no more begging

propagandize:

(flier via gazuedro, thanks to all those who noted the error! <3)

UC Student Conduct and Terrorism

from reclaimUC:

Last December, Governor Schwarzenegger invoked a rhetoric of terrorism to describe protests that had taken place on UC Berkeley campus:

California will not tolerate any type of terrorism against any leaders including educators. The attack on Chancellor Birgeneau’s home is a criminal act and those who participated will be prosecuted under the fullest extent of the law. Debate is the foundation of democracy and I encourage protestors to find peaceful and productive ways to express their opinions.

At the time, Schwarzenegger’s hyperbolic language, along with that of UC Berkeley administrators, was widely ridiculed. But now the University of California Office of the President (UCOP) is looking to insert specific language about “terrorism” into the guidelines that determine how the Codes of Student Conduct on individual UC campuses are written. The proposal is to incorporate this language into the section on hate crimes.

The following was circulated in an email from Jerlena Griffin-Desta, director of student services at the Student Affairs Office of the President. These changes may be included in the discussion at the November Regents’ meeting. The first point is particularly problematic, but note that the third almost as bad:

REVISED: Proposed Policy Changes to Address Hate Crimes

1. Terrorizing Conduct

The following new language would be added to the Policy on Student Conduct and Discipline (section 102.00 Grounds for Discipline):

“[The following is prohibited:] Conduct, where the actor means to communicate a serious expression of intent to terrorize, or acts in reckless disregard of the risk of terrorizing, one or more University students, faculty, or staff. ‘Terrorize’ means to cause a reasonable person to fear bodily harm or death, perpetrated by the actor or his/her confederates. ‘Reckless disregard’ means consciously disregarding a substantial risk. This section applies without regard to whether the conduct is motivated by race, ethnicity, personal animosity, or other reasons. This section does not apply to conduct that constitutes the lawful defense of one’s self, of another, or of property.”

2. Sanction Enhancement for Violations Motivated by Hate

The following new language would be added to the Policy on Student Conduct and Discipline (section 104.00 Administration of Student Discipline):

“Sanctions [for any violations of the Grounds for Discipline] may be enhanced where the victim was selected because of the victim’s race, color, national or ethnic origin, citizenship, sex, religion, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, pregnancy, marital status, ancestry, service in the uniformed services, physical or mental disability, medical condition (cancer related or genetic characteristics), or perceived membership in any of these classifications.”

3. Discipline for criminal convictions

The following new language would be added to the Policy on Student Conduct and Discipline (section 102.00 Grounds for Discipline):

“[Students may be subject to discipline, i.e., discipline is possible, not mandatory, on the basis of] A conviction under any California state or federal criminal law, when the conviction constitutes reasonable cause to believe that the student poses a current threat to the health or safety of any person or to the security of any property, on University premises or at official University functions, or poses a current threat to the orderly operation of the campus.”

UC Berkeley: Action on Wednesday

Noon, Oct. 27 – Sather Gate at UC Berkeley.

from those who use it:

The Academic Student Employees (ASEs) in UAW 2865 – that means all of the GSIs, readers, and tutors on all UC campuses across the state – have been denied a fair contract since negotiations with the administration began over the summer.  The UC is pushing an effective pay cut – a “raise” that is below the projected inflation rate – and refusing to increase childcare subsidies (which are currently $450/semester, hardly enough for even a month of childcare).

Undergraduates who have experienced fee hikes know the feeling.  With yet another fee hike on the table for the next Regents meeting (Nov. 16), this trend toward forcing its own students into poverty has no end in sight, and now graduate students are under attack.  Fee hikes and denial of a fair contract are two sides of the same coin: austerity measures.

Just when you thought the UC administration was the only enemy on campus, we find out that the GSIs’ own union bargaining team is giving them the runaround.  The final day of contract bargaining is this Wednesday, Oct. 27.

Grads: Will we stand back and let a panel of bureaucrats – very few of whom are actually GSIs themselves – collaborate with the UC and cut our pay and childcare subsidies, already well below those at comparable public institutions?

Undergrads: Will we let the UC continue to implement austerity measures against students on our own campus?  Fee hikes and denial of fair contracts are two sides of the same coin!

Workers: Will we really allow the UC to get away with this charade?  CUE/Teamsters have been without a contract for over two years now.  Now it’s UAW on the chopping block.  We saw the onslaught against AFSCME bus drivers earlier this semester, as well as the assault on UPTE last fall.

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!

This Wednesday, as the UAW bargaining team collaborates with the administration in denying GSIs, tutors, and readers a living wage, we fight back.

Meet at noon at Sather Gate and we will hold a brief march followed by a grade-in, publicly demonstrating the invisible work that GSIs, readers, and tutors do on a daily basis.

But this is not just about GSIs – this is about you!  All grads, undergrads, and workers must come out to fight these austerity measures, for this is only their latest guise.  On Wednesday, we fight back.

Fee hikes and denial of fair contracts are two sides of the same coin!

Those who produce and use the university fight back!

Implement austerity measures where they belong: on the superfluous administrative-managerial class!

UPR Students Occupy Social Science and Education Depts.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – On early Thursday morning, October 21st,  there was no class at the Social Sciences and Education Departments of the University of Puerto Rico as a protest against the $800 fee increase that the administration [intends] to impose on students. The fee implicates an almost 100% increase of tuition costs and that around 11,000 students would have to stop attending studies due to a lack of money.

At the Education Department claims were also made against the cuts on courses offered and the rise in class capacity. According to the Action Committee for Education, “their plan is evident. They want to make the University smaller, sacrificing the public and social interest that is assumed of a State university and adopting the model of the university-business. They want to tear apart our university to eventually give it to the private sector.”

At the Social Sciences Dept., they put together community claims from the department through their first multi-sectional assembly celebrated on October 14th. At the assembly, staff employees denounced the administration’s [intentions] to change the Medical Plan to a private one, which will be more expensive and of lower quality. The professors reclaimed protection over their retirement and better conditions for contracted faculty.

It’s the first time that during a department strike, other annexes are also paralyzed outside of the main buildings. At the University Plaza, the Worker, Rehabilitation, and Cooperativism building(s) of Social Sciences were paralyzed. At the Sports Complex the PE classrooms gates remained closed since they belong to the Education Department. Aside from that, various forums, painting, documentary screening, and other artistic activities took place.

Dialogue between the students and an informal administrative body was kept throughout the actions. This is part of the UPR's "non-confrontational" policy. Still, a couple cops showed up but did nothing.

One professor pushed through the barricades because he insisted he must get to class on time and then gave class to a total attendance of zero.

People from the island's teacher federation showed up to discuss parallels in struggle. The federation has been very active organizing strikes since the beginning of the school year and they have had much cooperation with UPR students.

A big empty banner was hung that students filled up with vents and claims to the administration

Original Article (with images) in Spanish available here. (Special thanks to Luis O. for the translation.)

More on UPR struggle:

• Oct. 19, 2010 – UPR Humanities Occupied

More coverage of last spring’s 2 month long strike here. See also, analysis of the UPR strike in the spring here.

Call for Action on Nov. 16

The University of California Administration and the UC Regents in particular have continued to demonstrate their callous disregard for the lives and futures of the Students and Workers who make up the University. The malicious assault which they are now leading against the pensions of employees, the conditions and wages of academic workers, and the future of students with a new proposed fee hike of as much as 20%, demonstrates not only the depth of their commitment to privatization but also their amnesiac forgetfulness regarding the events of last year. In the relative calm of the last few months they have forgotten the magnitude of the discontent which exploded in the form of mass occupations and strikes last November and on March 4th. As the regents meet to consider further austerity measures, we must act to demonstrate that if they fail to repeal the fee hikes implemented so far, if they continue to impose intolerable conditions on the Students and Workers of the University of California, we will render the University ungovernable. The UCSC Strike Committee calls upon Students and Workers across the UC system to take action on their campuses November 16th, both to demonstrate the continuing strength of our resistance and build the social power which can make the threat of an ungovernable university a reality.

UC Santa Cruz Strike Committee

The University Belongs to Those Who Use It

The University Belongs to Those Who Use It.

At one pole: the liberal slogan “defend public education” demands that we rally around a set of stratified institutions that serves the population as a means of glorified job training and ideological subordination, ejecting the overwhelming majority into the world of production. This is a struggle for conservation. At the other: self-proclaimed radicals demand that we treat the university as a mere distraction from the miseries of daily life, greenlighting it for annihilation.   This second position degenerates into a curious brand of nihilism.

Fragments on Forms of Struggle—Get Spoked

by before the fall, from Lines of Demarcation:

Of the General Assembly on October 7, I witnessed little: a few scattered eruptions of applause, audible on the deck north of Doe; photographs in the days that followed. What I saw instead on Thursday evening while I was stationed outside the library, were hundreds of people, in clumps of five or ten, leaving Doe in search of food. Most didn’t return that night, and the once massive sit-in gave up the ghost at dusk with a slight wheeze.

What is there to say about these groups passing out of Doe?

DN! on Whittier Elementary Occupation

CHICAGO, Illinois – For the past 37 days, parents have occupied La Casita, a fieldhouse at the Whittier Elementary school in protest over its proposed demolition and the lack of resources available to schoolchildren, including a library. Parents have transformed the space into a library by keeping the doors open to children and with the help of the community. More information at Democracy Now!

UPR Humanities Occupied

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – As of October 19th, the Humanities Faculty at the University of Puerto Rico, is occupied!

Before the warmth of the morning sun came, the students of the Humanities Action Committee (CAH) of the University of Puerto Rico – Rio Piedras campus, blocked passage to the classrooms of the Humanities Department with trash cans, desks, chairs and even plant pots to interrupt administrative labor and give way to humanistic and educational expression against the $800 fee that will be implemented on January 2011.

As the sun came up, and the physical occupation and paralyzation of the administration was guaranteed, some classes were given outside at Antonia Plaza, meanwhile the cultural activities of the day began with a web of strings, experimental music and an open microphone for students that wished to express themselves against the fee. The activities of the day included a dialogue about the fee’s impact and tactics for struggle, flute workshops, among other things. These activities would go on all day.

A giant web that extends across the Plaza calls attention to the students and demonstrators. From this web hang quotes from famous humanists with the purpose of continuing the student struggle for an accessible university of excellence and a better country, said the demonstrators.

For their part, the Fine Arts Department, which is also within Humanities, woke up barricaded with a sign that said “Closed due to bad administration”.

The occupation of the Humanities Department responds to an unanimous vote favoring the occupation at the Student’s Assembly celebrated this past October 14th.

Organizers of the CAH confirmed that this fee presents an imminent threat to the educational access for thousands of students of the university system and have begun delineating further actions that will revert this administrative policy.

Next Thursday the Social Sciences and Education departments will be occupied, after having both approved in the assembly.

Original Spanish article written by Gamelyn Oduardo with many great pictures here.

Translator’s note: Both the rhetoric and the organizing methods of the UPR students since April seem interesting provided the conversations, splits, and frustrations that have come up in California, NYC, etc. Many of their tools (assemblies, call for reforms, etc.) are tools that some people in the US would say are in direct contradiction with what radical ends are which is at the same time what the UPR students are doing on the ground: shutting down departments, opening space for free unmanaged expression, widening struggle. Does this mean that “liberal” forms of organizing actually can come out as radical gestures? Or is the UPR students’ form of organizing gonna be absorbed in the future as would be expected? Or is their context too different from the context in the US to answer such questions?

In any case, one point I’d like to make is that UPR students are not homogeneous in their stance, and there are many different approaches and stances, and I’d imagine, disagreements that have come up among their mostly successful occupations.

(Special thanks to Luis O. for the submission).

Oakland 100 Benefit Saturday

Dance party benefit this saturday (10/23) for the Oakland 100, (arrested after the Mehserle Verdict in July). It will be held after the ILWU Oscar Grant rally, and will be starting at 8pm. The location is TBA, so you should RSVP here.

Guest Appearance: Boots from the Coup, Zoe the Roasta, 40 Thieves and more!

Spread the word!

ILWU Rally For Oscar Grant This Saturday

PDF: oscar_grant_ilwu_action_final

French Youth Fight Austerity

French youths battled riot police, truckers blocked roads and filling stations ran dry as protests escalated Monday against President Nicolas Sarkozy’s plan to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62. (via some news website).

also, French strikes force 1,500 petrol stations run dry (out of 12,000). (via some other news site).

A Call for Disassembly

from anticapitalprojects:

No more General Assemblies • No more Statewide Conferences • No more Days of Inaction

The fiasco of the Oct. 7^th “sit-in” demonstrates the utter bankruptcy of the General Assembly: a political form more effective than tear-gas or billy-clubs in bringing an action to a close. In our fight against the university administration, we have ceded our power to administrative mechanisms that are little better.

How is it that an institution widely regarded last year as farcical came to assume ownership over the university struggle, to assert yet again its supposed sovereign power to broker all meaningful decisions? How can we assure that the General Assembly never again comes to assume the power to neutralize, silence, and demobilize?  How can we finally demystify the GA’s absurd self-presentation as a space of democracy, participation and openness?

It is tempting to think that the failures of the General Assembly are those of personality, ineptitude, and opportunism.  As we all know, the GA is run by a small clique of “socialist” organizers and future politicians who follow a political script unchanged, in its unflagging failure, since 1983. These are people who have, at every turn over the last year and a half, opposed proposals for direct action, or deferred them to some never-arriving future moment when they have “built the movement.”

Because of the very events last year — ones that were compelled to bypass the GA simply to proceed with planning — it is now impossible to hold a day of action that does not, in fact, feature action. The GA’s call for a sit-in was an acknowledgment of this fact, and of last year’s successes. But the organizers of the GA only conceived of the October 7 sit-in, it is now obvious, as a masquerade intent on borrowing the charisma of last year’s events in order to shore up their failing political project. They had no actual desire to sit-in or occupy the library, and so the millstones of circular proceduralism — the canned speeches, irrelevant proposals, votes on whether or not we would vote on taking a vote  – were hauled out to crush any spirit of actual resistance in the crowd, to preempt any discussion of the potentials of the present moment, or to address the practical, ready-to-hand exigencies. Were we going to stay in the space?  Were we going to let the police surround us? Would we call for support from fellow comrades, make preparations for an extended sit-in? None of these things were discussed until it was already too late. Rather, we talked about what we wanted to do next week, next month, next year. Seeing the “action” for what is was – a meeting about more meetings – people fled in droves. The facilitators were doing the work of the administration and its hirelings for them, and none of the hammer-and-sickle icons stamped on their faces could disguise this fact. Watching from the doorways, the cops smiled and ordered pizza.

The problems with the GA are structural and ideological, and no change of facilitators will make this form work within the present political landscape.  The GA is a failure because it assumes, from the start, principles of unity, majority rule and sovereign decision-making power that are incompatible with the university struggle as such. We do not need an assembly (usually composed of fewer than 50 people) to vote on what “all of us are doing” – we need a political form based upon collaboration and affiliation, whose basic communicational unit takes the form of “This is what we want to do. Will you help?” Those who worry that this will mean a fragmenting disunity should realize that there are different forms of acting-together; there is a spectrum of consensus and dissensus, and not all forms of unity must resemble liberal-democratic parliaments.

In any case, the unity of the GA is a false one: many, many people on campus do not identify with it except as a form of alienation, an external imposition. It is a protocol that assumes, in advance, what is and is not possible. It guarantees “plans” at the lowest common denominator, whose main function is not to be disagreeable — we must ask, is this a tenable platform for real struggle? Obviously not. We must overcome the hollowness of this small, anodyne plurality. Not by wandering away, atomized and dispirited, into the evening that had so recently promised so much — but by abolishing the General Assembly that stands in the way of that promise, of real struggle.

*

A related point concerns the “statewide coordinating committees”—these are bodies that have, at the highest level, done nothing but call for various “days of action.” What action? When will that be decided? What counts as “action” — another meeting to plan another day of action?

The situation here is much the same: when did we cede our power to a group of 30 people to establish the timeline for the university struggle? At what point did we agree to confine our political agitation to preappointed days, always too far away, the better to be ignored by our antagonists with their tuition bills and billy clubs?

Political struggles have rhythms, carried forward by alternating waves of optimism and despair, attack and counterattack. Actions occur on certain days and not on others, until, perhaps, one reaches a prerevolutionary moment. There is no avoiding, at least for now, the day of action. But we can be choiceful and artful and strategic in deciding when and where we will fight. We can  investigate the relationship between the actual, affective rhythm of political antagonism – the state of the struggle – and the abstract calendar laid atop it by the coordinating committee. How does the current calendar interact with the real temporality of our movement? Does it augment or diminish its power? What would have happened in the Spring of 2010 if there had been no call for the March 4^th Day of Action, a day into which people poured variously exaggerated expectations? It was a good hook for journalists and other semipro chit-chatters to hang their hats and hopes on. Wouldn’t it have been better to begin building from the energy of the previous semester, without hesitation or loss of momentum? Certainly there is a power to coordinated, multi-sector and multi-campus action. The general strike model is a good one. But the days of action have, so far, produced diminishing returns as a statewide or national education movement. We shouldn’t sacrifice the possibility of contestation for a “grand day” which never arrives. It is unclear that many successful general strikes have been called by coordinating committees. Such strikes, when they do not last for merely a day or so, when they really direct their power at capital and state, are built from the bottom-up, by resonance, contagion. We were more effective in the fall of 2009 during the Regents’ Meeting, when multiple campuses rose up, despite the absence of a statewide committee.

*

Once again, the UCOP has proposed a further fee increase of as much as 20%, a year after they voted in an increase of 32%. Will we stop them? Or will we hamstrung by the politics of failure?

Former Leslie Hotel Occupied

SAN FRANCISCO, California – Homeless and housing activists gathered together yesterday afternoon and marched down to the corner of Larkin and Eddy in the Tenderloin of San Francisco. There, they were greeted by occupiers hanging banners out the window, declaring this 68-unit hotel was now available for those in need of housing (and should remain so). Police arrived on the scene and shutdown traffic on the street; however, unable to contact the landlord, they were legally unable to evict the occupiers. Throughout the evening only a few police stayed behind to block further people from entering the building. As of this morning the former hotel is still occupied. (via Indybay)

Update: earlier in the afternoon today (Monday), the police raided the hotel, only to find it empty.

Sit-in at Blum Poverty Center

BERKELEY, California – Today, October 8th, is the opening day of the UC Berkeley Blum Poverty Center. Richard Blum, husband of US Senator Dianne Feinstein, is a current UC Regent who donated $15 million to help start this anti-poverty center in order to, “[create] innovative solutions to global poverty”. Richard Blum is the founder of Blum Capital, an investment firm with $4.5 billion in total assets. Although not the only UC Regent surrounded in controversy, Blum was the chair of the regents until last year and held stakes in several businesses that suggest he has a conflict of interest, including a construction firm involved in several UC building projects and private educational companies.

Around 12:15pm, some demonstrators began a sit-in at the poverty center. This action follows yesterday’s events at the Doe Library where around 600 demonstrators held a sit-in. There is also a simultaneous AFSCME 3299 picket at the site.

AFSCME local 3299 is the union representing service workers and health care workers in the UC system. In 2007, workers in the union began a campaign to raise service workers out of poverty level wages (as according to AFSCME, around 96% of service-workers qualify for public assistance). The irony of Blum holding the chair of the UC Regents during this contract struggle and founding an anti-poverty center, is not lost on workers and students at the university; and while service-workers were able to negotiate a new contract in 2009, the situation for workers at the UC continues to be a struggle.

Information about the grand opening was posted here in a UC Berkeley Press Release.

This video appears to be from the sit-in, in front of the Poverty Center:

More updates will follow here.

1:35pm: Protesters are being taken from the entry of the Poverty Center by police.

1:44pm: Around 11-13 protesters reportedly arrested.