Support The Davis Dozen! Drop All Charges!

Statement made at UC Berkeley Press Conference (9 April 2012)

We all know that banks love students. Banks love student loans, the only kind of debt you can't default on. People over 60 owe $36 billion in student debt, total student debt exceeds $1 trillion. Banks foolishly believe that these loans will all be paid back, and in this hope have created financial instruments that further profit from these loans. It is not going to work, but banks will still take plenty from us because, if we do not pay in cash, our wages, health care, and social security (should we have any of the three) will be garnished.

Last year, UC Davis and US Bank entered a relationship. The deal was that US Bank would provide some money each year to UC Davis, an amount based on how many students opened up accounts with US Bank, in exchange for Davis leasing an office to the bank in the Student Union and issuing new student ID cards, ones with a US Bank logo, that could be used as debit cards. This is a deal that benefits both sides, US Bank gets a captive group of possible customers and UC Davis gets some cash. The only people who do not benefit are the students. The logic of privatization is most clear when a student ID card is branded by its corporate sponsor. The money paid by US Bank to UC Davis is simply tuition by another name. Rather than call it tuition, they call it rent. But for US Bank this money is profit from student debt and for the University it is the financial benefit of privatization. It is a vicious cycle. The UC raises tuition forcing students to take on more debt, and students purchase more debt a portion of the profits of which go to the University. No one can be unclear about what this means, this University is not a site of disinterested learning or even one of strategic consideration of how to get the right degree for a future, well paid job. No, the University is a place to accumulate debt, to sell the value of future labor. The students are not the driving intellectual and cultural force that will graduate to participate in a thriving economy, they are wage slaves who will be deprived of much of their future wage in order to earn the right to a wage.

Protest of this deal met with what seemed like administrative silence. Unlike the notorious pepper spray incident of November 18th, no spectacular violence occurred—until the last two weeks.

At this point, the University announced that it had referred six cases to the Yolo County District Attorney, who increased the number to twelve cases. These individuals were to be charged with twenty one misdemeanor counts, adding up to a possible eleven years in prison.

This tactic is being used at Berkeley as well as elsewhere: retroactive criminalization. Truly the banal violence of the courts system. No batons, no pepper spray, just letters in the mail and time in prison. This type of violence cannot be photographed and circulated on the web to raise ire. But this violence is, in many ways, more terrible than the physical violence of the riot cops.

In the process of privatizing public education, the University will have to enforce its policies with the means available to it. For the past several years this has predominately meant riot cops. Now the use of courts has increased in this mix. As a friend said, it is like that show Law and Order was all about fucking over students.

We have to understand that this level of repression is serious and heavy handed. So frequently I am asked by friends, why do you think the UC is treating protestors so harshly? To be frank, I think it is because the University may better estimate our power than we do. This question assumes that the protestors can not really end the process of privatization (or even reverse it), and so draconian repression is excessive. Let us challenge this assumption. Perhaps this repression is because we are potentially so powerful, because the University accurately estimates our potential power. Let's actually be that powerful.