Occupy Everything! Photos from UC Berkeley

I support the protests but from a person standing by in the public, the whole debate needs to be reduced down to about 5 sound bytes or the public will not understand or come on board.

Here is the only thing I can find, in a few minutes, getting at the facts of the debate --

http://utotherescue.blogspot.com/2009/11/what-regents-should-do-instead-of.html

And really, I cannot get the basics out of that. The main website also does not appear to have a petition for average public, and does not lay out the basics and the proposed solutions.

The public viewpoint on this will be, "We're all getting cut, not just you, so what's the big deal?" And the basic public perception to "free universities" will be, "If each person is paying thousands now, how on earth can you just lose that and then operate "for free"??"

You need to provide 3 - 5 basic simple points for the public, like:

"Instead of free universities, as laid out in 1960, the richest 10 % in CA got free money by having their taxes cut xxx% over 40 years."

You need to lay out the crimes and the solutions like you were selling Crest or Colgate.

Public won't get it otherwise. It all sounds like rich students playing games in the rain because they don't want to fork over like everyone else.

Seriously. You need some PR.

I drove by the banners on 80 this morning and it said "SEIU". An average driver doesn't even know what that is, much less what it means relative to the protests.

The average reader will not be reading socialist worker to hear what the basic are.

Boil it down to soundbytes.

FUCK SOCIALIST WORKER, FUCK DEMANDS, FUCK SOUNDBYTES!

OCCUPY FUCKING EVERYTHING!

The student occupiers are having violent physical threats made to them by the police through the door!!

tell them to camera phone it and try and get the threats on recording

A group of us from San Francsico State are coming soon!
Keep it up! We can't wait to join you in the streets!

Solidarity

here's a video by someone, where the police are mildly shoving, but they are surrounded on all sides by students around Wheeler.
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1280538336639&ref=mf

3 must reads from the UC student movement:

DIY Occupation guide
http://theimaginarycommittee.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/occupation-guide.pdf

Communique from an absent future
http://wewanteverything.wordpress.com/2009/09/24/communique-from-an-absent-future/

A Vision of a New University and A Brief List of Impossible Demands
http://zinelibrary.info/vision-new-university-brief-list-impossible-demands

ALMOST EVERY STATE IN THE U.S. IS FACING BUDGET CUTS. SPREAD THE MOVEMENT.

Messages like 'we want everything' only reinforce the popular perception that this is just about entitled college kids thinking that they should be immune to the cutbacks everyone else is facing.

for those people who think that shit is going to change overnight -- that's just not how it works -- you need to build support.

and screaming 'fuck demands! occupy everything" ... well, 99.9% of folks just don't have any idea what they hell that means.

She said:
"Ask for work. If they do not give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread."

This logic can apply doubly to this education situation we have before us.