – 2 students were let in to speak with administrators. At least two students have been pepper sprayed. The building is still locked down. Students are chanting, “whose university?! Our university!”
2:14pm – No meeting is held. The chancellor promises to hold a meeting, but will not state when.
2:31pm – According to one source, numbers have reduced. Another source states that a graduate student has been dragged away from the premises. (note: contact with on the ground source has stopped… updates will be posted as they come)
The OC Register is saying there were 300 students protesting.
