I recently received an email forwarded to groups of students and faculty from colleagues at the University of California at Berkeley. The message described the excessive use of force by UC Berkeley police in their attempt to dismantle tents in Sproul Plaza. I was in that plaza a couple of weeks ago, speaking nearby at Berkeley's Townsend Center for the Humanities. I was shocked to read that one of my hosts, Celeste Langan, the director of the Center, was arrested and manhandled along with several students, staff and faculty who were protesting peacefully. Here's the beginning of Prof. Langan's comment on what happened:
I participated in the Occupy Cal rally on Sproul Plaza on November 9 (my sign, "We're Afraid for Virginia Woolf," made it to the Daily Cal's top 10) and stayed for the general assembly. The organizers of Occupy Cal asked those who were willing to stay and link arms to protect those who were attempting to set up the encampment; I chose to do so. I knew, both before and after the police gave orders to disperse, that I was engaged in an act of civil disobedience. I want to stress both of those words: I knew I would be disobeying the police order, and therefore subject to arrest; I also understood that simply standing, occupying ground, and linking arms with others who were similarly standing, was a form of non-violent, hence civil, resistance. I therefore anticipated that the police might arrest us, but in a similarly non-violent manner. When the student in front of me was forcibly removed, I held out my wrist and said "Arrest me! Arrest me!" But rather than take my wrist or arm, the police grabbed me by my hair and yanked me forward to the ground, where I was told to lie on my stomach and was handcuffed. The injuries I sustained were relatively minor -- a fat lip, a few scrapes to the back of my palms, a sore scalp -- but also unnecessary and unjustified.
You can read more here.
Here's a YouTube video that includes her arrest.
As indicated in the email from Berkeley, the absurdity of the university's response is best summarized by Steven Colbert.
Berkeley, like Wesleyan, has a long and proud tradition of protest. As a student at Wesleyan I participated in protests, and now as president I have been (and likely will be again) their object. I can imagine (with dread) extreme situations in which force would be required to preserve campus safety and our ongoing operations. As students, staff and faculty make their voices heard, however, the university's responsibility is to protect their rights, even as it ensures that the educational mission of the school continues. Our joint responsibility is for the future of an open and safe campus environment where learning, grounded in freedom of thought and expression, continues.
Prof. Langan wrote that she was defending liberal education in Sproul Plaza -- that she was defending an idea of the university that is being dismantled by political and education leaders who support only the most narrow forms of instrumental training. Prof. Langan's idea of the university emphasizes the links between the practice of free thinking and the cultivation of freedom in the years after graduation. She is a teacher and a student of Thoreau, the author of Walden and of Civil Disobedience, who understood how our American emphasis on the bottom line can make us blind to the world before our eyes and to our possibilities for change. Thoreau wrote: We should seek to be fellow students with the pupil, and should learn of, as well as with him, if we would be most helpful to him. But I am not blind to the difficulties of the case; it supposes a degree of freedom which rarely exists.
Our colleagues on the West Coast, the faculty and staff who stood shoulder to shoulder with students at Berkeley, were exercising "a degree of freedom which rarely exists." Their peaceful efforts to protest the dismantling of a once great university deserve our respect. The violent response to these efforts deserves our condemnation.
Alec Baldwin: What Occupy Wall Street Has Taught Me
"These protesting students should threaten to LEAVE and DROP-OUT of the colleges and universitiÂes that are raising tuition!"
You are 100% correct, but they do not want to hear that...for it does not have the same popular cry Freedom.
Have no fear for this, as in 1968 will also pass. The negativity is growing towards this movement daily, last I heard was 63% of Americans do not support them.
"You can't allow the people to take over."
- Pat McCrory
Is it no wonder we are hated around the world when it is
DO AS I SAY NOT AS I DO
No one got arrested who didn't choose to be arrested, to promote their street theater.
Are all of the Asian students (the majority ethnicity) that attend Berkley rallying against "Wallstreet and the man"? I hightly doubt it as many of them have come from systems (or are first generation from families that came here) that are far worse and they know that our faulted system is one of the best. That if you work hard and study, you will be successful. This is why Asia is so succesful and we are lagging. Hard work and education is the answer, not complaining and media fed cynicism.
Anger and protesting is a fashion for some.
And notice, I did not say inequalities of income.
The People have finally awoken to the fact that their voice has been silenced by the power of the1%. That's not what a democracy is supposed to be about. We should all be equal under the law. And the law should be responsive to the needs of the majority.
Money is not the issue.
Power and the naked exercise of it against the majority, not just the protesters--daily, in every way--is the issue.
Those of you who are so inclinded may now proceed with your hateful rhetoric, assumptions, and straw-man arguments directed at me.
If I saw that cop today, I would still punch him in the face about 34 times. Then kick him in his stomach and ask him if he feels like a big man for beating on a child?
Once you see this video, you understand how these cops are so wrong. What if his daughter was in school, and another cop hit his daughter in the stomach ? I bet he would want to kill that man.
"To Protect and Serve" has gradually shifted to the state of mind now where many in the law enforcement community view the general populace as the "enemy."
The efforts to militarize our domestic police forces seem to be growing, and practices like tasering is viewed as an acceptable way for a police officer to end a disagreement with a citizen. (And no, that's not an exaggeration.)
I don't know where this will take us as a country, but it doesn't look good.
Too big to FAIL--Too big to JAIL. Keep positive--see the good points of this. Unless you want it to fail.
The first thing I think of whenever I see a phalanx of such people, armed and moving aggressively against unarmed and largely peaceful protestors is of Robocop, a formerly human creature, made into something other by his job, good only for violence, and the only interaction with the populace at large saying "Move along, citizen".
When Mayor Quan said the other day that the Oakland PD had to blow off almost two hundred 911 calls because too many officers were engaged in guarding the protestors in Frank Ogawa Plaza I had to laugh. Obviously, watching the protestors to make sure they behaved was more important than responding to calls for help in what were potentially violent crimes. But then it's much easier standing around in riot gear with the intention of threatening your fellow citizens than to protect them from actual criminals.
It is a phrase that defines this country and protects all points of view, no matter how misguided they might be.
It is a phrase that the current administration and recent past administrations have chosen to ignore and even flaunt.
The phrase?
THE RULE OF LAW
The rule of law as a concept does not mean that all practices of law enforcement are legal. Indeed, such excessive force described here suggest that the violation of the rule of law was on the part of police and is more along the lines an authoritarian society rather than a democratic republic founded by a group of protesters.
One feels as if it were a gated community with rich administrators (growing in numbers, minions, and $) wanting to protect their turf rather than support real liberal arts education, which should include participatory democracy and teach-ins on what is going on.
Good post, but it should be "flout" the rule of law (as in disrespect or disregard) not "flaunt" it (as in showy display). Sorry for the grammatical nit-pick.
When clear commands like "disperse" are not sufficient, then minor violence is often the next step.
If you have the gumption to ignore official requests to disperse, you can handle a fat lip.
Please!
Police have been abusing people across the country, from the young veteran who took a cop's rubber bullet in Oakland to the peaceful women in New York who were maced for exercising their right to peaceful protest. That veteran got a fractured skull, by the way.
What rights did they deny? The First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment and the recent denial of habaeus corpus rights for journalists detained in New York. The police are not wrong in every case but you are squarely supporting abuse by cops with no concern for the guaranteed rights they deny the public who they are supposed to serve.