Sanctions for UCI Sit-in; 1 suspended

Documents received today from a California Public Records Act request on the student conduct process at UC-Irvine has revealed that 13 students have received informal resolutions for the February sit-in outside Chancellor Drake’s office.  The sit-in demands included a recruitment and retention center, gender-neutral bathrooms, reinstatement of laid-off workers, and the termination of some corporate contracts.

According to the obtained documents (available here), all 13 were found to have violated code sections 102.13, 102.14, 102.15, 102.16, and 102.24 of the UCI student code, for “Disruptive behavior in Aldrich Hall outside of Chancellor’s office; Failure to comply with PR directive to disperse”; this is assumed to correspond with the February 24 sit-in.  12 of the students faced sanctions of probation and restitution, while 1 has been SUSPENDED.  It is unknown what the status of their appeals is.

Here are the alleged code violations:

102.13 Obstruction or disruption of teaching, research, administration, disciplinary procedures, or other University activities.

102.14 Disorderly or lewd conduct.

102.15 Participation in a disturbance of the peace or unlawful assembly.

102.16 Failure to identify oneself to, or comply with the directions of, a University official or other public official acting in the performance of his or her duties while on University property or at official University functions; or resisting or obstructing such University or other public officials in the performance of or the attempt to perform their duties.

102.24 Violation of local, state, or federal laws otherwise not covered under these standards of conduct.

This comes after the decision to suspend the Muslim Student Union for one year and three of the five UCI students charged for participating in the Cal State Fullerton Humanities action received sanctions of one year of disciplinary probation and a research/confession paper.  More UCI students are awaiting meetings with Student Conduct and involuntary resolutions; to the best of our knowledge, at least 28 UCI students are facing student conduct charges.

All student conduct actions are intended to suppress student dissent, and other documents suggest that student conduct officers monitor everything from campus protests to reservations made by activist groups.  But the suspension of an activist for a peaceful sit-in is an outrage matched only by the sanctions that have been, and likely will soon be, taken against MSU for their protest of Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren.

In an initial round of research, we were unable to find a single sit-in–across the country, over the past 40 years–that was punished with suspension.  This includes countless sit-ins over labor struggles and against sweatshops and wars, many of which have been violently evicted by police and nearly all have resulted in arrest.  In fact, we only found record of one sit-in being prosecuted in criminal court: after UNC students sat in for two weeks protesting campus apparel-sourcing policies, 5 were found guilty of minor charges, and the judge stayed each of their sentences.  Even recent sit-ins at UC Berkeley and UC Riverside protesting the univerities’ profiting from sweatshop labor resulted in no criminal charges nor student conduct charges.

We can say with little doubt that this level of persecution violates all historical precedent for responding to student protests, and sets a terrible precedent for future actions against student leaders.  What used to be considered a fundamental right–and a rite of passage–for student activists has now been placed among the gravest of sins by the UCI administration.  Student Conduct Director Edgar Dormitorio has actively collaborated with UCIPD to drum up charges against student activists, with the full complicity of Dean of Students Rameen Talesh, Vice Chancellor Manuel Gomez, and Chancellor Michael Drake, while all of them told us repeatedly that they valued protest and sympathized with our grievances.

We will post additional information about how to support these students as we find out more; and ask that you watch out for future updates on this case and the charges against other students.

- UciLeaks

UNO to Hold Walkout

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana – Students at the University of New Orleans are holding a walkout Wednesday starting at 10am.

from occupyLA:

While bankers and CEO’s make off with huge sacks of cash in bailouts and undeserved bonuses, and the War in Afghanistan pushes 9 years, we’re told by bewildered-looking politicians that they’ve done all they can for higher-education. What they really mean to say is obvious: that private interests have taken precedence over our lives.

This is hardly news.

The only difference now is that the government and the corporations’ li…es are too blatant for us to ignore anymore. We’re now told we must pay 10% more for a school experiencing manifold worse conditions, after tuition-hikes have already been imposed for several years in a row now. We’re told we have to do this to be successful, although it’s highly uncertain whether our imploding economy will have any work to offer a student with a degree. Meanwhile we’re expected to go deeper into debt to fund our education , while a debt-based economy is what caused this crisis. Their hostilities go on…

By striking we wish to inject direct student control into these issues and more. If the administration won’t represent us than we will represent ourselves. On Wednesday September 1st, instead of going to class for the rest of the day, come to the quad and protest program cuts, fired faculty, tuition hikes and increased fees, and disrupt, “business as usual”.

Read more in Strike Against the Cuts: A Guide to the UNO Crisis.

Universidad de San Carlos Occupation

GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala – On August 9th, the Students for Autonomy (Estudiantes por la Autonomía, or EPA) occupied part of the University of San Carlos (USAC). Their demand for autonomy and a return to elected student representatives for university governance has faced an onslaught of media and state manipulation and repression. After 23 days, the occupation continues.

Four days ago, a group of medical students in the Autonomous Committee of Medicine (CAM), took over another building, the Centro Universitario Metropolitano (CUM). As a result of the new occupation, a handful professors from the faculty of medicine assaulted students. On the night of August 29th, a couple of students left the CUM building and entered their vehicle to leave. After a confrontation with police, the students lost control of the vehicle and crashed, leaving one student dead and the other critically injured. Read more about the current situation on the EPA’s website, here (en Español).

A video communiqué from the EPA:

An open solidarity letter has been drafted by Cascadia Solidaria in English:

Solidarity with Students for Autonomy, San Carlos University, Guatemala (Estudiantes por la Autonomía, EPA)

As students, workers, and community members in the United States and Canada struggling in defense of public education, we have been immensely strengthened by the example of movements in resistance against the privatization and neoliberalization of higher education across the world: in the Phillippines, in South Africa, in Puerto Rico and El Salvador, in Greece, Austria and various countries in Europe.  Now our solidarity and support turns to Guatemala and Students for Autonomy of the University of San Carlos (Estudiantes por la Autonomia, Universidad de San Carlos, EPA-USAC) and their allies, who have maintained the University under occupation since August 9 in protest against the systematic violation of the USAC’s constitutionally-guaranteed rights.

We state our support for the principle demands of EPA, and condem the reduction of student votes in the election of the University’s Board of Directors, due to a 2007 decision of the Guatemalan Constitutional Court, with the support of the University Administration (Consejo Superior Universitario, CSU).  We support EPA’s opposition to the increase of tuition fees at Guatemala’s only institution of public higher education; as well as the imposition of entrance exams and punitive measures against students who must repeat courses.  Policies which, in addition to increased fees, result in the progressive elitization of public higher education.  We support EPA’s call for the full funding of San Carlos University, as guaranteed by the Guatemalan constitution.

We call on the USAC Administration to negotiate in good faith and immediately implement policies to protect and restore students’ rights and the political autonomy of the University.  We reject the Administration’s calls to confrontation with students who have taken direct action in defense of their rights, and ask that no reprisals be carried out against these students.  We denounce all threats against the students of EPA and their allies, as well as any actions by State security forces which would violate the physical autonomy of San Carlos University.

Public higher education is a right, not a privilege or a private commodity.  We join EPA in calling for Universities which meet public needs and respect the rights of students and workers.

SFSU August Dance Party

SAN FRANCISCO, California – Hundreds showed up for the first dance party on SFSU’s campus this academic year. At its peak around 600 people were present.

CSUMB Banner Drop

MONTEREY, California – Student organizers handed out literature and dropped a banner during the “Presidents Barbeque” at CSU Monterey Bay on Sunday, August 22. The University President’s speech, which occurs every year on the day before class starts, had no relevance to students’ lives and once again proved the disconnect between those who attend the university and those who manage it. This year a group of students contributed to the event by passing out copies of CSUMB’s Otter Disorientation Guide, a guide to a more realistic college experience. It also echoed the recent statewide call to action to defend public education on October 7th. Several students dropped a banner over the side of a building that faced the crowd. The sign read “Set Education Free—Strike! Oct. 7th”. The banner was quickly removed, exposing the anti-free speech attitude of those who run the university. (via indybay)

October 7 Balloons at Cal

Balloons were released in several lecture rooms in 4 buildings at UC Berkeley.

The SFSU 10 Put On Hold

SAN FRANCISCO, California – Before dawn on December 10th last winter, occupiers of the SFSU business building were arrested. Since then, they have received over $700 in restitution charges by the university, each. As insult to injury, 10 of the students are now forced to pay part of it, $95, before a hold is removed on their registration for classes that began this week. They put a hold on their records without any sort of notification.

SFSU Dance Party

Friday, August 27 – Dance Party @ San Francisco State University

Location: The Dorms
Time: 9pm.

rsvp facebook.

i. communiqué

from radical women’s kitchen:

This is an unwavering political statement, a conscious effort to politicize an event without being apologetic or defensive. This statement is written by a collective of women who came together in the spring of 2010 based on shared experiences and concerns surrounding patriarchy and sexual violence within the radical scene and beyond. In our meetings and discussions, we learned that many of the women within our network have experienced some form of sexual violence. It is no coincidence that we have had this experience with power. Rape is not a personal misfortune but an experience with domination shared by many women. When more than two people have suffered the same oppression the problem is no longer personal but political – thus, rape is a political matter (New York Radical Feminists Manifesto, 1971).

Violence against women contributes to a system of power, organizing society into a complex set of relationships based on a sometimes invisible and internalized assumption of male supremacy. Rape is not the only form of control that male-bodied individuals can practice in romantic, friend, or comradely relationships. Physical as well as emotional abuse function as ways of maintaining involuntary hierarchies and control over women, female sexuality, and reproductive systems.

The silence and secrecy that often surrounds issues of power and domination should in no way to be taken as complicity, however, we as women and survivors will remain silent no longer.

Ideologically speaking, male-bodied anarchists and communists align with principles of egalitarianism and anti-authoritarianism, yet daily practices in this regard oftentimes fall short.  We have repeatedly seen a chasm between theory and praxis in male-bodied treatment of women and other oppressed people.  We have seen over and over again, male-gendered behaviors reproduce the very systems of domination that we are fighting to dismantle.  We refuse to allow this to continue.

In the course of our meetings, we identified one male-bodied individual as a repeat perpetrator of sexual violence against female-bodied people: Jan Michael Dichter, also known as Maus. This particular individual, whose vocabulary consisted of anti-patriarchal jargon, had committed sexual violence before, and participated in survivor-defined accountability processes. Since he continued to transgress boundaries, raping and sexually assaulting women in Boston and Santa Cruz, we decided to confront him. We met him at his home and verbally confronted him. He refused to take responsibility and his words were manipulative and insulting. When he refused to shut up, we shut him up. The intent was to inflict pain, albeit it would only be a small portion of the amount of pain his victims have felt.

We did what had to be done out of sheer necessity. As radicals, we know the legal system is entrenched in bullshit – many laws and legal processes are racist, classist, heterosexist and misogynist. Alternative accountability processes, much like the traditional ones, often force the survivor to relive the trauma of the assault and force her to put her reputation – a problematic concept in itself – on the line as “proof” of her credibility. They end up being an ineffective recreation of the judicial process that leaves the perpetrator off the hook, while the survivor has to live through the memory of the assault for the rest of her life (Anonymous communiqué from NYC, 2009). The US legal system and the alternative community-based accountability processes are simply not good enough for survivors, and certainly not revolutionary.

Rape is entangled in a system of patriarchy and domination. It would serve us well to consider rape as part of class and race analysis. It is not only a crime committed by individuals against individuals; it is systemic and structural. It is our material interest as women that pushes us to stand up for ourselves. The material consequences of patriarchy and male supremacy push all women, regardless of how they define themselves ideologically, to fight against our oppression. In our work as a radical community, both female- and male-bodied, we must work to dismantle this form of oppression and domination. We find it an incomprehensible and unacceptable betrayal that our so-called male-bodied ‘friends’ would perpetrate this kind of subjugation of female-bodied comrades. Just because you can articulate feminist theory does not mean that you are to be trusted.

We also find tacit support of male-bodied perpetrators, as well as the hijacking of our collectively defined accountability process particularly offensive. Attempts by some self-identified “male allies” to take control of the action by confronting Maus themselves, pressuring women for inclusion and calling a public meeting without our permission undermined our practice of self-organization. Rather than demonstrating their support these men made it clear that they were unwilling to allow us to act on our own behalf without their involvement. The type of action we took as a group of female-bodied comrades aligns clearly with anti-hierarchical politics and goals of self-determination. If our male-bodied ‘comrades’ want to be considered as comrades, we’d like to see them behave that way.

This action sets a precedent, the beginning of a new kind of accountability process, one that leaves the perpetrator in pain and articulates our call for the dismantling of male supremacy in radical political communities and beyond. We know that Maus is not the only guilty one. We know there are more of you out there…

It would take a revolution to eliminate structural violence; thus an anti-rape agenda must be part of any revolutionary agenda. We demand this now.

http://radicalwomenskitchen.wordpress.com

References:
Anonymous communiqué from NYC (2010),
http://twincities.indymedia.org/2010/apr/anarchist-rapist-gets-bat-well-show-you-crazy-bitches-2

New York Radical Feminists Manifesto (1971).

ILWU Demands Justice for Oscar Grant

OAKLAND, California – The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) local 10 has called for a community rally to demand justice for Oscar Grant on October 23rd at Oakland City Hall (i.e. Frank Ogawa Plaza). Local 10 is calling for all killer cops to be jailed.

RSVP on facebook.

Occupy Santiago

SANTIAGO, Chile – Over the past few weeks, students have been revolting over the privatization of education throughout Chile. In Santiago, students have occupied various school buildings, including ‘middle schools’ (i.e. high schools). According to one mainstream news source, over 100 students were arrested.

On wednesday, August 18th, some 3000 university and secondary students marched through Santiago only to be confronted by riot police. Police brutality ensued as they refused to allow students to reach the main ave.

Cal Disorientation Guide

front cover

BERKELEY, California – The Disorientation Guide has been a long running annual radical student paper produced at dozens of campuses each year. The UC Berkeley Fall 2010 issue is now available online here.

back cover

Glancing Backward, Leaping Forward: Reflections on the Oakland Assembly

from RaiderNationCollective:

As we prepare for sentencing in the case of Johannes Mehserle, we must also prepare to radically shift our strategic orientation, or risk becoming obsolete. Our objectives, our strategies, our relations with the community: all must change or the murder of Oscar Grant will become just another police murder, and our street rebellions “just another riot.”

Glancing Backward

The Oakland Assembly for Justice for Oscar Grant (OA) was created with the intention of being a space for radical democracy and communal struggle towards Justice for Oscar Grant, his family, and the Oakland community. Our goal when we put out the call for the first meeting of the Assembly was to form a body that could seek community justice for Oscar Grant as well as form a space outside of the state, non-profit, and liberal institutions.

Our thinking was simple: direct democracy instead of liberal leaders, community justice instead of white justice, and a radical movement instead of toothless reformism. Our analysis has been rooted in a recognition that our power lies in the streets, not in City Hall or the Department of Justice; in demanding justice and fighting for it rather than asking nicely. Our strategy has never been one of provoking conflict or putting others at risk, but instead one of recognizing the presence of justified anger, and attempting to transform that anger into radical systemic change. As Oscar’s family has insisted all along: this goes beyond Oscar.

During the past year, the Assembly has called for or supported a number of actions and events with both limited victories and limited defeats. We would like to remind folks of one important victory: the July 8th event on the day of the verdict that the Assembly called for, organized, and held down. Some have called this a defeat because those arrested were mostly people of color, but should we really expect anything different from the racist state? To claim that July 8th was a defeat because the police used it as an opportunity to target people of color is like claiming that the Black Panthers were a failure because the state chose to destroy them.

Rather than a defeat, we saw this day as a partial victory that expressed the spontaneous rebelliousness of a community that knows the difference between involuntary manslaughter and 2nd degree murder.

During this period, we feel that the OA has functioned as a liberated oasis which has encouraged the participation of queer and trans folks as well as woman and people of color but much more needs to be done on this front.

Taking Stock of the Present

It is in light of past victories and defeats that we must assess the present moment, which we see as a turning point in the Assembly.

We can either change or perish. We must move beyond the specific case of Oscar Grant as well as beyond merely being a space where organizers come together. In other words, our movement must broaden its scope to attack police violence more generally while deepening its organic relationship with the community.

No one group ‘owns’ the Assembly. It does not belong to us, or to anyone else for that matter. It has to belong to itself and make its own way. Raider Nation Collective has tried to set an example when it comes to moderating, facilitating, and putting forth proposals; but we need to be clear that we want this to be different: we want more trained facilitators, we want more coherent and principled discussion and debate over email and in person, and we want more prepared participation, with people bringing well-formulated proposals to Assembly meetings.

Furthermore, as an institution of popular, neighborhood power, the Assembly will not survive if it does not deepen its relationship with the community, and specifically young people of color. This is why we are in full agreement with Hannibal’s critique of the Assembly’s lack of young members of color and in particular young Black men. It is one of our main criticisms as well. This is why we, along with the vast majority of people in the Assembly meeting on July 15, 2010 voted for an outreach committee headed by Hannibal and other young Black men that would focus on bringing in more ‘Oscar Grants’ into the assembly. This is not your ordinary “outreach” committee, and should not be diverted toward labor outreach or any other task that departs from this primary demand.

For us, ‘Justice for Oscar Grant’ means freedom from police oppression for all people of color in Oakland but most specifically those young Black and Latino men who are disproportionately subjected to the violence of the police.

Leaping Forward

In the spirit of pushing forward within the OA, we will conclude by sketching out our vision for the coming months. Specific proposals are forthcoming.

Given our approach to understanding the power of the state and its operations, Raider Nation Collective does not believe that asking for concessions is the way forward. Frederick Douglass’ adage, “power concedes nothing without a demand” remains incomplete unless we remember the phrase which Douglass added to it, and to which his life was a living testament: “without a struggle, there can be no progress.” As a result, we do not believe that our energies are best spent in letter-writing campaigns which pressure federal intervention from the Department of Justice, or in popular justice tribunals which attempt to bring the moral weight of the United Nations to bear on policing in the United States. We would rather organize to fight than to ask nicely.

But here is what is important: within the Oakland Assembly, these differing strategies and tactics are not conflicting. We can and must move forward together with joint work. In that spirit, we will collaborate as much as possible with others in the months that come and play a supporting role at the ILWU event scheduled for October 23rd. However, we will be focusing our energies on plans for a Day of Action proposed for November 5th, the day of Johannes Mehserle’s sentencing. We hope that this day will bring together the anger that we feel at Oscar Grant’s murder (and those others killed before and after him) with the anger we feel toward the racist violence enshrined in Arizona’s SB1070 and the class conflict inherent in the state budget cuts. We hope, in short, that November 5th will be an expression of the same Black-Brown unity that the Oakland Assembly fights to build.

We hope November 5th will be a momentous day of unified struggles, of walkouts, of strikes, and a show of righteous force that will make the powers that be tremble. We have found our strength—now is the time to use it.

http://www.oaklandforjustice.org/

Students in Bangladesh Continue Fight

CHITTAGONG, Bangladesh – On August 14th, hundreds of students flooded the streets of Chittagong to protest police violence. Slogans such as “Why 300 injured? Why 500 arrested? Why a 120 criminal cases?”, as well as “We won’t pay an extra penny!” were shouted. Students are determined to keep fighting! (via Emancipating Education)

Massive Unrest to get Section 8 Housing in Atlanta

ATLANTA, Georgia – Some 30,000 people turned out on Wednesday for an event held by the East Point Housing Authority to hand out applications for Section 8 Housing. However, the EPHA had only expected around 10,000 to show up. Some people lined up several days in advance, and others came expecting a well organized event rather than a fight. Unrest and chaos ensued as the EPHA lost control and police had to be called in to control the crowd and eventually hand out applications themselves.