Anti-racism Occupations at UCSD, UCLA

From UC Regent Live

This morning, students with the Black Student Union at UCSD and allies
began a sit-in at their Chancellor’s office demanding action, after a
noose was found in Geisel Library. Students are demanding that the
campus be closed down for the safety of students.

Beginning around 1:50pm, Afrikan Student Union and at least 100 people
are occupying Murphy Hall, the administrative building of UCLA. They are
meeting with the chancellor as we speak in order to call for the
following, in light of the racist incidents at UCSD:

1. Closure of UCSD until there is a full investigation of events
surrounding Compton Cook Out and the noose left hanging in
Library.

2. Expulsion of offending students and dismantling of The Koala newspaper.

3. Diversity needs be met by March 4th. (see BSU demands from UCSD)

Statement from UCSD Black Student Union

(From Occupy California)

5:10pm: The UCSD sit-in has turned into a civil disobedience action. Chancellor Fox apparently has not attempted to meet the demands of the students. Some students have left the office to support outside, but estimates of 80-100 students inside are willing to be arrested. So far no word of police action or likelihood of arrests.

5:20pm: Drum circle forming outside Chancellor’s office. Police are threatening arrests. Students: “We will stay until BSU demands are met.”

5:23pm: According to one source, as many as 300 people still inside the office. A live audio stream is available here.

5:35pm: Students meeting with Chancellor Fox return to the sit-in to discuss the letter they received from the admin, describing it as, “bullshit.” They plan to return on Monday with their response. The student(s) involved in the noose incident is being suspended, although a time frame hasn’t been established. The protesters are not satisfied with this weak response by the administration, considering this new document from the Chancellor to have no new concrete improvements over previous ones.

Video available on CNN ireport: http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-413766

Wheeler Hall raided at 5 AM with 64 Arrests

At 5 AM this morning the Wheeler Hall study-in/soft occupation called Live Week was raided with 64 arrests. This after a week of activities such as skillshares, lectures, and film screenings.

In a statement the administration said they decided to arrest the students to prevent a planned concert, featuring a member of The Coup, that they feared woud disrupt finals that were to begin the next day. The statement also concedes Liveweek was “non-disruptive” and “they appeared to be taking steps to ensure that their activities would not conflict with classroom review sessions underway inside the building.”

This local news report shows students who participated in the previous Wheeler occupation were the first arrested. An article from Daily Cal says those 8 will be the only ones held and “may have to post bail.”

A rally has been called today for California Hall at noon to support arrested students. There have now been over 200 students arrested resisting the tuition hike throughout the UC system.

UC Semester not quite over yet…

Early this morning Wheeler hall was reoccupied “reclaimed” by students intending to turn it into a cooperatively run 24-hour free-school for the entire week. It seems the action has been successful, at least for the night. Twitter reports cops began to move in with eyes toward arrests, but “The tensions have subsided, thanks to your support. We can now go in & out.” (Via http://twitter.com/ucbprotest)

An earlier statement from describes the intent of the action, called Live Week:

“Dear friends, and those we’ve yet to meet,

Over the past months, we, the workers, students, and faculty of this campus, have shown the world that we can shut this university down.

Now, we show that we can run our public university the way it should be—by the public.

Starting Monday, December 7 on the steps of Wheeler Hall at 2:30 p.m., we will transform Wheeler Hall into a 24-hour open university. We will open the space for anyone in the community to come and go as they please, to organize study sessions, teach-ins, concerts, forums, club meetings, dance parties, and anything else our creative minds dream up.

Live Week is a time for us to open this university to all people and to all forms of expression and education. Our university is not only a space for hard work and practicality; it is a place for fun, fulfillment, and happiness. Our university is not only a space for people of privilege; it is a place for all of the community: young and old, rich and poor, majority and minority, teacher and student, on-campus and off-campus. Our university is not only a space to learn from books and lectures; it is a place to learn from each other’s experiences and expressions, and to create new knowledge and build a new future.

This university is yours! We shift competition to cooperation. We replace stress and anxiety with compassion and joy. We transform the traditional balance of power of this institution to create an education that includes the interests, concerns, and passions of all of us, and embodies the true ideal of democracy.

It’s time to reinvent public education together, So come one, come all to your university!”

At UC Irvine, administrators caved to threat of a similar action and agreed to keep the library open 24 hours.

The Necrosocial: Civic Life, Social Death, and the UC

Printable PDF

Occupied UC Berkeley, 18 November 2009

Being president of the University of California is like being manager of a cemetery: there are many people under you, but no one is listening.
UC President Mark Yudof

Capital is dead labor which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor.
Karl Marx

Politics is death that lives a human life.
Achille Mbembe

Yes, very much a cemetery.  Only here there are no dirges, no prayers, only the repeated testing of our threshold for anxiety, humiliation, and debt.  The classroom just like the workplace just like the university just like the state just like the economy manages our social death, translating what we once knew from high school, from work, from our family life into academic parlance, into acceptable forms of social conflict.

Who knew that behind so much civic life (electoral campaigns, student body representatives, bureaucratic administrators, public relations officials, Peace and Conflict Studies, ad nauseam) was so much social death?  What postures we maintain to claim representation, what limits we assume, what desires we dismiss?

And in this moment of crisis they ask us to twist ourselves in a way that they can hear.  Petitions to Sacramento, phone calls to Congressmen—even the chancellor patronizingly congratulates our September 24th student strike, shaping the meaning and the force of the movement as a movement against the policies of Sacramento.  He expands his institutional authority to encompass the movement.  When students begin to hold libraries over night, beginning to take our first baby step as an autonomous movement he reins us in by serendipitously announcing library money.  He manages movement, he kills movement by funneling it into the electoral process.  He manages our social death.  He looks forward to these battles on his terrain, to eulogize a proposition, to win this or that—he and his look forward to exhausting us.

UC Headquarters in Oakland briefly occupied

Outraged by the eviction of the Wheeler Occupation and the police violence around Berkeley Friday, over 100 students seized UC Headquarters demanding to talk to UC President Mark Yudof.

With supporters and riot police massing some administrators apparently talked to the students for 2 hours, and the students left by the time the building closed.  This tweet indicates a very phoney sounding compromise on the part of a UC administrator. Nonetheless, action continues throughout California.

Follow this indymedia link for updates on Monday’s action and search these Hash Tags on Twitter: #UCStrike #OurUni #UCregents