Videos of police attacking students and professors:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buovLQ9qyWQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNHXuf6qJas&feature=player_embedded
MTH
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Letter from Berkeley Graduate Students
Dearest colleagues,
You might have heard by now of the police violence against students, faculty and supporters last week on my campus, UC Berkeley. If for no other reason than filling out the scant picture that's been drawn in the media, I wanted to forward the thorough account my good friend, Irene, put together, distilling why students had gathered in (announced and administration-approved) peaceful protest in the first place, what happened after that, and why many of us - in cooperation with high schools, community colleges, and K-12 - are striking this coming Tuesday, November 15. Some of our grievances might be familiar to you from experiences on your campuses, but hopefully none of the violence will be:
"As I'm sure many of you have heard by now, this past week at UC Berkeley, several thousand students, faculty, and employees of the university came together to protest a proposed 81% tuition hike, the increased privatization of the UC system, the troubling conflicts of interest demonstrated by Board of Regents members' private business interests and their responsibilities to advocate on behalf of the UC community with the State government. While, for example, the governing body of the UC Regents (publicly appointed officials of the State of California) and campus administration have decided that the burden of making up losses in the budget crisis should fall heavily on students through rapidly rising tuition (the current figure is already triple what it was ten years ago) and on members of faculty and staff who've received reductions in pay and increased workloads--or have been laid off entirely, the current Regents have invested at least $1.5 billion of the UC's money in projects in which many of them personally hold significant stakes and also authorized $3 million in bonuses to top administrators last year alone.
These are some of the reasons
why so many people (myself included) gathered together on Wednesday to
stand in peaceful protest in front of Sproul Hall. In addition to
organizing numerous teach-ins, a rally, march, and
campus-wide walkout, students also hoped to set up a two-day encampment
in the spirit of the other Occupy movements around the country to
create a public forum for discussion and education about the current
financial situation of the university and the condition
of public education in the country today. All day, the crowd was
gathered in explicitly peaceful assembly to petition our government for a redress of grievances. As the university first responded by the early afternoon not with administrators to enter
into dialogue, but with hundreds of riot police, some students even took the time to recite the first amendment to police and protesters alike.
Whether or not you agree with the
reasons for the protests, however, I would hope that you would all at
least share my horror at what followed. As hundreds of students
linked arms to form a human chain around the one
tent they had (the few others they had tried to set up were ripped down
and confiscated by the police with no warning earlier in the day), riot
police began beating them mercilessly without warning or provocation.
Some of you may have seen the following clips
already:
Here, you can see the police suddenly
start to attack the protesters without cause. The young man in the
front that they keep beating even after he's unable to get up is a
first-year graduate student in my department named
Josh Anderson. He was the first of a number of students that had to be
taken to the hospital that day. As you can see from the video, neither
he, nor any of the other students being beaten with batons strike back
at the police with violence. Instead, you can
see him, barely able to stand, gingerly raise a peace sign after being
repeatedly struck on the head, neck, ribs, and legs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buovLQ9qyWQ
In the following video, the first
woman (in pink) that the police drag out of the crowd by her hair is
Professor Celeste Langan, a beloved professor of British Romanticism and
media studies in my department and director of
the UC Townsend Center of the Humanities. As she places herself in
front of students, the police approach her with batons. She repeatedly
told the police not to beat her but arrest her instead. As you can see
here, they respond by dragging her out by force
and throw her to the ground. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNHXuf6qJas&feature=player_embedded
When the police violence occurred
again later that night, they broke the ribs of another English
professor, poet Geoffrey O'Brien. When the police wouldn't stop beating
him even after he too had fallen to the ground, a good
friend and fellow graduate student, Ben Cullen, rushed in and demanded
that they stop. The police, in turn, rained multiple blows on him,
bruising his ribs as well. And just in case it's not clear yet that the
violence was not only against 'some kids looking
to make a fuss,' the police also thought it necessary jab 70-year-old
former Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Hass several times
in the stomach with a baton as well.
I could go on with more horrifying
accounts and recorded footage of the brutality the UCPD and Alameda
County Sheriffs inflicted upon my friends, professors, and students, but
I will stop here to say that for all the mainstream
media coverage after the day's events alternatively insisted upon UC
protesters "violently clashing with police" or the fact that police were
forced into "nudging" students with batons--
1) I've never been more proud to be a UC Berkeley student seeing the firmness with which every protester held
to his or her commitment of nonviolent resistance. More beautifully and
successfully perhaps than its Occupy
counterpart in Oakland, the Cal protesters responded instead throughout
the evening with chants of "Peaceful protest!" and even briefly,
"Bubbles not batons!" (Yes, some students gathered around midnight
started some impromptu bubble-blowing in crowd. Got
to love them hippy kids, right? But... seriously. I do.) The idea of
protesters clashing with police implies violence on both sides.
That was absolutely (and to be perfectly honest, given the police's
behavior, quite surprisingly) not the case.
2) As for the AP's account of police
"nudging" students with batons-- well, Steven Colbert does a nice job of
lampooning what is already patently ridiculous about that here: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/402024/november-10-2011/occupy-u-c--berkeley?xrs=share_fb
Hundreds of faculty and graduate
student instructors, myself [and Monica] included, have signed the
following open letter to UC Chancellor Robert Birgeneau who is
responsible for the police response: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/uc_berkeley_teachers_condemn_violence/. In
addition to making a statement of no confidence in the UC Regents and
administration, many of us are also demanding the resignation of
Birgeneau and the UCPD Chief of Police, Mitchell Celaya. The ACLU and
National Lawyers' Guild have demanded records of the
events from the UCPD and Alameda County Sheriff's offices.
Please consider helping by contacting
either Chancellor Birgeneau or Chief of Police Celaya's office to voice
your concern, demands, outrage-- whatever. More concretely, you can ask
for their removal from office, for their
compliance with the ACLU and National Lawyers' Guild's requests, for
Chancellor Birgeneau to make the investigation of excessive violence
open to external review (it's currently being delegated to an in-house board), or, y'know, for the university to
stop terrorizing members of the community that both comprise it and whom the UCPD are supposedly there to protect. Parents
and loved ones of Cal students-- or at least this one!-- feel free to
call and simply say, "Hey, I'd like you not to beat my
child/friend/loved
one who is a student at Cal and/or to think it would be okay to do so,
please. Thanks." Anything you could do to help would be much
appreciated. This violence is not only of a physical nature against the
students, faculty, and employees of Cal, but also against
the very idea and purpose of higher education itself. It cannot be
allowed to continue.
Their information is below."
Just to add more perspective to what Irene already so thoughtfully put together, here are some of the better accounts I've read, too: First, this is Chancellor Birgeneau's email from November 10 to the Berkeley community the day after the police violence on Wednesday, in which he justifies the use of force against non-violent students and faculty, insisting that linking arms is "not non-violent." http://zungu.tumblr.com/post/12620438282/message-to-campus-community
Here is a response by UC Irvine Professor Rei Terada (from Comparative Literature) to Chancellor Birgeneau's allegation of "not non-violent" tactics: http://workwithoutdread.blogspot.com/2011/11/not-non-violent-civil-disobedience.html
This is another friend's response to the arbitrary nature of the police power on campus in these last few days. It is, in large part, an effort to try to understand how the university's administration, whose task is, ostensibly, to support the education of young people, could justify harming the same: http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2011/11/11/the-grass-is-closed-what-i-have-learned-about-power-from-the-police-chancellor-birgeneau-and-occupy-cal/
And, last, this is a dispiriting story from the Nation, comparing the riots at Penn State (defending football coach Joe Paterno) to the peaceful protests on my campus. You might have seen this one already, as it was making the Facebook rounds in the last couple days: http://www.thenation.com/blog/164535/penn-state-and-berkeley-tale-two-protests
I know you're all busy people, with full lives and lots of
responsibilities. So thank you, first, for making it this far. We all
really appreciate it. If you are moved to, please consider signing the
petition linked to above, contacting the Office of the
Chancellor or the UC Chief of Police (their information is below), or
forwarding this to people who might send their energy and support to
students and faculty at Cal, and, really, to public education in
California more generally.
Thank you, again, for taking the time to read.
Thank you, again, for taking the time to read.
Good things.
Monica Huerta and Irene Yoon
Graduate Students in English
UC - Berkeley
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