UCSC Day of Solidarity and Action with UC Davis

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 28th, 7:00 AM @ QUARRY PLAZA

IN SOLIDARITY with the UC Davis General Assembly near-unanimous call for strike action to be leveled at and within all sectors of the University of California system, IN REACTION to the brutal, unconstitutional, and repressive police force exercised against peaceful UC Davis protesters, and IN RESPONSE to the UC Regents rescheduling their November 16th meeting as a closed-doors teleconference to avoid united student outrage, the UC Santa Cruz General Assembly is calling for a DAY OF ACTION on MONDAY, NOVEMBER 28th.

Last Friday, November 18th, UCPD pepper-sprayed and batonned non-violent UC Davis demonstrators who had formed a human chain. The particular agent used was military-grade pepper spray, which, in order to be effective and (for the most part) effectively non-lethal, must be discharged at a distance of 15 FEET. As the various videos taken of the incident indicate, students were maced repeatedly at POINT BLANK RANGE. Junior UC Davis faculty member Nathan Brown, in his open letter to UCD Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi, who ordered the police to clear demonstrators from the campus, writes:

"Police used batons to try to push the students apart. Those they could separate, they arrested, kneeling on their bodies and pushing their heads into the ground. Those they could not separate, they pepper-sprayed directly in the face, holding these students as they did so. When students covered their eyes with their clothing, police forced open their mouths and pepper-sprayed down their throats. Several of these students were hospitalized. Others are seriously injured. One of them, forty-five minutes after being pepper-sprayed down his throat, was still coughing up blood."

Instead of greeting this horrific incident with the condemnation it most certainly deserves, Chancellor Katehi instead justified the brutality of UC police by claiming that linking arms is "not" non-violent protest, following an almost identical statement made by UC Berkeley Chancellor Birgeneau's response to the brutality of UCPD on Berkeley's campus.

This is ridiculous. Even UC President Mark Yudoff thinks so, writing, "I am appalled by images of University of California students being doused with pepper spray and jabbed with batons. I intend to do everything in my power . . . to protect the rights of our students, faculty, and staff TO ENGAGE IN NON-VIOLENT PROTEST." Yudoff is here also referring to the equally repressive actions taken against UC Berkeley protesters in Sproul Plaza on November 9th. Professor Brown writes,

"UC Berkeley faculty stood together with students, their arms linked together. Associate Professor of English Celeste Langan was grabbed by her hair, thrown on the ground, and arrested. Associate Professor Geoffrey O’Brien was injured by baton blows. Professor Robert Hass, former Poet Laureate of the United States, National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winner, was also struck with a baton. These faculty stood together with students in solidarity, and they too were beaten and arrested by the police. In writing this letter, I stand together with those faculty and with the students they supported."

It is time for us, as students and faculty of UC Santa Cruz, to stand together with our fellows as well.

Our demands are congruent with those put forth by the UC Davis General Assembly. Namely:

1) The immediate resignation of Chancellor Katehi

2) The immediate disbanding of the superfluous, costly, and repressive UCPD

3) NO MORE FEE HIKES, the continued existence of which is precisely what our brave, brutalized fellow students and faculty have been protesting in the first place.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 28th, we will begin the day by convening in QUARRY PLAZA at 7:00 AM. Yes, in the morning. If you are committed, find a comrade and inform yourself. It is from here that we will begin our Day of Action, and demonstrations will in fact be protracted throughout the day. If it's too early for you, come when you can. We will also convene at QUARRY PLAZA at 12:00 PM, it is at this point we hope to achieve or to have already achieved our critical mass. Apologies for the ambiguity, it is quite necessary in case of possible surveillance. Bear this in mind, and communicate accordingly.

Again, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 28th at 7:00 AM and 12:00 PM.

No more UCPD.
No more repression.
No more justification of brutality.
No more stolen futures.

Expect us.