UCSC Academic Senate releases Tent City Report that includes anonymous spy testimony

The UCSC Academic Senate task force charged with investigating the "Tent City" protest and the police response released a draft report today that can be obtained (as a pdf) here. On pages 3 and 4 of the report, in summarizing the background events leading up to the confrontation, it is stated that "The administration was particularly alarmed by the presence of the author/organizer David Solnit at training sessions at the Resource Center for Non-Violence, noting his association with the Seattle WTO protests. The report goes on to say that

among the materials submitted to the task force was an unnamed individual who attended the workshop and the Resource Center for Non-Violence. That individual estimated that "25 subjects were in attendance" and that they learned to "resist in a passive manner" in order to "hold out as long as possible and then be arrested." This source reports that organizers advised them that "the use of force would only discredit their cause."

The task force report does not make clear if the identity of the individual (i.e., "the source") was unknown to them, or how they ascertained the validity of the information supplied unnamed individual. Use of the term "subjects" is suggestive that the source may have been associated with law enforcement. In a previous statement, the Chancellor has declared that its university police have not been used to spy on student organizers.