Last Wednesday, tens of thousands of demonstrators marched in the streets of Oakland, shut down the center of the city, and paralyzed the Port of Oakland. With so many people, affinity groups, and organizations involved, things are bound to happen that not everybody agrees with. In the aftermath of the day of action, many folks have stepped up on Facebook, Twitter, and even the Occupy Oakland website to criticize and condemn a couple of these actions: the property destruction at banks and a Whole Foods that took place during an anticapitalist march in the afternoon; and the occupation of the former Traveler's Aid Society, which occurred late Wednesday night and was violently repressed by hundreds of riot police with tear gas, flashbang grenades, rubber bullets, and arrests (including a number of journalists and legal observers). What we want to do here is to provide a few important pieces of background as a way of helping to contextualize Wednesday's actions.

To begin with, one of the very first decisions the GA made was to approve a statement on diversity of tactics. As of October 30, it was collected with a series of other decisions (including a statement to the media which we mentioned and started to discuss here), formatted into a single document, and distributed at the GA as the "Occupy Oakland General Assembly Decisions and Practices":

Occupy Oakland encourages diversity of tactics for actions that occur outside the camp. For example, during marches:

• when confronted by police, some people may want to attempt to have calm conversations with them, urging them to be non-violent
• some people may want to sit down in front of lines of police
• some people may want to express their anger by yelling at the police
• some people may want to attempt to remove police barriers
• some people may want to disrupt traffic or banks
• some people may prefer to remain on the sidewalk

We should be tolerant of each other’s approaches and respect different forms of protest, while being aware of our privilege or lack of it, especially when engaging with the police.

The second decision we wanted to share has to do specifically with the building occupation. Many have criticized the occupation for being "secretive," for purposefully "provoking" the police, for circumventing the General Assembly and therefore constituting an "undemocratic" form. Most of these attacks strike us as simplistic and moralistic, although some have laid out much more thoughtful critiques that are worth seriously reflecting on (e.g. zunguzungu). In any case, what is missing in the majority of cases is any reference to the GA's declaration explicitly endorsing and offering material support for autonomous building occupations. It was approved by the GA with a vote of about 95 percent prior to the general strike:

Declaration of Solidarity with Neighborhood Reclamations

Occupy Oakland, in solidarity with the Occupy movement and with the local community, has established the principle of claiming for open use the open space that has been kept from us. We are committed to helping this practice continue and grow. Here in Oakland, thousands of buildings owned by city, banks, and corporations stand idle and abandoned. At the same time social services such as child and healthcare, education, libraries and community spaces are being defunded and eliminated.

Occupy Oakland supports the efforts of people in all Oakland neighborhoods to reclaim abandoned properties for use to meet their own immediate needs. Such spaces are already being occupied and squatted unofficially by the dispossessed, the marginalized, by many of the very people who have joined together here in Oscar Grant Plaza to make this a powerful and diverse movement.

We commit to providing political and material support to neighborhood reclamations, and supporting them in the face of eviction threats or police harassment. In solidarity with the global occupation movement, we encourage the transformation of abandoned spaces into resource centers toward meeting urgent community needs that the current economic system cannot and will not provide.

The occupation of the former Traveler's Aid Society building fits very well into these guidelines. A quick look at the half-sheet that was distributed in the moment, as well as the full statement that was posted later on, is all it takes to understand that the occupation was meant to "transform[] abandoned spaces into resource centers toward meeting urgent community needs."



An interesting question has been raised about the meaning of "neighborhood" or "autonomous" building occupations and likewise what "community" is being referred to in the context of "community needs." Who is this collective "we"? Who falls outside of that category? For an action to be "autonomous" or be associated with a "neighborhood" does that mean it can't be an official part of the GA or of the so-called Occupy movement? That seems absurd, especially given how the movement is framed as one of the "99 percent." Furthermore, even in the overall context of the general strike, much of what took place was organized autonomously. As Jaime Omar Yassin put it, "Even the migration to the port, some two miles away, was a puzzle of pieces of self-directed groups." The march from UC Berkeley to Oscar Grant Plaza, the critical mass out to the port, the anticapitalist march, the flying pickets that shut down various banks, the feminist bloc in the march -- were each and every one of these actions voted on individually by the full general assembly? No. And for good reason. First, there's an issue of effectiveness. From early on the GA has been based on autonomously organized actions. Here's another chunk from the GA's decisions and practices:

3. Encourage autonomous actions.
In order to keep the GA from being bogged down, and in order to allow for diversity of tactics, actions other than major events (like the General Strike) should be announced as actions rather than brought forward as proposals to be voted on.

Second, there's an issue of safety. Zunguzungu writes, "We do things in the open, or I’m not part of that 'we.'" That certainly makes sense for a lot of actions. For example, the general strike would have been impossible to organize in a closed forum. In large part, that's because of the nature of the action itself -- you can't shut down the Port of Oakland with an affinity group of, say, ten people. On the other hand, a small affinity group can do other things that can be very useful and effective. If those things are illegal and require the element of surprise, it becomes very dangerous and counterproductive for people to propose them in a large, open general assembly. There are often undercover cops in the camp and the media often reports on and records the GAs. The idea that every single action has to be planned "in the open" effectively means taking a large set of actions off the table.

Hopefully these statements will help contextualize what went down on the day of the general strike. We aren't trying to present these as absolute answers and agree on the need for some serious discussions of tactics and strategies (though we also think these specific discussions should happen in the context of the GA and not on social media). Overall, it's important to remember that what we organized -- over the course of a single week! -- was amazing, an incredibly powerful show of force, and we shouldn't lose sight of that in the face of internal divisions.

Finally, as a postscript, here are a few more links that we've found helpful for thinking about questions of "violence," property destruction, tactics, and strategies. These interventions are valuable and to some extent model the kind of conversations we need to be having (and are in fact starting to have -- last night's GA was in this respect very useful).

From Lines of Demarcation:

To: Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, EVCP George Breslauer, Chief Mitchell J. Celaya III, Stephen Stoll, Director of the Office of Emergency Preparedness, Tyrone Morrison, Records and Communications Supervisor

Accounts from on-site witnesses and from videos raise some disturbing questions about the behavior of UCB Police last Thursday night, September 22, toward students participating in the open occupation at Tolman Hall. According to witnesses, sometime shortly after 9 pm, police blocked the outside doors of the building, deliberately preventing students from leaving the building. The police did not communicate to the students their reasons for taking this action nor did they give any other information to the students prior to or after the unexpected blocking of the exit doors. No dispersal order had been given. One protestor when trying to leave was tackled by police and restrained aggressively. That protestor was subsequently arrested was refused medical care while in custody. Students had previously planned to respect the closing time of the building and to leave the building when the police gave an order to disperse. We reiterate the fact that the police did not give such an order, nor communicate any instructions at all. Since the actions of students had been entirely peaceful, the sudden blocking of the doors to keep students in without explanation was unexpected, illogical, and traumatic to the students inside.

We request that the administration and the Police Review Board undertake an immediate review of what happened at Tolman Hall and we ask that the administration and UCPD provide answers, in a document to be published in the Daily Cal, to the following questions:

Who was in charge of the police response to the student activities on September 22, 2011? Who decided that police should block doors and prevent students from leaving? When was this decision made and when did the police at Tolman know of it?

What policy or policies govern the level of aggression and risk of injury permitted in police responses to student protest activities? To what degree were police actions consistent or inconsistent with those policies?

Given that the police are carrying guns, what are the guidelines guaranteeing the safety of those they are supposed to protect, or, in cases of protest, to monitor? What are the guidelines guaranteeing the safety of the police officers? Of bystanders and people from the media?

Upon what authority did the police tackle and injure the student who tried to leave the building? What was the reason for that violent response? Why was that student not allowed to receive a medical examination and care while he was in custody?

Do the police or administrators claim that one or more students engaged in any violent or aggressive act that justified this threatening and violent response? Or does the current policy and practice allow UC Police to violently restrain students whose behavior is not actually violent or threatening? What are the current criteria for arrest of students on campus?

Signed:

Amanda Armstrong, Head Steward, UC Berkeley, UAW 2865
Kyle Arnone, Trustee UAW 2865 (UCLA)
Jessica Astillero, UC Berkeley undergraduate
Erika Ballesteros
Andrea Barrera, Undergraduate, Rhetoric Dept.
Joi Barrios-Leblanc, UC Berkeley Lecturer
Axel Borg, Librarian, Shields Library, UC Davis, Vice-President for Legislation, UC-AFT
Shane Boyle, Head Steward, UC Berkeley, UAW 2865
Gray Brechin, Dept of Geography
Natalia Brizuela, Associate Professor, Spanish & Portuguese
Jordan Brocious, Sgt. at Arms UAW 2865 (UC Irvine)
Chris Chen, Department of English
Natalia Chousou-Polydouri, Head Steward, UC Berkeley, UAW 2865
Mandy Cohen, Recording Secretary UAW 2865 (UC Berkeley)
Jean Day, UC Berkeley staff, UPTE member
Ivonne del Valle, Assistant professor/Spanish and Portuguese
Cheryl Deutsch, President UAW 2865 (UCLA)
Charlie Eaton, Financial Secretary UAW 2865 (UC Berkeley)
Katy Fox-Hodess, Head Steward, UC Berkeley, UAW 2865
Judith Goldman, 2011-12 Holloway Lecturer in the Practice of Poetry, Dept. of English
Ricardo Gomez, UC Berkeley undergraduate
Jane Gregory, graduate student, Department of English, UC Berkeley
Lyn Hejinian, Professor, Department of English
Shannon Ikebe, Member, UC Berkeley, UAW 2865
Nick Kardahji, Trustee UAW 2865 (UC Berkeley)
Kathryn Kestril, UC Lecturer
Elliott Kim, Southern Vice President (UC Riverside)
Seong Hee Lim, Graduate Student, History Department, UC Santa Barbara
Larisa Mann, Head Steward, UC Berkeley, UAW 2865
Brenda Medina-Hernandez, Trustee UAW 2865 (UC Davis)
Blanca Misse, UAW 2865 Guide (UC Berkeley)
Dustianne North- UCLA Social Welfare, Doctoral Candidate
Megan O’Connor, Graduate Student, UC Berkeley English Dept.
Gabe Page, Steward, Comparative Literature, UAW 2865
Gautam Premnath, Dept of English
Brian Riley, Student Unity Movement
Manuel Rosaldo, Head Steward, UC Berkeley, UAW 2865
Robert Samuels, Lecturer, Writing Programs, UCLA, President, UC-AFT
Chris Schildt, Head Steward, City and Regional Planning, UAW 2865
Sara Smith, Northern Vice-President, UAW 2865
Ann Smock, Department of French
Michelle Squitieri, UCB Alumna and Field Representative, UC-AFT
Daniela Torres-Torretti, PhD Candidate in Education, UCD, Student Unity Movement
Jennifer Tucker, Unit Chair, UC Berkeley, UAW 2865
David Vandeloo, graduate student, Department of English
Megan Wachpress, Recording Secretary, UC Berkeley, UAW 2865
Josh Williams, Head Steward, UC Berkeley, UAW 2865

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 congregate 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 political 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.

[Updated Monday 10:10am]: Check out "A Small Critique on Rhetoric," over at Gazuedro:

Perhaps it’s just rhetorical poisoning that my mind has suffered through the years by the media and the movement police, but it seems reckless to say, carte blanche, that “violence works.” This is not an ethical criticism of the argument, but rather a concern for the lack of clarity portrayed by this rather brief statement. I would take it, the “critical lesson” is that given the imminent political force of the crowd outside, and the aggressiveness of the police, the use of violent force to circumvent further atrociousness from the police was effective, worth the risk, and justified. Perhaps more importantly, that as a tactic, it’s easily justifiable to a community critical of police brutality against students who were merely demonstrating, and was thus something that might help bring a community together. I bring this up only to say that this argument isn’t given a fair chance by the brevity of the original statement (i.e. violence works) or by the dramatic and defiance-infused description of events that took place. In short, does all “violence work?” No of course not, it depends on the situation. It’s clear that this statement is a reaction to the moral condemnation of what happened, but as you realize, the problem with moral condemnation is its outright ignorance of how nuanced the issue is; and how general sweeping statements (i.e. moralisms) are aggravating excuses for failing to think critically. The approach of this argument falls under that same trap of being too general.

Similarly, stating “the police are the enemy,” seems a little extravagant. Certainly they often hold the role as the enemy, and are physically present to disable you from being effective. But the police are not the capitalists. The police are (massive) obstacles that must be dealt with. They are often the racist fuckers that shoot unarmed black men face down on the platform, but they are not the ones that solely perpetuate the system of oppression. If you’re purpose is to explain to the uninitiated that the police are not our friends, then you’re a folly of your own third lesson: failing to engage a diverse crowd the right way. An argument like this won’t reach folks. This kind of message, by far, is a lesson best learned through direct action: through the realization that your attempts to make the world better (and thus by extension communize) will be struck down with a baton every time if you fail to organize yourself to resist. This statement does help justify the event for those who were present, but it stops short of contextualizing the power structure thats at fault. It’s most certainly frustrating to have people constantly defend the police and absolve them of any wrongdoing, but the medium to change that won’t be in a brief communique.

I think generally, insurrectionary rhetoric like this overuses hyperbolic language and exaggeration. It usually comes off as grating rather than evocative of romantic adventurism and adrenaline-infused, humbled righteousness. I really appreciate the perspective and analysis though -- for which y’all should be much lauded.

A version of this article was recently published in the UCSC Disorientation Guide. We repost it here because we found it to be a very useful resource: a history of the UC from the perspective of austerity that collects and synthesizes a lot of otherwise dispersed data. Give it a read, and check out the rest of the disorientation guide as well.

As you go from class to overcrowded class this fall, you’ll want to forget that tuition last year was around $1,800 less than you’re paying now. Continuing a 30-year trend, the UC Board of Regents gathered in cigar and gin-soaked boardrooms over the summer to raise our tuition by 17.6% and lay down plans for further increases in January, or maybe just raise tuition 81% over the next 4 years. (Hey, overcrowding at least improves your chances of getting lucky; tuition hikes on the other hand, just increase the probability of working a shitty job in college and plenty of debt after). The UC Office of the President (UCOP) never tires of reminding us that tuition increases are the recession’s fault or scolding us that Californians are just unwilling to spend on education in hard times; this is a strange excuse though, since state funding has been decreasing while tuition has been skyrocketing since the early 1990s. Even while UCOP continues to whine about how poor it is and how unfortunate it is that they need to raise tuition, it’s offering the state of California a billion dollar loan from UC financial reserves. As it happens, in 9 of the past 10 years tuition was raised – well before the 2008 recession began; UCOP’s insistence on the necessity of this recent series of tuition increases has so many logical fallacies that if it were an assignment, it’d get an F (assuming, of course, that the overburdened TA grading it even had time to pay attention to it). Tuition hikes and budget cuts – at all levels of California higher education – are part of the decades-long process whereby the richest assholes in California (and the greater US) intend to make private what few institutions remain in public hands.

It's comforting to know Homeland Security is on the job at the UC:

From: John Wilton, Vice Chancellor - Administration & Finance
To: "Staff, All Academic Titles, Students,"
Date: Tue, Jun 21, 2011 at 6:09 PM

The campus`s annual emergency drill will take place this Friday, June 24, with participants testing their skills in locations across campus, including outdoor areas where mock victims and real emergency responders will be visible to passersby.

The annual exercise is designed to demonstrate the readiness of UC Berkeley to effectively respond to major emergencies on campus, and to test emergency communications, tools and equipment.

Organized by the campus`s Office of Emergency Preparedness, the drill will take place from 8 a.m. to noon. The campus`s emergency sirens and public address system will alert the campus to the start of the drill and its end.

More than 700 campus personnel will participate in the drill including the Chancellor`s Cabinet and representatives from various units, schools and departments including Environmental Health & Safety, University Health Services and the Office of Public Affairs. The UC Police Department, working with the various campus units, will oversee the management of the mock emergency.

Campus emergency officials will send WarnMe test messages to randomly selected 2,500 subscribers. WarnMe is the campus alert system that sends brief email, phone or text messages to alert members of the campus community to major emergencies.

The scenario for this year`s exercise, "Resilience 2011," involves a moderate earthquake that results in an explosion on campus. Passersby will likely see most drill activity taking place around Wurster Hall, Stanley Hall and University Health Services. Mock injured victims, wearing signs that identify them as such, will be in view along with UCPD officers and Berkeley fire department responders. Fire and police officials will be in standard uniform and with standard emergency gear.

All members of the campus community are encouraged to sign up for WarnMe http://warnme.berkeley.edu/ and to view emergency preparedness tips listed on the Office of Emergency Preparedness web site: http://oep.berkeley.edu/emergencies/earthquakes/index.html

Supervisors: Please print and distribute this message to staff who do not use computers or email at work.

For further information, please contact:
Stephen Stoll
Director, Office of Emergency Preparedness/Homeland Security UC Police Department
(510) 642-9036
oep@berkeley.edu

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.

First, this article from last Friday that our compañeros at thosewhouseit caught as well. In it, UC President Mark Yudof declares that tuition could double if no tax increases are incorporated into Governor Jerry Brown's budget:

UC President Mark Yudof had a simple message to deliver Friday morning when he testified before the state senate's budget committee: If the legislature opts for an all-cuts budget to fill its remaining $15.4 billion deficit, "all bets are off" at the University of California.

If the $500 million cut already made to the university earlier this spring were to double to $1 billion under an all-cuts budget, Yudof said the 10 campus system would be put on a path that could lead to a mid-year tuition increase next January, employee layoffs, program closures throughout the university and -- ultimately -- a doubling of tuition to $20,000 a year.

[...]

Friday's committee meeting marked the first time Yudof has publicly acknowledged what the consequences of a $1 billion cut could look like, though Gov. Jerry Brown had predicted in April that tuition could rise to $20,000 or $25,000 under an all-cuts plan. Yudof agreed, saying to the committee that he had looked at the numbers until he was "blue in the face" and that "the governor is not far off in his prediction."

At this point, it's hardly news that the state has cut funding for higher education -- they've been doing it for decades. But this isn't about speaking out against cuts. It's about positioning. Yudof testified to the state senate's budget committee that "the system can absorb the initial $500 million cut" -- the one that has already been programmed into the UC budget for this year -- "but if the state increases the size of the cuts the university will have little choice but to raise tuition 'geometrically' and cut services." In addition to erasing the violence of austerity ("Don't worry about it, we'll be fine... as long as you only cut $500 million." Um, really?), 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.

Now take a look at this article published in today's paper. It reports on the results of an audit of UC finances that shows the system's increasing liabilities relative to its assets. Of course, the UC administration isn't having any of it. UC spokesperson Steve Montiel, always ready for a vapid soundbite, tells the paper that "financially, the university is pretty strong." Thanks, Steve. But then we get this:

The report also states that capital spending -- funding that goes towards long-term assets that help in the production of future goods and services -- throughout the UC continues at a "brisk pace" in order to provide the facilities necessary to support the university's teaching, research and public service mission and for patient care.

Facilities include academic buildings, libraries, student services, housing and auxiliary enterprises, health science centers, utility plants and infrastructure and remote centers for educational outreach, research and public service.

[...]

Additionally, in 2010, $2.8 billion of debt was issued to finance and refinance facilities and projects at various UC campuses, though the report did not specify those projects.

Wherever there's a budget crisis, there's capital projects. The Daily Cal does an interesting job of translation here, with that little clause to tell us what "capital spending" is: it's spending, they say, that leads to accumulation. Another way of saying it would be it's spending that transfers the burden of debt from the university to the student. As Bob Samuels recently wrote, "In this modified credit swap, students are forced to take out subprime student loans, often charging 6 per cent interest, so that the university can borrow money at a reduced rate." And then there's that short sentence at the bottom on construction bonds, the debt issued by the UC to engage in further construction projects. Another $2.8 billion. And as usual there's little transparency -- no mention of where that money is going. Will it be used to pay for important renovations? Or new stadiums and laboratories? All we can do is guess, but at this point we have little reason to trust the UC administration's word on any of this. [Update Wednesday 5/11: The Chronicle just published a relevant article on the UC's maintenance backlog: "the university predicts it will need nearly $2 billion over the next five years to address capital renewal and deferred maintenance." There's not much analysis in the article about why this is the case, but it does note: "Money for capital projects at UC or CSU is often earmarked for specific projects, such as the $321 million bond for renovation of Cal's Memorial Stadium. None of that money can be used, for example, to repair the stairwell at the life sciences building." But presumably the administration could sell bonds dedicated to repairs -- the real question is why they don't. But in reality it's not much of a question at all.]

Once again, Steve Montiel: "'We've got great ratings services. The university has really high ratings from many ratings services,' Montiel said. 'I don't know there is any need to reduce liability.'" What ratings is he talking about? Bond ratings. As Bob Meister wrote back in October 2009,

Why haven’t you been told that UC has been using your tuition as collateral to borrow billions of dollars? The obvious reason is that tuition increases are justified (to you) as a way to pay instructional expenses that taxpayers refuse to pay. If that’s why they’re being imposed, it’s natural to assume that tuition increase will be used to minimize cuts to education. But when UC pledges your tuition to its bond trustee (Bank of NY Mellon Trust), it’s really (legally) saying that your tuition doesn’t have to be used for education, or anything in particular. That’s why it can be used to back UC construction bonds, and why the growth in tuition revenue, as such, is enough to satisfy UC’s bond rating agencies (S&P and Moody’s), whether or not UC can pay its bills. The effect of UC’s pledge is to place a new legal restriction on the use of funds that it must first say it could have used for anything, including education. Thereafter, construction comes ahead of instruction.

Some of UC’s new, and self-imposed, constructions costs will come off the top of its annual budget, despite this year’s “extreme financial emergency.” When UC chose t0 take on $1.35B in new construction debt for 70 projects in August 2009 -- one month after imposing employee furloughs that “saved” $170M -- it committed to spending $70-80M in extra interest payments for years into the future -- they’ve just released the interest rates for each new bond series. Earlier in the year, UC had already issued $.8B in tuition-backed bonds in spring 2009, only some of which were for refinancing older projects at lower interest rate. It’s thus likely that the interest due on new projects funded during 2009 alone will have eaten up more than half of UC’s “savings” from the furloughs. Would the furloughs have been “unavoidable” if UC were not secretly planning to incur additional interest expenses for new bond-funded construction?

Note that the graphic above shows that $2.5 billion of the UC's short-term liabilities are classed as "securities lending collateral." We're not entirely sure what this means, but it might refer to the $2.8 billion in construction bonds mentioned by Montiel. Why the $300 million difference?

Now that we once again have the UC administration's obsession with construction over instruction in mind, take a look at another article out of today's Daily Cal. This one is about the ongoing process of developing a plan for renovating and redesigning Lower Sproul Plaza at UC Berkeley, a project that's budgeted at $223 million. And guess what:

As the exact design of the new Lower Sproul Plaza continues to form, an estimate of the cost for the current design is over budget by about $10 million.

The money for the project comes from a number of sources: "contributions from the campus, the UC Office of the President and student fees approved . . . in the 2010 ASUC General Election." In other words, not only are students paying directly for the project -- after all, we voted for it! Democracy in action! -- we're paying for it indirectly as well, through tuition increases that have already taken place (that money goes into the general fund) and the promise of future tuition increases that the UC now owes the bond raters.

This isn't about budget cuts -- it's about priorities.

In the early hours of the morning, police from both the CSU and SFPD, dressed in full riot gear entered the administration at Sacramento State -- which was going into the fourth day of occupation by student protesters -- advanced on sleeping students in attack formation and from multiple directions, and ordered them to leave. Occupiers left voluntarily, with no arrests. Here's part of their statement of the eviction:

This morning on the fourth day, April 16 at 3:24 A.M. we were met with the administration’s opposition expressed through a riot taskforce.

Earlier that morning at approximately 12:30 A.M CSUS police entered the building for the first time accompanied with San Francisco State police. We were told that the new forces were needed, and that our own police were showing them the layout of our building. At this time we asked to be updated about the situation and we were refused that request.

Our police liaison Yeimi Lopez, again approached CSUS police with questions and she was told that they could no longer release information, and that they were following the orders given to them.

At 3:24 AM there was a police officer at the front doors unlocking the entrance, when asked what was happening and why, we were told that he could not answer that question. At the same time police were assembling in a militant formation with full riot gear, batons, and a large amount of zip ties. They were approaching sleeping students from multiple directions within the building. They threatened with force that if we did not leave we would face arrest. Our police liaison met with Lieutenant Christine Lofthouse that if we did not leave the peaceful demonstration that we would face arrest.

This is to be expected. In the end, these administrations don't care whether student action, especially direct action like occupation, is "peaceful" -- in any form it constitutes a threat to their ability to impose whatever measures they deem appropriate. At UC Berkeley, for example, we experienced something similar in December 2009 during Live Week, when riot police descended at 3 am on sleeping students and arrested 66 of them. We scare them. As our compañeros at Anti-Capital Projects wrote,

From this perspective, the bottom line is: fuck yeah Sac State! Solidarity with occupiers everywhere!

* OCCUPY * DISRUPT * RECLAIM * FIGHT BACK *

Section 102.24: Conduct, where the actor means to communicate a serious expression of intent to terrorize, or acts in reckless disregard of the risk of terrorizing, one or more University students, faculty, or staff. ‘Terrorize’ means to cause a reasonable person to fear bodily harm or death, perpetrated by the actor or those acting under his/her control. ‘Reckless disregard’ means consciously disregarding a substantial risk. This section applies without regard to whether the conduct is motivated by race, ethnicity, personal animosity, or other reasons. This section does not apply to conduct that constitutes the lawful defense of oneself, of another, or of property.
 
Section 104.90: Sanctions [for any violations of Section 102.00, Grounds for Discipline] may be enhanced where an individual was selected because of the individual’s race, color, national or ethnic origin, citizenship, sex, religion, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, pregnancy, marital status, ancestry, service in the uniformed services, physical or mental disability, medical condition, or perceived membership in any of these classifications.

Obviously this is a long-delayed response -- a year and a half after the fact -- to the property destruction at the Chancellor's house, which then-Governor Schwarzenegger called not only a "criminal act" but went as far as to label it "terrorism" itself. In fact, the text of these violations is almost exactly the same as what we posted last October -- the only difference is that where the new version uses "those acting under his/her control" the previous version read "his/her confederates." A strange word choice, admittedly.

But the question this raises is the following: when have members of the university community had cause to fear bodily harm or death, perpetrated by the actor or those acting under his/her control? Oh right, it was when the Chancellor invited the riot police onto campus, and they, acting under his control, hit us with clubs, shot us with pepper spray and rubber bullets, and aimed their guns at us. We know what this is all about.







It's like the budget cuts, where the highest-level administrators have declared themselves exempt: one set of rules applies to them, another one applies to the rest of us.

Today the Daily Cal published an op-ed by the author of the blog post we linked to here, which builds on and develops a number of the ideas in the original. For us, the key question here is the nature of "students' rights." Check it out:

On Thursday March 4, I went to Wheeler Hall to teach section for Legal Studies 140 "Property and Liberty" -- a subject about which we learned a lot more than we expected that day!

Students were protesting in front of and on the balcony of the building, and police were standing around, but nobody stopped me from going inside. Students in my section showed up and we started the discussion.

Twenty minutes later, two police officers came and told us "the chancellor is closing the building."

But by what right does the chancellor get to close Wheeler Hall?

This campus exists because the land was donated by the state legislature to the university in exchange for its providing education to the citizens of California.

So who owns the university? If the labor of teachers is part of the educational mission, at what point do teachers get to decide what happens on school property? If you believe, as I do, that student labor is also part of education -- helping to create what is learned by all in the classroom, what right do students have to make use of the spaces whose existence is justified by an educational mission? If there is disagreement or diversity of opinion, who or what should arbitrate these rights?

I later got an e-mail from the chancellor saying that a "health and safety issue" in Wheeler Hall required its closing.

Immediately afterwards, a friend who was outside Wheeler Hall told me about police pepper-spraying and beating protesters with batons while attempting to remove them from the area. Was that the health and safety issue?

In November 2009, a police officer smashed the hand of and nearly took off the finger of a student participating in the protests, while at the November 2010 Regents' meeting, police pepper-sprayed nonviolent students in the face. On March 4, police prevented people from bringing water to those protesters who were thirsty and had requested it. Police presence appears to be a leading cause of these "health and safety issues," and yet they are still allowed on campus.

Another issue raised during previous protests was concern over damage to the building. But is damaging human bodies preferable to damaging buildings? Also, has anyone seen the bathrooms in Wheeler Hall? If police were to start beating people over building damage, 20 percent of students there on a regular day would need ambulances. Hiring back the laid-off janitorial staff would be a better response to this concern and a better expenditure of university resources than paying the wages of police who beat students.

Whose rights are being protected by the beatings, the pepper-sprayings, the denial of water to protesters?

Let's consider students' rights to pursue an education without disruption. We were carrying on our section without a problem until closure of Wheeler Hall happened, it was the police who kicked us out.

What of the rights of the students who have dropped out because of fee hikes (many of whom are locked into crushing debt), or the janitors and other staff members who will no longer be on campus because of the policies like fee hikes and the layoffs like those dictated by Operational Excellence? Did they have any rights to pursue an education? The founders of the UC system would have said that they did.

How do we measure these rights alongside those of students, protesting or not, currently attending UC Berkeley? Non-protesting students' rights to pursue an education have already been affected: Despite massive fee increases, the resulting funds have not gone towards actual education: Class sizes are increasing, labs are cut, libraries are closed or have shorter hours, teaching resources are cut, class sessions are cut -- my own course has four fewer classes than usual because of the cuts! Meanwhile, endless construction projects disrupt the campus more than any protest has, to date.

We all learned a tremendous amount about the power and meaning of property rights on March 4. We saw how the campus put property rights in objects over people's property rights in their own bodies.

Students' rights to bodily integrity, to pursue an education and to have a voice in University of California policy were less important than the chancellor's right to absolute control over the goings-on inside Wheeler Hall. But what, besides force of arms, supports the chancellor's right? What about the UC's mission as an educational institution?

From Indymedia London:

Marika Iyer and Alex Barnett, two of the nine protesters on the Wheeler ledge, take to the Daily Cal:

On March 2, a national day of action to defend public education, 17 people were arrested for refusing to leave Wheeler Hall. Less than 24 hours later, nine students locked themselves to a ledge atop the building, four stories above ground, with four demands:

1. Stop the $1.4 billion in cuts to California public education.
2. Allow democratic decision making in the budgetary process.
3. An end to student repression through a politically motivated student conduct process.
4. An immediate end to Operational Excellence (OE), the campus's budget cut program.

UC Berkeley sophomore Jessica Astillero recounts her experience: "I was sitting in one of the doorways studying, when all of a sudden riot police rushed up the steps and told us to move. As we did, they started shoving us and the next thing I know, I get hit with a baton in the face and then another officer maced me right in the eyes ... it was a ridiculously excessive use of force for such a peaceful demonstration."

Several questions have been raised about last Thursday's action:

What was accomplished? What does this demonstrate? This action witnessed the first concrete victories since protests began in fall 2009; specifically: one, a decisive end to past and present conduct charges which the campus has used to intimidate students from engaging in political action, and two, a meeting between Chancellor Birgeneau, the chair of Operational Excellence, and the students and workers on campus who are directly affected by its proposed implementation. The events of March 3 also clearly demonstrated the value and necessity of direct action. The administration has proven that they will not respond to anything but the most spectacular expressions of student dissent. Once again, this has exposed the administration's complete disregard for the collective will and well-being of students and workers and has brought to attention the authoritarian logic governing the campus.

Why is there so much scrutiny on UC Berkeley administrative decision-making, when all energy could be directed towards the cuts coming out of Sacramento? The concrete situation we are experiencing on our campus and systemwide has as much to do with the administration's prioritization of funds as it does with cuts at the state level. Operational Excellence - our university's internal restructuring program - comes out of last year's $3 million contract with consulting firm Bain & Company. Not only is it irresponsible for our administration to pay out that much in contracting costs in these conditions but also the move emphasizes their utter inability to "administer" the campus (the job they claim requires a six-figure salary) as well as their exclusion of those most affected by the restructuring from important decision-making processes.

Additionally, OE is branded as eliminating excessive bureaucratic and managerial layers, yet staff have already buckled under the added strain resulting from last year's layoffs. Rather than eliminating unneeded positions, OE is eliminating vital positions and reallocating that work to the remaining staff members; this is nothing short of exploitation. Top administrative ranks, however, remain untouched. We also shouldn't be quick to forget the university administration's use of promised fee increases as construction collateral as well as their opting for riskier investments which cost the university $23 billion in the 2008 recession. The administration does not have its hands tied as it would like us all to think - it very much has control over the allocation of what funds are at its disposal.

What's next? Chancellor Birgeneau should be meeting regularly with concerned students, not least the departments and programs that are being affected by such unilateral decision-making. He must be accessible. He cannot hide in an office or a house - we must have these conversations, and they must be public. The administration's attitude echoes that of President of the University of California Mark Yudof - "being president of the University of California is like being manager of a cemetery: There are many people under you, but no one is listening ... "

We are here to tell the administration: We are not corpses. The chancellor, provost, vice chancellor, dean of students and any other unilateral decision-maker on our campus must realize: This action was a response to their consistent refusal to make themselves accountable to those who work and study on campus. As students, we will not tolerate this any longer.

For more information, check out reclaimuc.blogspot.com and thosewhouseit.wordpress.com.

The same questions I ask about the claims over "intellectual property" have always been worth asking about physical property. By what right do people claim the right to exclude? What rights do people who labor and create have to define access and share what they have?

Those of you who tried to come on Thursday, I apologize -- the police let several of us in and we were inside the building until police came and told us the chancellor was closing the building at which point we had to leave.

A question this course should lead you to ask is: by what right does the chancellor get to close Wheeler Hall? Whose property is it?

Know that this university exists because the land was donated by the state to the university in exchange for it providing free education to the citizens of California. In terms of labor theories of value, if the labor of teachers is part of the educational mission, at what point do teachers get to decide what happens on school property? If you believe, as I do, that students' labor is also part of education -- helping create what is learned by all in the classroom, what right do students have to make use of the spaces that were given as sites of education? If there is disagreement or diversity of opinion, who or what should arbitrate these rights?

I later got an email from the chancellor saying there was a "health and safety issue" in Wheeler which necessitated closing it. This seems odd to me. I also heard from a friend who was stopping by Wheeler (a volunteer medic) that police had pepper-sprayed and beaten protesters with batons while attempting to remove them from the area. (Was that the health and safety issue? If so, I can think of a few ways short of closing the building that could have protected people.)

I encourage you to think about the primacy of property rights in what happened at Wheeler Hall. Property rights in objects were supreme over rights over people's own bodies. The rights to bodily integrity of the students were not as important as the rights of the chancellor to control what happens in Wheeler Hall. It's true there may have been a concern about damage to the building -- but during the first occupation a police officer smashed the hand (and nearly took off the finger) of a student who was participating in the protests (nonviolently and not causing property damage), and yet police are still allowed on campus. The costs and the harm of  batons and pepper spray are not as much concern to the university as the right of the university to control property.

Whose rights are being protected by this? (Note that we were carrying on our section without a problem until this happened, it was the police who were limiting access.)

Of course there is the question of [a] student's right to pursue an education without protest. As above, who should be the arbiter between those different opinions about educational priorities in situations where protesters ARE disrupting classes?

But also, what happens if you include the rights of the students and former students, and also the janitors (speaking of keeping the building in good shape) who are no longer on campus because of the policies like fee hikes and the layoffs dictated by Operational Excellence? Did they have any rights? Milton Friedman (whom we read this week) would say no. But what about the founders of the UC system and its mission?

Also, the rights of nonprotesting students to pursue an education are affected anyway, because even despite the massive fee increases the resulting funds have not gone to education: class sizes are increasing, labs are cut, teaching resources are cut, class sessions are cut (this course has four fewer classes than usual because of the cuts), libraries are closed, construction disrupts the campus as much as protests.

I hope this is food for thought and future discussion!

The kids in Milwaukee just published a press release on their webpage:

75 University of Wisconsin Milwaukee (UWM) students are currently occupying the Peck School of the Arts Theater Building.

Milwaukee, WI March 2, 2011 -- There are currently about 75 University of Wisconsin Milwaukee students occupying the Peck School of the Arts Theater Building. The occupiers adopted this solidarity statement: “We stand in solidarity with the workers and students striking and occupying the Wisconsin State Capitol building.  We demand immunity for all occupiers and strikers involved in these actions.”

“Students and workers across Wisconsin are fighting back against Governor Walker’s attacks on education, public services, and underrepresented groups. UWM students are occupying in solidarity with students and workers from Egypt to Madison,” said Jacob Flom.

Contacts:

Jenna Pope
608-751-4527

Jacob Flom
262-573-7185

UWMoccupied.wordpress.com
UWMoccupied@yahoo.com

Solidarity with the occupiers in Wisconsin!



More photos, thoughts at the Burnt Bookmobile.

From thosewhouseit:

If you recall, we reported a little over a week ago that our comrade Julian Martinez’s student conduct hearing for the 11/20/09 Wheeler occupation ended before it even began. It was scheduled for Friday, February 18th, but the hearing panel spent most of the evening deliberating over several procedural matters, and neither side even had the opportunity to present their respective opening statements. After graduate student panelist David Fannon recused himself, Martinez’s hearing was rescheduled for February 28th. Martinez is not the only Wheeler student currently in the hearing stage of the student conduct process, but his hearing is the only one currently open to the public. Please come out and show your support!

We’ll have info on subsequent public hearings shortly. It sounds like one of our closest comrades will have his hearing for the Wheeler occupation a week from tomorrow. We’ll post details once it’s confirmed. In the meantime, please, please, please come out to Julian’s hearing and show him some solidarity.

The hearing will begin at 5:30 pm, Monday, February 28 in Building 14 on the Clark Kerr Campus.

[Update Monday, 12:45pm]: If you want to follow the hearing, it looks like @callie_hoo will be doing some live-tweeting.

[Update Tuesday, 7:58am]: Julian found "not responsible" (i.e. not guilty) for ANY of the charges against him! This is the one of the first times a protester from November 2009 has been cleared -- and, notably, it is the only time where the defendant's "adviser" (i.e. lawyer or lawyer-like helper) has been allowed to speak. Congratulations to Julian and to his adviser Thomas Frampton! Here's the summary from thosewhouseit:

For the first time, the Berkeley Office of Student Conduct (OSC) lost its case against a student protester who occupied Wheeler Hall on 11/20/09. Julian Martinez was found not guilty on all counts. The verdict was read around 1:30 am last night at his hearing on the Clark Kerr Campus. We highly recommend reading over the de facto summary on our comrade’s live-tweet. Thomas Frampton from the Campus Rights Project (CRP) ripped it. Highlights include Thomas telling the panel he is offended as a Berkeley student that this is the standard of justice on campus; pointing out that OSC threw a charge intended for rapists at most of the Wheeler occupiers; and telling the arresting officer that he is an embarrassment to UCPD. Congrats to Julian, Thomas, and CRP, and ironic kisses to the career functionaries at OSC.

We can draw several immediate conclusions from this decision. First, of course, it demonstrates the utter incompetence of OSC, which was unable to prove (even given the absurdly low standard of proof) that one of the protesters who was arrested in Wheeler Hall during the occupation was "responsible" (i.e. guilty) for even a single charge. At times like this, such incompetence ends up working out in the favor of student protesters; most of the time, however, it works against us. The reason is that the student conduct procedure is specifically designed to hold certain kinds of people (namely, students) accountable, while consistently letting administrators and institutions at large off the hook. Thus, we should not take this as a sign that "the system works" or let down our guard in any way -- rather, we should recognize that what just happened is a flaw in the system. We should also expect that flaw to be "resolved" quickly -- much like the comment made by undergraduate member of the hearing panel on her AOL Lifestream page four days after Julian's prehearing ("Never pass up an opportunity to castrate a man") has since been removed. Don't worry -- we saved a screenshot of it. [Editor's note: As of 6/23/2020 we have edited this post to remove the identifying information of the undergraduate member of the hearing panel.]

Second, this decision demonstrates the significance of affording students their full due process rights instead of the abridged version on which the student conduct procedure is based. Julian's case is the first time a protester from the 2009 occupations has been able to have his adviser speak for him; significantly, it is also the first time all the charges have been overturned. What this demonstrates -- and this is fairly obvious, but it still needs to be said -- is that someone who is trained in dealing with such pseudo-legal matters is obviously better at it than someone who isn't. By forcing students to defend themselves, OSC and the UC administration are blatantly attempting to skew the playing field.

Third, this decision calls into question all previous and future decisions regarding protesters from the 2009 occupations. What Frampton referred to as the "three P's" during the hearing -- procedure, politics, and proof -- are more or less the same in very case, and the university has failed in each of them. All previous decisions against student protesters have therefore been reached wrongly and should be retroactively dismissed; simultaneously, all future decisions must be seen through the lens of what happened here. This will be especially true if an adviser is not allowed to speak for his or her client.

We're a little late to the draw on this one, but it seems that on February 13 a mansion valued at £6 million and owned by film director Guy Ritchie was occupied and converted into a free school by a collective appropriately called the Really Free School. The corporate media reported:

At least 12 people have occupied the large Grade I listed property in Fitzrovia and claim they now plan to convert the building into a free school.

The collective known as the Really Free School entered Mr Ritchie's property over the weekend.

The police were called but the squatters refused to leave.

They have now placed large banners in the front windows that say "strike", "resist" and "occupy".

Occupied, or reclaimed -- "It is believed Mr Ritchie wants to convert the former language school into two homes and sources claim the cost of the refurbishment could run into millions." In any case, unfortunately the squatters were evicted on Friday, but not before throwing a party and publishing a "Call to Celebration", which is below the fold:

From ThoseWhoUseIt:

The plot thickens, coagulating into a repulsive glop.  Roughly an hour after we reported that a UC Berkeley undergrad was threatened with conduct sanctions by the Office of Student Conduct (OSC), we learned of 4 additional students and alumni -- all of whom were undergraduates during the period of the alleged violations -- who received similar charges.  Three of them received notices of possible violation seemingly identical to the one posted in our initial report. However, a fourth student -- a longtime contributor to this blog -- was threatened with charges not only for his alleged involvement in the chalking on November 19 (for which he too received an identical notice of possible violation), but also for his alleged activities at the Regents’ meeting on November 17. Because this author was present for our contributor’s arrest, I can attest to the fact that the arrestee violated no law. In fact, on the very evening of the 17th, CBS aired a video of our comrade being arrested. It clearly showed a line of students and workers linking arms in an attempt to prevent the Regents from leaving the parking deck. Our comrade was not one of these demonstrators. Instead, he walked up and down the line writing the phone number for the SF National Lawyers’ Guild on the forearms of the demonstrators with a permanent marker. In the CBS clip, a cop can be clearly seen pointing out our comrade to two other cops, at which point they walk up to him, violently throw him to the ground, beat him, and cuff him face down on the cement. At this point they hauled him off to a holding cell near the Civic Center. When he appeared for his arraignment a few weeks ago, no charges were filed. Obviously. He didn’t do a thing, and it’s all on video! We will provide the video clip at a later date, but he has asked us to protect his anonymity for the time being. However, we have obtained his notice of possible violation, which includes the following two charges:

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

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

[...]

What a joke. According to the OSC’s own code of conduct -- explicitly referenced in this notice -- cases must be resolved within 75 days of the alleged incident. The fact that 5 of our comrades are receiving initial notices of possible violations 72 days afterward means that they will not even receive their notices of actual charges until well past the 75-day deadline. Of course, we all know that OSC unilaterally suspended their own timeline in a secret email from Associate Dean of Students Cristina Gonzalez to OSC Acting Director Susan Trageser in August of 2009. We have long had a copy of that email, and it explicitly suspends the timeline (which is beyond the scope of Dean Gonzalez’ authority by the way, not that it seems to matter) for a single academic year. That year has long been over. Unless there is another secret email in which an administrator declares a state of exception about which we have not yet heard, these bureaucrats are one-upping even the sovereign: refusing to declare a state of exception, they have decided to simply will it into existence. In other words, we do not need to be informed that the law has been suspended, nor do we even need documentation any longer; the suspension of the law itself no longer needs to remain within the formal bounds of legality!

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again:

Drop all charges against student protesters!

And seriously, if the only reason our comrade received a notice of possible violation for his alleged actions at the Regents’ meeting is because he was arrested; if that arrest appears in a widely available video in which it is quite clearly wrongful; and if no charges were actually filed against him, signaling that the SF DA is cognizant of this fact, on what basis is he being charged by OSC? More to the point, if OSC threatens students on the basis of formal legal sanctions that they receive on or off campus, why does OSC exist at all?

Abolish OSC!

Update: We have just learned that at least one UCSC student has been charged by OSC on he/r campus for an arrest at the Regents’ meeting. More details when we get them.

For a detailed account of the operations of Office of Student Conduct, see "On Administrative Conduct: Procedural Violations and the Rule of the Arbitrary" published in the most recent issue of Reclamations.

From Lines of Demarcation [PDF here]:

Many of us are looking back right now at the sets of actions that trace student/worker/faculty opposition to the programmatic final neoliberalizing of the university. We have engaged in various actions over the course of the last two years, some of which we have seen the immediate effects of and some whose effects we have not been able to see or anticipate. Those actions in the second group are the source of much anxiety; we wonder if they have been a waste since they appear not to have advanced anything. We should remember that actions have a dispersed life and bear on our moment in many ways. One way that we can understand this is by the effects that we can see in the actions of our enemies. The administration is shaken. This is evident by the unprecedented police presence on our campuses after the Regents' meeting. They are trying to forcibly enter our meetings, scare us with heavy handed legal consequences. Collectively, we are students, faculty, student-workers, and service workers, we are the classes that make the university, we provide the labor that it uses as capital and cache in its attempt to sell the university as a commodity. They hold us in precarious positions and divide us from one another through bureaucratic distinctions like job titles and degree designations. They pit us against each other, making us think that we have to fight each other for resources. This is a lie. They know that we produce, collectively, the product that they sell and profit from. They keep our wages down and our ability to determine the university by keeping us from aligning with one another. We have learned in the history of our actions that we are already aligned. When we act together, as we have, they cannot stop us. The problem emerges when we are again divided by our fear: fear of sanctions, fear of violence, fear of future retribution. We must not let this be the case. We must remain in solidarity.

It may be easy to feel depressed about the lack of apparent wins, but our actions have had consequences. Now is the time to push those consequences to the conclusions that we want. Let's not let the round of repression from the university, the police, and their allies keep us from reconfiguring the spaces that we live and work in. We are angry at the wave of arrests, home 'visits', police standing guard on our campuses, sending students to jail, and charging them with 'serious' crimes.

The convention of looking backward as one begins something new only reveals what is normally concealed; the past can only exist in the present. We look to the past to get a sense of what to do in the present, but the present is opaque to us too. The present is the name that we give to what has just happened. To be concerned with the present in this way is to think ideologically about what is possible. We can and must think with the conjuncture, not about it. The present that we occupy is under construction at every moment in the sense that we produce the narratives of our actions that give them meaning. We live here. We live now. We act in the relations that we live in if we do this, we move against ideological separation and we move in solidarity. This is to say: they are afraid; if we were not threatening, they would not push back with this force; however, their fear alone isn't a win and it doesn't mean that they can't hurt us. Let's push the situation further. We should begin to disrupt every aspect of business as usual. Engage in every tactic that brings the university to a halt. Solidarity means that we act in concert but not in unification. We should have one demand: the control of the place that we both produce and are produced by. We must do everything we can to disrupt every process that forces us to produce our own debt and hold us accountable for it. Shut down the processes that are mobilized to keep students and workers from controlling the university. Let's realize the relations that capital tries to conceal from us. Categories of hierarchy (graduate students, lecturers, adjuncts, undergraduates, faculty, staff, service workers) though material, conceal the ways in which we are all precariously situated in the institution that we make.

WE WANT EVERYTHING * WE WILL NOT COMPROMISE WITH ADMINISTRATORS OR POLICE * DISRUPT * OCCUPY * STRIKE * TAKE OVER * SHUT DOWN * BARRICADE EVERYTHING // OCCUPY EVERYTHING

Yudof himself says: "There can be no business as usual." For once, we agree.

The recent wave of occupations and massive protests in the UK are incredibly inspiring for those of us in California who have been fighting the privatization of public education. There are some clear parallels, not only in terms of the economic and discursive forms the austerity measures take but also in the tactics being adopted and developed to challenge and combat them. But there are also significant differences.

In an essay published a couple weeks ago, Michael Hardt analyzed some of these differences. "Whereas in Britain, Italy, and other European countries students battle police in the streets and experiment with new means to protest such government actions," he writes, "there is a relative calm on U.S. campuses." What explains this calm? One relevant factor, he suggests, is that the movement toward privatization in the US has been much more gradual than in the UK. The broadest, biggest, and most intense protests in California took place in November 2009 when the UC Regents were voting to approve a 32 percent tuition hike; in the UK, parliament just voted in a 300 percent increase, and slashed the overall budget for higher education by some 80 percent. A second factor is the difficulty of national coordination, since the education policies vary from state to state.

But Hardt is most interested in the big picture, the roots of difference: "The most significant reason for less student activism in the United States, however, may derive from a much deeper national condition. The social value placed on education for all, especially higher education, has declined dramatically." Education is no longer a central mission of the US government as it was in the post-Sputnik era, and what Hardt (and Negri) identify as the shift toward "biopolitical production" has made the focus on hard sciences and engineering that dominated the industrial model less and less important:

University policies throughout the world have not kept pace with these changes. The private money that universities solicit to compensate for the decline in public funding is dedicated overwhelmingly to technical and scientific fields. The human sciences, which are increasingly relevant in the biopolitical economy, are deprived of funds and wither. In this case the student demands actually point in the direction of economic prosperity. The current student protests thus reconfirm a general rule of politics, that social struggles proceed and prefigure social development.

Hardt raises a number of questions that are clearly important for us to consider. In some ways, however, his broad vision obscures some of what I think are the most interesting differences at the micro-tactical level. Here I want to really briefly lay out two that I've been thinking about recently.



First, cops with guns. In this video from last week's protests in London, cops struggle to hold their own line as the "book bloc" of protesters attempts to push through using reinforced banners and shields in order to break out of the "kettle" where they're being kept against their will. In contrast, at the UC Regents' meeting at UCSF Mission Bay in November, the police used chemical weapons (pepper spray) and even drew guns to shut down protesters. What would demos look like here if the cops couldn't rely on such overwhelming firepower? How would we confront them?



Second, private property law. Dozens of universities in the UK were occupied in November, and many of these occupations are still ongoing. University College London, for example, has been occupied for about three weeks now. It's inconceivable for an occupation to last that long in the US. Even "live week," the open occupation of Wheeler Hall at UC Berkeley that took place almost exactly a year ago, lasted just four or five days. Not only was there a heavy police presence the entire time, we've since learned through a public records dump that the administration was scheming to shut it down from the start. They were just waiting for an opening to send in the cops, which they eventually did, making 66 arrests. But the legal context is different in the UK. As Angus Johnston wrote last week,

Some two hundred students at University College London have been occupying the Wilkins Building on campus for the last two weeks in protest against planned funding cuts and fee hikes at Britain’s universities. On Thursday the university demanded that they leave.

In the US, the university’s next step would have been obvious — call in the cops. In California, student occupations are becoming a regular occurrence, and police evictions accompanied by mass arrests are almost inevitable.

But this isn’t the US.

In the UK, you can’t evict students who are peacefully occupying a campus building without a court order, and the university has in this case so far failed to get one.

In comparison to the broad strokes of Hardt's brush, these examples may seem less significant. Obviously there are other critical differences -- for example, the strike culture that makes it possible to paralyze campuses in Puerto Rico, for example -- but the ones presented above are useful for thinking about horizons of possibility. Maybe what's at stake is the distinction between strategy and tactics. But sometimes this distinction gets blurry -- the normalization of cops with guns and the fetishization of private property shape the kinds of tactics we deploy and the kinds of violence we face in response. To some extent, they produce the field on which political action occurs. Actions or campaigns to push cops off campus or to disarm UCPD, for example, could significantly shift this ground and immediately add to the repertoire of tactics at our disposal. They won't turn California into London or Rome, but it certainly couldn't hurt.