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<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/maher11242009.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/maher11242009.html<br><br>
</a></font><font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000">November 24,
2009<br><br>
</font><h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4><b>Behind the
Privatization of the UC, a Riot Squad of Police <br><br>
<br>
</i></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#990000">
Occupy Everything!
</b></font></h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4>By GEORGE
CICCARIELLO-MAHER <br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=2><i>Berkeley</i>.<br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=6 color="#990000">T</font>
<font face="Verdana" size=2>his was bound to be a big week in California
regardless, as the threat of a 32 percent tuition and fee increase across
the University of California system made a crashing entrance into reality
with Wednesday’s vote by the UC Board of Regents. Perhaps the Regents and
UC President Mark Yudof expected that their diversionary tactics--lament
the crisis and direct blame to Sacramento’s budget cuts--would pay off.
But this was not to be.<br><br>
Aided in no small part by the explosive exposé published by UC Santa Cruz
Professor of Political Science Bob Meister, the student, faculty, and
workers’ movements the length and breadth of the state were no longer
willing to accept privatization disguised as crisis-imposed budget cuts.
As <a href="http://www.cucfa.org/news/2009_oct11.php">Meister explained
in no uncertain terms</a>, the proposed (and now passed) tuition increase
has nothing whatsoever to do with budget cuts, but the cuts merely
provided the pretext for a long-planned drive (and Reaganite wet dream)
to privatize public education in California once and for all.<br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000"><b>Anti-Capital
Projects<br><br>
</b></font><font face="Verdana" size=2>A statewide day of action on
September 24th generated mass walkouts and sporadic occupations, both
successful (at UC Santa Cruz) and not
(<a href="http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/09/25/18623229.php">at UC
Berkeley</a>). A UC-centric assembly called for a month later yielded
mixed results: a plan to build for a
<a href="http://takeastand4publiced.org/">March 4th action</a>, but only
the vaguest of decisions regarding what such actions would entail. This
sporadic guerrilla struggle, however, would yield a full-scale war of
maneuver once the stakes of the November 18th UC Regents meeting became
clear. <br><br>
A coalition of organizations at UC Berkeley endorsed a three day strike
in which the third day, contingent upon the expected Regents’ decision,
called simply for “Escalation.” On Thursday the 19th,
<a href="http://occupyucla.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/an-occupation-statement/">
UCLA protestors seized Campbell Hall</a> (now renamed “Carter-Huggins
Hall” after the slain Black Panthers who lost their lives between those
very walls in 1969). Across campus, protestors confronted the Regents
themselves as they voted for the fee hikes, with the militarized
atmosphere <a href="http://ow.ly/DBSO">sparking first clashes</a> on
Wednesday and then a veritable state of siege in Thursday from which
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iM4sl7WZkcw">the Regents were
forced to flee the angry crowds</a>. <br><br>
Just a few short hours later, UCSC students marched from the
already-occupied Kresge Town Hall to Kerr administration building,
gaining unexpected access to and holding the building until Sunday. Also
on Thursday, hundreds of UC Davis students
<a href="http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/11/20/18629531.php">
occupied the Mrak administrative</a> building on campus, clearly touching
a nerve and prompting 52 arrests. Less than 24 hours later, students
again occupied: this time in Dutton Hall, where they remained until being
dispersed by police. As this goes to press, Mrak is again in the
crosshairs.<br><br>
At Berkeley on Wednesday afternoon, after a rally and march of some 1,000
students, workers, and faculty at UC Berkeley, a group of more than
thirty surreptitiously gained access to the diminutive Architects and
Engineers Building, nestled between Sproul and Barrows Halls and which
hosts UCB’s capital projects. Responding in part to Meister’s revelation
that it was capital projects rather than budget cuts that were driving
the cuts and fee increases, activists responded with
<a href="http://anticapitalprojects.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/no-capital-projects-but-the-end-of-capital/">
a communiqué and website aptly entitled “Anti-Capital
Projects</a>”:<br><br>
</font>
<dl>
<dd>The arriving freshman is treated as a mortgage, and the fees are
climbing. She is a future revenue stream, and the bills are growing. She
is security for a debt she never chose, and the cost is staggering… No
building will be safe from occupation while this is the case. </i>No
capital project but the project to end capital.<br><br>
</dl>The occupation of the Capital Projects Building, however, would be
short-lived, as police soon gained access and occupiers negotiated a
strategic withdrawal on the promise that they would not engage in any
other unlawful activity for a week. But a week is a long time at moments
like these.<br><br>
<font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000">Lines of Force are
Revealed<br><br>
</b></font>At around 6am on Thursday morning, UCPD became aware that
Wheeler Hall, a
<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/Wheeler_Hall--UC_Berkeley--Panoramic.jpg">
prominent and massive building</a> at the very heart of the Berkeley
campus, had been occupied by more than 40 protesters. Police quickly
gained access to the lower floors of the building, arresting three
occupiers, who were immediately and vindictively charged not </i>with
trespassing, but with felony burglary. By 6:30a.m., an already surprising
number of supporters, in the dozens, had received word of the occupation
and gathered on the west side of Wheeler to show their support. By
mid-morning, the number had increased to hundreds. As the crowd grew,
UCPD responded with a mutually-reinforcing combination of aggression and
fear: aggressively smashing into the growing crowds to install metal
barriers where caution tape had proven insufficient, and calling
desperately for backup first to Berkeley PD, then to the Alameda County
Sheriff’s Department, and finally to Oakland PD. <br><br>
Around 1pm, the skies opened up in a downpour that might have, in other
conditions and other situations, dispersed the crowd entirely. But
instead, umbrellas popped up like mushroom caps, tents were erected, and
plastic bags distributed as makeshift ponchos as the crowd of hundreds
persisted. Had the police gained access to the occupiers during the
storm, the day would have ended much differently. But as it turned out,
the occupiers held strong, the skies cleared, and as evening fell, the
crowds began to swell further. One demonstrator confessed nostalgia at
the sight of the umbrellas, and the reminder they offered of another
seminal moment in trans-sectoral unity: that of the 1999 anti-WTO
demonstrations in Seattle that sparked the alter-globalization
movement.<br><br>
The occupiers,
<a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/prglazer/Nov20OccupationOfWheeler?feat=directlink#5406593263164443618">
visible through a series of windows</a> on the west side of Wheeler,
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qODFzQTGjaY">relayed their
demands to the gathering crowds by megaphone</a>:<br><br>
<ol>
<li>Rehire all 38 AFCSME custodial workers recently laid
off;<font size=3></font>
<li><font face="Verdana" size=2>Drop all charges and provide total
amnesty to all persons occupying buildings and involved in student
protests concerning budget cuts;</font><font size=3></font>
<li><font face="Verdana" size=2>Maintain the current business occupants
of the bears lair food court and enter into respectful and good faith
negotiations;</font><font size=3></font>
<li><font face="Verdana" size=2>Preserve Rochdale apartments leased to
Berkeley student cooperative for $1 a year in perpetuity.</font>
</ol><font size=3><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=2>It became clear that the police and
university administration were in no mood to negotiate on these terms:
this much they communicated non-verbally with their pepper spray under
the door, with their battering rams and wedges, and verbally with their
promises of violence, as occupiers were told to “get ready for the
beatdown.” Some of the occupiers, overtaken by the unmistakable candor of
such threats, sought a last-minute compromise that would allow them to
leave unscathed. <br><br>
For a while it seemed as though such negotiations had failed dismally.
Demonstrators outside could hear the police making a final offensive to
smash down the door, and
<a href="http://lh4.ggpht.com/_6HzhEJ5_YiY/SwgYM5ocbRI/AAAAAAAAAZI/02YuYctjwVM/s640/IMG_2586.JPG">
the occupiers could be seen as dusk fell,</a> back to the window, visible
only in outline with their hands raised to be arrested. But the
atmosphere was tense, and the swelling crowd had no plans to let the
police carry the arrestees out without a fight. Hours earlier, tactical
groups had been preemptively dispatched to all possible exits from the
network of underground tunnels that connect Wheeler to the neighboring
buildings. Students who, by all outward appearance, could have been
members of sororities or fraternities, demanded to know where bodies were
most needed to maintain a strong and impermeable perimeter.<br><br>
Let this be clear: if the students were arrested and carried out, there
was going to be a fight</i>. A riot? Perhaps (this much depended on the
police). A fight? Mos def.</i> <br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000">A “Victory”?<br><br>
</b></font>As with all massively important political moments, the rancid
stench of opportunism was never far off, emanating from some student
leaders and faculty alike. While many faculty members performed admirably
during the standoff (some, like
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W5XK1enBeY">Professor of
Integrative Biology Robert Dudley</a> even being arrested for their
efforts), some skillfully substituted their own voices and their own
demands for those of the students engaged in the occupation.<br><br>
Particularly egregious in this respect was Democratic Party “framing”
strategist and self-styled movement guru George Lakoff. Visibly angered
by the occupiers’ refusal to leave Wheeler voluntarily (without any of
their demands having been met, of course), Lakoff seized the megaphone to
spew the morally bankrupt argument that since the students knew they
would be met with police violence, they would themselves be responsible
for creating that violence if they chose to remain</i>. No more repulsive
a phrase was uttered that day. And were this not sufficient, Lakoff was
even heard lying repeatedly to the occupiers, insisting that there had
been no police violence, no rubber bullets, and no injuries outside the
building, all in an effort to manipulate those inside into abandoning the
occupation.<br><br>
In speaking with more than a dozen of the occupiers, one sentiment above
all was expressed regarding the role of many faculty that day: a deep
sense of betrayal. As one occupier told me: “we asked the faculty to
mediate and to negotiate with the administration as a way to get our
demands out,</i> but apparently they interpreted this as a call to
negotiate with us </i>so that we would leave the building.” In fact, many
of those mediating--be they faculty, ASUC officials, and leaders of
student organizations--were self-appointed and drawn almost unanimously
from the ranks of those who had opposed the tactic of occupation to begin
with. And this would show: according to many of the occupiers, these
mediators, in focusing their attention on calming the crowds outside and
encouraging the occupiers to leave, had effectively performed a “policing
function” that protected the administration from the protesters</i>.
<br><br>
Ali Tonak, a UC Berkeley graduate student, summarizes the feeling that
many expressed:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>They have a warped understanding of how power works. They think that
calming people outside was keeping the people inside safe, when it was
really the opposite: the only thing that was keeping the folks inside
safe was people being rowdy outside. In the end, the negotiators were
doing the job of the state. <br><br>
</dl>And this opportunism was not limited to faculty. As word came down
that a deal had been struck to allow the students to walk out the front
doors of Wheeler with nothing but misdemeanors, those who had spent the
day attempting to calm the angry crowds shifted their demobilizing
efforts into full gear, shutting down any and all possible debate
regarding what had transpired. The crowd was urged to sit (ironically,
while chanting that they were “fired up,” and that students should “stand
up” for their rights), and self-appointed student leaders, most of whom
had opposed the occupation plans from the very beginning, set about
explaining that the day had been a “victory.”<br><br>
Of course, in a sense it had </i>been a victory of sorts, but not in the
sense that it was presented to the crowd. It was no coincidence that all
interruptions from the crowd, from those who wondered aloud, “What about
the demands? What about the layoffs? What about the fees?</i>” were
quickly and summarily dismissed and silenced by self-appointed
“mediators” whose only common feature was their previous opposition to
occupations.<br><br>
<a href="http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20091120163523853">A
recent statement from the UCLA occupation</a> of Carter-Huggins Hall sets
its sights on student body president Cinthia Flores, “a junior politician
careerist bent on control,” and in so doing provides an acute diagnosis
of the more general danger of political opportunism, a danger which must
be fought tooth-and-nail if the movement is to move forward:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>These people thrive on the status quo, it’s their realm, and they
always want to drag back those who escape. There are CINTHIA’s everywhere
who <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHOnIJ2W1R4">make up and
direct the movement-police</a> to be encountered at any site of struggle.
Occupation takes power and immediately destroys its concentrated form.
Beware of bureaucrats, occupy everything! <br><br>
</dl><font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000">A “Peaceful”
Ending?<br><br>
</b></font>And the claim that the occupiers had emerged victorious erased
more than their unfulfilled demands. It also concealed the aggressively
violent response that UCPD and its imported proxies had unleashed that
day. As mentioned above, this violence began early on, as UCPD attempted
to install metal barricades by
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOI5l2_RghQ">wading into the
growing crowds</a> and <a href="http://ow.ly/Ehjx">attacking anyone</a>
standing their ground. As the day progressed,
<a href="http://www.ktvu.com/video/21684405/index.html">police from
various forces were seen ruthlessly</a>
<a href="http://twitpic.com/qb6qu">pounding</a> any and all protestors
who disobeyed the momentary absoluteness of their sovereignty, with one
such protestor being
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWGCnVjWRd0">shot in the chest
with an unidentified projectile</a>.<br><br>
The pettiness of such sovereignty and the repulsiveness of its executors
were in no case so clear as that of UC Berkeley graduate student Zhivka
Valiavicharska. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6q0ebKT-QU">As
this video sho</a>ws, an unidentified member of (what appears to be) the
UCPD suddenly found his authority called into question by the fact that
Zhivka’s hands were on a police barrier, and found it necessary to
threaten her and strike the barrier with his baton. What the video does
not show occurred just a minute later, when the officer again approached
the barrier and smashed Zhivka’s hand with full force, breaking two
fingers and nearly reducing one to pulp so that it was hanging by
threads. <br><br>
As Zhivka herself describes the attack:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>I was holding on to the barrier with one of my hands, and this cop
came up and started rudely shouting at me, telling me to take my hand off
and threatening me. My hand remained there. The cop made me
withdraw my hand by hitting the rail right next to it. When I leaned it
again on the rail, he smashed it with full force. It was very deliberate,
very skillful, and extremely excessive, since no one was challenging the
barriers where I was at that moment. <br><br>
</dl>Who was the officer that maliciously and intentionally attacked a
member of the student population with the intention to do serious bodily
harm? What of the witnessing officer, J. Williams, Badge #93, who is
clearly identifiable in the video? Will UCPD and Chancellor Birgeneau
immediately begin an investigation into the officer’s identity, suspend
him immediately, and press criminal charges?<br><br>
Former Berkeley undergraduate Yaman Salahi was present to witness the
police violence, and immediately penned
<a href="http://www.yamansalahi.com/2009/11/21/current-events/chancellor-birgeneau-must-be-held-accountable-for-violence-against-students/">
a thoughtful and necessary letter</a> to the UC Berkeley community in
which he heaps responsibility, quite rightly, onto the shoulders of
Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, for not only loosing these various police
forces onto the campus community, but also for attempting to cover up the
violence he himself had unleashed in an email dispatch later sent to the
entire campus community. Despite the many instances of documented
violence by police, the Chancellor nevertheless insisted that the
situation “ended peacefully” and thanked the police for playing a
positive role. <br><br>
Salahi demands a “statement against the deployment of non-UCPD personnel
against students on this campus in the future,” adding that “In addition
to students’ limbs, something has been broken, and Chancellor Birgeneau’s
cover-up will not fix it.” But while I agree with Salahi’s general
concerns, it is worth noting that it was not OPD, BPD, or the Alameda
County Sheriff’s Department that smashed Zhivka’s fingers. It was UCPD, a
force which remains as alien to the university community as OPD is to
East Oakland. When we challenge their privatizing efforts, they will meet
us with whatever force is at their disposal and with whatever violence is
deemed necessary. As I write this, however, it appears as though Salahi’s
call is meeting some receptive ears, and a group of prominent faculty
members have begun an investigation into the police brutality deployed
against students all across the UC system. <br><br>
<font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000">Remembrance the Past,
Realizing Our Power<br><br>
</b></font>Remembering and reinscribing the violence of this police
response into our collective memory of the occupation is of more than
historical interest, however, and consists of more than merely
remembering the pain inflicted upon our comrades, however necessary this
may be. It is in this violent police response that a strategically
correct interpretation of events lies, and this fact makes efforts to
conceal the conflict of the day more than merely an effort to prevent
further violence. The police response showed precisely what was at stake
in the occupation, and what remains at stake in the movement more
generally. The police response showed exactly how far the UC Regents,
President Yudof, and the local administrations are willing to go in order
to drive the privatization of public education down our unwilling
throats. It showed us, in short, that we were doing something right</i>,
and we can expect more of the same if we ever hope to win.<br><br>
And that’s not all: the final police and administration response--that of
opting to let the occupiers walk out of Wheeler of their own
accord--tells even more of the story. It tells us just how powerful our
collective presence was on that day. There can be no doubt that every
single occupier would have been arrested, likely beaten and abused to
some degree, and hit with the trumped-up felony charges, had the crowd
not been assembled outside. And this was not merely because the crowd was
bearing witness to injustice or expressing its verbal non-consent.
<br><br>
It was not moderation and negotiation that created and sustained this
pivotal moment and generated its outcome: it was the unmistakable show of
force that the students gathered represented, a force that was not merely
symbolic. As the great revolutionary CLR James once put it: “The rich are
only defeated when running for their lives.” The same could be said of
today’s privatizers of public education, and those running things more
generally. Oakland’s Oscar Grant rebellions
<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/maher02032009.html">taught us this
much</a> in January, as it was only the threat of continued rioting that
put BART officer Johannes Mehserle behind bars. The Berkeley occupation
movement teaches us the same lesson today.<br><br>
And we have late word of a library occupation at Cal State Fresno, and
more are on the way, at Berkeley and elsewhere. Earlier today, marchers
occupied the UC Office of the President in downtown Oakland to demand a
face-to-face with Mark Yudof. Further, the contagion is international, as
the students who have held Austria in a constant state of occupation for
weeks on end <a href="http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/2610022">descended
</a>en masse</i><a href="http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/2610022">
yesterday onto the US embassy in Vienna</a> as a demonstration of
solidarity with the California occupations and outrage at the images of
police violence that have been broadcast across the globe. This is a
force that is expanding as we speak, and will do so as the months pass
and contradictions become more acute. The university struggle has turned
a crucial corner on the UC Berkeley campus, and a qualitative leap in
consciousness has occurred, by weight not of peaceful entreaties but of
forceful demands. <br><br>
George Ciccariello-Maher</b> is a Ph.D. candidate in political theory at
U.C. Berkeley. He can be reached at gjcm(at)berkeley.edu.<br><br>
<br><br>
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