Today two banners were dropped on UC Berkeley campus. One, reading "TIME UC US OCCUPY," was dropped from the Campanile (hard to see in the picture, but that's what Daily Cal reporter Damian Ortellado, who took these pictures, tweeted) while another (actually a three-banner set), reading "FUCK YOU BIRGENEAU," was dropped at Eschelman.


This unsigned letter was apparently being distributed at the site of the banner drop:

Respectfully to:

President Mark Yudof, Regents, Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, UC Chancellors, High Level Administrators, and Fellow Students.

We come to you at a time when our careers and futures look bleak, and the future of the generations to come look even more inauspicious than our own. We can all agree in saying that in our own unique perceptions of this world, we see its problems and calamities, and recognize the time has come to act.

The voices of students have spoken. We know there is something inherently wrong within our method of operation, and as you have seen, no matter what the method of repression, even allowing time to pass to kill us, we will continue to speak and voice this message. We call on each and every one of you whose eyes touch this message to act in all your ability, with full vision and intensity, to work to create the real solutions to the problems we face, especially those within our university community.

Mohamed Bouazizi and the Arab Spring, massive worker strikes world wide, the riots in London and Greece, student revolution in Chile, the network of occupiers infecting every cultural sphere of the globe made up of people in every demographic and possible category one can be placed, when viewed together, demonstrate the underlying tensions that we as a species are feeling together. We are paying attention.

These matters must be attended to or the decline of our complexly interconnected species will surely come to disaster in due time. Today we focus on education. We ask to those who can, those who in their present time have power, to help mold a new way to how we operate and function in our educational system. Education is not a commodity only to be sold to those who can afford it. We hope that all will address their own personal responsibilities to their campus and local communities, to influence those in your spheres of work and school, to create and facilitate the solutions for our educational system, and the problems our nation faces that we see fit. No matter where you stand, we must act.

We, some students here at UC Berkeley, with the privilege at our backs to be attending this great university, have recognized the need for change through our studies in class and in our homes, and are watching with a close eye of the events that are transpiring. We understand education is the solution, and this is why we fight for it. This global awakening is a direct result of mass education and awareness through the resources we have been given through the gift of technology and human creativity. We are beginning to see, and time is running out.

To you whom it may concern: our networks only grow, and we will more than gladly generate the solutions for ours futures ourselves if you don't act in all your ability. We want to see things change, not the tabling of our tuition hikes for student outrage to die out.

The time is now.
Occupy your education.

Fiat Lux,
Students
Go Bears!


...tic tock

Occupy Oakland will begin at 4 pm on Oct 10th, in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street and the dozens of other occupations taking place across US, as well as indigenous resistance day. A delegation from the Glen Cove encampment will be present at the opening of the occupation.

The organizers of this encampment want to link up Oakland with a growing social movement, but also adapt it to the realities and needs of our city with its rich and powerful political history.

There will be a final meeting to prepare for the occupation on Saturday, October 8 at 4pm in Mosswood Park.

For more information:

On the web: http://occupyoakland.wordpress.com/
On Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=290818544264175&ref=ts
On Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/occupyoakland

Download flyers and other propaganda here: http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2011/10/07/18692504.php

(For the record, we know Officer Timothy Zuniga #73 well -- he's the one who lied his ass off on the quote-unquote "stand" during two separate student conduct hearings and was basically laughed off the stage.)

For more coverage of the Tolman Hall occupation, see our previous post.

The other day, we wrote a brief post on the renovation of Lower Sproul Plaza at UC Berkeley, reading it (following Bob Meister's now classic exposé) as yet another capital project funded by UC construction bonds that are, for their part, backed by student tuition. Mostly we were interested in the way UC administrators imagined their accountability to the students who increasingly "foot the bill" for pretty much everything the university does, and we didn't get into the technical details of the project because, well, we aren't so great with that kind of stuff.

Fortunately, it turns out we didn't need to. After a brief back-and-forth in the comments of that post, Zach Williams has written an incredibly useful and detailed investigation into the funding mechanisms for this particular project. Think Charlie Schwartz with a killer instinct. Williams's analysis is not only useful for understanding this particular case, but more generally it serves as a framework or methodology for understanding UC capital projects, for seeing through the obscure complexity of these financial deals. This complexity offers the UC administration another rhetorical weapon to be deployed in its war on students and workers. We're going to post the conclusion here, but we highly recommend reading the full post:

The Lower Sproul renovation is funded, almost entirely, by payments from the students, despite University protestations to the contrary. . . .

13 million is from campus funds -- some of which is sourced from student fees, though not student tuition.

200 million is externally financed. This 200 million in financing is backed by two sources:

1. 112 million in special student fees, proposed and approved by the students themselves.
2. A General Revenue Bond

So, half of that external financing (which is, if you recall, nothing other than a general revenue bond, though it may be a federally subsidized one) will be financed by . . . another general revenue bond. The rest will be footed by a sort of ‘complicit in one’s own domination’ decision by the ASU to help turn a basic safety retrofit into a project to increase space for students, student organizations, and student run revenue streams.

And that general revenue bond will be financed by student fees. Quite clearly, none of the 35% of funding from grants is going to this capital project. Rather, it will be financed entirely from auxiliary and student fees. And the bulk of auxiliary fees are . . . oh, right, student fees.

So, let’s list no bullshit sources of revenue for this project.

1. Student fees (campus funds)
2. Student fees (special student fee)
3. Student fees (registration fees)
4. Student fees (auxiliary fees from housing, dining, parking, and so on)

The other day we posted on the legislative operations that have produced a series of austerity budgets for the state of California. Of course, the services that are on the chopping block are both significant and diverse -- the cuts will affect far more than public education. But for obvious reasons public higher education is usually our point of departure. Anyway, in that post we looked at the responses of the UC administration to the Democrats' proposed budget plan, which would have included another $300 million in cuts to the UC and CSU systems (if it hadn't been vetoed by Governor Brown). First came the statement of UC spokesperson Steve Montiel, which noted that "Any further cuts would threaten our ability to provide access, affordability and academic excellence." Then we turned to a statement signed by UC president Mark Yudof and UC regent chair Russell Gould, which asserts that "An additional $150 million in cuts will impair our ability to provide access at an affordable price while preserving academic excellence."

Access, affordability, and excellence. These qualities -- which, it's worth mentioning, are defined only in broad, meaningless strokes -- are what Yudof has called the UC's three "compass points." Here's how Yudof referred to them at the UC regents' meeting in January 2011 (this quote is under pretty heavy rotation these days):

Yudof said the university has long operated on three "compass points" -- access, affordability and excellence.

"We are moving dangerously close to having to say: pick two of the three. That’s my view, and the excellence is nonnegotiable," he said. "We are going to have to look at access and affordability."

Yesterday, the day after the statements from Montiel, Yudof, and Gould were printed, Chancellor Robert Birgeneau published his own statement, which was emailed to the entire UC Berkeley campus and is posted here. He writes:

As you know, Berkeley already faces extraordinary challenges for the coming year. Our share of the $500 million cut from the Governor’s proposed budget is about $70 million. On top of the proposed cuts, the campus has additional mandatory increased costs such as utilities and health care benefits for which we must find $40 million. Thus, in effect, we are already facing $110 million in cuts for 2011-12 and we cannot sustain any further cuts without placing an intolerable burden on our students and staff. Specifically, the legislature’s budget would have added as much as $25 million to this shortfall, an amount which we simply cannot bear. Not only would this be very painful for our campus, it would ultimately be damaging to the economy and future prospects of California.

As usual, the official response takes a specific form: it once again turns on the logic of the words further/additional. This formulation erases everything that has already happened, removes it entirely from the political horizon. As we wrote here last month,

In addition to erasing the violence of austerity . . ., this strategy charts a path of rhetorical retreat. Obviously this isn't a rousing defense of public education. But it leads to another danger: every time the budget is cut, it's a "disaster"... until the cuts go through. At that point it becomes the new normal. In effect, it represents an attempt to limit political struggle to a relatively minor question about what's currently on the table -- everything else simply disappears.

That's bad enough. But, to return to Yudof's "compass points," something unexpected goes wrong in the next paragraph of Birgeneau's statement:

I know that the Cal community cares deeply about public higher education and understands the importance to the state and to the nation of the education, research and public service that we provide. I want to assure you that we will not compromise on our principles of Access and Excellence. I urge you to join me in telling your local legislators, leaders in the Assembly and Senate, and Governor Brown himself that they must arrive at a budget agreement that does not require further cuts to the University of California.

Either Birgeneau didn't get the message (shhhhhh!) or the decision that Yudof was alluding to back in January has already been made. Not that we were under any illusions about the UC administration's commitment to "affordability." Tuition has skyrocketed, up 40 percent in the last two years and 300 percent in the last ten.

When even the rhetorical flourishes have disappeared, nothing will hold back the coming wave of tuition increases -- or stop the plodding advance toward privatization.

This interview aired on a pirate radio show called Relatos Zapatistas (via Indybay):

interview with the compañero ilya on the "anticut 1" action which took place in downtown oakland on june 3. conversation includes a working definition of austerity, the relationship between austerity and gentrification, between austerity and the police, and the difficulties of articulating an anti-austerity politics from an anti-state position. (mp3, 23 min)

Don't forget:

Oakland: Friday June 3, during Art Murmur

- Gather at 7:30, Broadway @ Telegraph,
- Guerrilla Film Screening at 9:30 following march

*Note: There’s a chance of some scattered showers tomorrow night. We’ll be there either way.

Via UC Rebel Radio, we wanted to update folks on the prosecution of the Irvine 11. As you know, these students from UC Irvine and UC Riverside are currently facing criminal charges -- not just the bullshit charges associated with the arbitrary student conduct process -- for participating in a protest during a speech given by Israeli ambassador Michael Oren. They are accused of conspiring to interrupt and then interrupting Oren's speech, charges which could carry a sentence of up to six months in jail if they are convicted. The trial is scheduled to begin on August 15.



This kind of protest happens all the time, and to political figures who are far more significant than Ambassador Oren. For something like this to lead to a criminal prosecution -- let alone the convening of a grand jury! -- is stunning.

In any case, the recent update is that the judge has issued a gag order in order to prevent "potential jurors [from having] preconceived ideas about the case." The gag order applies to both prosecution and defense, but oddly is not retroactive:

Attorneys for the defendants objected to a protective order against them, with one attorney saying their clients "are not similarly situated" with the district attorney's office and therefore should not be subjected to the same limitations.

Attorneys for the 11 also requested that the court mandate the D.A.'s office remove other information relating to the case from its website, including removal of press releases and emails among the defendants that could be submitted to the court later as evidence. The judge denied the request, saying that there is no need to "go back and sanitize" what has already been released.

Obviously, it's impossible to go back and erase what people have already heard. But there is nevertheless something strange about the disproportionate effects of the gag order -- it silences the present while entirely overlooking the past. There's also something interesting here about the way that "free speech" operates. In a case where college students are facing half a year of jail time for allegedly violating the right to free speech of an Israeli politician, the logic of "free speech" demands that (some) speech be silenced, and (other) speech effectively reinforced. It redistributes speech, spatially and temporally. This is where technologies like "free speech zones" and "time, place, and manner restrictions" come into play.

It's also interesting how the politics of free speech often turns on or the legitimation of racism, with regard to both speech and practice. The LA Times article cited above takes a weird turn toward the end:

The defendants also have critics, including prominent Jewish leaders who say they support free speech but believe the students' behavior crossed a line.

Among those who were in the Santa Ana courtroom Friday was Jim Gilchrist, founder and president of the Minuteman Project. Gilchrist, whose organization places civilian patrols on the U.S. border, said he was interested in the case because it related to 1st Amendment free speech rights.

"We need to set ground rules," Gilchrist said, adding that he was "victimized" by people interrupting speeches he's given across the country.

"Louis Farrakhan could speak [to me]," Gilchrist said. "You don't stop people from speaking. I want to talk to the accused and see their point of view."

There's so much going on here. Even if we totally leave aside the claims of white victimization and the odd tokenization of Louis Farrakhan, what's interesting is how the politics of free speech renders some utterances speech and others non-speech. Apparently, Gilchrist recognizes that the protesters have a "point of view," a political argument they want to express. In reality, Oren's speech wasn't prevented, blocked, or suppressed (in other words, the protest was less "effective," in absolute material terms, than the gag order) -- rather, it was delayed, or temporally displaced. And, insofar as all speech is contextual and situated, the protesters' can only make that particular argument in the way they did. It is a fundamentally different speech act to denounce the Israeli occupation while the Israeli ambassador is speaking than it is to denounce it outside the building, or the following day.



Now compare the argument Gilchrist lays out above with this interview he did on Democracy Now. The interview -- well, partial interview -- took place following a speech he tried to give at Columbia University that was interrupted when a group of students rushed the stage and unfurled a banner denouncing anti-immigrant racism. This, it seems, is the sort of thing he calls victimization. (Notably, at one point in the video a minuteman kicks one of the students in the head.) Anyway, what happens in the interview is a sort of back and forth between Gilchrist and student organizer Karina Garcia, except it ends abruptly when Gilchrist bails after Garcia begins to confront him. He just gets up, pulls out his earpiece, and walks off camera.

In this case, of course, Gilchrist doesn't want to talk with the other side and "see their point of view." The point here is obviously not that the head of the Minutemen is an asshole -- it sort of goes without saying -- but rather that the tension in his militant desire to simultaneously hear and silence speech precisely mirrors the logic of free speech more broadly.

One final image: this is what pops up on the screen after Gilchrist cuts the camera in his studio (which is located, notably, in Irvine, CA). Somehow, it's extremely appropriate.


[this post has been edited for clarity]

Fuck the regents. More information here.

The February/March 2011 issue of the Berkeley Campus Monitor, a broadside serving up "subterranean student news," has been released and is circulating around campus. This issue features an article by Slavoj Zizek on the revolution in Egypt, as well as articles taken from the blogs. Keep your eyes out for a hard copy, or check it out here.

Issue 1, January 2011, contains both original pieces and some stuff taken off the blogs. The next issue, which should be coming out in the next couple days, will include Operational Excellence, political issues in the greater Bay Area, and more -- keep your eyes out for it.

In light of the UC Berkeley administration's decision to permanently remove the "wall of faces" (otherwise known as the "propaganda wall"), we've put together this retrospective in memory of what the university saw as a "marketing tool" for commodifying people of color -- er, raising funds. Enjoy.

It's moments like this where concepts like "reasonableness" (also, "proportionality") are rendered so obviously ideological. The language is made to appear so highly rationalized, removed, bureaucratic. The police are trained in the various "levels of force" that are to be deployed in a measured manner:

The Board’s goal was to look at the actions of the officer and determine if they fit within the parameter of reasonableness. The officer clearly communicated several warnings to you with instructions for you to keep your hands off the barricades. In fact, you initially complied with those warnings and temporarily removed your hands from the barricade. It was only after your failure to heed the repeated warnings that the officer increased his level of force from a verbal admonishment to a strike against the rungs of the barricade. When you again returned your hand to the barricade, the officer applied the next level of force by striking you. The Board determined that the officer used a continuum of force that was within reason and within his authority during these circumstances. The Board’s finding of your allegation is exonerated.

It is these "levels" that are responsible for exonerating the cop. But there's a revealing slippage here. In the moment of violence, marked by the smashing of bone against metal, "levels" are abruptly transformed into a "continuum." On the continuum of repression, what begins as dialogue, say, ends in batons, pepper spray, and pistols. Even the police's own "Sufficiency Review Board" understands that "levels" are an illusion: all there is is force.

Full story below the fold, from thosewhouseit:

Reclamations is back with issue 3. Table of contents (with links) is below the fold:

This open letter from a former Berkeley unit chair is a helpful addition to the numerous reasons we have for voting NO on the tentative contract agreement that the UAW leadership is pushing on us. But it's even more interesting in terms of the way it details some of the internal practices within the union, practices that make it completely unresponsive to and unrepresentative of its graduate student members:

The year before last I became, almost accidentally, first the acting then the elected Chair of the UAW for Berkeley. I was recruited to this position and agreed to it without much understanding what it entailed. This seems to be standard MO for the current statewide leadership; after I had agreed to stand for the position it was hinted to me that nefarious and disruptive people might try to challenge me for what is, after all, an elected position. As it turns out, no one did, I was “elected” by all of you without you having any idea, unless you actually read all those emails full of dense and formal bureaucracy-speak that you receive on a regular basis, and the leadership avoided having to deal with anyone who might make waves.

My position made me a member of the bargaining committee, and we prepared to negotiate a contract last year. Days before the first meeting with the University, in the midst of what was then the still-unfolding budgetary crisis, the state-wide president (do you know who your union president is? did you vote for her?) suggested we take the university’s offer of a one-year extension of the current contract with no changes at all. This was presented as fait accompli at a meeting of the committee, and we voted unanimously to accept it.

In the aftermath of all of that, I became increasingly frustrated with how poorly the union represented its members, how shockingly little democracy was actually involved, how easily the state-wide leadership quashed any dissent, and how wholly it bought into the University’s antagonistic relationship while capitulating on a regular basis to the University’s interests. I was in the perfect position to do something about this, but I was not the individual to do it for a variety of reasons. Clearly, that is why I was put in the position to begin with. So I resigned, and as I did so, I urged various people to step in and do what I was unwilling to do. I’m not proud of all of this, but I do have the satisfaction of knowing that Berkeley’s current representatives are a force for agitation among the state-wide leadership, and I support them.

Now, the University really is a vicious negotiator. You will note that we are only now, in the last week of November, voting on a contract, while these negotiations began last Spring and the previous contract expired at the end of September. You probably heard something about the switching of “fees” for “tuition” and whether or not that would invalidate our guaranteed fee remissions, a well-timed announcement that now puts the union in the position of touting as a win what is actually a holding of the status quo. The bargaining committee is not made up of evil people, nor are they secretly trying to shore up the UC’s bottom line at our expense; I’m sure they really believe that this is the best contract they can get. But they are tired of the process, they have been skillfully manipulated by the University, and they are actively quashing efforts to allow debate among the actual membership of the union around this contract.

Another form that the anti-democratic nature of the union might take is the real possibility of fraud in the vote count. This text comes from a flyer that was being handed out today on Sproul plaza:

The UAW Elections Committee, made up of elected representatives from each campus, agreed on voting procedures that require each campus to submit voting tallies to the committee, after which all ballot boxes are sent to one place and a final tally is made. The totals of the campus tallies and the total tally are compared.

On the morning of November 30th, the chair of UAW Elections Committee announced she would be withholding the daily campus tallies from the rest of the Elections Committee. Further, the Chair refused to hold a conference call with committee members to discuss this last-minute change in voting procedure. This unilateral act violates the November 28th decision of our Elections Committee -- duly authorized by the Constitution and Bylaws of the union.

Call Fawn Huisman, chair of the Elections Committee and express your concern over this unilateral and arbitrary violation of democratic procedure and the constitution of the Union.

360-441-5376

In the last few days, a new blog called "UAW for Sanity" has appeared and begun to push back against the folks advocating a NO vote. It purports to be a "grassroots" blog, but at least three of the five authors are members of the UAW joint council. Not that that makes their opinion irrelevant, but it certainly makes the idea that this constitutes some surge of "grassroots" outrage laughable. As @santacruztacean put it the other day,



One final note: as of this moment, 946 people have pledged to vote NO. Last day of voting is Thursday. At Berkeley, you can vote at Sather Gate and North Gate from 8am - 4pm, and at Kroeber Hall from 10am - 2pm.

[Update 12/2]: More on the UAW's astroturf blog here. Also, an interesting recording of a confrontation at a polling station at UC Irvine is here. Paid UAW staffers (non-students) have been brought in to get people to approve the contract:

4 Paid and bias[ed] UAW Staffers were spotted on the Palo Verde (Graduate) Housing Bridge. Reports are that they were at the polling table and that one of them was “removed” and replaced by a less biased one.

Below, you may listen to the audio recording of the incident linked from the UC Rebel Radio Audio Archives. The louder voice at around 10:00 (and before) is the person operating the poll. He is a paid staffer, not a student. He talks at length to this graduate student about the contract, especially around 15:00, where he discusses what the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ would mean. He says things like “A ‘NO’ vote is not caring for childcare”. It is pretty fucked up.

At 16:20 Coral (a Union polling member) tells him he is out of line. Someone then text messages Fawn (UCI physics graduate, statewide elections committee person) to tell her this shit is fucking crazy. Someone tells Coral they want to put the recorder on the table. She then calls Fawn about this. Fawn shortly shows up to take over operating the poll.

On the one-year anniversary of the occupation of Wheeler Hall, happy reading:
- Remember, Remember the 20th of November
- A New Metapolitefsi
- The University and the Ruins of the Present