Brief reflections on UCSC and UCB

It is no great secret that the terminal crisis of capitalism is before our eyes: the welfare state, the bitter product of two world wars, the child of Hitler and Noske, wherein a certain social safety net was provided for a measure of social peace, is in the process of being forcibly liquidated by the exigencies of an incresingly bankrupt social system. This much is evident to all those who have a basic thinking capacity. And thus, those who are protesting for a defense of this transient historical form will find nothing here of value, nor even anything here addressed to them. Such people can protest all day for a return to the glory days they imagine, but since these halcyon times never existed anyways, one can see they will certainly have no success now. Rather we address ourselves to those who believe in any fashion in the “terminus of student life”; but not of course to open something so worthless as a literary polemic or discussion, nor to presume to give prescriptions or orders — all we do here is attempt a “generalization of insinuation.” For, to be right means nothing, what is important is acting in consequence.

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The emptiness of Liberal morality:

Or why non-violence discourse is destructive.

There is a growing commentary critiquing the blind discursive commitment to non-violence that permeates many aspects of on-campus resistance in California. FN1 In the wake of the assaults on Chancellor Birgeneau's on-campus mansion, the hegemony of non-violent discourse was threatened and some insight into where constituent interests lie was provided.

On the one hand, we have an administration committed to violence -- monolithic in its hierarchy and monopolization of force. On the other, is a loose consortium of students, faculty, and workers with some intersecting interests and goals. The former, the administration, has a clear goal: to support the privatization agenda being forced down the student/worker/faculty throat by any means necessary. The latter group has no unified 'plan,' 'goal,' or consensus about what is possible.


Letter from Student Advocate’s Office on Friday morning arrests

The Student Advocate’s Office (SAO), a non-partisan and executive office of the ASUC, is deeply concerned with the circumstances surrounding the university arrests of 66 individuals, including approximately 40 students, from Wheeler Hall on December 11, 2009.

While we do not condone conduct that threatens the safety of the campus community and recognize that the planned unauthorized concert lacked the necessary safety precautions, we believe the administration did not adhere to procedures that were in the best interest of students. The following is a statement that addresses our concerns:

Read the entire letter.

Don’t give Birgeneau a free pass to shut down student organizing

One need not agree with whatever happened at the Chancellor’s mansion to resist the administration’s attempt to co-opt independent student forces by soliciting their blanket condemnation of the incident.

Governor Schwarzenegger finally took notice of public education after the incident, calling individuals who were allegedly involved “terrorists.” Earlier today the Chancellor and his PR spokesperson Dan Mogulof echoed a similar approach, calling them “extremists.” Of course, we have no idea what actually happened yet, or if police provocateurs played any role, but it is clear that with this incident the administration and police hope to obtain a pretext to further suppress student organizing efforts. Students should not give it to them — even if they disagree with what their peers are accused of doing.


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Eight Arrested After Attack on Chancellor's House

By Javier Panzar
Daily Californian
Contributing Writer
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Category: News > University > Student Life

Several dozen individuals, some wielding torches, marched on UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau's home on the north side of campus early Saturday morning at about midnight, in what police said was an attack where damage was done to the home and several torches were thrown at police officers responding to the scene.

As three extinguished torches lay on the scene, eight people were arrested--including two UC Berkeley students. One of the six non-students had been arrested Friday morning at the occupation of Wheeler Hall, according to UCPD Lt. Adan Tejada. Those arrested have been charged with rioting, while further charges have yet to be determined for those who attacked police.

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SF Chronicle Article

PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE DISTRIBUTION

PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE DISTRIBUTION
UC BERKELEY “OPEN UNIVERSITY” RAIDED BY UC POLICE, 65 ARRESTED

Contact: Elias Martinez (559) 999-4964 and Ianna Owen (570) 977-0487

This morning, on the fifth and final day of a weeklong “Open University” held at UC Berkeley’s Wheeler Hall, University of California Police stormed into the building around 5am, arresting 65 people without provocation, witnesses said.

“People were not given a final warning – police burst in while people were sleeping and immediately started locking doors and arresting people. Many students have papers due today, and finals to take starting tomorrow,” said Elias Martinez, an undergraduate from Political Science. “There had been cops in here all week, they were acting like it was okay. We had no idea.”

San Francisco State

SF State occupation.

Just a spoonful of sugar . . .

Editor: Greece's youth movement is strong, militant, and national in scope. Following nationwide student and youth insurrections last year, the Greek state is applying a counterinsurgency program focused on politically left youth and students. Recent Events precipitated a new wave of demonstrations and occupations.


During the last two months, the strategy of counterinsurgency developed by the greek state since December has passed to a new phase of totalisation. If we speak of counterinsurgency and not of repression it is because the former in contrast to the latter is not so much a military type intervention, as an integrated political and social technology producing consent, fear and defeatism. It aims not at the immediate annihilation of the insurgents, but at the removal of their living space: the conceptual, affective and cultural plane of the insurgency. This is a preventive strategy whose object is the wealth of possibilities that sprouted out of the insurrectionary event. It is a low intensity warfare, a politico-psychological warfare, in the sense that its goal is the corrosion of the political, social and psychological consistency of the insurgency. The basic principle of counterinsurgency is, on the one hand, to “win hearts and minds”, and, on the other hand, “not to take the fish out of the sea, but to dry the sea where the insurgents swim like fish”. And it does this by “separating and uniting”. Separating the insurgents from their possibilities, separating the insurgents from their political and social affinities, separating the insurgents from each other. And at the same time uniting social discontent with the call of reform, by representing the insurgency as a cause of backwardness, and uniting the forces of repression with wide segments of the population, by presenting the former in as both humane, pro-people and effective.

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For more information about the situation in Greece, Occupied London features regular updates and photos.