Rally January 4 – noon – UCI flagpoles

From the facebook event:

Many of us just paid our Winter Quarter fees; but with the new fee hike going into effect, some of our friends and classmates couldn’t.

Administration has made it clear that the cuts and hikes were sad but necessary, while they’re making six-figures and living in homes that won’t be foreclosed.

On the first day of Winter Quarter, let’s show the Administration who we are and how we’re affected by their decisions

Let’s make it clear that, even though the 32% has been finalized, we expect our administrators to do everything they can to reverse the cuts and ease the burden on poor students and students of color and their families.

For updates about the rally and future actions, follow http://twitter.com/takebackuci.  This is extremely important once the group reaches a certain size, as facebook cuts off messaging.

Occupy this blog!

Libraries and Admin buildings aren’t the only things getting occupied.  You can now submit articles for publication on this site.  Just enter your article as a comment on this post, and we will review it.

Of Many Tasers and Batons, a Few Torches and Rocks, and the Way Forward

(from Occupy CA)

Of Many Tasers and Batons, a Few Torches and Rocks, and the Way Forward

The actions and arrests that occurred on Friday night at Chancellor Birgeneau’s residence have provoked a moment of pause and recalibration among those of us involved in the anti-privatization movement in UC. The facts about what happened that night are unclear. No charges were filed at the arraignments of those who were arrested and held in jail for four days on bail of $132,000. It would seem that, at the moment, there is no evidence to support the accusations of multiple felonies for which they were detained.  At a time when people are considering the initial rush to judge and condemn, we should remember that lives are ruined by police accusations that those inside and outside the movement circulate as fact.  Let us take this opportunity to affirm absolutely that the reaction to last Friday’s events must take place as a conversation among those who have been engaged in the defense of public education in California: the workers, students, and faculty who have risked much in pursuit of overturning the policies approved on November 19^th at UCLA. The current UC President Mark Yudof, enabled by the tacit support of Chancellors, implemented the endgame of a process that will see our libraries close at 8 pm., our campus workers fired, and public education increasingly become a commodity for the wealthy to purchase. These offices are now engaged in a dishonest and insulting rhetorical game of misdirection that encourages students to address their rage to an abstraction called “Sacramento” in lieu of directing it at the flesh and blood people – Governor, UC Presidents, Regents and Chancellors — who penned, signed, and excused this gross betrayal of California public life.  Part of this campaign to misdirect the message of the movement was the governor’s supremely irresponsible labeling of the actions of a few protestors on Friday as “terrorism,” equating the smashing of planters and the throwing of rocks at windows with acts of mass murder. One need not condone the vandalism that occurred at Chancellor Birgeneau’s on Friday night to condemn this abuse of language and logic and to worry about its dangerous effects. It would be laughable if not for the fact that such political posturing has material consequences for the lives of individuals and movements. We now know that there is insufficient evidence to charge those held in jail with vandalism, let alone to support the charges made by the Governor and the Chancellor’s office. We add this to the list of good reasons to mistrust reports issued by Chancellor Birgeneau and his Public Relations spokesperson Dan Mogulof. After the occupation of Wheeler Hall on November 20^th, Mogulof claimed that those inside the building were not Berkeley students. There was no reason for the Chancellor and Mogulof to believe this and so we are left to assume that this was misinformation knowingly circulated. In an impromptu press conference held in front of Sproul Hall on Saturday, Mogulof affirmed again and again that the arrests at Wheeler early Friday morning were made in order to “prevent at all costs a scene like the one on November 20^th.” This statement, heard by faculty, students and workers who were present, confirms that contrary to the Chancellor’s official statements of concern, these arrests represented a tactic in the effort to suppress student activism at Berkeley. If Mr. Birgeneau was simply concerned with clearing the building, certainly police would have issued an order to disperse to each of the occupants and allowed students the choice to take a civil disobedience arrest, or to leave. We are left to assume that the spectacle of students hand-cuffed in the rain was a PR goal for the Chancellor. Let’s not allow the public response to Friday’s action, whatever the facts turn out to be, to further excuse a policy of student intimidation that was underway prior to acts of property damage and intimidation. Let us not forget who perpetrated the previous violence on our campuses this year, and on whose orders. I urge the faculty, if they are uncomfortable with any tactic or ideology connected with this student movement going forward, to resist relying on spokespeople who have circulated lies. Ask a student what the environment was like in Wheeler prior to the mass arrests. Ask a student what students and workers are saying about the vandalism at the Chancellor’s house and how it has affected student activism as a whole on campus. Given the complete exoneration of those arrested we should vow to  remember next time that while activists remain in jail, the in-house conversation can be nuanced and critical but the public comment should strive for solidarity and at all costs should avoid circulating the unverified (and in this case utterly, absurdly false) claims of the administration and the police. Faculty need not condone the acts of the few in order to express concern for the wrongfully jailed and renew a commitment to the mission and tactics of the larger UC-wide student movement: to resist the long pre-meditated and ideological policy of Governor Schwarzenegger and his appointee Mark Yudof to replace a public trust with a private concern and to take money out of the pockets of poor, working and middle class students and workers and put it into the pockets of the wealthy, their own and those of their under-taxed class mates.

In Solidarity,

Emma Heaney

UC-Irvine Graduate Student, Department of Comparative Literature

Translation guide for understanding UC press releases

(reposted from elsewhere)

“We wish to remind everyone of the limits of protest”: being on campus at any given time may be an offense punishable by police brutality.

“Members of the university community”: People punishable without due process by university courts.

“Members of the community”:  People against whom we have no recourse after the DA acknowledges that we have no case.

“Anarchist”: 1a) a word I heard on television the other day; 2a) a resident of San Francisco

“Nonstudent”: all purpose term for student from another campus, faculty, community supporters, press

“Bystander”: faculty member pushed off a ledge by police

“Outside agitator”: grad student visiting from new york

“Protestor”: the 34,500 students not involved in the protest.

“Criminal”: everyone involved in the protest.

“Terrorist”: everyone in the state of California against whom we have not yet had to admit that we have no evidence.

“All night hip-hop concert”: imminent do-rag threat.

“Genuinely feared for our lives”: roused from our coffins before completing nocturnal regeneration.

Shockwaves

The following was posted as a comment, responding to the post “From a Community College Student.”  We offer this testimony to our critics at UCI, around the UC, and elsewhere.  We present this as evidence that the success of an action is judged not only by its having occurred but also by the opportunities it creates.  While the actual library occupation was co-opted by admin and perhaps had a less than ideal turnout, it must be seen as a success.

---

I thought my campus was very apathetic, apolitical, and hostile to meaningful collective action, too. Then I went to one of the reformists’ coalition meetings and gave an impassioned speech about how Irvine was going to occupy their library, and that if they could do it in Orange County, we could do it three times over! I swore just enough, I loudly rejected the idea of limiting ourselves to traditional mainstream tactics, I gave specific ideas on radical actions we could take, I justified my proposals, and then I made very clear that they were just that, proposals–that the important thing was for people to get angry and get active, no matter what we decide to do. At the beginning of my speech, the meeting was about letter-writing. At the end of my speech, the meeting was about blockading a freeway. And when somebody asked, “Who wants to occupy the library?”, every single hand in the room shot up.

The Voice in the Machine

From UC Rebel Radio:

Recent statements from the UC Administration and UC Academic Senate have made it clear that they have initiated a campaign against the student movement by appropriating its language and emphasizing that it lacks “civility” and “respect” in its actions. Instead of admitting to any police brutality on their campuses they remind us that their police officers also “sustained injuries” and, adding insult to real injury,  some students get a letter asking them to support their local UC police department by donating teddy bears to their x-mas charity event!

They think we are children, but unlike those who are to receive our teddy bear effigies this holiday season, they think we are spoiled and undeserving. It is the typical appropriation of the family model to claim control of authority; it is the ancient Greek system meant to appease and civilize the “unruly” and the “barbaric”, the dominance over the “natural”. Again, they think we are children easily appeased by the offer of a dialog with the state legislators, while it is them that have been playing shift-the-blame and find-the-scapegoat over and over again. They are the ones who imply that a protester’s smashed hand is a slap on the wrist. They are the ones who claim to be balanced in their assessment of a situation in which armed cops are confronted with a group of unarmed student protesters. They are the ones who are afraid, like children, of the breakdown of the routine slavery that is the current university system.

Guess what, Mr. Yudof? We already spoke to the legislators and they didn’t listen. We’ve outgrown the merry-go-’round. We know this dialog is a dead end and a stall tactic. We are not going to let you continue to raise tuition and layoff workers while you pretend to be our friend and guide us by the hand. The children are all grown up now and they are going to expose every lie and its messenger.

There is a voice in the machine and it is getting louder.

Langson Library Now Open 24 Hours

From Occupy CA:

IRVINE – Responding to plans to occupy Langson Library on Friday, December 4 – the weekend before final exams – and threats of an indefinite study-in, the UCI administration decided on Tuesday to open the library from 8am December 4 until 5pm December 11.  Vice Chancellor Manuel Gomez (himself a former radical-turned-administrator, who admittedly “used to fly the black flag” but now knows better than us) made the announcement in an email sent to the student body: “In consultation with ASUCI, we are prioritizing student study needs during Finals Week. We are pleased to announce that we will be keeping Langson Library open 24-hours a day beginning 8 a.m. Friday, Dec. 4 and ending 5 p.m. Friday, Dec. 11.”  While ironic that amid a 32% tuition hike, 1200 layoffs, cuts to already-funded student services (such as SAAS), and the arrest of one student organizer they finally give a shit about student needs, the decision to open the library has more to do with a broader strategy to co-opt and preempt student dissent and action, and the reality that it would have cost the administration more to pay police overtime to staff the occupation than to actually open the library to students.

While by no means ideal, UCI students consider this a victory.  Even with the wind taken out of their sails, students and faculty continued on with a study-in to draw attention to the role of student action in opening the library.  About 50 students and faculty took over a graduate-only reading room at 5pm and opened it to the public, holding teach-ins and discussions about the university’s structural adjustment programs, a meeting earlier in the day with Chancellor Michael Drake, and future actions.  The study-in ended around 7:30pm, with future meetings and actions planned and a clearer understanding of where we are now and how to move forward.

ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE OCCUPATION OF THE POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSTY OF ATHENS.

(sent to us from some Greek comrades)

Approximately 150-160 people have been detained as a means of terrorisation whilst also preventing and deterring others from participating in demonstrations marking the anniversary of the murder of a 15 year old youth in Athens.

A year after the murder of Alexandros Grigoropolous by the Greek state, the regime enforcing army are attempting to seize every corner of the city.

From a Community College student

I am organizing with other students at a community college.  I have been supportive of and excited by the occupations from the get-go for raising the level of risk and disruption of business-as-usual.  I see the occupations as a necessary component of an overall strategy to build the power we need now.

At the same time, on our campus we are not at a stage of organized resistance to pull off anything like an occupation.  Right now we are concerned with pulling students together and finding our voice.  But make no mistake, the occupations have created more imaginative space as we walk forward.  Even if we can’t find the will or the ability to do it where we’re at, we know that more can be done than signing petitions and marching around with signs.  And that means a lot.

On our campus of working class students, most of us haven’t had the opportunity to be involved in collective political action before, and very few of us have had the benefit of being exposed to the range of social theory and organizing skills that a significant number of UC students have had.  (I’m one of the exceptions, but I’m kind of a weirdo.)  So into this steps a few teachers who define themselves as Leninists and Trotskyists and who knows what else.  I’ve lost track now of whether they belong to the Socialist Worker Party or the Workers Socialist Party or the Tutti-Frutti Fourth International Clusterfuck of the Proletariat, but whatever.  All I know is when they start pumping out their scripted ideology, with that weird glazed look in their eyes, most students seem to want to start digging a tunnel to escape.    If we had a good anarchist trend on our campus to counter-balance this I wouldn’t be so worried, but there’s a pretty apolitical vibe overall here.

So while the occupiers on other campuses are busy opening up imaginative space, the sectarians are busy trying to shut it down.  There seems to be an obsession with the “March in March” thing, for example.  Okay, it’s great if we can get buses and all go up there, but then what?  And up til then, what?  It seems to me that these March marches have become a regular event, a ritualized pageant – but they don’t seem to have worked!  Or maybe they’ve worked brilliantly. In other words, a few crumbs might follow from a march, just enough to make people think they are effective, so that all our energy goes into these marches for the next go-around. Like people of great faith those promoting the march are convinced that all we have to do is make the march BIGGER this time.  We just have to pray harder! I mean, am I the only one who thinks it’s kind of weird that our administrators and the media are urging us to go to Sacramento and quit raising a ruckus right where we’re at?

I’m not arguing against the march.  There are many people for whom the march is inspiring and makes sense and to whom it appeals as an action they can participate in.  Let ‘em go.  I’m not arguing over the date of the march, or suggesting that we need to do one thing or another.  I’m just concerned that the laser-like organizing focus on the march is closing down imaginative space for creative and disruptive action.  I hear a lot of scolds denigrating the occupations for being adventurist, for taking the focus off the march, but what about the way the march is taking focus off our ability to transform our campuses and fundamentally change the power relationships that exist in our daily lives?

Why are our teachers telling us that our banners and flyers and slogans all have to be about the march?

Anyway, a few words of experience, strength, and hope from the rest of you out there would be nice.  Don’t forget us out here in the CC’s!

Statement From Faculty

from Defend UCI:

Dear Chancellor Drake, Members of the UCI Administration, and Library Staff,

We write to let you know that we support the peaceful efforts of UCI students to keep the main library open this Friday after 5pm through Saturday and possibly Sunday.  Those of us who are able to do so plan to hold study sessions, participate in teach-ins, and stop by to be with the students in the library during the week-end.

The current library hours, among many other measures, do a grave disservice to our students and staff and are simply an embarrassment for a great research university like UCI.  Far from being a mere service to students, the library, where books and study spaces are available, lies at the center of the intellectual exploration that reaches fruition in final papers and exams.

Our action is intended to draw attention to the unacceptable sacrifices made by students and staff at UCI, despite the best efforts of faculty to continue to provide the high quality instruction for which our university is known.  We note that our support of this action does not preclude our support of other actions, such as the “write-in” on the budget organized by the Chancellor.

We ask that you do all in your power to ensure that the library action goes forward peacefully, allowing students the full use of library resources before finals week.

Sincerely,
Cecelia Lynch, Political Science
Elizabeth Allen, English
Jane O. Newman, Comparative Literature
Rei Terada, Comparative Literature
Eyal Amiran, Comparative Literature and FMS
Laura Mitchell, History

(please send signatures to john.bruning@gmail.com)

UCI on KPFK

Don’t let the administration, the police, or ASUCI misinform you. Learn about what they don’t want you to know. Meet students and faculty from UCI as they join OC Weekly’s Gustavo Arellano for a radio interview regarding the UC Budget, the Occupations, and the future of the Student Movement in California. Thursday, December 3rd, 2009: 3:00 p.m. (pacific) Locally: KPFK 90.7 FM (Los Angeles and Orange Counties) On the web: http://www.kpfk.org