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

Segregation doesn't only consist of physical walls or explicitly racist policies, but is also embedded in the structures and flows of the cityscape as well, in bridges, crumbling building facades, liquor stores, and, in this case, MUNI rails. This is one of the critical questions raised by the recent police murder of 19-year old Kenneth Harding, who was shot 10 times by police officers as he ran away from a fare inspection. While the mainstream media gets carried away breathlessly reporting (and later retracting) every new detail that SFPD feeds them, we are more interested in other questions: Why does SFPD patrol the trains in Bayview, while in the rest of the city the work is done (if at all) by simple fare inspectors? What insights do we get from understanding the murder as stemming first and foremost from a fare inspection?

In Bayview, the T-Third MUNI line functions as a gateway to the rest of San Francisco. Especially for youth and others who don't have access to cars, it's the primary path toward downtown and by extension to the rest of the MUNI grid that crisscrosses the city. Guarded by armed police officers who, we now know, are ready and willing to use their weapons, the Bayview MUNI station operates as a militarized checkpoint that serves as a form of population control, regulating the flow of primarily black youth into but most importantly out of the neighborhood. Even the police identify it as such. As the police chief has explained, fare inspections have been stepped up recently as a way of confiscating guns from Bayview residents who ride the trains. Fare inspections, in other words, are explicitly not about making sure people pay their fares. Rather, what they do is give the police an excuse to detain, search, and criminalize black youth in the moment that they attempt to navigate an urban landscape that has been closed off to them.

Segregation also rests on particular social relations -- again, to be clear, most San Franciscans have never even been to the neighborhood. Part of what's been so successful about the recent demonstrations against police terror in and around Bayview is not only the solidarity that they manifest but more importantly the high level of participation by residents of different neighborhoods in every action. Folks from Bayview turned out to the demo in the Mission last Tuesday; likewise, folks from the Mission and beyond have showed up at press conferences and rallies in the Bayview. Of course, the specter of the "outside agitator" (as imagined by both city officials and institutionalized non-profits) is never far off. But what seems to have characterized these moments of collaboration is something very different, a coming-together based on a recognition of points of commonality in the struggle against the police as enforcers of an unjust economic system. That such a convergence would arise doesn't require that everybody involved experience the same forms of violence -- of course they don't, and to suggest they do would be to purposefully ignore different manifestations of class/gender/race/etc -- but that they perceive the overlaps even within those differences.

This is how we should read the arrest of Fly Benzo (Debray Carpenter), a Bayview resident who has been one of the most vocal and visible critics of SFPD in the wake of the Kenneth Harding murder. Watch videos and you'll see his face; look at the SF Chronicle and you'll see his name; he was interviewed on the local ABC affiliate. His analysis of the situation, furthermore, is sharp; as he told the Chronicle:

"We need to shut down the T line until we get answers to our demands -- no police on trains, free trains or no trains at all. We'll make sure there are no trains at all if that's the way they want it."

Once again, it comes back (especially now, in the broader context of austerity) to public transportation, the trains that connect Bayview with the rest of the city. But if segregation also appears in the form of social relations, then the arrest of Fly Benzo -- a bridge between dispersed actors organizing around police terror -- represents yet another attempt to violently reinforce the segregation that has plagued Bayview/Hunters Point for decades.

A detailed participant reportback posted on Indybay: Notes Concerning Recent Actions Against the Police. This is by far the best write-up we've seen on the demo:

On Tuesday July 19th, hundreds of people took to the streets of San Francisco in order to demonstrate their rage against the recent murders of Charles Hill and Kenneth Harding in the city by BART police and SFPD respectively. We marched behind a banner reading “they can’t shoot us all; fuck the police” as an expression of our intention that police murder will be met with resistance and retaliation every time they rear their ugly heads in our city.

A statement written by an anti-state, anti-capitalist feminist bloc was distributed during the march:

Women in poor urban communities are often both breadwinners and housewives. They are the ones left behind in the wake of these murders, beatings, and incarcerations, to hold the funerals, pick up the pieces, and fight the fight against their sons’, husbands’, fathers’ murderers... all while still being subject to patriarchal violence, sexual assault, and the de-funding of social services, the cutting of the public sector particularly where it employs or supports women of color. The police targeting of young men of color is a phenomenon that ripples outward and effects the gendered structure of poor communities, that affects women as well as men, but in a different form.

An open letter to SFPD and BART police, from Surf City Revolt:

Dear SFPD and the BART Police,

Please do not consider yourselves special. We hate you this is true, but it does not come from our hearts. It comes from the entirety of our beings. Our lives our antagonistic to yours in every way shape and form. We did not develop a feeling of disdain for you over time but under capital and the state apparatus we were born enemies. This is why San Francisco was shaken like an earthquake on Tuesday. As police you exist to protect the relations of capital, the dominance of the state, the reproduction of apparatuses meant to enforce our subservience and docility. Capital depends on your existence for its protection. However we exist to see your total elimination. We are the ones who produce value for capital. Who work for others. Who pay rent. Who are unemployed. Who are students. Who are women. Who are queers. Who are brown. Who are hooligans looking for fun. Who evade fare and die trying. Who black out on BART platforms and get killed for it. Who are unarmed and executed on New Years just trying to get home. Who have nothing in this world. We are the elements you either must be scared of, prepared for or both. Confrontation is essential to our relationship. You stand between what is possible and what is horrible in this world of capital. And it is not just you, but all like you, police everywhere. We say this with the utmost seriousness and lucid consideration. This is not childish rage nor a mosh pit at a punk show, this is fact. You do not defend nor protect us, but kill us in cold blood for reasons out of individual officers control. There are no good cops and bad cops, only a social relation of submission, domination, and enforced value extraction. You are the material line of defense between us and another world beyond the tragedy we live in.

Stop playing stupid. You know exactly why paint, hammers, and fireworks were thrown. You know why 200 people from all over San Francisco and the Bay Area took to the streets angry. Why passersby stopped to yell obscenities at you in a fit of rage. There is no mystery - this is war. This is only the beginning, trust us there is more to come.

sincerely,
an autonomous working committee at Surf City Revolt!

Last night, a townhall meeting took place in Bayview where the SFPD Police Chief Greg Suhr was going to (once again) present the official story of the shooting and take questions from the community. It didn't go so well:

Police Chief Greg Suhr was met with a hail of boos, jeers and curses by members of the Bayview community Wednesday night, prompting an early end to a planned dialogue about Saturday’s fatal shooting of an armed parolee by officers.

From another report:

Barely anyone tonight asked about Saturday's shooting. Plenty of people asked about previous incidents they say amounted to police brutality -- often, incidents involving them directly.

And another one:

After Harding’s shooting, the street filled with 20 cops carrying semi-automatic weapons, [community activist Geofrea Morris] said. “Nobody burned anything or caused civil disobedience. Why would they send so many cops?”

She said she was happy that people had gathered in the Mission District on Wednesday. Even though the protest led to 43 arrests, police in the Bayview are much harder than cops in the Mission, she said.

“I am glad they did that in the Mission,” she said. “They are not scared, like us.”

Two articles on the murder have been published at Counterpunch in the last day or two. First, a longer analysis by UC Santa Cruz grad student Mike King, "A Life Worth Less than a Train Fare":

Another young, unarmed black man, Kenneth Harding, has been gunned down, shot numerous times in the back as he fled, his empty hands in the air in broad daylight. His crime had been a simple train fare evasion for which San Francisco police executed him in the street. Dozens of witnesses saw a sight that has become commonplace in US cities, capturing images with cell phones of police surrounding the man and watching him struggle and writhe from a distance, in a swelling pool of his own blood. Without either offering the severely wounded man assistance, searching him, or otherwise looking for the supposed weapon, the police, most of whom had their backs turned to the suspect, would later try and say that he had fired at the them and randomly into the crowd that had assembled. No one in the crowd said anything about him having or firing a gun. Police would later say one had mysteriously appeared, via an informant. The police publicly named Harding as a "person of interest" in a Seattle killing, a day after he had been shot dead by police. They are using a criminal conviction to attempt to further devalue his life. This piece is not about previous convictions, or the "official story" which the police are constructing as I write, about post-mortem murder suspicions and mystery guns. One thing is clear, as far as police knew he was a simple fare evader. As far as multiple witnesses could see, Harding had no gun and the shots all went one way.

Whether BART police, Oakland PD, or SFPD, the stories have been very similar. Suspects are gunned down in the street, no weapon, usually shot in the back as they ran, almost all men of color, a homeless or mentally-ill white man here or there. We get a similar story each time. One that is weak, lacks probable cause for lethal force, and is based on the opinion of the offending officers whose word is unquestioned by superiors, city officials, or the corporate press. Unless there is a video. Mehserle, the cop who shot Oscar Grant, thought his glock was a lighter and larger and fluorescent tazer, though it had a completely different grip. An exception to the rule, Mehserle did time for his crime – a few paltry months. He was recently released. The OPD shot Derrick Jones in the back, he was carrying a scale. No charges were filed. Several killings of unarmed men of color in Oakland have yielded temporary suspensions, followed by reinstatements with back pay. Some acting, individual OPD officers have killed more than one unarmed man on separate occasions and still patrol the street, guns loaded, and ready to go.

The root causes of these murders by the police are multiple and far too complex to be fully discussed here: insulated and unaccountable police power committed to upholding a particular racial and economic order; psychological fear-turned-violence or plain hostility among the police; white supremacy at several levels of society from the motivations of suburban law-and-order voters to the historical legacies of the police in this country; to geographies of segregation, of which the Bayview is a prime example.

And a shorter piece by Patrick Madden, "The Police Murder of Kenneth Harding":

The Hungarian-Marxist Philosopher Georg Lukacs once remarked that economic crises have a demystifying and revealing effect on the class relations of a capitalist economy. Capitalism is predicated on the indirect domination of the majority of people in society by a relatively small minority of the owners of the means of wealth; the indirect-ness of this domination results in a situation in which the domination itself doesn't necessarily appear as such. In a crisis, the violent social relations that undergird the system are laid bare.

Of course the truth of this observation has recently been on display worldwide, almost since the beginning of the economic crisis that erupted in 2008. From Greece to the UK, from California to the Arab world, street battles and their necessary consequence, state murder, are on the rise. The scale of them may be different but the problem is the same: capitalist social relations, the social relations that determine who gets what, who lives and dies, who is free and who is incarcerated, are ultimately backed up by extreme violence. When the "ideological apparatuses" that maintain the normal reproduction of social relations fail, the cops step in.

Finally, a powerful piece by Tiny a.k.a. Lisa Gray-Garcia, in the SF Bay Guardian, "Killed for Riding While Poor":

For the last few years, police presence on Muni has increased — as have attacks on poor people and people of color whose only crime is not having enough money to ride the increasingly expensive so-called public transportation known as Muni. From fare inspectors working for Muni to fully armed officers, they form a terrifying mob waiting menacingly at bus stops in the Mission, Ingleside, Bayview, and Tenderloin, and then enter buses to harass, eject, and cite anyone too poor to ride.

The police said the man pointed a gun. That's what they consistently claim when rationalizing involved shootings. Several eyewitnesses said otherwise.

But before we get caught up in whether he had a gun or not, let's stay with the real point: this young man was shot for not having a transfer. He was shot for not having $2. How did we get here?

Some pictures are up at Indybay; we expect more to follow.

From occupyca:

SAN FRANCISCO, California – Around 4:45pm today, police shot and killed a MUNI passenger in the Bayview district of San Francisco. The police claim they spotted a gun on the passenger and chased him down; then the passenger drew his gun and shot at the police. The police have provided empty bullet casings they found on the street as evidence, but have yet to recover a weapon, suggesting the passenger either threw it away or the weapon was taken by a passerby. Witnesses, however, claim that the young man had no weapon, but was being chased for fare evasion for the light-rail. One witness said, “It didn’t even make sense what-so-ever, honestly. A young man running, he didn’t even have no gun out at all, with his hands up in the air, and you’re still shooting?” (KTVU). This shooting comes only a few weeks after the killing of Charles Hill at the SF Civic Center BART platform, where police claimed Hill wielded a knife, and where witnesses claimed he had no knife.

Last night, folks congregated at 24th and Valencia and marched through the Mission District of San Francisco to show their rage at the killing. No arrests were made. The following statement was posted on Indybay:

Yesterday, hundreds of enraged people took to the streets of San Francisco in response to the murder of a 19 year old by SFPD in the Bayview neighborhood. He was killed for running from the police after not paying his MUNI fare. Immediately people in Bayview responded - confronting the police, screaming at the murderers and throwing bottles. At Midnight, another group called for a last minute march against the police. About 100 marchers took the street and attacked ATMs, banks and a cop car.

----

Whether we like it or not, this city is a fucking war-zone. For the second time in as many weeks, police officers have murdered someone in cold blood. Yesterday, they murdered a 19 year old in the Bayview district. For the crime of not paying his $2 bus fare, he was executed by SFPD; shot ten times in front of a crowd. On July 3rd, BART police responding to a report of a man too drunk to stand, arrived at Civic Center Station and shot Charles Hill within a minute of their arrival, killing him as well. His crime: being broke and homeless in a city that fucking despises us.

And so, within a few hours of hearing word of SFPD's latest atrocity, we called for a march against the police in the Mission District. About 100 of us gathered, donned masks, and marched down Valencia St. toward the Mission Police Station. We attacked the first pig car that approached. We attacked ATMs and a Wells Fargo as well. We upturned newspaper boxes and trash bins, throwing them into the streets at the encroaching riot cops. We screamed in the pigs faces and confronted them at their front door. By 1AM we had dispersed without arrest.

This march comes on the heels of Monday's attack on the BART system in response to the murder of Charles Hill. Again, over 100 of us clogged the BART system, blocking trains, vandalizing machines and bringing the rail system to a grinding halt. For over three hours BART suffered system-wide delays and the BART police were forced to close several stations throughout the city. After being forced out of the system, we took the streets in an impromptu march. Causing havoc and avoiding two attempts by the police to kettle us. The march ended in a heated stand-off with SFPD in front of hundreds of tourists at the Powell St. plaza.

In reporting this we hope to make it obvious: we will no longer allow the police (regardless of what badge they wear) to murder us in the streets. When they kill, we will respond with force. These two marches along with the burgeoning revolt in Bayview are only a beginning. We do not care about their attempts at justifying themselves. In each of these killings they claim that their lives were in danger. We say they lie, but honestly don't care either way. As the State has removed any illusion that it exists to serve or protect people, we can see clearly that it exists only to push us into prisons and to shoot us in cold blood. Two single dollars are worth more to them than our lives. The very existence of the police clearly endangers all of us, and we won't be safe until they are destroyed.

WAR ON THE POLICE
WAR ON THE BART SYSTEM
WAR ON THE MUNI SYSTEM

Stay tuned,

some anarchists in the Bay Area

There is no better example of how tightly austerity and police are woven together than this: a homeless man murdered on a BART platform, a black youth murdered for fare evasion on MUNI. Austerity means that folks -- especially those who are already most marginalized -- are increasingly pushed into precarity and desperation. If the politicians are responsible for implementing austerity, then the police are its necessary enforcers, operationalizing the extraction of profit (rent, fares) from the poorest while rushing to defend corporate interests and private property at the slightest provocation.

A call has gone out for an action to take place on Tuesday, meetup at Dolores Park, 5pm. More information here.

[Update Monday 9:27am]: Also check out "Why should you die for a transfer?" over at the SF Bayview:

None of the many witnesses I spoke with yesterday saw the young victim either holding or shooting a gun and firmly believe he was unarmed. ABC7’s Carolyn Tyler balanced the police claim that they shot the youngster in self-defense by interviewing Trivon Dixon, who said: “He was running. How could he be a threat in retreat? And he wasn’t running backwards, turning around shooting. He was in full throttle, running away from the police. I don’t see in any way how he could be a threat to the police.”

Chile's education system is a neoliberal gem, reformed under the Pinochet dictatorship to privilege private and for-profit institutions. Today, tuition in Chile is about three times higher than in the United States. Since June, students in Chile have launched massive protests against this privatized education system, with hundreds of thousands marching in the streets of Santiago and Valparaíso and upwards of a hundred secondary schools occupied (tomados). On July 14, a massive march of at least 100,000 took place in Santiago. In contrast to previous marches, which had been "approved" by the state at the last minute, this time the government decided to prohibit the march, or to be more exact, to approve a march with a completely different route than the one that organizers had convoked. But people still turned out. When the march reached La Moneda, the seat of the president of Chile (infamously bombed by the air force during the CIA-led coup against Salvador Allende in 1973), militarized riot police immediately attacked the crowd with batons, tear gas, and water cannons mounted on tanks. The AFP reports that 54 arrests were made and 32 police officers were wounded.









(images)

As we reported here, last fall the UC regents voted once again to raise tuition by 8 percent (on top of the 32 percent increase the previous year) during a meeting at the isolated and heavily fortified facilities at UCSF Mission Bay. Around 400 students and workers showed up to protest the decision. During the protest, the police used pepper spray and batons to attack the protesters, and at one point an officer named Jared Kemper drew his pistol on a group of unarmed students. A number of students were arrested that day, and two of them -- Peter Howell and Eric Wilson -- are preparing for their upcoming trials.

Peter Howell is being charged with:

1) Penal Code section 148(b): removal of baton from Officer Kemper
2) Penal Code section 243(b): battery on a police officer (Kemper)
3) Penal Code section 148(a)(1): resisting, obstructing or delaying an officer (Officer Suttles)
4) Penal Code section 406: Rout: attempted riot

Eric Wilson is charged with:

1) PC section 243(c)(2): battery with injury on an officer (Officer Bolano)
2) PC section 148(a)(1): resisting, obstructing or delaying an officer (Officer Bolano and Sgt. Acuna)
3) PC section 148(a)(1): resisting, obstructing or delaying an officer (Officer Suttles)
4) PC section 406: Rout: attempted riot.

The matter is set for Jury Trial readiness on July 22nd, and as soon as a courtroom is available it will be sent out to trial, most likely during the week of July 25th-29th. The trial should last approximately 1 week and will take place at the Hall of Justice in San Francisco, located at 850 Bryant Street.

The defense is still looking for witnesses who would be willing to testify on behalf of either Howell or Wilson. If you were at the protest and saw either the incident with Officer Kemper or the incident in the stairwell, please leave a comment on this post at occupyca or send us an email at reclaimuc [at] gmail.com. We'll forward your contact info to the lawyers, but apart from that everything will remain entirely confidential. Also, if you know of other people who were at the protest on November 17, 2010, please let them know about the trial, forward them the link, and get the word out. We'll keep posting updates here as new information comes in.

(via surf city revolt)

On May 17, UC President Mark Yudof delivered the keynote address at the annual meeting of the American Law Institute (ALI) in San Francisco (via). His talk, titled "Whose University? The Decline of the Commonwealth and Its Meaning for Higher Education," is available both in text form as well as in the video above. Those of us willing to subject ourselves to the torture of watching the full speech in the video, however, will discover that what Yudof actually said diverged in some fairly significant ways from the original script. What we want to do here is think through and analyze Yudof's invocation and mobilization of this highly specific language of protest, on which, as the title of the talk suggests, his entire argument turns.

Consider the following passage, which sets up the rest of the talk. We've edited the passage based on the video, striking out the words that were not said and adding in italics those that were inserted. It begins at about 11:05 in the video:

Now, during the many demonstrations against fee increases, students and their allies have consistently taken up the chant: "Whose university? Our University!" In my day, and admittedly when the dinosaurs roamed the earth, the battle cry was "make love, not war," a call to arms which I personally find more alluring. [Laughter]

But I do get the point the current students are trying to make -- that is, that they have a stake in the administration's decisions administration, they have a stake in the university, they have a stake in the decisions the legislature, the board of regents, and others make.

Still, the more I ruminate over the question "Whose university," the more I realize that this chant actually frames a more profound societal question, one with implications far beyond the University of California, or even public education in general.

It's a question for American society as a whole -- how to distinguish between the "public good" versus the "private good," and how to strike a balance between the two. A balance that navigates at least in my judgment a course between JFK's noble call and the rhetorical stance of some politicians that government is never the solution, only the problem.

Apart from his stale jokes, there are a couple things to notice here in the way Yudof frames the meaning of the rhetorical question and answer "Whose university? Our university!" As in the case of the protesters who chant these words, the question for Yudof is a rhetorical one -- the speaker already knows what the answer is. Tensions emerge at the seams, that is, over the path of the lines that we, with these words, attempt to trace between friends and enemies. What is at stake, in other words, is the meaning of the word "our" and, by extension, of its opposite, "them." Solidarity is how we define friends and enemies.

With this in mind, take a look at the gap between the prepared speech and the actual remarks. Yudof invokes the slogan, and goes on to claim that he understands where the students are coming from: "I do get the point the current students are trying to make." What they want is to have a stake in -- and here the speech diverges from the text -- not the "administration's decisions" but the decisions of the administration, the university, the legislature, the board of regents, and so on. In moving away from the prepared text, Yudof expands the political horizon of the students' supposed demands. How do we read this expansion? A generous reading might suppose that Yudof is acknowledging the call, for example, to "democratize the regents," that is, situating the protests within a broad political context and recognizing just how far-reaching these demands can be. (But we know what Yudof actually thinks about democratizing the regents: "I don't like it much personally speaking.")



Notably, one of the institutions that students supposedly want to have a stake in is not like the others: the administration, the university, and the board of regents constitute the governing apparatus of the UC, but to invoke the legislature is to shift the domain of struggle away from the space of the university. While seemingly expanding the political horizon of possibility, this move at the same time attempts to close the door on a set of tactics and strategies that have proven useful to students, workers, and faculty who see the UC administration as a necessary target in the struggle over public education and against austerity.

It is this move, furthermore, that enables the rest of Yudof's speech. The co-optation of the protest slogan allows him to push "far beyond the University of California, or even public education in general" to "American society as a whole." What he's driving at, in other words, is a more general question of political economy that focuses on the relationship between public and private goods. For Yudof, this argument serves a useful purpose because it situates politics firmly within the realm of the state and within the strategy of the vote. Politics is thus reduced to little more than a question of persuasion, of campaigning, of donations -- similarly, it is isolated within the relatively homogeneous field of political parties, all of which, it turns out, are down with austerity.

Yudof has other reasons for abstracting the conflict to an oversimplified discussion of public and private goods -- because his proposal is to sketch out a "balanced" approach or middle ground. This "hybrid university," as he calls it, occupies an uncomfortable position between the two poles. Uncomfortable because of its instability, oscillating from private to public and back again throughout the talk. But these are rhetorical hues -- the hybrid university that Yudof outlines ends up resembling a corporation more than anything else. He declares, for example, that universities must "look at their operations with a 'private' sensibility. They should establish realistic priorities, eliminate weak programs, adopt money-saving IT services, and aggressively reduce waste." Not only must it adopt corporate practices, but it must also be seen and imagined through a corporate, economistic lens:

[T]he university maintains a critical role in this state's wealth creation. Because if the pie doesn't grow, it's difficult to realize the ambition of bridging the divide between our private and public sectors.

So, in order to preserve these missions, public universities must be able to depend on a three-part funding base -- one of student-family contribution, private support and state funding.

The equilibrium of the "hybrid university," balanced between private and public funding, is undone: the "three-part funding base" has overturned the dual foundations that Yudof originally seemed to propose. It is now two parts private (the student-family debt burden along with corporate investment) to one part public (state funding). As Bob Meister has observed, however, the UC administration has a vested interest in shifting away from state funding, which comes with certain restrictions regarding how it can be used:

[A]lthough tuition can be used for the same purposes as state educational funds, it can also be used for other purposes including construction, the collateral for construction bonds, and paying interest on those bonds. None of the latter uses is permissible for state funds, so the gradual substitution of tuition for state funds gives UC a growing opportunity to break free of the state in its capital funding.

In attempting to shift the location of "Our university!" to the broad terrain of democracy and the "American public in general," Yudof constructs a unified "we" that seeks to conjoin the administration with the protesters, blurring and diffusing the tensions between these structurally opposed positions. Against this "we," presumably, stands the "them" of the state. But we know that those who run the UC are the state: Yudof himself was appointed by the Board of Regents, each of whom was directly appointed by the governor, commonly in return for political favors. Sacramento is everywhere. Yudof's "we" thus serves to confuse and disrupt our lines of solidarity. In the end, it is the UC administration that is to be held responsible for the tuition increases, for the layoffs, for programs eliminated, at the same time as they increase their own ranks and salaries. They are austerity; they are our enemies.

Austerity, of course, is implemented at the barrel of a gun. Behind every fee increase stands a line of riot cops. It goes without saying that Yudof is well aware of this. Returning to his speech at ALI, we find the following paragraph early in his prepared remarks:

I've been forced to preside over the furlough of employees, myself included, and a 40 percent increase in tuition. I've faced a variety of demonstrations -- a rich cornucopia of folks exercising their free speech rights. It's certainly given me a new perspective on my First Amendment course.

But what he actually says is this (starting at 9:10):

I've been forced to do some things which I daresay have not been popular with the faculty, the staff, and the students. I've presided over furloughs of virtually all of our employees, including me -- that really hurt, they celebrated my furlough days at the office; a 40 percent increase in tuition in three years; and I've found . . . that I always had an enthusiasm for the First Amendment. I taught a course on it, Constitutional Law. What can I say: California is a rich cornucopia of folks exercising their free speech rights. [Laughter] It's certainly given me a certain perspective on the Constitution: if I ever go back to law teaching, which I expect, I'm going to start with the Second Amendment, that's my plan. [Laughter] And I may deal with quartering of soldiers, I don't know, Letters of Marque and Reprisal, there are all sorts of things I could deal with. [Laughter]

This is lawyerly humor of the pathological variety -- it's no wonder the lawyers in the audience crack up. Yudof's response to the protests is not, as he suggests in the earlier passage, to "ruminate" on the students' demands, but to rhetorically draw his gun and quarter his soldiers (UCPD) on university grounds. This is the kind of leadership that ends in Jared Kemper pulling his gun on unarmed students at the UC Regents' meeting in November 2010; and police surveillance and infiltration of student groups across the UC system.


And those Letters of Marque and Reprisal?

In the days of fighting sail, a Letter of Marque and Reprisal was a government license authorizing a private vessel to attack and capture enemy vessels, and bring them before admiralty courts for condemnation and sale.

What we have here, in other words, is a declaration of war. But this war takes a very specific form: the state-sponsored and -authorized expropriation and privatization of enemy (in this case public) goods. In this little bit of improvisation, Yudof reveals, if not the administration's strategy of counterinsurgency, then certainly the violent logic of austerity in its clearest form. Behind heavily-armed and militarized agents vested with the full juridical authority of the state, austerity advances slowly but steadily.

* * *

What we mean when we shout "Whose university? Our university!" has little to do with the legislature or the American public in general. It has to do, as one might expect, with the university. It is our demand that those work at and use the university, those who make it run, those who schedule, teach, and take the classes, those who advise and provide support, those who maintain its spaces -- in short, everything but the bloated administration -- are the ones who should run the university. "We" face off against "them"; they are the management, the administrators. In the end, they will be abolished, as we have no need for their dismal cutbacks, their prefabricated capital projects, their rules of conduct, or their police. They are useless to us.

WHOSE UNIVERSITY? OUR UNIVERSITY!

Is the asshole who, as thosewhouseit has discovered, smashed our compañera's hand so hard with his baton that he literally severed her fingers. For no reason. She was resting her hand on a metal barricade. The image above comes from this video, taken outside Wheeler Hall during the occupation (the important part starts around 1:35). It was filmed just before Tinney's attack:



What did the police review board say about this? After doing an investigation, they declared it a "reasonable" use of force. It was "proper, lawful, and appropriate under the circumstances." Here's the key paragraph from the review board's report:

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

Which makes sense. In the end, cops will never indict other cops, just as UC administrators will never indict other administrators -- as long as they can get away with it. Within the structures they have created to facilitate their rule (internal review boards, specially-appointed task forces, and so on), no challenge to that rule can possibly emerge. The only possible line of attack evades their attempts at capture, going outside the bureaucratic procedures laid out precisely by those responsible for the violence. That's why this lawsuit is so important.

The lawsuit names UCPD Chief Mitch Celaya and second in command Captain Margo Bennett. Why them and not Officer Tinney? Because they refused to disclose the name of the officer responsible for the brutal attack. This is to be expected. But now we've figured it out on our own.

Special bonus: Officer Brendan Tinney's LawOfficer Connect page, which seems to be something like LinkedIn for pigs:

Why does Brendan love being in Law Enforcement? "No day is the same as the day before (usually)." True! Yesterday you were being protected -- and today you've been exposed!

[Update Monday 3:17 pm]: We've just learned that Officer Brendan Tinney has a twin brother named Sean, who is also a member of UCPD. No, we're not making this up. It's possible, then, that the Tinney in the picture above is actually Sean Tinney and not Brendan. Word on the street, though, is that Brendan is more of an asshole than Sean is. (The tree-sitters referred to the Tinney brothers as "B for bad" and "S for so-so.") In any case, this development certainly gives the story an interesting twist.

Our compañeros over at thosewhouseit mentioned this interview the other day, but we hadn't seen the video. For some reason, the whole interview didn't make it into the transcript. Anyway, we've been meaning to write something about it for awhile, but today there's an op-ed by English postdoc Brendan Prawdzik in the Daily Cal that beat us to it. The piece does a good job of taking down the language used both by Newsom and by Chancellor Bobby Birgeneau on the day of the protest, which, if you'll remember, was coded in typical administrative bureaucracy-speak. Anyway, here's a chunk of the piece:

When on the afternoon of March 3 student protesters took to the roof of Wheeler Hall to challenge repeated cuts to their education coupled with repeated "fee" increases (in "Truespeak," don't we really mean "tuition"?) Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, who, in my experience, has never appeared afraid of email prolixity, issued to students and faculty the following two-sentence pronouncement: "The campus is dealing with a health and safety issue in Wheeler Hall and the building is closed. All classes and events scheduled in Wheeler Hall for this afternoon/evening are cancelled until further notice."

The email is both deceptive and insulting. It is a clear sign of the disconnect between the university's privileged administrators, answerable to no democratic process, and the university's students, upon whose backs our bloody budgets continue to be carved.

The email is inaccurate because administrators and police, and not students, made the choice to close down Wheeler Hall. When there was a real threat to public safety, this came from the police themselves, who (we all know) have upon several recent occasions beaten students taking action against the administration. We are all familiar with their barricades and batons: ironic symbols of "free speech" at Berkeley these days. (I say nothing about the UCPD officer who pointed a loaded gun at protesters in November.) I must assume that Birgeneau is an intelligent man with a strong command of the English language. As such, I must also assume that he was intent on deceiving the Berkeley community by sparsely referring to a "health and safety issue." For those unaware of the protests, the email works against awareness. For those aware, it implies that the protesters were solely responsible for the "health and safety" issue, for classes being cancelled and office hours cut short (as were mine, by a bevy of officers).

Regent Gavin Newsom certainly comprehends the situation this way, as evidenced by an interview published March 31, in The Daily Californian. Therein, Newsom declares that he "completely understand(s)" student frustration but that "when people start locking themselves in and denying other people access that are innocent in terms of the debate and when people start to incite behavior that can actually start tipping and losing support, that's when I just want to pause and say, 'Hey guys, you don't need to go this far.'"

Thanks for the fatherly advice, Regent Newsom. But you see, it was the police who locked everybody out, not the protesters. It was the police who "den(ied) other ('innocent') people access." Moreover, it was certainly the police who "start(ed) to incite behavior ... tipping" students not against the protesters but rather against the police and the administration. From widespread local and national news reports, it was clear to me that the administration embarrassed itself that day: the protesters held the high ground at night, and were celebrated by their fellow students. The victory proudly adorned the front page of the next morning's Daily Californian. With such extensive coverage, I expected more words from our Chancellor. I guess that he was content with his two-line, absurdly euphemistic dismissal.

Read the rest here. As for the "health and safety issue," we'd like to once again recommend our piece "Health and Safety on the Wheeler Ledge."

From occupyca,

This is a clip from an upcoming documentary about the student struggle so far at the University of Puerto Rico. It covers the recent establishment of the $800 fee increases, the police brutality against demonstrators, Governor Fortuño’s plan for privatizing the public sector, and the subsequent ban on large gatherings at the university.

Yesterday, the Movimiento por Justicia del Barrio briefly occupied the Mexican consulate in New York City in solidarity with five political prisoners, members of the Zapatista "Other Campaign," in Chiapas. Later, they released a communiqué (in Spanish) and some pictures from the action. Here's a rough translation:

At 7:30 in the morning, on the fourth day of the campaign called "5 Days of Worldwide Action for the Bachajón 5," members of the Movimiento por Justicia del Barrio, from the "Other Campaign" New York, entered and took over the Mexican Consulate of New York City. We initiated this occupation as part of this campaign to protest against the cruel repression of the State against the dignified struggle of the ejidatarios from San Sebastián Bachajón, Chiapas, Mexico, who are also adherents to the "Other Campaign and are defending their natural resources from greedy transnational corporations disguised as an "ecotourism venture."

In our action today, like all the other Mexicans forced to wait in line to enter the Mexican Consulate, we had to pass through a pack of guards. We realize that security is getting tighter and the number of guards is multiplying every time we do actions here. There are always more than the previous time. But in any case, this didn't stop us. We continued with strength, entering the tall building located between golden streets that extend out like veins from the heart of global capitalism.

It's here in one of the most expensive cities in the world, and inside these gray buildings, where decisions are made that not only fill the pockets of greedy capitalists and their political lackeys with money, but also affect simple, hardworking, dignified, and humble people around the world.

On entering the consulate we saw that -- as always -- it was full of other Mexican immigrants, displaced like us, waiting to be helped by government functionaries, who with brutal irony were the ones who forced us to migrate here. With banners and fliers in our hands, and with a deep outrage in our hearts, we shouted our chants. We demanded that the consul come out and listen to us read a letter denouncing the violence and injustice that the bad government of the PAN, PRD, and PRI [the three main political parties in Mexico] has exercised against the community of Bachajón, and demanding that the Mexican government and its bureaucratic accomplices immediately release the five political prisoners from San Sebastián Bachajón and respect their demands.

Several times the guards tried to remove us from the building, even physically. The bureaucrats tried to shut us up, but they couldn't.

A compañera from the Movimiento read our letter out loud so that all our Mexican comrades who were in the building would hear what the bad government is doing, and we shouted: "Not the PRI, not the PAN, not the PRD, the 'Other Campaign' against Power!" The functionaries and guards looked at us and tried to intimidate us by taking out their cameras and taking pictures to record our faces. We handed out informational fliers explaining the situation that our brothers and sisters in Bachajón are facing, and the serious abuses that the five prisoners are suffering. Finally, the officials from the Mexican Consulate called the police, and they also tried to shut us up and make us leave. But their fear has no dignity. We overcame their attempts and handed out more fliers.

In the end, we went back to our community in East Harlem. Here in El Barrio, like our brothers and sisters in San Sebastián Bachajón, we struggle against displacement and for dignity. We also struggle, as part of the 'Other Campaign," so justice is done in our Mexico, so that our people from Mexico no longer has to flee from poverty, like we had to do. Although we're here in New York, Mexico lives in our hearts and our dreams. And that's why we did this action. They say in the "Other Campaign" that "si nos toca a un@, nos tocan a tod@s" (if they touch one of us, they touch us all." For the humble and simple people of El Barrio, this isn't just a saying, but, as we demonstrated today, a practice, an action that should be our path toward justice and dignity.

UC Davis professor Joshua Clover writes an op-ed in the California Aggie:

Over the last year, the UC Davis administration has pursued an extensive program to place staffers in and around student-worker protest. They have done so not, as you might expect, to join in the struggle against indecent cuts and backdoor privatization, but to deliver surveillance on participants.

This "Activism Response Team" was, for example, trained to "collaborate with police," and advised by university counsel on negotiating possible rights violations of those undergoing surveillance. When asked directly whether they were supplying information to the administration, ART members denied this. Once caught, the chancellor assured us that -- suddenly! -- she would like to make public what in truth had become public only via the legal compulsion of the Freedom of Information Act.

The chancellor's justification (see "Embracing Student Activism," March 14) has two main claims, strikingly different in tenor. First, the paternalistic hymn of "we have your best interests at heart." Second, the childish denial that resembles getting caught cheating on an exam, mumbling that you "could have done a better job of educating the campus community" regarding your scheme -- and would now prove your virtue by publishing your crib notes.

Now, Holmes is suing UCPD, the Yolo County Sheriff's Department, and the DA. Pay close attention to what the pigs were posting on Facebook, and remember that cops always think that other cops "acted appropriately" -- even when they crush people's hands. As reported by the California Aggie:

[O]n Feb. 4, 2011, Holmes filed a civil lawsuit alleging unreasonable seizure, excessive force, malicious abuse of process and battery. She is seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.

According to the complaint, the arresting officers, Yolo County Sheriff's Deputies Ryan Mez and Gary Richter, violently slammed Holmes onto the hood of a patrol car and pinned one of her arms that had gotten tangled in the strap of her bag. The two officers repeatedly jerked and grabbed Holmes, ignoring her screams that her arm was stuck and in pain.

UC Davis Spokesmen Andy Fell said the police officers acted within their rights.

"Based upon the information available to us, we believe the officers acted appropriately and certainly have no legal vulnerability," he said in a statement.

While preparing for the civil lawsuit, Holmes and her attorney, Stewart Katz, reviewed Facebook updates by one of the arresting officers, Deputy Sheriff Mez.

In a Facebook status on Sept. 25, 2010, Mez posted, "is looking to ruin somebody's day! Anybody wanna go to jail today?"

Then a few months later in November, he posted, "I hate the people I'm with. Fucking Davis people!"

Katz said the Facebook postings might be relevant to the officer's state of mind during the arrest and whether or not he is liable for punitive damages.

"If he operated under ill will or malice, that would be a factor to be considered in terms of whether or not he should be assessed for punitive damages."

Mez was not available to comment in response to the Facebook postings.

Today's conduct hearing, for one of the Wheeler Hall occupiers from 2009, was live-tweeted by @reclaimuc, @callie_hoo, and @sgnfr. All of these twitter feeds are conveniently available on a twitter list we've put together, appropriately titled "kangaroo court." The cast of characters includes Thomas Frampton, star counsel for the defense coming off a huge victory in his last case; Jeff Woods, prosecutor for the Office of Student Conduct (OSC) and widely seen as one of the stupidest and most incompetent people in UC Berkeley's administrative bureaucracy; Ron Fearing, professor of electrical engineering and the faculty chair of the hearing panel; and, in a minor role, Stacy Holguin, who interprets the Code of Conduct as OSC's "procedural adviser" and monitors protest actions as administrative spy. The hearing ended for the day around 5 pm, and will be taken up once again on -- and this is entirely appropriate -- April Fool's Day.

In the middle of the hearing, we received the following update from thosewhouseit:

What a joke this whole conduct process is. We just learned that Student Regent Jesse Cheng was found guilty of sexual battery by UC Irvine’s OSC. The sentence? Disciplinary probation. To put this in perspective, this fucking rapist gets off with probation, while one of this blog’s own contributors was given a stayed suspension and 20 hours of community service . . . for his participation in the 2009 occupation of Wheeler Hall. Even more egregiously, Cheng will not be removed from his position on the Board of Regents, in effect condoning sexual battery. Again: non-violent civil disobedience gets stayed suspension and community service; rape -- let’s dispense with the technocratic minimization as “unwanted touching” and call a spade a spade -- gets disciplinary probation, a markedly lighter sentence. What the fuck is wrong with these people?!

This is not a new or accidental phenomenon, nor is it only a question of Cheng's position as student regent. Rather, it speaks to the nature of the university's quasi-legal student conduct apparatus itself. The system operates according to assumptions of difference, inferiority, and hierarchy -- whether they are based on politics, age, race, or -- as is the case here -- gender. Again, this speaks to not some sort of idle speculation but a striking pattern of impunity. Take the following examples, just published in the last couple weeks. First, an article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer discusses the case of a female UC Berkeley student who was raped four years ago by a "persistent upperclassman." Pay close attention to what OSC does and does not do in the context of these rape allegations:

More info at occupyca, photos at Indymedia PR.

Friday, March 11 is the World Day of Solidarity with the Students of the University of Puerto Rico:

March 11, 1971 was one of the bloodiest single days in the history of the University of Puerto Rico. The main campus at Río Piedras was occupied by the Puerto Rico Police, unleashing violent confrontations that ended the lives of two police officers, including the then chief of the notorious Tactical Operations Unit, and one student.

Barely one year before, on March 4, 1970, during a student demonstration, student Antonia Martínez Lagares was shot dead by police. These tragedies influenced a series of decisions that helped reduce the intensity of on-campus conflicts during the following decades, including the removal of the United States’ Army Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC), and an institutional commitment to resolving conflicts without police intervention.

Forty years later, the UPR community, led by the students, still struggles for a democratic and accessible institution, against the abusive and exclusionary policies of the latest colonial government. Among these, aside from its clear intention to privatize higher education as much as it can, said government has laid off over 25,000 public employees, and intends to build a gasoduct across the island that will displace entire communities and impact areas of high ecological and archeological value.

In this context, the Río Piedras Campus once again lived several months of police occupation, with the open support of the government and university administrators, in reaction to the strike democratically declared by the Río Piedras General Student Assembly, rejecting an unjust and arbitrary $800 hike in the cost of studying. The eyes of the world watched as Puerto Rico Police officers tortured peaceful civil disobedients with impunity, sexually accosted and attacked women students, discriminatorily harassed student leaders, and savagely beat people, even under custody, all before the television cameras.

There can be no doubt that the recent decision by Governor Luis Fortuño to withdraw the bulk of the police force from the Río Piedras Campus is a partial victory for the students, who with their bravery and determination have raised the political cost of sustaining that level of repression way to high for the government to afford. However, now is not the time to lower the guard. It wouldn’t be the first time that the Fortuño administration temporarily curtails its use of brute force, only to return even more violently under any pretext. We are convinced that if the Puerto Rico Police is not removed immediately, completely, and permanently from all UPR campuses, it will only be a matter of time before another March 11.

In addition, we are united by the firm conviction that the demands of the UPR community are just. The strike is still in effect, and the struggle (its current phase) will continue until the $800 hike is eliminated. In the longer term, we support a real democratization of the decision-making process in the UPR, so that it is the community that determines the best way to handle the institution’s financial and administrative problems.

For all of these reasons, Friday, March 11, 2011, fortieth anniversary of that fateful March 11, will be World Day of Solidarity with the UPR. On that day we will hold, in our respective cities, simultaneous demonstrations together with individuals and organizations that support just causes. At a time when the powerful voice of the brave Egyptian people and all arab nations is still ringing around the the globe, we are confident that the people of consciousness of the world will welcome this initiative and organize their own activities of solidarity on that day.

There will be a solidarity rally in San Francisco on Friday, March 11, 4:30-7:00pm at the 24th/Mission BART Station Plaza.

Tunisian police have arrested a rap singer who released a song critical of government policies as protests against President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali's rule shook the North African nation, his brother said on Friday.

Police arrested 22-year-old Hamada Ben-Amor late on Thursday in the Mediterranean Sea coast city of Sfax, Hamdi Ben-Amor told Reuters.

"Some 30 plainclothes policemen came to our house to arrest Hamada and took him away without ever telling us where to. When we asked why they were arresting him, they said 'he knows why'," he said.

Ben-Amor is known to fans as The General. Last week he released a song on the internet titled 'President, your people are dying' that talks about the problems of the youth and unemployment.

Students have apparently been heavily involved in the protests, and the government has shut down the universities in response. Anywhere from 21 to 50 protesters have been killed so far by police.

[Update Thursday 7:56 am]: Excellent roundup with videos and links. Also, the U.S. government's bullshit response. And some thoughts on the media blackout regarding the Tunisia protests.

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

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

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

Full story below the fold, from thosewhouseit:

The website Iupileaks has obtained a private email sent by the president of the Universidad de Puerto Rico (UPR), José Ramón de la Torre, in which he calls the students protesting the $800 tuition increase "bandoleros" (bandits) and likens the conflict to a hyperbolic fight to the death:

Felicidades: Yo de guardia las 24 horas. Para mi no hay navidades. Esto es lo que me ha tocado. Nadie me va a intimidar voy a dar la pelea contra viento y marea aunque los Bandoleros me quieran liquidar. Que Dios les bendiga. JR

[Congratulations: I'm standing guard 24 hours a day. No Christmas for me. This is what I must do. Nobody will intimidate me I'm [sic] going to fight against wind and tide even if those Bandits want to liquidate me. May God bless them. JR]

 
As the editors of Iupileaks point out, this is not the attitude of someone who wants to resolve a conflict but someone looking to impose his will no matter what. Of course, this doesn't come as a surprise to those of us in California who have seen government and administration officials refer to student protesters as "intruders," "illegal occupiers," "vandals," and even "terrorists." At the same time, these characterizations help explain the ease and speed with which these administrations repeatedly turn to heavily militarized police and violence to suppress political dissent.

(The Iupileaks project. modeled explicitly on Wikileaks, is worth taking a look at. They've posted some very interesting documents, including a letter dated December 10 and signed by 25 faculty members demanding the incursion of the police onto campus.)