[Update 8/14 3am]: The library was raided by OPD just before midnight. Check back for more info.

[Update 8/14 later]: Some photos and twitter updates from last night's raid are consolidated here. Zunguzungu has a beautiful photo essay: "A Day in the Life of the Biblioteca Popular Victor Martinez (People's Library), August 13, 2012, East Oakland." Finally, you can hear the voices of some of the occupiers, participants, and community members in this great radio report put together by Radio Autonomia.



From occupyca:

OAKLAND, California – On Monday morning, the former 23rd Avenue Branch of the Oakland Public Library was occupied and renamed the Victor Martinez People’s Library. The building was shut down as a public library in 1976 and was briefly an alternative school and later a social services facility. The building has been vacant since 2010, located on 1449 Miller Avenue in East Oakland. (Read more about the life of Victor Martinez here.)

Here’s an initial statement from the people’s library:

The building unveiled today as the Victor Martinez Community Library was part of a Carnegie Foundation endowment of four libraries given to the city of Oakland between 1916 and 1918. Oakland’s librarian at the time, Charles S. Greene, believed that the city’s people would benefit most from libraries placed within their communities.

Despite this vision, the building was one of seven branch casualties of budget cuts in the late seventies, severing vital library life-lines in poor and working communities. Since then, the “Latin American Branch” library building located at the corner of Miller and 15th st. has mostly sat empty, despite the fact that the next nearest library is miles away, and increasingly difficult to access in a city like Oakland with an increasingly expensive transit system. With its eroding chain link fence and decaying, armored exterior, the building is much more than an eyesore; the unused, but inaccessible, space creates a life-draining dark vacuum of stability that serves at best as a convenient place for the unscrupulous to dump their old mattresses, couches and assorted garbage.

This morning, a group of activists opened this building again for use as a library. Inside is the modest seed for a library and community center—hundreds of books donated by people who envision the rebirth of local, community-owned libraries and social and political centers throughout Oakland. We’ve named the building after recently deceased author, Victor Martinez, who overcame a young life of hard agricultural work to become a successful writer in the Bay Area. His semi-autobiographical novel, Parrot in the Oven, has become a seminal work of the Latino experience. Martinez died last year at 56 of an illness caused by his work in the fields.

If you live in this community, we only ask that you think about how you can use this building. Name it anything you like. Purpose it to any goal that benefits the community—library, social or political neighborhood center. All we ask is that you consider keeping it out of the hands of a city which will only seal the fence and doors again, turning the space back into an aggregator of the city’s trash and a dark hole in the middle of an embattled community. The doors here are open. And there are many others simply waiting to be.

Guest post by our comrade @repoliticize...

[Update 1/20 9:02 am: Check out Zunguzungu's reportback from the library occupation.]

Via Occupy Cal:

We love our libraries and are here to protect them. Libraries are critically important for excellent education for all. We students, faculty, and community members collectively have decided to occupy the Anthropology Library at UC Berkeley to protest the dismantling of the library system on campus and public education as a whole.

We chose to occupy this space because the Anthropology library is a recent victim of extreme service cuts. The hours of operation are being cut from the previous, already slim, 9am-6pm to the current 12pm-5pm, because the university has not taken the necessary steps to sufficiently staff the library. The multiple attacks on campus libraries are a reflection of privatization and the devaluation of the public education system.

We are here to reverse this process. We call on the administration to take immediate action to hire another full-time librarian to ensure full access to this valuable resource.

The administration may claim that there are insufficient funds, but in reality these resources exist, but their allocation by UC administrators and the state does not adequately reflect the values of excellent public education. Why have the UC Regents continued to approve 21% increases in administration salaries, while students are being denied access to their libraries? Why are the taxes of the 1% so low while essential social services are being cut across the state and country?

We stand in solidarity with the Occupy movement as a whole and the protestors at UC Riverside who were met with violence in their attempt to protest the austerity policies of the UC Regents, Sacramento, and Washington D.C.

Defend our libraries and schools. Occupy together.

--- The Anthropology Library Occupation
January 19, 2012

One of the first direct actions during the fall 2009 cycle of anti-privatization protests was the "study-in" at the Anthropology library. Due to budget cuts, or so the administration misleadingly suggested, the library's hours had been cut back to the point that it would no longer open during the weekends. As midterms were coming up, students were desperate for places to study. On October 9, 2009, a group of about 300 students, workers, and faculty moved into the library and refused to leave at its 5pm closing time. UCPD initially attempted to remove them but in the end opted not to intervene -- most likely out of the administration's fear of the photos of cops dragging struggling students from the library -- and the library was held for a full 24 hours. During that time, there were study spaces, teach-ins (including a presentation by Bob Meister in which he presented for the first time his groundbreaking findings that would be published the following day as "They Pledged Your Tuition to Wall Street"), spoken word, free food, and lots of sleeping bags and pillows. On leaving the library, organizers vowed to liberate one library every week and designated the Ed/Psych library the next target. In the interim, and notably without any demands having been made, the administration miraculously found the money to keep the libraries open. Not student government, not lobbying in Sacramento, not signing petitions, not even holding rallies -- it's direct action that gets the goods.

But now, they're trying to cut the hours again. They think we're not paying attention. But we are. And we're going back:

Defend the Anthropology Library!

Occupy Cal is calling for a ‘Study-In’ encampment inside the Anthropology library, Kroeber Hall, for Thursday, January 19 at 3pm. The Anthropology library is a recent victim of harsh service cuts caused directly by the university’s mis-management of funds and privatization. The hours are being cut from the previous, already slim, 9am-6pm hours to the current 12pm-5pm hours. This is part of the story of how university administrators are failing the educational mission of the UC, part of the corporatizing and privatizing movement. The UC regents recently raised selected salaries by 21%, yet we are still experiencing the cutting of extremely valuable resources for our education. Bring Your Own Tent, sleeping bags, and pillows for Occupy Cal’s first encampment of the Spring 2012 semester. Let’s keep the library open as a shared public space!

Join Occupy Cal in a Study-in and Encampment to protest these cuts!

January 19th, 2012
230 Kroeber Hall
Study-in: 3pm-5pm
Encampment: 5pm - ?

This action is in solidarity with the Regents' meeting protest at UC Riverside.

Check out the full write-up at Bay of Rage.

"Those who have held a book know well enough that it can be a weapon. We are interested in the living society of which libraries are an image: not divided along lines of public and private, but one that is collective, shared."

(cf.)

A quick write-up on this afternoon's action:

Anticut 2 disrupted downtown Oakland this afternoon in an anticapitalist defense of the libraries. 75 people took the streets of downtown in the face of an ominous police presence. Crowds walking by and waiting for buses cheered on the action as banks locked down in fear of the disruption. At one point, police attacked the crowd and arrested multiple people but failed to halt the movement of the action. The mobile disruption ended at the downtown Oakland Library Branch where it was greeted by local librarians. 14 out 18 libraries in Oakland are facing closure due to the proposed budget by the city.

For context, a genealogy of the book bloc, plus some previous coverage on this blog. More to come soon.

The latest updates on tomorrow's action from Bay of Rage:

Take the streets of Oakland this Friday, June 17!

• mobile blockade & march against austerity plans in Oakland:
3:00pm @ Telegraph & Broadway in downtown

• ending in a gathering and street party in solidarity with the fight for the Oakland libraries:
5:30pm @ 14th & Oak, in front of main library branch

+ Food Not Bombs will be serving at the 5:30pm street party
so even if you can’t make the 3pm action come join us afterwards!

bring your banners, propaganda and friends to manifest the second in a series of counterausterity marches and events planned for the summer

the statements that will be handed out during this action are now available online! check them out here and here!

“The city itself is a bank, a dazzling accumulation of wealth, increasingly withdrawn from our lives and stashed in broad daylight, policed with public funds for the enrichment of a few. Join us in jamming, temporarily, these circuits of dispossession.”
read the full invite here

“Austerity is not just cutting a school budget. It is not just closing libraries. It’s filling prisons and killing poor people, as the alternative to the libraries, schools, and services they cut. It’s a whole system of “crisis” that makes the poor pay for the problems caused by the rich.”
read the invite handed out during protests against Mehserle’s release

From Bay of Rage:

This is the second in a series of counterausterity marches and events we have planned for the summer, in order to begin assembling an anticapitalist force capable of combating the current age of budget cuts and economic violence. This second event is a disruption -- a mobile blockade -- meant to interrupt, temporarily, the business as usual which economic crisis ever more desperately imposes as the public face of private wealth. For every library and school closure, ten ATMs spring up overnight, circulating ever more swiftly the wealth, looted via predatory lending and home foreclosures. This is not news. Just as globally the US seeks to prop up brutal plutocracies and autocrats in order to maintain its grip on oil reserves and military outposts in the face of popular revolts, so, too, in Oakland we daily confront mechanisms meant to insure our passivity in the face of dispossession: pernicious sit-lie laws, skyrocketing tuition, mounting layoffs and rising unemployment. The city itself is a bank, a dazzling accumulation of wealth, increasingly withdrawn from our lives and stashed in broad daylight, policed with public funds for the enrichment of a few. Join us in jamming, temporarily, these circuits of dispossession.

The action will start at the intersection of Broadway and Telegraph in downtown Oakland on Friday, June 17, at 3 pm. Anticut 2 flyer here. Also worth checking out: during last Sunday's protest about the release of Johannes Mehserle, the BART cop who murdered Oscar Grant, an invitation to Anticut 2 was distributed as well.

On the morning of October 7, the national day of action, UCPD officers broke into the Rhetoric Department library and confiscated banners.


The note reads:

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN
THE BANNERS IN THIS ROOM
WAS [sic] RECOVERED BY UCPD
AS FOUND PROPERTY IT IS
HELD AT UCPD ANY QUESTIONS
PLS CONTACT CAPT. RODRICK
LT. TEJADA

They did it again this week. This time, they stole the following materials, which had to be "re-recovered" from UCPD: a few boxes of paint, medical supplies, water, plus a couple of signs.

UC Berkeley: Home of the Free Speech Movement.

Sit-in at North Reading Room of main library.
Updates and photos at Occupy CA.

Update [Friday]: Student Activism wonders:

The sit-in broke up around seven o’clock or a little earlier. Neither the Occupy CA liveblog, the Daily Cal liveblog, nor the Daily Cal morning story say exactly why . . .

Answer:


Update [several days later]: On a related note, check out "A Call for Disassembly" from Anti-Capital Projects.

Update [even later]: See also.

From reclaimuc.org:

Architecture has, like other growing phenomena, to go to school before it can wisely be emancipated. It is a distinctly promising sign of future power, for a young people . . . to forget self for the time being in the quiet, assiduous acquisition of knowledge already established by others. The time for fresh personal expression will come later.
--John Galen Howard, 1913

Accelerate: we are here to help architecture make the leap to emancipation. The architect John Galen Howard, who designed and oversaw the construction of what is now called Durant Hall at the beginning of the last century, was a hesitant man. We say: the time for fresh personal expression is now! There is no question that we are already the product of other people's assiduously accumulated knowledges, so many that they become impossible to catalog exhaustively. The accumulation of knowledge is a library, perhaps, but it is also a struggle, a movement, a tactic. Likewise, the acquisition of knowledge does not have to be quiet -- next to the sound system, self is forgotten and the commune emerges. The dance party: a distinctly promising sign of present power.

Future power too. On March 4, UC Berkeley students, workers, and faculty will march in solidarity with those from other UCs, CSUs, community colleges, and K-12 schools across California and the country as a whole. Like this building, reclaimed from the graveyard of financial speculation, we will reclaim the streets of Oakland in conjunction with an international day of action for public education to be free and democratic.

For the last two years, Durant Hall has been little more than a shell, surrounded by piles of rubble and heavy machinery, themselves surrounded by uneven rows of chain-link fencing. No longer is there any trace of the library it once was -- the East Asian Library, now moved across campus to a new building named after an insurance mogul who founded the notorious AIG. Language has been uprooted, pruned, and replanted as well. The Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures went with the library, and in the process lost half its Japanese, Korean, and Chinese classes as well as the faculty that taught them -- over 1,500 curious students will be turned away this year. Subtracted from the flow of campus life, Durant Hall has existed only as a barrier, an inconvenience, a silent witness to the frustration of the thousands of students, workers, and faculty protesters who surrounded the neighboring Wheeler Hall and clashed with police last November.

But apparent emptiness conceals the movement beneath the surface, behind its fenced-off walls: capital flows through its veins. "Capital Projects," the administration of the University of California calls them. As we now know, the UC administration has used not only students' tuition, but also the promise of future tuition increases, to secure the bonds and bond ratings necessary to channel ever increasing resources into construction projects. They will always need more money, and it will always be our money. A general concern that changes the way we see the campus that surrounds us. But if there is one building in particular that exemplifies this process, it is Durant Hall: its renovation was halted in 2008 for lack of funds, and only started up again after the administration sold $1.3 billion in construction bonds last May backed by our fee hike as collateral. Its melancholy fate is to become yet another administration building. Durant Hall will be inhabited by deans and staff of the College of Letters and Science, but it has already been occupied by a bloated administration with private capital on its mind.

Capital, like architecture, is a growing phenomenon, but one that never matures. It pushes outward continuously in all directions, always presupposing an endless, spiraling expansion. New endpoints replace old ones in smooth succession, projecting themselves onto the grid of the future, erasing languages, knowledges, and histories that do not fit easily into the right angles of its blueprints. But we will not let their future bulldoze our present. We have our own bulldozers: dance parties to reclaim dead buildings, marches to reclaim the streets. On March 4, fight back!

ESCALATE-OCCUPY-RECLAIM

Signed,

The College of Debtors in Defiance.

Update: For more information check out The Durant Riot: Initial Brief and this email from previous occupants of Durant Hall.

Direct action works, but watch out for co-optation. Once again, it's UCD Chancellor Katehi, trying to make it seem like the library study-in was her idea all along. Professor Nathan Brown writes a letter (Katehi's email follows):

Dear Colleagues,

In a message just circulated to the UCD community, the Chancellor has announced that Shields Library will be open 24 hrs through the weekend, in response to a planned Study-In which several groups have been organizing over the past few weeks. The study-in -- intended to protest reductions in library funding and insufficient student space on campus (including the planned closure of the Davis Student Co-Op this summer) -- has been publicized through flyers, posters, and Facebook, with over 650 people having indicated that they plan to attend: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=270851043900&index=1

It is no doubt this overwhelmingly supportive response to the planned study-in that forced the hand of the administration in extending library hours over the weekend. I have attached two flyers with basic information about the action, which you might distribute to your classes beforehand. People will gather at the MU patio at 4pm tomorrow, and then move to the library thereafter.

Now that the administration's approach to handling the event has clarified itself, I'm writing both to comment on the process that lead to this outcome and to invite faculty to attend over the weekend -- and perhaps to speak on the situation of library funding. Robert Samuels (President, UC-AFT), Jarue Manning (Biological Sciences), and Bob Ostertag (Music/Technocultural Studies) are already scheduled to speak on Friday evening (they committed to speak prior to the Chancellor's announcement). If you would like to speak or to run a workshop in Shields on Saturday or Sunday, please let me know.

In assessing the response of the administration, it seems important to note that Chancellor Katehi's decision to hold the library open is in no way the result of any process of negotiation or of mutual concessions. The stance of the organizers toward the administration has been one of indifference. The event was planned and publicized openly, but it was not announced directly to either campus or library administrators. This is a case in which the will of students to act has resulted in a recognition by the administration that their will cannot be ignored. The same decision-makers who unceremoniously ordered a mass-arrest of students for being in a building after-hours in November seem to have calculated, in this instance, that the balance of forces is not in their favor.

In other words: direct action works.

I hope that the study-in this weekend will be an important event in building links among activist students, staff, and faculty, and in building momentum toward the state-wide Day of Action on March 4.

In solidarity,
Nathan

--
Nathan Brown
Assistant Professor
Department of English
University of California, Davis
http://english.ucdavis.edu/people/directory/natbrown


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Chancellor Katehi and Provost Lavernia
Date: Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 10:11 AM
Subject: Library Weekend Study Hall
To: UC Davis Community Members


Dear UC Davis Community Members,

This weekend's announced "study in" at Shields Library reflects a shared concern -- the need for adequate student study space, especially during peak testing periods and despite significant budget cuts that have affected every corner of the campus.

With midterms pressing, and with the Library's 24-hour reading room overly crowded, we have asked our head librarians to take steps to keep Shields open as a study hall throughout this weekend.

The extended hours -- from 7:30 a.m. Friday, Feb. 5, through midnight Sunday, Feb. 7 -- will expand quiet study opportunities in designated areas of the Library. Library services will be limited during the extended evening hours (for example, Reserves, Inter-Library Loan, Circulation and Reference Services will not be offered then), but some staff will be available to assist patrons.

The Library's Use and Conduct Code (http://www.lib.ucdavis.edu/ul/about/policies/conduct.php) and our Principles of Community will apply throughout the weekend, helping to ensure for everyone a welcoming, comfortable and safe environment in which to study. If the weekend proves successful, we'll give every consideration to expanded hours during finals week, as well.

In addition, designated quiet space will also be available this weekend during the Memorial Union's and ARC's normal hours (MU: 7 a.m.-5 p.m. Friday, 12-5 p.m. Saturday; ARC: 6 a.m.-11 p.m. Friday, 8 a.m.-9 p.m. Saturday, and 9 a.m.-midnight Sunday).

We do understand the overall concerns that have been expressed about the Library's funding. The Library is the heart of an academic institution and a shared asset of inestimable value. While it's not been possible to completely protect the Library from budget cuts -- our budget challenges are simply too great -- we have tried to shield the Library by assessing cuts that are less than half those assessed administrative units. Looking forward, we are eager to receive the advice of a newly formed Joint Senate-Administration Task Force on the Future of the Library that will develop short- and long-term recommendations to ensure an intellectually vibrant Library that serves our UC Davis community well.

We wish you well in your studies this weekend and in the examinations that follow.

Sincerely,

Linda P.B. Katehi
Chancellor

Enrique J. Lavernia
Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor

Daily Cal:

Nearly 60 UC Berkeley students and faculty attended a teach-in at the Education Psychology Library in Tolman Hall last Friday in protest of what they view as the growing privatization of the university.

Attendees gathered before the library closed and held their teach-in past the library's 5 p.m. closing time, as UCPD officers stood outside. The teach-in ended around 5:40 p.m., at which point some attendees left to join Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory bus drivers in a protest on Gayley Road and Hearst Avenue.

According to participants, last Wednesday's announcement that libraries hours would be restored did not change the purpose of the teach in.

"This is bigger than just libraries," said Andi Walden, a Middle Eastern studies and political science double major. "Our intent all along has been to open up public spaces, this is one expression of that."

The UC Berkeley administration has decided to reopen the libraries and return to the spring 2009 schedule, a shift that will be phased in beginning this weekend and continuing through November. The official announcement goes out of its way to diffuse any connection with the action carried out in the Anthropology library last weekend. But guess which library they decided to reopen first?

Saturday library hours to be restored

Thanks to funding provided by the Chancellor and Provost, Cal's subject specialty libraries will receive funding to reopen on Saturdays, similar to last Spring semester's Saturday hours.

This will be phased in, since the libraries need to hire and train new students to work in the libraries on Saturdays.

The first library to reopen on Saturdays will be the Education/Pscyhology Library in Tolman Hall, open Saturday, October 17 from noon - 5pm. As Saturday hours are restored in other libraries, we will announce them here and post them on the Library Hours page.

The following email was sent by Harry Le Grand, Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs, to UC Berkeley students on Wednesday afternoon:

Dear Students,

I am very pleased to announce that library hours across the UC Berkeley campus will be returning to the spring 2009 schedule, the standard schedule that existed before budget cuts forced us to reduce weekend hours at most libraries within the campus's library system.

This decision was made in consultation with Chancellor Robert Birgeneau and Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost George Breslauer, who secured funding for the expanded service hours through gifts from parents of UC Berkeley students.

Recent events and concerns raised by students, faculty and staff served as important reminders to all of us that libraries are a critical resource for students and a vital part of this university. I am grateful to the donors, the Chancellor and Provost, for their efforts.

With funding secured, library managers will now begin hiring and training student workers to staff the libraries during the expanded hours. We will begin by expanding the hours of at least one branch library this weekend and will continue with a phased approach of expanding library hours until we are operating under the spring 2009 schedule. This return to the standard schedule will occur no later than mid-November.

In the interim, please be aware that many of our existing library facilities are not being used at capacity and provide abundant study space through the week and weekend. This includes more than 1,000 seats available in Moffitt library and the Gardner Stacks. You may recall that, last week, a generous donor provided funds to allow students 24-hour access to those facilities during finals. Details on that gift and the finals schedule are available under the News and Events section of the library home page: http://lib.berkeley.edu/

Current information on hours of operation for all libraries in our system is always available at: http://ucblibrary3.berkeley.edu:8080/newhours/LH/

Expanding the hours of our libraries requires not only generous support but also the dedicated work of library managers and other staff who, working under difficult conditions, have remained dedicated to doing all that they can to serve the faculty, students and staff of this community. I'd like to extend my thanks to them and the entire campus community.

Sincerely,

Tom Leonard
University Librarian

The library action scheduled for Friday is still on.

San Francisco Chronicle:

Several hundred UC Berkeley students took over the anthropology library for 24 hours this weekend to protest UC-wide budget cuts, in particular Saturday closures of small campus libraries that students use for studying and research.

Organizers said nearly 300 students -- along with dozens of supportive staff and faculty members -- showed up at the anthropology library shortly before 5 p.m. Friday, when the facility was scheduled to close for the weekend.

Instead, students flooded the room and set up camp -- arranging their books and laptops on long tables and setting out food and pillows and blankets. About 80 students spent the night in the library, some studying almost all night, others curled up to sleep in corners and between high bookcases. On Saturday, students continued to study and hold teach-ins to talk about campus budget issues until 5 p.m., the library's usual closing time.

Alternet:

This is the face of a new student movement, a movement invested in our spaces of learning, and one which demands to control the terms and conditions of our education. For tonight and tomorrow, we have transformed the space of the Berkeley Anthropology Library into one of study, learning, teaching, and community-building. During the 24 hours that we’re holding the library, there will be five faculty teach-ins, two student teach-ins, an open-mike poetry slam, numerous study groups, and a long-overdue open discussion on privilege and inequality in the context of this struggle.

That this was organized and pulled off with success in under a week is testament not only to the hard work of the organizers, but far more to the general state of campus and the eagerness on the part of the community to take action.

The show of civil disobedience in the Anthropology Library this weekend follows on the footsteps of the university-wide walkout and rally on September 24 -- said to be the largest protest in the bay area since the Vietnam War -- as well as the student occupation of the graduate commons at UC Santa Cruz. And there’s more coming: a planned conference on public education on October 24 sponsored by the General Assembly, a jazz funeral for the university on October 30, and certainly, there will be more direct actions of the sort of this weekend’s library action. At the same time, many choose to direct their efforts towards Sacramento.