Leading Democratic party strategists have begun to openly discuss the benefits of embracing the growing and increasingly organized Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement to prevent Republican gains in Congress and the White House next year.Strategies planned include targeting next year's swing states (Florida, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wisconsin, Ohio, North Carolina, Nevada, New Mexico), opposition research on OWS luminaries, an anti-OWS advertising deluge (thanks, Citizens United!1), and "targeted social media monitoring." Protip: stop organizing your super-cool anti-establishment activities on fucking Facebook, you (inspiring) putzes.
This would mean more than just short-term discomfort for Wall Street firms. If vilifying the leading companies of this sector is allowed to become an unchallenged centerpiece of a coordinated Democratic campaign, it has the potential to have very long-lasting political, policy and financial impacts on the companies in the center of the bullseye.
Well-known Wall Street companies stand at the nexus of where OWS protestors and the Tea Party overlap on angered populism. Both the radical left and the radical right are channeling broader frustration about the state of the economy and share a mutual frustration over TARP and other perceived bailouts. This combination has the potential to be explosive later in the year when media reports cover the next round of bonuses and contrast it with stories of millions of Americans making do with less this holiday season.
It may be easy to dismiss OWS as a ragtag group of protestors but they have demonstrated that they should be treated more like an organized competitor who is very nimble and capable of working the media, coordinating third party support and engaging officeholders to do their bidding. To counter that, we have to do the same. Putting the cornerstone elements of a plan in place right now will prepare firms to respond quickly and collectively at the earliest and most influential point when embracing OWS goes from concept planning to execution. The cornerstone elements of a plan include: survey research and message testing, opposition research, targeted social media monitoring, coalition planning, and advertising creative and placement strategy development.
Some 64% of [Berkeley] undergraduates receive some form of financial aid. For example, in 2008-09, 37 percent of all Berkeley undergrads were eligible for Pell Grants (family incomes generally less than $45,000 a year). Berkeley educates more of these economically disadvantaged students than all of the Ivy League universities combined. Some 5,700 undergraduates received a total of $33 million in scholarships, many of them privately funded."posted by ericb at 3:47 PM on November 19, 2011 [33 favorites]
"I can't see any legitimate basis for police action like what is shown here. Watch that first minute and think how we'd react if we saw it coming from some riot-control unit in China, or in Syria. The calm of the officer who walks up and in a leisurely way pepper-sprays unarmed and passive people right in the face? We'd think: this is what happens when authority is unaccountable and has lost any sense of human connection to a subject population. That's what I think here."posted by ericb at 3:51 PM on November 19, 2011 [68 favorites]
One of the earliest arguments for pluralism came from James Madison in The Federalist Papers #10. Madison feared that factionalism would lead to in-fighting in the new American republic and devotes this paper to questioning how best to avoid such an occurrence. He posits that to avoid factionalism, it is best to allow many competing factions to prevent any one dominating the political system. This relies, to a degree, on a series of disturbances changing the influences of groups so as to avoid institutional dominance and ensure competition.That's from wiki-thingy. It's important these days. The professor I first heard it from was worried about how too much money on one side or the other would destroy the whole principle.
Downtown Oakland residents, citizens, parents, teachers, principals, artists, small business owners, and fellow occupiers have spoken and do NOT want to see the Occupy Oakland Encampment moved to 19th and Telegraph. As of 2:30 pm today (Nov. 18) 201 people have signed a petition expressing their concern on the issue. See this link to the petition for an up to date count:posted by brundlefly at 7:14 PM on November 19, 2011 [11 favorites]
http://www.change.org/petitions/occupy-oakland-facilitators-provide-an-opportunity-to-re-vote-on-where-the-next-encampment-will-be
We are not against choosing a different location, or even maintaining the location right here, at Oscar Grant Plaza, but we feel it is important to develop a committee to thoroughly research this decision from all angles.
When the proposal was originally voted upon, it was clear that many of the key individuals impacted by this decision where not in attendance at that night’s General Assembly. We believe the following facts and concerns should have been addressed more thoroughly:
Facts concerning the proposed encampment site @ 19th and Telegraph:
1) The new location is next door to the Oakland School of the Arts. This is a middle/high school serving children between the ages 10 – 18.
2) Families, administrators, and teachers of the adjacent school were not contacted for their feedback on the proposal
3) The new location is adjacent to an affordable housing complex and residents were not contacted for their feedback on the proposal
4) The new location will occupy the proposed and federally funded art and sculpture garden soon to be constructed
Key Concerns:
- No community outreach that we know of was conducted prior to the proposal being voted upon, yet this is a move directly into a primarily residential area
- 19th and Telegraph does not impact the 1%, but would place hardships on working families and students
- Innocent children will be put in the crossfire between OO and OPD without parents being given a voice or choice in the decision to involve their children
- As experienced by another neighborhood public high school, Envision Academy @ 15th and Webster - we know that police altercations within and around the Occupy Oakland encampment have a negative impact on schools, the school’s attendance and budget suffer, schools must close early or open late, and parents are fearful of their children’s well being
- We also know that police blockades and forced closures of BART make it difficult if not impossible for children to get to school
- 19th and Telegraph falls within a drug free school zone thereby putting the Police into a position of “protectors” of the peace and safety of a community
- The community previously fought for funding to convert this lot into a community park and art space, police response could endanger funding and construction of this project
- Once the decision was released into the community, an outpouring of responses from families and community members started surfacing and it is essential that Occupy Oakland remain responsive to community concerns and interests in order to maintain a strong and mutually beneficial working relationship
In light of these concerns, we ask that you vote to NOT move the encampment to 19th and Telegraph, but instead agree to create a committee to thoroughly research and suggest an appropriate location for the encampment.
Dear Member of the UC Davis Community,posted by mudpuppie at 7:43 PM on November 19, 2011
Yesterday was not a day that would make anyone on our campus proud; indeed the events of the day need to guide us forward as we try to make our campus a better place of inquiry, debate, and even dissent. As I described in my previous letter to the community, this past week our campus was a site of week-long peaceful demonstrations during which students were able to express their concerns about many issues facing higher education, the University of California, our campus, our nation, and the world as a whole. Those events involved multiple rallies in the Quad and an occupation of Mrak Hall which ended peacefully a day later.
However, the events on Friday were a major deviation from that trend. In the aftermath of the troubling events we experienced, I will attempt to provide a summary of the incident with the information now available to me.
After a week of peaceful exchange and debate, on Thursday a group of protestors including UC Davis students and other non-UC Davis affiliated individuals established an encampment of about 25 tents on the Quad. The group was reminded that while the university provides an environment for students to participate in rallies and express their concerns and frustrations through different forums, university policy does not allow such encampments on university grounds.
On Thursday, the group stayed overnight despite repeated reminders by university staff that their encampment violated university policies and they were requested to disperse. On Friday morning, the protestors were provided with a letter explaining university policies and reminding them of the opportunities the university provides for expression. Driven by our concern for the safety and health of the students involved in the protest, as well as other students on our campus, I made the decision not to allow encampments on the Quad during the weekend, when the general campus facilities are locked and the university staff is not widely available to provide support.
During the early afternoon hours and because of the request to take down the tents, many students decided to dismantle their tents, a decision for which we are very thankful. However, a group of students and non-campus affiliates decided to stay. The university police then came to dismantle the encampment. The events of this intervention have been videotaped and widely distributed. As indicated in various videos, the police used pepper spray against the students who were blocking the way. The use of pepper spray as shown on the video is chilling to us all and raises many questions about how best to handle situations like this.
To this effect, I am forming a task force made of faculty, students and staff to review the events and provide to me a thorough report within 90 days. As part of this, a process will be designed that allows members of the community to express their views on this matter. This report will help inform our policies and processes within the university administration and the Police Department to help us avoid similar outcomes in the future. While the university is trying to ensure the safety and health of all members of our community, we must ensure our strategies to gain compliance are fair and reasonable and do not lead to mistreatment.
Furthermore, I am asking the office of Administrative and Resource Management and the office of Student Affairs to review our policies in relation to encampments of this nature and consider whether our existing policies reflect the needs of the students at this point in time. If our policies do not allow our students enough flexibility to express themselves, then we need to find a way to improve these policies and make them more effective and appropriate.
Our campus is committed to providing a safe environment for all to learn freely and practice their civil rights of freedom of speech and expression. At the same time, our campus has the responsibility to ensure the safety of all others who use the same spaces and rely on the same facilities, tools, environments and processes to practice their freedoms to work and study. While the university has the responsibility to develop the appropriate environments that ensure the practice of these freedoms, by no means should we allow a repeated violation of these rules as an expression of personal freedom.
Through this letter, I express my sadness for the events of past Friday and my commitment to redouble our efforts to improve our campus and the environment for our students.
Sincerely,
Linda P.B. Katehi
Chancellor
And so that brings me to a useful piece of advice for any readers who are aspiring dictators, one that the Communists knew, Suharto knew, but that some modern day tyrants seem to have forgotten. There is always a level of civil unrest that outstrips the capability of even the most loyal and largest regular armed forces to deal with. In all likelihood, as a medium sized emerging market, you will have a capital city with a population of about five or six million, meaning potentially as many as three million adults on the streets in the worst case. Your total active-duty armed forces are unlikely to be a tenth of that. When it becomes a numbers game, there is only one thing that can save you.Familiar, no? It's that sentence near the end there - "The bigger and burlier the better, but when the time comes they'll be fighting in groups against people weaker than themselves, often under cover of darkness, so numbers are more important than anything else" - that makes it so horribly prescient.
And that is, a reactionary citizens' militia, to combat the revolutionary citizens' militia. Former socialist republics always used to be fond of buses full of coal miners from way out the back of beyond, but the Iranian basijis are the same sort of thing. Basically, what you need is a large population who are a few rungs up from the bottom of society, who aren't interested in freedom and who hate young people. In other words, arseholes. Arseholes, considered as a strategic entity, have the one useful characteristic that is the only useful characteristic in the context of an Egyptian-style popular uprising - there are f---ing millions of them.
This is my advice to any aspiring dictator; early on in your career, identify and inventory all the self-pitying, bullying shitheads your country has to offer. Anyone with a grievance, a beer belly and enough strength to swing a pickaxe handle will do. You don't need to bother with military training or discipline because they're hopefully never going to be used as a proper military force - just concentrate on nurturing their sense that they, despite appearances, are the backbone of the country, and allowing them to understand that although rules are rules, there are some people who just need a slap. The bigger and burlier the better, but when the time comes they'll be fighting in groups against people weaker than themselves, often under cover of darkness, so numbers are more important than anything else. The extractive industries are indeed often a good source, as are demobbed veterans (Zimbabwe) or the laity of an established religion.
I think this is my new rule for assessing the stability of any dictatorship around the world, and I am on the lookout for any Francis Fukuyama-style book contracts. The key factor in determining the survival of repressive regimes isn't economics, religion or military success. It's arseholes.
Tenth Update | Here’s a federal court ruling from 1997 which appears to indicate not only that yesterday’s pepper spray incident was an violation of the activists’ constitutional rights, but that Lt. Pike would be unable to hide behind “qualified immunity” in any court proceeding, and would thus be subject to suit as an individual.Just to clarify for everyone: The individual officer may be immune in most cases (but not all) but the institution, be it a university or city won't be. So UC Davis might have a lawsuit on their hands.
In a sad kind of way, all this 'democracy in action' sheds the very worst light on all the principles that the nation stands for, I wonder if they realize how badly it hurts their own propaganda and global image in today's hyperconnected world? and makes them sound like hypocrites as they support the same across Africa?I think it's unlikely that most Americans would even think about it that way. They see these protests as totally different then what happened in Egypt, Tunesia, etc. If you go on reddit you see people saying it's completely ridiculous to make comparisons like that, even though I've seen some of the Egyptian activists say that OWS is actually kind of similar.
"PEPPER SPRAY IN YOUR FACE!"At least they are identifying the protesters with the viewers, rather as dirty hippies or something. Don Lemon actually asked the chancellor if she was going to resign later on. She said no.
What the FUCK, CNN?
I don't know, Avenger. I seem to remember a recent President calling the Cambridge police "stupid" for something or other ...When an actual friend of his got manhandled, and he backed off after a day. Maybe the president can call for "Beer Summits" for all the OWS protestors and NYPD, the students at berkely, UC Davis, etc. Oh and Scott Olsen and the cop who shot him... when he gets out of the hospital, of course.
In the Bank Transfer Day thread, we discussed how Bank of America recently moved trillions of Merrill Lynch's bad derivatives onto the books of retail accounts, meaning they wrote themselves an extra-gvernmental bailout using ordinary people's money. THe FDIC opposed this of ocourse, but the Fed made it happen.The FDIC insures deposits, not institutions. Bank of America would have to be taken over by the government in order for the FDIC to start making payments.
during the negotiated management period, police stated that their highest priority was to respect the First Amendment even for those that expressed unpopular messages (McPhail et al. 1998). Now, when applying strategic incapacitation police openly declare that only protesters who agree in advance to engage in the permitting process and follow police-determined guidelines will be accorded protection of their rights to free speech and peaceful assembly. . . . Preemptive arrests neutralize both individuals and organizations whose actions police cannot predict with certainty. . . . Such pro-active policing detains potentially disruptive actors from protest situations and sends a message to all others that regardless of their actual actions they are targets for arrest if they fit the profile of a transgressive protester. . . . [regarding specific post-9/11 cases] police appeared to pre-emptively use non-lethal force to neutralize threats, perceived or actual, posed by transgressive protesters. Quite often bystanders and contained protesters acting within the limitations of their protest permits were also incapacitated as the effects of such non-lethal weapons spilled over beyond their intended targets . . .[emphasis mine]
Does [strategic incapacitation's] use make our society safer or merely cultivate the perception of reduced risk? Does the profiling, labeling and sorting of activists favor some messages over others? To what extent does police management of both space and the media affect public opinion? Does the normalization of strategic incapacitation have a chilling effect on protest or drive it underground where it becomes more radicalized?
I'm not sure if many people have gotten to the end of the video. The crowd follows the police officers chastising them with a chant of "SHAME ON YOU" when the same deuchebag pulls out two pepper spray cans akimbo and brandishes them at the still totally peaceful crowd. The crowd, having threatened nothing but any hope they had of moral superiority, quickly starts chanting "YOU CAN GO" just in case they feel trapped. The douchebag, now perceiving no possible shred of an excuse for force on this polite and fucking generous crowd, then turns around and they all walk away.I was struck by this too. When Two-Pepper-Spray-Douche brandishes arms akimbo it is so hokey and cheesy. What? He's some kind of fucking badass action hero ready to go to war against a bunch of college kids? What was that? His pride was hurt?
Two campus police officers caught on video using pepper spray on seated Occupy protesters at University of California, Davis, have been put on administrative leave, the school announced today.posted by ericb at 11:59 AM on November 20, 2011 [2 favorites]
"I spoke with students this weekend, and I feel their outrage," UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi said in a statement released today. "I have also heard from an overwhelming number of students, faculty, staff and alumni from around the country. I am deeply saddened that this happened on our campus, and as chancellor, I take full responsibility for the incident.
"However, I pledge to take the actions needed to ensure that this does not happen again," she said. "I feel very sorry for the harm our students were subjected to and I vow to work tirelessly to make the campus a more welcoming and safe place."
Katehi said that she had also accelerated the timetable for a task force to investigate the events surrounding the arrests, including communications from the police to the administration. She set a deadline of 30 days for the task force to issue its report.
Katehi said the task force will be chosen this week, and will include faculty, students and staff.
Katehi's announcement comes as faculty and students began calling for her resignation over the incident, which occurred Friday and was captured on video that was postd on YouTube.
"... [I]t’s the excessive police actions that help add fuel to the very movement they're attempting to quash. Bringing the protests back into the media spotlight and lending them a great deal of public sympathy is probably not what police have in mind when they pepper-spray a line of peaceful protesters, but it’s exactly what happens.posted by ericb at 12:22 PM on November 20, 2011
... Just as the OWS folk start to dip in public opinion polls, the cops make martyrs out of them."*
The Principles of Communityposted by mudpuppie at 6:32 PM on November 20, 2011 [2 favorites]
"The University of California, Davis, is first and foremost an institution of learning and teaching, committed to serving the needs of society. Our campus community reflects and is a part of a society comprising all races, creeds and social circumstances. The successful conduct of the university's affairs requires that every member of the university community acknowledge and practice the following basic principles:
* We affirm the inherent dignity in all of us, and we strive to maintain a climate of justice marked by respect for each other. We acknowledge that our society carries within it historical and deep-rooted misunderstandings and biases, and therefore we will endeavor to foster mutual understanding among the many parts of our whole.
* We affirm the right of freedom of expression within our community and affirm our commitment to the highest standards of civility and decency towards all. We recognize the right of every individual to think and speak as dictated by personal belief, to express any idea, and to disagree with or counter another's point of view, limited only by university regulations governing time, place and manner. We promote open expression of our individuality and our diversity within the bounds of courtesy, sensitivity and respect.
* We confront and reject all manifestations of discrimination, including those based on race, ethnicity, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation, religious or political beliefs, status within or outside the university, or any of the other differences among people which have been excuses for misunderstanding, dissension or hatred. We recognize and cherish the richness contributed to our lives by our diversity. We take pride in our various achievements, and we celebrate our differences.
* We recognize that each of us has an obligation to the community of which we have chosen to be a part. We will strive to build a true community of spirit and purpose based on mutual respect and caring."
WALKER: "They walked, with heads up, without music, or cheering, or any hope of escape from injury or death." (His voice is taut, harshly professional.) "It went on and on and on. Women carried the wounded bodies from the ditch until they dropped from exhaustion. But still it went on."posted by argonauta at 7:51 PM on November 20, 2011
He shifts the mangled notes and comes to his last paragraph. He speaks it trying only half successfully to keep the emotion from his voice.
WALKER: "Whatever moral ascendance the West held was lost today. India is free for she has taken all that steel and cruelty can give, and she has neither cringed nor retreated." (On Walker close. His sweating, blood and dirt-stained face near tears.) "In the words of his followers, 'Long live Mahatma Gandhi.' "
The Principles of Community are not official University of California, Davis policy; nor do they replace existing policies, procedures or codes of conduct.posted by arm's-length at 8:40 PM on November 20, 2011 [2 favorites]
An Open Letter to My Students and Colleagues at UC Davis:posted by mudpuppie at 8:55 AM on November 21, 2011 [43 favorites]
A lot has been said so far about who is responsible for the horrific violence on campus last week. A lot of blame is being passed around, and it’s all pretty accurate. But I’d like to take a different approach, if I may, and offer our students, my students—and yes, you are all my students whether I’ve had you in class or not—an apology on behalf of the faculty.
That’s right. An apology. Not just because there weren’t as many of us with you on Friday, getting arrested and pepper spray down our throats, as there were at Berkeley. But because of something bigger.
Because we left the wrong people in charge.
You see, with few exceptions, the people running this campus up in Mrak Hall think of themselves as administrators, not as educators. Because, with few exceptions, these are people who haven’t seen the inside of a classroom in years, if not decades, if ever. These are people who don’t have you guys. They don’t have students to remind them every single day on this campus why they are here, simply by stopping by their offices with a friendly, “Hey, Professor, I just had a question about something…” These are people who don’t have you all to keep them humble by (to use a personal example) reminding them that they almost forgot to collect the paper that’s due in class today, or pointing out the typos on their final exams.
No, instead, what we have are people who end up thinking of you as data points and dollar signs, rather than as whole human beings, whose hearts and minds we as a faculty have the honor and privilege of shaping into the future of our state, our nation, and our world. (And I assert that no one who thought of you as whole human beings could possibly have called in armed riot police to deal with a peaceful protest, tents or no tents.)
So how did it get this way? Of course it’s complicated, but one answer is that, as faculty, we’re busy. I know, you hear that a lot, right? “We’re busy.” But it’s true. We expend a lot of energy on our research. And the vast majority of us put a lot of time and effort into our teaching too. Because we care about you. We do. But there’s a whole host of other things, administrative things, that go into running a university, that we as a faculty have had less and less to do with over the years. Things like budgets. And efficiency reports. And “Resource Management.” And the truth is that most of us hate those things, and we’re perfectly happy to let someone else deal with all of it.
As it turns out, though, there’s a kind of power in those things. Big power, actually. Money power. And in many cases that power wasn’t just taken from us, we gave it away, all too gladly.
You know, it wasn’t malicious. We thought it would be fine, better even. We’d handle the teaching and the research, and we’d have administrators in charge of administrative things. But it’s not fine. It’s so completely not fine. There’s a sickening sort of clarity that comes from seeing, on the chemically burned faces of our students, how obviously it’s not fine.
So, to all of you, my students, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry we didn’t protect you. And I’m sorry we left the wrong people in charge.
And to my colleagues, I ask you, no, I implore you, to join with me in rolling up our sleeves, gritting our teeth, and getting back to the business of running this place the way it ought to be run. Because while our students have been bravely chanting for a while now that it’s their university (and they’re right), it’s also ours. It’s our university. And as such, let’s make sure that the inhuman brutality that occurred on this campus last Friday can never happen again. Not to our students. And not at our university.
Hey everyone,posted by kaibutsu at 9:44 AM on November 21, 2011 [17 favorites]
Here is my account of the past week. I speak for myself and not for Occupy/Decolonize UC Davis. These are my observations, opinions and memories. Enjoy!
On Tuesday, November 15, 2011, students and faculty gathered on the quad to discuss the police brutality that occurred at UC Berkeley days before. Hundreds stood together in solidarity while faculty members, graduate students and undergraduates spoke about the proposed 81 percent fee hike over the next four years within the UC system, and the detrimental effects it would bring.
Students spoke confidently about how the capitalist system not only divides the rich from the rest, but a fee increase would eliminate the diversity our university has strived for. Capitalism divides people into classes, and those who identify as queer, groups of color, and women struggle to remain on the periphery of this system.
In response to the hate crimes at the annual Students of Color Conference, we discussed the lack of support from not only the police, but from those in power. In particular, we brought to light the lack of support from Chancellor Linda Katehi.
After numerous speeches, we began to march. We peacefully walked to Olson Hall and made our way through the Starbucks chain at the Silo, finally ending the march at Mrak Hall, the Office of Undergraduate Admissions building. There, hundreds of students occupied the building, chanting.
That night we slept in Mrak Hall. I left to help cook food for the estimated hundred people occupying Mrak, and about 60 students slept there on Tuesday night. There were a few police, two upstairs, and two by the front entrance outside, who eventually left. They were friendly, we exchanged some conversation, and I eventually went to bed. Linda Katehi allowed us to sleep in Mrak. She publically dismissed University policy, and relayed the decision to the occupiers.
I woke up on Wednesday morning and went to San Francisco for the UC-wide march against the proposed 81 percent tuition increase. The UC Regents cancelled the meeting a few days prior to our march, knowing that we would shut it down.
That day in San Francisco, hundreds of students marched through the financial district, ending up at the Bank of America on California and Davis. We entered the bank and asked through a “mic check” that Monica Lozano “Refund the UC system.” Although we were met with opposition from riot police, 14 people from Davis stayed and were arrested; we shut down the bank. I was outside, forming a human chain in the street so that the police would not leave the premise. Several of my housemates were arrested.
On Thursday, we held a GA on the quad on campus, and the overwhelming attendance confirmed that we would start our occupation once again. So, we set up about 35 tents, got a food station together, provided food and even a proper dishwashing system. We set up on both sides of the bicentennial walk, it was a beautiful site to see. We knew we were breaking University policy.
The next morning, Friday around 11am, a letter circulated regarding the dismissal of our encampment. Katehi wrote that if we did not remove the tents, at 3pm she would order a peaceful dismissal. I don’t have the paper with me, but her orders implied a non-violent approach.
At 3pm, I was washing the dishes from the night before, when I heard that the police would shortly be at the quad. I immediately went with two friends to the quad, where students were playing guitar and singing, holding hands in a circle.
We moved the tents to the middle of the quad, and began to form a huge circle around the tents. The police eventually came and began to destroy our tents. The mass group of students holding hands in the circle, probably around 50 by then, moved the tents hastily. We kept chanting. The one I liked the most was: “You’re sexy, you’re cute, take off your riot suit!”
We quickly retreated while a few students and two UC Davis alumni were arrested. They were handcuffed with zip-ties that were attached too tightly. One student, a friend of mine, still can’t feel his left hand. He is left-handed. Another alumni was threatened by a cop because his hand was swelling from the pressure. The cop in riot gear had to cut the tie off, threatening: “Don’t move, or you’ll get stabbed.”
The police came at first encircling us on our own campus. After the tents were taken away, we, the students, hand in hand peacefully walked around the police, allowing for an entrance. I know this because I was at the end of the line, and there was about ten feet of space between both sides.
Picture this: the students surrounding police, who were all in riot gear, and the police holding two students captive, one laying on his side on the pavement, like prisoners. We chanted “Let them go” and “You can leave.” We were all sobbing, sitting down peacefully, asking the police to get off of our campus.
“Don’t shoot students.”
I saw some students in the middle start to cover their faces with the few sweaters or bandanas they had, and everyone in the circle followed. I shut my eyes and heard screams from the crowd. My eyes burned, but the tears made it worse.
We marched the police off the quad, everyone. Even those who had just been pepper sprayed. We were chanting at full force, still peaceful and non-violent. We marched the police out of the quad and made them leave. It was a win, and we all could feel it.
I am in solidarity with all of the occupy movements on college campuses around the world. I participate in this struggle for accessible public education for anyone who dreams of going to college in the future. We must preserve our rights to free speech and public education. We are together in this, and we will continue non-violently to protect these institutions. Cops off campus.
In solidarity and with love,
[name witheld]
Katehi told "Good Morning America" this morning that she won't resign: "I really feel confident at this point the university needs me."OK.
I am here to apologize. [crowd cheers] I really feel horrible for what happened on Friday. If you feel you don't want to be students at a university like we had on Friday, I'm just telling you, I don't want to be the chancellor of the university we had on Friday. [applause, cheers, calls of "resign!"] Our University needs to be better than it is, and it needs all of the community to come together to do that. We need to work i-- together. And I know you may not believe anything that I'm telling you today, and you don't have to; it is my responsibility to earn your trust. I only have to say one thing: [voice cracking] there is a plaque out there [gestures] that speaks about seventeenth of November of 1973. [voice shaking] And I was there. And I don't want to forget that. So I hope I will have a better opportunity to work with you, to meet you, to get to know you. And, uh, ah, there will be many opportunities in the next few weeks to do that. Thank you.(17 Nov 1973 was the Athens Polytechnic uprising that Houstonian mentioned upthread.)
I really don't know what Katehi can be thinking at this point.One simple possibility, of course, is "My salary is $400,000 a year."
"The hideous pepper spraying of college students at UC Davis yesterday reminds me of a similar case in the 90s, which I've written about several times before.This video is absolutely horrific - and a good reminder that this sadism has been with us for quite awhile.
"In 1997, environmentalists were staging a sit-in against the cutting of old forest in Humboldt county. The police sprayed pepper spray directly into the protesters eyes in similar fashion to what happened in UC yesterday and then used liquified pepper spray and applied it directly to the protesters eyes with q-tips. I'm not kidding. There's video.
Among the legacies of the uprising was a university asylum law that restricted the ability of police to enter university campuses. University asylum was abolished a few months ago, as part of a process aimed at suppressing anti-austerity demonstrations. The abolition law was based on the recommendations of an expert committee, which reported a few months ago ....The article has a bit more, plus links to the document.
Among the authors of this report – Chancellor Linda Katehi, UC Davis. And, to add to the irony, Katehi was a student at Athens Polytechnic in 1973.
Two people were killed in Cairo and Alexandria this weekend as Egyptian activists took the streets to protest the military's attempts to maintain its grip on power. And guess how the state is justifying its deadly crackdown.posted by symbioid at 3:19 PM on November 22, 2011
"We saw the firm stance the US took against OWS people & the German govt against green protesters to secure the state," an Egyptian state television anchor said yesterday (as translated by the indispensable Sultan Sooud al Qassemi; bold ours).
AS VOTED UPON BY THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY:
The General Assembly of Occupy UC Davis convened and formally voted that it has no-confidence in Linda Katehi to continue to act as Chancellor of the University of California, Davis. Her actions have stripped her of the legitimacy required to continue to rightfully wield the authority of that office.
The General Assembly of Occupy UC Davis has voted and reached consensus to issue an official, formal demand. We demand change in the institution of the Office of the Chancellor itself. We demand the democratization of that Office, to begin with the implementation of a recall mechanism that will allow a sitting chancellor to be removed from office by democratic means.
These are official demands of the students of Occupy UC Davis as voted upon by the General Assembly."It would be awesome if there was someway to index all links in threads someplace on the page for easy access, especially when you want to return to something in a super long thread and can't find it."Here's a Greasemonkey script to do this. Warnings:
Metalinks?
Wonder if anyone w/mad skills could make some sort of page scraper w/links for greasemonkey. A sidebar w/links in the page may be interesting. Hmm...
Flunkie, I think that sounds marvellous, but A. userscripts.org wouldn't let me install an unlisted script without being logged in, then B. after I created an account specifically to install that script, THEN it told me that hotlinking to unlisted scripts isn't allowed! THANKS A HEAP USERSCRIPTS.ORGYeah, sorry about that. I'm trying to get it, uh, de-unlisted, and if the userscripts.org admins get back to me on that, I'll post something here about that. After that you should be able to install it easily.
More recently, Bratton has launched a global security firm, Altegrity Risk International, and been tapped by British Prime Minister David Cameron for advice in curbing gang violence in that country.posted by arm's-length at 8:37 AM on November 23, 2011 [1 favorite]
Bratton’s selection to lead the review may prove to be a controversial one with student protesters.
Speaking in an August interview with The Telegraph newspaper, after rioting in England, Bratton said police should have "a lot of arrows in the quiver." He advocated a doctrine of "escalating force" with weapons including rubber bullets, Tasers, pepper spray and water cannons, the paper reported.
"In my experience, the younger criminal element don’t fear the police and have been emboldened to challenge the police and effectively take them on," Bratton told The Telegraph.
[Katehi] also announced that she will request that the charges be dropped against the 10 protesters arrested by university police. In addition, she said any medical expenses incurred by those hurt will be refunded.posted by arm's-length at 8:41 AM on November 23, 2011
I am not sure I want to learn about gangs from an area of America that has 400 of them. It seems to me, if you've got 400 gangs, then you're not being very effective.Burn.
It is raining on us now and quite cold.
This Thanksgiving, when you are warm, inside, together with your families, won't you please think of us, and talk about the problems with our higher education system that brought us out here?
On Monday, the UC Regents will vote to raise tuition by 81%. Among degree holders under 25, 22% are unemployed and a further 22% have a job that does not require a college degree. Student debt is out of control. We are burdening our youngest generation so heavily that it will hurt us all, as a nation. We are out here for you. Please consider donating to help us continue to speak out.
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posted by Fupped Duck at 1:50 PM on November 19, 2011 [1 favorite]