For nearly two years now, the University of California has been criminalizing peaceful student protest. University officials have arrested activists as they slept quietly in a campus building, resting after a day of hosting workshops and seminars during a pre-finals study period. Campus police have used batons and tasers and pepper spray on protesters who meant them no harm and posed no physical threat. The university has distorted and abused its student conduct policies, deploying judicial sanction to suppress lawful dissent.
And all the while the dismantling of public higher education in California has rolled on. The state's governor and legislature have at times responded to the activists' passionate defense of their institution, but the institution itself has not.
The administration of the University of California has hollowed out the space at the heart of the university where productive dialogue and robust disputation should reside. They have thwarted students' efforts to devise a creative, productive response to the current crisis, to build common cause in the shaping of the educational community. (The faculty, meanwhile, have mostly stayed silent and disengaged.)
And now a campus police officer has drawn his gun and pointed it at students who, seeing no alternative, were -- in the words of Berkeley's own son -- putting their bodies upon the wheels and upon the apparatus, trying to make it stop.
The chief of the University of California San Francisco Police Department says the students took the officer's baton. But video footage shows that officer standing alone, apart from the crowd, letting the baton fall from his own hand as he draws his weapon. She says that a student beat the officer with that baton. But video footage of the five-second scuffle that preceded the officer's act shows no such beating. She says someone yelled "take the gun." But video footage shows nothing but confusion in the moments before the gun was drawn, confusion that turned to shock and fear as the weapon appeared.
And yet the chief of the University of San Francisco Police Department says the officer who drew his gun and pointed it at a group of rowdy but fundamentally non-violent student protesters showed "great restraint."
Forty years ago, in the spring of 1970, law enforcement agents twice opened fire at angry student demonstrators on American college campuses -- first at Kent State University in Ohio, and then, ten days later, at Jackson State College in Mississippi. Six students were killed. Twenty-one others were wounded by gunfire. One remains paralyzed to this day.
In the wake of those killings Richard Nixon appointed a presidential commission to study the crisis in the nation's universities, and when that commission published its report a few months later, it called the Kent State and Jackson State shootings "unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable." A nation "driven to use the weapons of war upon its youth," the commission declared, "is a nation on the edge of chaos. A nation that has lost the allegiance of its youth is a nation that has lost part of its future."
California in 2010 is not Ohio or Mississippi in 1970, of course. Two years ago I would have scoffed at such a comparison.
I'm not scoffing today.
Today I'm worried. Today I'm sad. Today I'm angry.
Cross-posted on StudentActivism.net
Follow Angus Johnston on Twitter: www.twitter.com/studentactivism
And thank you for your post. I'm a grad student at UCLA and we have been watching all of this closely, especially after our friends were tased during non-violent action (a sit-in in front of a parking garage) last November. I was horrified and shocked by police violence then, and am horrified (though no longer shocked) today. My campus does not feel like a safe place anymore.
The entire altercation appears to have resulted from a miscommunication between this officer and the rest of his team, and it lasted for barely five seconds. Whatever we may think of the behavior of the students during those five seconds, there is no indication whatsoever that they actually posed the kind of physical threat that would justify the drawing of a gun.
Peaceful demonstrations sure, but your doing it wrong!
Shame on the students for their behavior. The officer was just doing his job and protecting himself...
Sorry Angus, there is no "conspiracy" here. The Regents aren't ordering the police to "violently surpress" these protestors. The police use force when force is pointed at them. What do you expect????
Also, as a reminder, these same police or the ones the protestors claim to be protesting for: they are full-time employees of the University of California and are facing the same pension cuts that everyone else and that the students seem to care so much about.
I guess its "RETIRE WITH DIGNITY!!!!" as long as you let me assault you on my way in to takeover the Regents meeting. Its completely absurd and these students are not very sympathetic characters.
You know, we do have a political system to voice just these kinds of grievances.... Why don't they use them? They should be organizing and lobbying Sacramento not exploding in a blind rage on a Board of Regents that has no choice but to make cuts and increase fees withut more revenue from the state.
http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2010/07/uc_regents_bar_documentary_fil.php
http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2010/07/uc_officials_say_differing_sto.php
"the cops are great", my experience and the news say otherwise
And that's putting it nicely.
They simply don't know the law.
I once had one lecture me that by carrying groceries home from the store on a public street I was violating the open container law because a beer had fallen out of one of the 6-pack rings... not actually opened, mind you, but out of the plastic rings that hold th 6-pack together.
I told him to arrest me if he could handle the financial impact of a 4th Amendment lawsuit -- so he only gave me a "warning."
These are NOT peaceful protesters (some of them are but there is definitely violence as well)...
Taking over a campus building is not an act of violence, and campus police officers, of all people, should be expected to understand the difference between the two.
This is what happens when you treat civil disobedience as a mosh pit. I feel so insulted as a long time activist for people to act like this is acceptable behavior.
But even if we empathize with this officer's anxiety, two questions remain. First, is drawing his weapon an appropriate response? Second, why has the UCSF police chief apparently misrepresented the circumstances in which he drew his weapon? And third, why was this situation allowed to develop in the first place?
It's not my goal to make a scapegoat of this officer. For all I know, he's a conscientious and caring professional. But when campus cops start drawing their weapons and pointing them at student protesters, and when those who do are lauded by their superiors for showing "restraint," it's a recipe for disaster.
There's got to be a better way, and the University of California has a moral obligation to find one.
But ultimately the issue here isn't this one officer's actions. That wasn't the focus of my essay, and it's not the focus of my concern. The issue is the University of California's systematic undermining and marginalizing of legitimate student protest, and the radicalizing effects that this strategy has had on activists and campus police alike.
Yesterday five UC students were handcuffed and threatened with arrest for chalking on their campus. Today several UC students were cited for putting up posters that included an image of the officer who drew his gun yesterday. Is this a sane way for a university to behave? Is this an approach to legitimate student protest that makes any sense at all?
I say it's not. I say it's dangerous.
In general, the crowd was fairly peaceful. People attempted to break past the police lines and access the building, but they weren't physically confronting the police.
I'm not saying that we were in any way innocent. Some of us were aggressive, some of us weren't. But there is no justification for him to pull out his gun. If you pull it out, you have an intent to shoot. end of story.
http://www.ktvu.com/video/25828298/index.html
Thank you for making our point for us.
You think that is responsible behavior for a protest?
Pick up a book and read about Ghandi.