When the Berkeley students unite with the people of Oakland against the batons of the 1%...take a guess who is going to win...this time.
Chancellor Birgeneau says no camping out on the steps. Chancellors have said that before. Chancellor Heyman said it back in the '80s during the anti-apartheid/U.C. divestment movement. He threatened to-
"take action to open the doors of Sproul Hall, take down the signs and end the camping out."
Yes, we took the steps & slept there. We renamed it Stephen Biko Plaza. The police came in riot gear, arrested 100s of us, & cleared the steps.
Then we took the steps again.
The same steps that were the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement.
Chancellor Birgeneau has squared off against the students, declaring that they will not be allowed to occupy the steps with tents & sleeping bags. Yet they will, & they will keep them. They could do it alone: they are young, strong, educated, & know they are right. And they have their tents.
(Photos below from The Daily Cal's live-blog if not otherwise noted.)
But this time they are not alone. Occupy Oakland is in solidarity with the students of Occupy Cal & Occupy Berkeley, & the students are in solidarity with Oakland. From the East Coast to the West Coast, and beyond, Occupied movements are in solidarity. Parents & children.
The Chancellor has brought in outside agencies to enforce his diktat.
They've resorted to arrests.
They've resorted to violence, as shown in stills from Horace Boothroyd III's diary
It will serve the Chancellor little, as it has served Oakland's mayor little. All it has done is to draw the lines a little clearer between-
those who use violence to defend the 1% & those that use non-violence to speak up for the 99%.
There is no generational division here. This isn't my mother's movement, it isn't my movement, it isn't my son's movement: it is ours. The kids are all right, & they're not alone. Mayor Quan knows that if she tries to close down Occupy Oakland, Berkeley will come to support the Occupiers. The Chancellor should know that if he tries to close down Occupy Cal, Oakland will come. Many others will come.
2:01 a.m.
As the number of protesters in Sproul Plaza dwindles, so does the number of police. A bus has come to pick up the contingent from the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office.
The Sheriff's have already gone back home. The students don't have to travel as far & will be back in larger numbers in the morning. And Oakland is right next door.
I know a bit about the steps, whether going up...
(Personal photo)
or going down...
(Personal photo)
I can tell you they will not be empty tonight. They will not be silenced from reverberating with Mario Savio's words spoken in front of the steps decades prior.
There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious—makes you so sick at heart—that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop.
Maybe they'll even be an echo of what an old friend of mine said in response to Heyman decades ago,
"When we sat down we felt in our hearts that we should stay," said protester Andrea Pritchett, a 21-year-old senior.
Co-Founder of CopWatch, she, along with the rest of the world, is watching now. Remember that Chancellor Birgeneau.