SUPPORT THE UC 8!

urgh... You know, I think it is important to support them, and it would be helpful if someone close to the action could make specific suggestions of how to be helpful. However, intuitively I think it is a pretty bad idea to put their names up. What goes on the internet, stays on the internet, including when people are looking for jobs . Any of these 8 people could easily be bystanders who were doing nothing except being african americans who were standing around when police were called to a hip hop event- or similar. I have seen stuff like this happen. In southern California, for example, the police have a big crackdown every year upon the halloween event at UC Santa Barbara, where they are passing out drinking tickets to everyone they see standing on their lawn with a red cup, even if they aren't acting up. Still - those students will have a 'drunk in public' misdemeanor on their record that makes them look like a fool who was being aggressive. I haven't heard any reports of what really happened at this event, however it was clear that the police wanted to make a big point because it culminated a week of protest.

I dunno - aspects of this sound so scattered, or below the level of organization and intelligence that I have seen among folks I've spoken to or watched.

Hopefully these sketchy 'police informant' types who were observed at the UC Santa Cruz student lounge occupation two months ago didn't arrive on the scene and instigate the incendiary/torch part of this. Can anyone who was there verify whether the fire was distributed by someone who is known or trusted, or by new and unknown individuals? I mean, in a way I wish I were just joking here, and making a small criticism of how haphazard and drunken this incident sounds. But we do have this verified observation of suspicious individuals at the other student protest.

http://snitchwire.blogspot.com/2009/10/alert-infiltrators-in-santa-cruz.html

This is not cool for all the reasons mentioned above.
After the 2004 RNC in NYC the village voice published an 'honor roll' of everyone name who was arrested during the protests. Quite a few people were very unhappy about that. L

This post should absolutely be hidden unless people decide they want to publicize their names.
Info re: where are these people? When are they getting out?

The noontime rallies in conjunction with the labor strikes of college workers make sense and will produce results. All the rest of what we have been hearing does not make sense. As Mario Savio stated in his famous speech in 1964 at
http://www.fsm-a.org/stacks/mario/mario_speech.html
students are the raw material. Students do not create profits; labor does as profits are the stolen wages of the workers and labor creates all wealth. The problem is not the overpaid administrators; the problem is the private profit system that encourages privatization of the schools. Rather than wasting your energy on trashing administrator homes, walking around with stinking, dangerous torches (who gave you that terrible idea?) and all the rest of the similar actions we have heard about, public school education will be saved when labor in this backward country finally declares a general strike, takes over the schools and the rest of society and runs this society by and for the workingclass. On March 4, there is supposed to be a statewide labor strike. THIS IS LONG OVERDUE. I suggest the students focus their energies on building a WORKER-STUDENT ALLIANCE to make this labor strike successful.

For those from out of state reading all this, UC Berkeley alone has some 35,000 students. San Francisco State University has some 30,000 students. UC Los Angeles has 30,000 students. Thus, when you hear of occupations of 100-200 students, arrests of 60 or so people on some occasions, 8 on this occasion, and almost half are not students or workers at the university at this week's Wheeler occupation arrest, you have to wonder what is going on.

In any event, those of us who are members of the workingclass, and also by definition taxpayers, are not impressed by trashing anything, torches or the like. A successful defense of our public universities requires LEADERSHIP BY LABOR and a worker-student alliance. The students most adversely affected are those who have to work to pay their fees. It would help if those students did labor organizing on their jobs as well as work with college workers for the March 4 statewide strike. The reason we are in this mess is LABOR HAS NOT BEEN ORGANIZING IN THIS BACKWARD COUNTRY FOR OVER 50 YEARS. The insult of the never existing "American dream" has been swallowed hook, line and sinker by the American workingclass and they are just now getting their wake-up call. WAKE UP, GO ON STRIKE, TAKE OVER THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION AND ELIMINATE THE PROFIT MOTIVE, eliminate the stock market, eliminate the military, eliminate prisons and the death penalty, make all schools from pre-school through university PUBLIC AND FREE, make all medical care PUBLIC AND FREE, and much more. THERE ARE NO JOBS FOR UNIVERSITY GRADUATES RIGHT NOW. If your education is to be at all useful, you will have to transform this society to a socialist society, and only a labor movement can do that.

The arrestees' names were released by UC police and first published by corporate media, not here.

Can I please put in a good word for Carwil J. While I don't know the man, he has a very good reputation as a smart, educated, hardworking activist, with connections to well-known progressive organizations. He is known for putting on clever skits, and it would be very out of character for him to have committed any vandalism.
In fact, I bet he's only in town on vacation, and wanted to check in with old friends. He probably got caught due to not fleeing the scene because he was just an observer. In elementary school, my mom taught me and my siblings to just get out of the area if other kids were acting up, because if something gets broken, the homeowner will come out and blame whoever they see at the scene.

If half of what's appeared in the corporate media is true, and these people are really involved, I think sincere activists should distance ourselves from them, not celebrate pointless vandalism. It must feel fun to try lighting UC property on fire (yes, that mansion belongs to UC, regardless of current inhabitants), but absolutely alienates every reasonable ally and potential ally. And anyone who thinks the administration will now have its eyes opened by the legitimacy and maturity of student demands- well, you're a moron. They can now do anything they want against the students, and get majority public support, even though only two of these (possible police agent) vandals are actually students.

While I do understand that people ultimately make decisions for themselves in that those arrested somehow implicated themselves to participating in the action, we can not ignore the role that certain individuals played in agitating and organizing it.

I think it is totally fair that these individuals assume full responsibility in bailing out those that were arrested, especially the young UCB students. Not to be condescending, but we all know young people can be impressionable.

If these folks had any spine or integrity they would come up with the money one way or another.

What do people think?

How quickly we turn on our own. Your comments are disgusting. The eight arrested the other night are victims of the police, targeted not with any proof of their involvement, but rather because the police needed to show that they had caught someone.

What the administration wants, what the cops want, is for us to separate. If we are splintered, we are nothing. Those of us who are more violent must support those of us who are more peaceful, for only through a diversity of tactics will we ever win this thing.

Strategically, if those of us who are more passive turn on those of us who are more violent after an incident like this, we are simply playing into the hands of our enemies. Those who are passive in this struggle weaken their own position when they divide themselves from those who choose to take more "violent" actions.

Let's get real here, it was raining pretty heavy Friday night, and the Chancellor's house is made of stone. I don't think a couple of torches would have set it ablaze.

So yeah, a handful of people out of 80 decided to do some minor property damage, and someone brought some torches along for the dark walk. If this had occurred in broad daylight, it would be written off as just another anarchist protest.

Was it a little bit scary for the chancellor? Probably. Did the action strategically advance the goals of the movement? Probably not.

But you could say that the administration fired the first shot when it arrested 66 people who were studying or sleeping in the early morning Friday. Coming to Wheeler that some people were willing to respond with force.

Perhaps that will resonate with the administration the next time they consider open hostility toward its own students.

One of those arrested was a freelance journalist who often has donated photos and articles to indybay.
It is very easy to guess that officers at the scene might have taken him into custody because he was there with a camera, and could provide him with video and photos of the event, and description of the aggressors (particularly if he is threatened with charges himself). Even if the UC police department arrived very quickly, they couldn't get there in time to see who was engaging in vandalism early on, so they grabbed observers standing near the building with cameras.

STUDENT PROTEST at BIRGENEAU'S HOUSE
three talking points to keep in mind:

1.) The Chancellor chose to initiate this escalation. Breaking a tacit agreement, the police were sent into Wheeler early Friday morning without warning to mass arrest peaceful students. Some are still in jail, and will remain. This rightly infuriated many students, who felt betrayed by the administration. It was this fury that was directed toward the individual who made the decision: the Chancellor. It became clear that even the most peaceful and orderly of protests would be met with repression. Had the arrests not taken place, neither would what occurred at the Chancellor's residence.

2.) The Chancellor is now speaking of violence, but this is notably not the violence that he himself unleashed on students by deploying the police to beat, smash, shoot, and arrest. The Chancellor was not beaten or clubbed. His fingers were not broken. He was not shot with any rubber bullets. Students activists have been subjected to all of this violence in recent weeks. The Chancellor, on the other hand, was in no danger whatsoever. And yet now, "violence" has become the word of the day. Many students have justifiably concluded that the only violence that matters in the eyes of the administration is that which affects administrators; violence against students simply does not count (even as it is perpetuated with trumped-up charges and bail amounts of $132,000).

3.) Of the eight persons arbitrarily arrested by the police in the aftermath of the concert, two are UC Berkeley students, two are UC Davis students, one is a visiting student from City University of New York, one is a journalist, and two are community members supporting the work of student activists. The student movement draws strength from its connections across various schools and with those from allied communities whose work for social justice is intimately connected with students who are working for a more just and equitable education system. Let's remember UC spokesman Dan Mogulof's outrageous claim on the night of November 20 that the vast majority of those involved in the first occupation of Wheeler were not students when in fact 41 out of 43 were. No one should be fooled by the administration's continued attempts to divide the movement by pitting campus against campus and students against community members.

if you are in solidarity with student and worker struggles against capitalism, cops and bureaucracy, then you should find ways to contribute constructively... not post endless streams of patronizing lectures on indymedia about how they are going about things the wrong way. this would be appropriate on a right-wing or mainstream news site, but not here. if you really think they are on the wrong track then set an example by organizing other kinds of actions. but for gods sake there is no reason to make the Man's job easier by getting in each other's way like this.

diversity of tactics people!

You and I can share ideological goals and common beliefs, but that certainly doesn't mean that I should or will ignore stupid actions if/when you conduct them.

I can support the goal of protecting the quality and accessibility to public education without supporting a handful of idiots firebombing another humans house.

People carrying torches are dangerous, candles, or flashlights are another option. Society does not need right wingers to smash these idiot's heads, there are plenty of moderates who would like to do it.

It is amazing to me still that people are repeating the bs reports posted by mainstream media as though it were truth. From what I hear, no one torched the house. No one threw anything on fire inside the house. No one fire bombed the house (but it is also silly to suggest people were carrying torches to simply light the dark path they were walking on- seriously). Just stop the bullshit! It sounds like the only thing that happened here was some things got broken outside the house. As someone else said- was it scary for the people inside? Sure. But it was probably really scary for the people dragged out of Wheeler and onto school buses in their socks and underwear the night before. Either way- please stop repeating the bs stories fed to us by the mainstream media until you know them to be true.

Even self-reporting here on Indybay by people attending the march or observing it first hand acknowledge that it was out of control. People were bangin on the cars of uninvolved people on the streets, overturning trashcans, and then there are the pix of damage to the house and pix of the torch carrying mob.


Keep it real. It hapened. Deal with that reality if you want to have any credibility. Mistakes were made.