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

(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.

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.

Friends:

One of our valued comrades and partner of a UC graduate was severely beaten by police inside Tolman Hall last night, while he cried out repeatedly, "please stop hurting me." As a matter of course, he was issued severe charges; the more the police injure someone, the worse the charges must be so as to justify their violence.

There is little doubt that he will not be convicted, should this go to trial. However, because his injuries were severe and he had been denied medical attention at the UCPD building nor at Santa Rita, his partner felt it was imperative to get him out as swiftly as possible. This meant posting bond rather than the $15,000 bail, and forfeiting the $1,500.

The good news is that his partner just started a community care job this week that provides medical insurance; she told me this, tearfully but wryly, last night. The bad news is that she is currently broke. She managed to get the necessary amount from her family, but they themselves are quite poor. As a result, we are taking up a collection to help repay them some or all of the amount, and asking for your support. Please understand: because this was bond and not bail, any donations will be exactly that; it won't be returned at trial. We are grateful for contributions of any amount.

Please contact Joshua Clover (jclover@ucdavis.edu) if you are able to help with this, and we'll make arrangements about gathering what we can — and we'll repeat our thanks, both in specific and for the strength of our shared friendships.

Bay of Rage: Book Block Makes It Happen at UC Berkeley:

Day 1: September 22 the first day of anti-austerity actions on CA campuses

After a rally that drew more than 400, a 20 title strong book bloc led the crowd on a rowdy march through the campus towards Tollman Hall. Upon reaching the building, the book bloc fought off police as the crowd rushed in to occupy the building. Over the next hours, students and friends occupied multiple rooms of the building while police watched nervously. Meetings were held, students held a skype meeting with their counterparts in Chile, donated food was delivered and those present discussed how to push the struggle forward over the next months. At 9pm, riot police flooded the building and clashes broke out as those inside forced their way through police lines and rocks and bottles rained down on the officers. By the end of the day, the police had made two arrests and one book The Sex That is Not One by Luce Irigaray was confiscated by police.

This was the first day of what promises to be a hot fall on campuses across the state.

Public Education Coalition, Update 3:

Unfortunately, the open occupation was ended rather violently by the UCPD. While students and community members had gone into Tolman to create an open, collective alternative space for organizing, studying and solidarity, the UCPD had no intention of allowing students to live in peace. UCPD tackled a demonstrator some time around 8PM arresting him for likely bogus charges. Later, while students chanted in the lobby of Tolman, UCPD tried to block the doors to force students in. When students tried to open the doors, UCPD pushed, punched, and batoned students. One demonstrator trying to exit was tackled, beaten, and had his legs twisted for absolutely no reason. His screams were audible even after UCPD carried him to the second floor of Tolman.

Occupy CA: UC Berkeley Tolman Hall Occupied
Daily Cal Live Blog: Day of Action
Daily Cal Article: Day of Action ends in violence, two arrests
Daily Cal Storify: UC Berkeley's Day of Action
Golden Gate Xpress: UC Berkeley students occupy Tolman Hall, two arrested
KRON: U.C. Berkeley Demonstrators Occupy Empty Classroom Building to Protest Tuition Hikes
ABC: 9 Hour Protest Ends at UC Berkeley
CBS: Classrooms at UC Berkeley Occupied by Tuition Hike Protesters
SF Chronicle: UC Protests Funding Cuts
Sacramento Bee: Students seize UC Berkeley hall
AP: Student Protesters Occupy UC Berkeley Building
CNN: Berkeley students take over campus building to protest proposed tuition hike
Twitter: @callie_hoo, @reclaimuc

statement from the occupation of Tolman Hall at UC Berkeley

We’ve come together today to call for a halt to the destruction of our public schools,
and to insist that education be universally accessible and free. But today we are not
simply pressing demands; we’re also working collectively to reclaim our campus, to
make it a little more public and a little less estranged from us. Starting this afternoon,
we’re opening up a university building to be used as an organizing and educational
space; for teach-ins, film screenings, planning meetings, and whatever else we students,
workers, and debtors at large decide will help us more effectively resist austerity.
We’ve decided to begin by reclaiming the seismically-unsafe Tolman Hall. In August
2011, The Daily Cal reported that in the midst of the “financial crisis”, unsafe
buildings across the 10 UC-campuses would have to wait before they could be
retrofitted. The administration has shut down 13 classrooms in Tolman Hall, which we
are here to reclaim and transform. The UC administration has engaged in an actuarial
risk assessment and decided that students should not be in the building but that
workers are still required to labor there daily. While buildings like Tolman Hall are
being closed throughout the UC-campuses, the University continues to build multimillion
dollar buildings that are nominally public. Tolman Hall stands as a ruin of
public education. We want to call attention to the ways in which the dismantling of
public education and public services is manifested by the defunding of public
infrastructures on our campuses and in all classrooms across this country – buildings
and classrooms that are not simply “brick and mortar” but are the spaces of
collective action and institutional memory. Today, we move to remake these landscapes
of inequality and to open up a new center of resistance.

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

tol