CA Dept. of Corrections Threatens Crackdown on Prisoners Hunger Striking

from PrisonerHungerStrikeSolidarity:

California – With the hunger strike continuing to spread from Pelican Bay and Calipatria State Prisons to at least 6 other prisons, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has threatened to crack down on the at least 6,000 participants, including sending prisoners to solitary confinement.  The CDCR also faxed expulsion orders to two mediation team lawyers, notifying them that they had been banned from all prisons pending an investigation into whether or not they had “jeopardized the safety and security of CDCR” institutions.  Meanwhile, the prisoner-selected mediation team that has been trying to negotiate with the CDCR since the strike was initiated in July sent a letter to Gov. Jerry Brown, demanding a meeting and lodging their vehement objections to the actions of CDCR officials.

“This is very worrisome to say the least,” says Carol Strickman, one of the mediation team lawyers banned from CDCR facilities.  “We have been receiving steady reports from prisoners of CDCR intimidation and retaliation leading up to the strike.  Now, we have the CDCR threatening prisoners and cutting off contact with our legal team.  We obviously don’t want to imagine the worst, but we are legitimately concerned about violence on the part of the prison administration.”

In a letter sent to Gov. Brown this morning, mediators laid out the prisoners’ demands and said that prison officials’ inaction at the negotiation table and threats to prisoners “clearly demonstrate the unwillingness of CDCR officials to address the prisoners’ demands adequately.”  Mediators are asking for a meeting with Brown, saying, “We are ready to bring forth specific proposals that will make the current proposed reforms complete and bring California in line with best practices nationwide.  We can and must end torture in California’s prisons now.”

Support for the hunger strike continues to grow nationally and internationally.  “The strike is growing throughout the California for Security Housing Units, from Administrative Segregation Units, throughout the general population. Prisoners are becoming more and more united in their opposition to the horrendous conditions they are forced to endure at all levels of the prison system,” said Manuel La Fontaine, of the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity coalition. “And as their strike grows, so does the support coming from outside the prison walls.  People see this as a human rights issue, and so no level of repression on the part of the CDCR will stop people all over the world from fighting to help these prisoners win their demands.”

Berkeley UAW on Tolman Occupation

from reclaimUC:

Ratified, Monday September 26, 2011
Statement of Solidarity with September 22 Actions and Arrestees:
UAW 2865, Berkeley Unit

On September 22nd, members of the UAW 2865 joined several other students, workers, faculty, and their organizations to nonviolently protest the austerity measures undermining the quality and purpose of public education at UC Berkeley and other universities around the state. Hundreds participated in a rally at Sproul Plaza and marched through campus to raise awareness of the undermining of our public institutions and reclaim education as a civil right.

Near the end of the march, participants decided to occupy and utilize empty classrooms in Tolman Hall where the Department of Education is based to hold teach-ins, documentary viewings, and general meetings open to anyone who wished to contribute. While some classrooms in Tolman Hall are still in use, the reclaimed classrooms, which once prepared future generations of educators, are now empty due to administrative and state disinvestment. We students, workers, faculty, and community members understand this neglect of space to be symptomatic of a larger crisis of priorities: upper-level administration and faculty – as well as UCPD – take increasing portions of the budget while workers are fired, overworked, and underpaid; student fees and tuitions are increased; and classroom buildings as well as departments are abandoned. Such austerity measures satisfy investors by selling off our futures, displacing educational costs onto unreasonable amounts of student debt. The university continues to grow and enhance its brand while instructional value suffers, students struggle to graduate, and staff works more for less money and job security. Students and workers transformed these derelict spaces into improvisational classrooms where people could speak critically and openly about how these changes are affecting their lives and about local, national, and international movements to restore affordable education at the center of our democracies. Documentaries were viewed. Food and water was distributed. A conversation with a student activist in Chile was organized. Teach-ins were held.

Although hundreds of students and workers entered Tolman Hall to carry out these peaceful demonstrations, they were met by the UCPD with shows of aggressive, physical force and pepper spray. Throughout the day, the presence of the UCPD militarized the situation and often escalated confrontations. Demonstrators grew increasingly frustrated as they watched one participant be beaten and seized in a hallway outside of a classroom under the pretense of fabricated charges. Around 8:50pm, the UCPD began locking down the building on peacefully chanting demonstrators without giving a dispersal order or even announcing that the building was to be closed – in contrast to the official statement made by UCPD and the UC administration. The counter-force exerted outside the building came after the police locked the doors on protesters. Ultimately, nearly all protestors inside the building were allowed to leave peacefully without receiving citations. We believe these violent, precipitous, and likely illegal actions by the UCPD to be a localized expression of broader structural tensions augmented by divisive strategies of austerity and privatization. The core mission for all members of the academic community –workers, students, faculty, and community members alike—should be the restoration of the purpose and viability of education as a public, democratic good.

The repression of students and workers cannot be tolerated!
Austerity undermining public education will not be tolerated!

As members of the UC community, we demand:

• A complete reversal of recent fee increases.
• A revision of current admissions policies to lift barriers faced by underrepresented students of color and working class students.
• The re-hiring of workers fired as a result of budget cuts
• A full investigation of the Regents’ conflicts of interest, especially their investments in banks and for-profit schools.
• An end to UC administrative and police surveillance, violence, and intervention in political and academic activities.
• Equal and full access to the university for undocumented students and workers.
• The democratic control of the university by students, faculty, and staff.
• All charges be dropped against the two individuals arrested on Sept. 22.

The UAW Local 2865, which represents academic student-workers, calls on community members and all faculty, students, workers and their organizations to join us in making these demands.

The escalation of police force against peaceful demonstrators indicates that conventional measures of protest and dialogue have been denied despite official pronouncements by UCPD and the UC administration. If faculty, students, community members, and workers cannot gather peacefully on campus to defend public education against the austerity measures imposed by the UC administration and enforced through the brutality of UCPD, we are increasingly left with no choice but to disrupt business-as-usual at the university in order to be heard.

We call on all community members, faculty, students, workers and their labor unions, associations and organizations to accelerate preparations for larger, collective actions if our demands are not met following sustained efforts of public statements, negotiation, and peaceful protests against the UC administration.

Occupied Wall Street: Some Tactical Thoughts

from Jacobin:

I’ve been to the encampment at Zuccotti Park a few times since the 17th, but I have never stayed that lonrg. It’s not just cause I’d rather sleep in my room in Brooklyn on which I spend the vast majority of my income, but because I’m just not that into it. Yet I’ve met some great folks and I really do believe in the intentions of the vast majority of non-undercover non-Party attendees, so these notes are to them in hopes that we might advance the struggle together. When I was leaving the Park a few days ago, I heard someone in an assembly tell the audience: “We’ve won just by being here!” and she was met with uncontested applause. Sleeping on the sidewalk is not a victory unless you’re first in line for concert tickets. Sleeping on the ground of a small decorative park owned by a commercial real estate firm is not a victory unless you are attempting to protect an endangered squirrel or a really old tree, and probably not even then.

Meanwhile, the ring of police officers surrounding the park earn time-and-a-half, stroking their batons, waiting. I’ve seen far fewer cops disperse much larger groups of better trained and prepared demonstrators in a matter of minutes, as has almost anyone who protested against the Iraq War; the notion that we have won control of the park through the strength numbers is absurd. Meanwhile the police go on with the farce of instructions from “the space’s owner” as if there were a guy standing in an officer tower watching the park and changing his mind back and forth. It’s a tactic, and one we ought generally ignore. Look around. See the group with guns and sticks? They’re calling the shots. A friend remarked that if aliens showed up on the scene, they would think they had stumbled onto a police holding pen.

It seems to me that the tactic of an occupation has two main goals, neither of which the Zuccotti Park encampment is achieving. The first would be some sort of sabotage or interference that halts business as usual. When you hear “occupy Wall Street,” you don’t think Soviet tanks rolling into Prague, but there’s a suggestion of interruption. We want to occupy Wall Street because we want to make them stop what they’re doing. Camping in a park outside their office isn’t how you make them stop, it’s how you ask them to prom if you’re creepy about it*. It’s not like we’re even costing any CEO his beauty sleep “HeyHeyLBJ”-style. They all go home at night. When you walk to the encampment, it’s hard to realize anything’s happening until you get up and inside. It is painfully clear that the people who work there could not give a fuck. Wall Street’s crisis-business goes on as usual, under “occupation” or not.

The second function of an occupation would be a kind of collective enjoyment or gain at your enemy’s expense. His stuff becomes your stuff, which you get to play with and put to use. A park could be useful in this way as a staging ground for other actions and a liberated space participants can enjoy. As the snake-march to Union Square (with an arrest rate between 10 and 30 percent) demonstrated, a spot that’s surrounded by cops is probably not the best place to plan the specifics of your next action. I’m not being paranoid or even controversial in pointing out that police officers are working inside and outside the bounds of the occupation. Sorry, but that buff 30-something guy with sunglasses, three Blackberries, and no friends isn’t there because he saw the Olbermann feature on Current. There’s no security and no attempt to keep anyone out of the park, which I understand, but people should be aware that plans made in this supposedly occupied place go straight to the police, if they weren’t suggested in general assemblies by cops in the first place. So it’s not a very good staging ground for a next wave of actions, it does not perform that function as a strategic resource.

As for the enjoyment, I guess that’s a subjective question, but it was hardly a raucous party. Mostly people didn’t want to “give the cops a reason” by enjoying themselves too publicly. If you thought passing around a bottle of whiskey was tough in your parents’ basement in high school, try doing it under the watchful eye of dozens of New York’s finest. I mean, we did, and it was kind of fun, but not like temporary autonomous zone fun. As I’m writing this, I’m seeing reports on Twitter of a cop-enforced quiet time after 10. It makes me wonder if they haven’t let the whole thing go on this long as a way to get some austerity-hit officers overtime pay.

The fuzzy ultra-left ideal about forging new kinds of relationships through struggle and finding each other and such can’t just be about meeting in space and time, otherwise we could start a bowling league and be done with it. If we’re trying to learn how to have each other’s backs, how to trust and depend on each other moving forward, then we need to put ourselves in situations that demand that kind of strength and solidarity**. And I don’t mean taking people’s sides in arguments over assembly process. That shit is dumb.

I don’t want to quibble about whether or not the encampment counts as a “real occupation” — you can occupy a bathroom, but that doesn’t mean you’re doing shit. It seems clear to me that the encampment at Zuccotti Park isn’t providing the benefits a successful tactical occupation could and should. That said, there are definitely some bright spots. First of all, the occupation has accumulated (last time I heard) $24,000 in a war chest, along with literally tons of donated food. It looks like the national climate is such that an action of this ideological orientation can attract financial support, which is going to be huge, especially considering the costs associated with the criminalization of protest. When a brutal cop maced a couple women just for kicks, some anonymous*** internet folks posted a good bit of his personal information online. If there are direct personal consequences for particular aggressive cops, that can only be a good thing. For the first time it looks like people on the interwebs can help protect people on the ground. It seems to me they could do more. For example: I, for one, if the webs are listening, am interested in learning more about the owners of Zuccotti Park. These are elements of an emergent potential, the question remains what we can do with it.

Here are some ideas:

- The GA/consensus model doesn’t exactly encourage creativity and is particularly susceptible to police co-optation. In one of the most heavily policed places in the world, where the NYPD is bragging about its ability to shoot down planes, we should assume they have a Che t-shirt and a Chrome messenger bag in a prop room somewhere. If anyone can lead the group, that means anyone can lead the group. A switch to a model based on smaller bands of people (5-10) who know and trust each other and have found common ground and operate in (naturally) overlapping ways would have the dual benefits of enabling creative rather than agreeable actions and reducing the risk of police infiltration, without forfeiting the benefits of a large group. The technical term for these crews is “affinity groups,” but I prefer “friends.”

- If the population of the park can grow past its boundaries and start threatening the normal functioning of Wall Street, then it could open up space for smaller groups to operate without too much police attention and change the balance of power in the park. I heard unconfirmed reports that Radiohead is planning a concert at the occupation this week, which if true could make it uncontrollable and attract more folks to a relatively uninhabited part of the city. I’m disinclined to believe the rumors, but you never know, and it’s not like they can’t afford to bail themselves out of jail. Maybe they could be cajoled over Twitter to show up and play a few acoustic songs. Either way, it doesn’t make sense to me to try and protect the occupation from this kind of influx of people, even if that would make it untenable in its current form.

- This is a marathon, not a sprint or a hamster wheel. The next year is going to be explosive: the two Parties will spend a billion each reminding Americans how terrible everything is, and hoping they can get away with blaming each other for a permanent unemployment crisis. The social ills that brought people out aren’t getting better any time soon. Occupy Wall Street is part of a sequence, not the sequence itself, and we should be thinking about its role in a revolutionary campaign of a longer but bound duration.

- If corporations are people, what would it mean to wrap our hands around one’s neck and choke it to death?

These are admittedly preliminary thoughts, and I want to discuss what to do with other folks, but I don’t want to address an assembly, and not just for security reasons. When I’ve found people and groups of people at the occupation who are ready to move beyond its current bounds, it’s on the edges of the large circles. Maybe it’s time the whole thing got edgier. That is, sharper.

See you in the streets.

—

*I swear this is a plot point in a movie or tv show, but I can’t remember which one. Remind me in comments and get your name here!

**This also means doing it the smart way. When I expressed surprise to a longtime New Yorker that the Union Square march resulted in so many arrests, he told me everyone knows the NYPD doesn’t play above 14th Street while the UN is in session. I did not know that, and I would wager some of those arrested didn’t either.

***It’s an adjective, not a Party.

Notes on the Tolman Occupation

from indybay:

As with the inaugural event of the California occupation movement two years ago – when students barricaded themselves inside the Graduate Student Commons at UC Santa Cruz – the occupation of Tolman Hall was both an act of material expropriation (or attempted expropriation) and an act of communication, meant to signal, to warn, to threaten and raise the alarm. . . It was both a declaration of resumed hostilities against the university and a form of communication with comrades here and elsewhere, both inside and outside the university. It was a warning directed at the small clique of arrogant, befuddled bureaucrats who run the university, as well as their armed thugs. But also a message sent to our comrades. For our comrades, the occupation was meant to communicate first and foremost a kind of excitement: Let’s do this! Let’s occupy everything! But behind the initial thrill it should communicate, also, a few critical lessons:

1)The first lesson is as clear as a geometric proof: Violence works. As with the threat of a two thousand person riot which freed the Wheeler occupiers on Nov. 20, defensive violence works particularly well. Faced with a group of largely passive occupiers, a group which seemed in no way prepared to resist a dispersal order, the police decided to enjoy their own capacity for arbitrary displays of power and bar the doors without giving any verbal warning. The occupiers, correctly, rushed the doors and tried to get out, pushing the cops out of the way and dearresting those whom the police grabbed. With over half of the crowd outside, the police finally secured the doors, throwing one of the last people to try and flee to the floor, bloodying his face and nearly dislocating his shoulder. They had started a riot. Outside, fewer than five officers faced off against a crowd of 30 or more in total darkness. Someone threw a metal chair at the cops. Others threw chunks of concrete and traffic cones. They chanted “Pigs just fucking try it. There’s gonna be a fucking riot.” The cops were forced back into the building, at which point it seemed like only a matter of time before the crowd tore down some fencing and smashed open the doors (someone had already smashed one door). Realizing the volatility of the situation, the cops released the detainees on the inside. QED: violence works. Violence, in this case, is one of the most intense forms of solidarity. Only because of the mystification that surrounds the police, can this appear as anything other than an act of mutual aid. When a group of thugs kidnaps your friends and starts beating them, you fight back. This is common sense.

2)Second lesson: the police are the enemy. They cannot be convinced, cajoled, manipulated. They have been given orders to treat every demonstration as a criminal matter, an act of burglary and vandalism. The administration has indicated in explicit terms that only the police will deal with such situations. There will be no discussion, no phone calls or visits from the Deans. It does not matter if we have the support of the inhabitants of the building. Police are the proxy owners of the campus; they will go in and militarize occupations immediately. Unlike other places where the police might wait outside for hours or days or weeks until given orders to attack an occupation, police at Berkeley act on their own initiative, autonomously, attempting to take control of a space even before they contact their superiors. The image of officers rushing into the crowd as if they were running backs pushing through defensive line would be absurd elsewhere, but here it is par for the course. This makes the “open occupation” – the occupation which attempts to claim space but allow for easy circulation in and out, creating a functioning autonomous space in which all kinds of activities take place – rather difficult. It is pretty obvious at this point: we cannot be free with cops in the room. There is no struggle against fees and debt, no struggle against austerity that is not, at the same time, a struggle against the cops. We will have to find ways to physically prevent the entry of police into our occupations, unless they are politically prevented from doing so. This is our message to the administration: restrain your attack dogs or expect more riots.

3)A final lesson. This occupation failed for many reasons – an inability to keep police out of the building, a lack of “planning for success” (ie, having clear ideas about what we wanted to do once we were inside). All of this meant, ultimately, that there were too few people to survive the first night without courting arrest. Still, as brief and disorganized as it was, the number of people entirely new to protest and occupation was incredibly encouraging. These new folks, of course, displayed a naivete that is no doubt frustrating – wondering, for instance, why the presence of cops in the building was even an issue (they learned the answer quite quickly). But instead of engaging them, and attempting to explain what was happening, instead of attempting to help them understand the practice they were engaged in, many comrades simply left them alone, preferring to congregrate with the likeminded. This is a real weakness, one we note in ourselves. It evidences a lack of patience, and a desire to avoid uncomfortable experiences that strikes us as rather prevalent in the Bay Area milieu (and prevalent, we note, in our own behavior). Our contempt for those who stand in our way, and who do so repeatedly, is good and important. But it seems we resort to contempt even when confronted with people who oppose us not out of some deep-seated ideological conviction but out of sheer lack of experience. Let’s be clear: insurrection will not occur solely as the result of intentional action by a group of already committed radicals, a group of people who already display the “correct” thoughts and actions. It will occur as the result of transformative experiences – experiences that always involve new forms of knowledge and politicial discourse – and which drive people to do things they never imagined doing before. In short, we need to get better at talking. We’re pretty good at fighting. We’re pretty good at writing. We’re pretty good at taking care of each other. But we’re not so good at speaking publicly, it seems, under pressure, at the right moment. As a friend noted to us afterwards, perhaps this is because we hate leaders and fear becoming them, fear the banal acts of persuasion and oratory upon which the left thrives, and despise those who try to dominate others through such proselytizing. But saying what you think is not necessarily domination. Sometimes it’s an act of friendship.

Irvine 11 found guilty of all charges

Santa Ana, CA — 10 of the defendants in the Irvine 11 case have been found guilty of conspiracy and disturbing the peace. Court is in recess until 1:30pm, when Judge Peter Wilson will read the sentences.

One of the defendants had previously had his charges dropped in exchange for community service after it had been found that some of his charges resulted from a confidential email between him and his attorney which was obtained by the District Attorney’s office.

The guilty verdict comes 19 months after the 11 were arrested for disrupting a speech on campus by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren.

During the trial, defense attorneys pointed out that the 11 had disrupted Oren for just a few minutes, while Professor Mark Petracca and other administrators spent more time ostracizing and paternalizing students on “civility” and “appropriate behavior.” Oren himself delayed the speech by nearly a half hour, and cut the talk short in order to attend the LA Lakers game that evening. Defense attorneys also pointed to other disruptions that didn’t result in charges, including Senator Joe Wilson’s heckling of President Obama and previous disruptions of Muslim Student Union events by Zionists as the police looked on. (Occupy UCI has a similar analysis of past speaker disruptions and heckling)

We will post additional updates once the sentences are made public, but in any case this will have a serious impact on all protest in Orange County, especially the UCI 19 case which is headed to trial November 8. In a society in which one can be found guilty of conspiracy for planning a protest, then all dissent is rendered illegal.

UPDATE, 2:30pm: Because all of the defendants have clean records, they will receive NO JAIL TIME but instead will receive 3 years of informal probation and 56 hours of community service at a non-profit organization.  The judge said that the actions of the 11 were political, and that they are productive members of the community.

CA Prisoners to Resume Hunger Strike!

CALIFORNIA – Prisoners in the Pelican Bay Security Housing Unit (SHU) will resume their hunger strike against torturous conditions of imprisonment next Monday, Sept. 26th 2011. Read Tortured SHU Prisoners Speak Out: The Struggle Continues for more details on why they are resuming the strike.

According to family members, prisoners at Calipatria State Prison will also resume the hunger strike on Sept. 26th in solidarity with the prisoners at Pelican Bay and also to expose the brutal conditions they are in at Calipatria, where hundreds of prisoners are labeled as gang members, validated and held in administrative segregation (AdSeg) units, waiting 3-4 years to be transferred to the Pelican Bay SHU indefinitely.

The Calipatria hunger strikers have a similar, separate list of demands from the strikers at Pelican Bay, including abolish the defriefing policy & modify active/inactive gang criteria and expanding canteen/package items & programs/privileges for validated/SHU status prisoners (such as art supplies, proctored exams for correspondence courses, P.I.A. soft shoes, yearly phone calls & two annual packages). (via Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity)

UC Berkeley Tolman Hall Occupied

Book Bloc

BERKELEY, CA – Between 100 and 200 students marched from a rally at noon in front of Sproul Hall, and entered Tolman hall against austerity measures cutting public education through out the state of California. Demonstrators entered the lobby of the building only to be met police batons and pepper spray. Police claim that pepper spray was used in response to someone grabbing a magazine clip from one of the officers, but at least one witness says that these were two separate events, and that the magazine clip was only found later after a police officer dropped it.

[The police] never rallied, somehow, and despite two helicopters circling and enforcement arriving constantly, they had so clearly got their asses kicked that their sticking around just humiliated them further. From the beginning, we treated them so aggressively, and once the blond cop dropped her clip and had to scramble around for it in the doorway, they never recovered.

Students were able to take a hold of room 2308 and other parts of the first floor through the afternoon and into the evening until the police evicted them from the building. Tolman hall is the education and psychology building, closed to general classes for retrofitting. The occupiers released a statement in full below.

The arrested students are seeking financial support to help cover the cost of posting bail, please read more if you can donate some money!

Police officer chokes student demonstrator in front of Tolman.

Videos from the day:

Update:

-Around 1pm, Police began physically throwing students out of the building.

-Around 50 students occupying Tolman.

3:05pm – still going.

4:30pm – holding a meeting.

5:10pm – still going.

6:00pm – Message from inside: “Hi all! Folks are still here holding the building open, having discussions, watching movies, etc. PLEASE COME OVER AND SUPPORT. EAT DINNER HERE, STUDY HERE, MEET PEOPLE. BE HERE AT 10PM WHEN WE WILL NEED THE MOST FORCES. We are on the 1st Floor in the class rooms as well as [outside]“ (read more)

8:00pm – One student arrested in the hallway of Tolman while talking to the police! The details are unclear, but the one student arrested was standing outside of the meeting and was approached by police. Folks in the meeting heard screams for help, only to see him being tackled to the floor. Police claim this student had assaulted an officer earlier that day.

9:08pm – 2nd Arrest after being put in a headlock, blood on floor! Police have warned protesters to leave (without giving a formal dispersal order), but POLICE ARE BLOCKING EXITS!

9:17pm – Occupiers are leaving the building.

9:30pm – As the group of protesters leave campus, a bus full of police arrive and begin following the protesters.

9:45pm – Protesters announce to return to Tolman at 10am tomorrow (Friday).

Initial Statement:

We’ve come together today to call for a halt to the destruction of our public schools, and to insist that education be universally accessible and free. But today we are not simply pressing demands; we’re also working collectively to reclaim our campus, to make it a little more public and a little less estranged from us. Starting this afternoon, we’re opening up a university building to be used as an organizing and educational space; for teach-ins, film screenings, planning meetings, and whatever else we students, workers, and debtors at large decide will help us more effectively resist austerity.

We’ve decided to begin by reclaiming the seismically-unsafe Tolman Hall. In August 2011, The Daily Cal reported that in the midst of the “financial crisis”, unsafe buildings across the 10 UC-campuses would have to wait before they could be retrofitted. The administration has shut down 13 classrooms in Tolman Hall, which we are here to reclaim and transform. The UC administration has engaged in an actuarial risk assessment and decided that students should not be in the building but that workers are still required to labor there daily. While buildings like Tolman Hall are being closed throughout the UC-campuses, the University continues to build multimillion dollar buildings that are nominally public. Tolman Hall stands as a ruin of public education. We want to call attention to the ways in which the dismantling of public education and public services is manifested by the defunding of public infrastructures on our campuses and in all classrooms across this country – buildings and classrooms that are not simply “brick and mortar” but are the spaces of collective action and institutional memory. Today, we move to remake these landscapes of inequality and to open up a new center of resistance.

We invite all (with the exception of police officers and UC administrators) to join us in reclaiming and holding this space open so that we may begin to dream and imagine together how we can re-build a truly public university on the ruins of this. (via reclaimUC)

BREAKING: UCIPD Simulating an Anti-Occupation Operation at UC Irvine

IRVINE, California – We have just received word from our comrades at UC Irvine that as of 3:00pm today, UCIPD and Irvine PD are running an anti-occupation operation at the Gateway Commons Study Center at UC Irvine.  Campus and/or police staff are pretending to be student protesters and are simulating the occupation of the Gateway Commons building, while police are in full SWAT gear and Irvine PD are dressed in olive green and brown military fatigues.  The “protesters” reportedly are throwing water bottles at police.  The UCI Press Office would not comment when called.

Gateway was the site of a brief—but failed—occupation attempt on March 4, 2010, following a rally of nearly 1000 students that left campus and blocked Campus and University Drives.

UPDATE: A UCI undergrad made the following notes regarding the operation:

I am on campus today and I am currently witnessing a protest simulation complete with UC Irvine SWAT teams, police, fake protesters, and the fire department. It looks like a really strange farce. They are “protesting” outside of Gateway in a “closed” off area around the library. The protesters are simulating what “protesters” act like, confronting officers, yelling, and running around the building with picket signs and megaphones. There are also photographers and camera men “capturing” the event . . . . There were a lot of SWAT on campus and I thought they had a real emergency going on. It seems it has been going on for over an hour. The protesters even have fake “speeches” and chants.

A sign reads “Police Training 8am- 4pm.” People are changing “Join us for peace,” “We want something.” There’s a camera crew capturing the “event” from different angles, Orange County people with picket signs saying “No Peter” and blocking the Gateway center . . . . Police in swat gear are “confronting” protesters who are “booing.” They’re rehearsing to act intimidating, practicing how to surround the building and the perimeter. “This a protest, be LOUD.” The practice is going inside the Gateway building, police are ready to come into the scene. “No Peter” signs, a sign reading “I have a sign!” More chants: “Join us, don’t you believe in freedom and justice?” “Hell no, we won’t go.”

(more notes, written a little after)

The fake protesters did NOT look like UC Irvine staff, they are not very good actors (or smart ones), and you can tell that they were working for the police. There are some middle-aged people, a couple of protest “leaders” and designated lawyerish and “first-aid” folk with megaphones. There were also a couple of young people, pretending to lock box themselves together inside the Gateway Center, three young men who look like 20-something-year-old college “students.” The simulation was thorough, the police and swat teams made several rounds around the building before entering the Gateway Center, even going on the megaphone to deliver an order to disperse. When the police “asked” the fake head protesters “Why are you doing this?” they responded “Oh you know, I don’t want to pay to pee. We want free books. Fees.” There was some more chatter, but I could not hear them very well and it was quite obvious that the whole protest message is a joke. They also said “We want freedom, justice,” “Hell no we won’t go!” yelled “Pigs” at the police, “Come on this is a protest!” “We want free stuff,” “UCI! UCI!” “USA! USA! USA!” and  “We don’t like the guy in the green!” They also threw several water bottles at police in riot gear . . . .

The protesters also said “Join us, join us!” and four middle aged women “chained” themselves to the entrance of the Gateway building, where occupiers were “locking” themselves in. They then proceeded to “break” through the “locks” and ties, with firemen on hand to remove the fake protesters. There were at least ten Ford beigeish cars parked in the back of the library on ring road, along with a SWAT team paddy wagon (Irvine SWAT), and three fire trucks. These SWAT appeared more militarized, with head-to-toe body armor, high black combat boots, shields, long black batons, rubber-bullet rifles, and face shields.

 

Day 1, Sept 22

from reclaimUC:

Day 1

September 22, 12 pm

Sproul Plaza [at UC Berkeley]

 

Resistance at UC campuses and other schools in California has certainly diminished since the powerful events of the 2009-2010 school year – its strikes, its occupations, its stand-offs with police. Emboldened by this fact, the UC administration have begun a fresh round of assaults – piling on thousands of dollars of fees, laying off thousands of workers, and signaling that they intend to continue with more of the same over the coming year.

We need to regain the ground of 2009 and 2010. But we’ll need to do more than that if we want to begin to win. We need to surpass those occasional days, and bring the university to a grinding halt for as long as it takes. As one text from 2009 put it – “We need to push the university struggle to its limits.”

These are remarkable times. From Greece to Chile, from Britain to Spain, government austerity measures provoke some of the most profound militancy in over a generation. And in each one of these cases, students and student movements (which involve more than just students, of course) are central to the fight. We should take some inspiration and direction from these fights, but we should remember that students on their own can only do so much. We need more “outside agitators” rather than fewer of them.

September 22 is the first day of classes at the other UCs. Though we know that they won’t be able to organize anything yet, we picked this day in solidarity with them, in hopes that later on in the semester we can organize events on a cross-campus basis.

This is intended as the first of what we hope are many “days” this year. Let’s make it big!

UCSC Disorientation Guide 2011

From our friends at UCSC Disguide:

UC Might Increase Tuition 81% Over the Next Four Years

from ChangingUniversities:

When the Regents meet September 14th, they will discuss a multiyear funding proposal that will likely result in a series of large tuition increases over the next few years. The heart of the plan is found here: “Components of a multi-year plan would include the assumptions about efficiencies and revenue- generating strategies, and a proposal that, under the optimal scenario, would call for eight percent annual increases each in State funds and in tuition and fees through 2015-16. If the State is unable to meet its share of this cost, student fees would be raised further to make up the State’s deficit. Thus, if the State provides only four percent increases each year, student tuition and fees would increase by 12 percent annually. If the State provides no increase, student tuition and fees would increase by 16 percent annually. Incorporating this principle into a multi-year plan will make clear to all stakeholders that a failure to invest in the University will directly increase the amount students and their families pay to attend.” According to this structure, if the state does not increase funding over the next four years, tuition will go up 16% each year for a cumulative total of 81%.

Support UCI 19

from reclaimuc:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=213859005334089

On February 24, 2010, 17 UCI students and community supporters sat in outside Chancellor Drake’s office, issuing demands for workers rights on campus, increased access for underrepresented students, and amnesty for the Irvine 11. They were quickly arrested and evicted from the building by dozens of police without a single administrator offering to hear their demands.

Nine months later, those 17, along with 2 students who were outside Aldrich Hall during the action, received criminal charges by mail. After months of hearings and attempts at reaching a plea, the UCI 19 are headed to trial, beginning September 27. Over 19 months since the initial incident. The 17 are being charged with trespassing, disturbing the peace, and refusal to disperse. The other two are being charged with false imprisonment, blocking a thoroughfare, and being a public nuisance. Everyone potentially faces over a year in jail if convicted.

In the last 40 years nationally, there has never been a sit-in prosecuted to the extent that this one is. The charges faced by the 17 are excessive. The other two defendants are being selectively prosecuted for an incident involving 30 students outside the sit-in, and it is clear they are being singled out because of their past political involvement.

Don’t let UCI and the DA criminalize dissent! Demand that all the charges be dropped!

———————

We’re counting on your support to beat the charges. A strong showing of campus and community support on the first day of trial will send the message to the DA and the court that we’re here to fight.

Trial officially begins at 8:30am on 9/27, though it never starts on time. Please try to come as early as you are able to. It will also not likely conclude on the first day, but will instead be drawn out, so please also pay attention for future dates.

Josh Wolf forced to reimburse Cal Prof

BERKELEY, California – In November 2009, Josh Wolf was among a few journalists covering the occupation of Wheeler Hall at UC Berkeley, resulting in the arrest of Wolf and the occupiers. Wolf was a graduate student in the School of Journalism at Cal, and was present at the occupation as a journalist, but was nevertheless charged for student conduct violations. Wolf, who has a history of standing up for the importance of journalism and the rights of journalists, was given a conduct hearing with optometry professor Robert DiMartino as the chair of the hearing. Wolf took DiMartino to small claims for denying his right to have a legal adviser present during his hearing. The small claims case was dismissed, but DiMartino took Wolf back to court and demanded that Wolf pay the court fees of $1,066. The court concluded that Wolf must pay $747.90. Read more.

Wolf is seeking financial support to cover the cost of this pitiable excuse for justice. Donate here.