Things Heat Up at UC-Davis

Posted by BooMan | Nov 19, 2011 | 35 |

Reading about what happened at UC-Davis yesterday doesn’t have the same impact as watching what happened.

It’s an eight-minute video. I don’t expect you to watch the whole thing. It begins with a Davis police officer pepper-spraying a bunch of sitting students. Then the crowd begins to chant “Shame on you” for several minutes as the police haul the victims away. Finally, the crowd begins to chant “You can go” to the police officers. And they retreat, to much applause and revelry.

You might want to know why the police were there in the first place. The thing is, it doesn’t matter why they were there. There’s no excuse for pepper-spraying people who pose no threat to you.

But the answer is that the school administration wanted them to clear a quad of camping equipment.

All they accomplished was a massive international black-eye for their institution. And, I guess, they just radicalized a few dozen bystanders.

About The Author

BooMan

Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.

35 Comments

Phil Perspective on November 19, 2011 at 11:01 am

And then they wonder why people chant “F–k the police!!” The above video is just one of the many examples why.
- TarheelDem on November 19, 2011 at 12:10 pm
  
  Tactically, that is not a helpful chant.
  
  The current classic is:
  
  You’re so sexy; you’re so cute
  So take off that riot suit.
  
  Another appropriate one:
  
  There’s a peaceful protest here;
  there’s no need for riot gear
  - Phil Perspective on November 19, 2011 at 12:52 pm
    
    I know it’s not helpful. I never said it was. I’m just saying stuff like that UC-Davis video is why people do chant such things.
    - TarheelDem on November 19, 2011 at 1:53 pm
      
      And why Occupy Wall Street spends a lot of time in non-violence training and legal briefings before the police arrive.
      - Errol on November 20, 2011 at 12:15 am
        
        the pepper spraying is horrifying, the students’ training is impressive
- shan on November 19, 2011 at 2:43 pm
  
  Now you see why cops were called pigs in the sixties.
Salunga on November 19, 2011 at 11:08 am

That was cruel as shit. He should face charges.
seabe on November 19, 2011 at 11:17 am

The American university system is also very complicit and has actively engaged in the same class warfare that the very rich have been engaging in with their ridiculous tuition hikes in order to pad their administrator’s ridiculous salaries; have faculty they don’t need (increased adjunct professors, having faculty do the jobs that used to be done by the tenured profs); increasing other services that provide no increased educational value (such as Texas Tech’s leisure pool, and turning dormitories into mini-condos); and a surge in college sports to the point that kids choose schools over the sports instead of the academics. A corrupt institution, indeed. Occupying the universities is a good thing to do.

I especially enjoyed Katha Pollitt’s Nation article on the sports aspect:

Penn State’s Patriarchal Pastimes

Maybe cancel college football too. In no other country’s university system, after all, does sports play anything like the central role it does in American academic life. Men do not go to Oxford to play cricket; the Sorbonne does not field a nationally celebrated soccer team. Even in the most sports-mad countries, sports is sports and education is education. That’s a better system.

College sports distorts academic life in many ways, beginning with admissions. Recruited athletes’ scholarships soak up almost a fifth of places at most elite colleges, and athletic scholarships raise costs for everyone else. People defend these programs as offering hope to black and low-income students, especially boys, who otherwise couldn’t go to college at all. But what about their high school classmates who do better in school and can’t afford higher education either? Where are our priorities? Right now, we are telling the kids at the bottom that the way out is not to study and take college preparatory classes but to work on their jump shot and their blocking. If there was no scholarship incentive for those skills, the kids might not blow off their classes in favor of endless hours in the gym. Instead of the false hope of winning fame and wealth by turning pro after college–a brass ring grasped by only 1.5 percent of seniors who play NCAA football and basketball–they might focus their ambition on careers that could lift them out of poverty for life.

Moreover, sports scholarships don’t just go to poor kids. They also go to wealthy suburban kids who play golf, squash, lacrosse, tennis and other games favored by the elite. Those kids not only get a break on tuition; they get indulgence for mediocre grades and low SAT scores. Basically, colleges are saying to kids lucky enough to go to excellent resource-rich high schools, Don’t worry about that missed chemistry lab, those 200 pages still to go in One Hundred Years of Solitude, those French irregular verbs–bring us your backhand and your butterfly stroke.

I love it, I love her.
- santiago on November 22, 2011 at 1:59 pm
  
  University administrators really don’t make that much. Their pay is comparable to public school system administrators at the K-12 level, if not lower in many cases. And neither of those is anywhere comparable to executive management pay for private business sector employment for essentially the same set of skills and time commitment, so I really don’t think we should be conflating public sector executives with private sector executives at all. Their levels of power and capacity to extract wealth from others due to their social position alone is not in any way comparable.
vicki on November 19, 2011 at 11:28 am

That officer’s demeanor was absolutely chilling. His actions were barbaric, but his demeanor spoke volumes about him. He is a monster in storm trooper’s clothing.

Oh, and a big fat chunk of the country is likely to believe that those hippies deserved it. No matter if they were just sitting there. They fucked up somehow, so they deserved it.

Doomed, I tell ya.

::
- Phil Perspective on November 19, 2011 at 12:55 pm
  
  Of course they do. There is another great example yesterday. The top commenter in an anti-OWS article from Murdoch’s NY Compost calls for bashing in hippie skulls. And guess who he works for? The NY Federal Reserve!! We know that because the Compost uses Facebook of all things for their comments and he was stupid enough to post.
  - Oui on November 19, 2011 at 2:23 pm
    
    .
    See my diary – CLGC Proposal to Undermine OWS and Democracy for $850K
    
    "But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
Indianadem on November 19, 2011 at 11:38 am

The whole world is watching! – thanks to YouTube, for one and citizen journalists.
ejmw on November 19, 2011 at 12:01 pm

I can’t even express how much respect and love I have for those kids for just sitting there in the face of that assault. I don’t think I could have done it; just watching it I feel like beating the shit out of that asshole in cop’s clothing.
- BooMan on November 19, 2011 at 12:06 pm
  
  make sure you watch the end where they surround the cops and tell them that they are giving them a moment of peace so they can leave.
  - Brendan Skwire on November 19, 2011 at 9:06 pm
    
    that is fucking amazing. that’s the part that blows my mind.
    
    and it’s why the establishment is so scared.
- CabinGirl on November 19, 2011 at 12:34 pm
  
  I am so proud of those kids for keeping their heads and ultimately driving those cops out of there. I don’t think I could have been that brave.
- Jan on November 19, 2011 at 6:40 pm
  
  Me too. I have huge respect for every sincle one of these OWS folks. The fascism is really coming out into the open now.
TarheelDem on November 19, 2011 at 12:07 pm

Jerry Brown: first UC-Berkeley Police Department jabbing students with batons. now UC-Davis Police Department gratuitously pepper-spraying peaceful passively resisting protesters with a “quick Henry the Flit” attitude.

Governor, the University of California Police Department system has a huge problem on your watch. Unless you’ve turned into Ronald Reagan, you need to deal with it. And with the Chancellors who ordered it. And with the Board of Regents who tolerates or encourages it.

Or does the Governor of California no longer exercise the power that Ronald Reagan exercised in repressing the protests of the 1960s? Or is it easier to let the dogs loose than to restrain them?
BooMan on November 19, 2011 at 12:19 pm
18 November 2011

Open Letter to Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi

Linda P.B. Katehi,

I am a junior faculty member at UC Davis. I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, and I teach in the Program in Critical Theory and in Science & Technology Studies. I have a strong record of research, teaching, and service. I am currently a Board Member of the Davis Faculty Association. I have also taken an active role in supporting the student movement to defend public education on our campus and throughout the UC system. In a word: I am the sort of young faculty member, like many of my colleagues, this campus needs. I am an asset to the University of California at Davis.

You are not.

I write to you and to my colleagues for three reasons:

to express my outrage at the police brutality which occurred against students engaged in peaceful protest on the UC Davis campus today
to hold you accountable for this police brutality
to demand your immediate resignation

Today you ordered police onto our campus to clear student protesters from the quad. These were protesters who participated in a rally speaking out against tuition increases and police brutality on UC campuses on Tuesday–a rally that I organized, and which was endorsed by the Davis Faculty Association. These students attended that rally in response to a call for solidarity from students and faculty who were bludgeoned with batons, hospitalized, and arrested at UC Berkeley last week. In the highest tradition of non-violent civil disobedience, those protesters had linked arms and held their ground in defense of tents they set up beside Sproul Hall. In a gesture of solidarity with those students and faculty, and in solidarity with the national Occupy movement, students at UC Davis set up tents on the main quad. When you ordered police outfitted with riot helmets, brandishing batons and teargas guns to remove their tents today, those students sat down on the ground in a circle and linked arms to protect them.

What happened next?

Without any provocation whatsoever, other than the bodies of these students sitting where they were on the ground, with their arms linked, police pepper-sprayed students. Students remained on the ground, now writhing in pain, with their arms linked.

What happened next?

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.

This is what happened. You are responsible for it.

You are responsible for it because this is what happens when UC Chancellors order police onto our campuses to disperse peaceful protesters through the use of force: students get hurt. Faculty get hurt. One of the most inspiring things (inspiring for those of us who care about students who assert their rights to free speech and peaceful assembly) about the demonstration in Berkeley on November 9 is that 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.

One week after this happened at UC Berkeley, you ordered police to clear tents from the quad at UC Davis. When students responded in the same way–linking arms and holding their ground–police also responded in the same way: with violent force. The fact is: the administration of UC campuses systematically uses police brutality to terrorize students and faculty, to crush political dissent on our campuses, and to suppress free speech and peaceful assembly. Many people know this. Many more people are learning it very quickly.

You are responsible for the police violence directed against students on the UC Davis quad on November 18, 2011. As I said, I am writing to hold you responsible and to demand your immediate resignation on these grounds.

On Wednesday November 16, you issued a letter by email to the campus community. In this letter, you discussed a hate crime which occurred at UC Davis on Sunday November 13. In this letter, you express concern about the safety of our students. You write, “it is particularly disturbing that such an act of intolerance should occur at a time when the campus community is working to create a safe and inviting space for all our students.” You write, “while these are turbulent economic times, as a campus community, we must all be committed to a safe, welcoming environment that advances our efforts to diversity and excellence at UC Davis.”

I will leave it to my colleagues and every reader of this letter to decide what poses a greater threat to “a safe and inviting space for all our students” or “a safe, welcoming environment” at UC Davis: 1) Setting up tents on the quad in solidarity with faculty and students brutalized by police at UC Berkeley? or 2) Sending in riot police to disperse students with batons, pepper-spray, and tear-gas guns, while those students sit peacefully on the ground with their arms linked? Is this what you have in mind when you refer to creating “a safe and inviting space?” Is this what you have in mind when you express commitment to “a safe, welcoming environment?”

I am writing to tell you in no uncertain terms that there must be space for protest on our campus. There must be space for political dissent on our campus. There must be space for civil disobedience on our campus. There must be space for students to assert their right to decide on the form of their protest, their dissent, and their civil disobedience–including the simple act of setting up tents in solidarity with other students who have done so. There must be space for protest and dissent, especially, when the object of protest and dissent is police brutality itself. You may not order police to forcefully disperse student protesters peacefully protesting police brutality. You may not do so. It is not an option available to you as the Chancellor of a UC campus. That is why I am calling for your immediate resignation.

Your words express concern for the safety of our students. Your actions express no concern whatsoever for the safety of our students. I deduce from this discrepancy that you are not, in fact, concerned about the safety of our students. Your actions directly threaten the safety of our students. And I want you to know that this is clear. It is clear to anyone who reads your campus emails concerning our “Principles of Community” and who also takes the time to inform themselves about your actions. You should bear in mind that when you send emails to the UC Davis community, you address a body of faculty and students who are well trained to see through rhetoric that evinces care for students while implicitly threatening them. I see through your rhetoric very clearly. You also write to a campus community that knows how to speak truth to power. That is what I am doing.

I call for your resignation because you are unfit to do your job. You are unfit to ensure the safety of students at UC Davis. In fact: you are the primary threat to the safety of students at UC Davis. As such, I call upon you to resign immediately.

Sincerely,

Nathan Brown
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Program in Critical Theory
University of California at Davis
link
- genconc on November 19, 2011 at 2:15 pm
  
  Wow, pretty good letter.
  
  Makes me want to send a text to the Chancellor: “You can go”. My guess is she’s already received this message multiple times. Still, I want to pile on. Does any know her number?
  - tb92 on November 20, 2011 at 12:38 am
    
    http://chancellor.ucdavis.edu/contact.php
    - tb92 on November 20, 2011 at 12:39 am
      
      (530) 752-2065 Go get her!
- janicket on November 20, 2011 at 10:03 am
  
  Parts of that letter are quoted, with attribution, in this morning’s CNN story about the pepper spraying, which is their top-left-featured story on the website right now.
BooMan on November 19, 2011 at 12:47 pm

Interesting take.
TarheelDem on November 19, 2011 at 12:54 pm

This just in:

OccupyNashville Occupy Nashville
RT @Ghostpickles Police officer who soaked #UCDavis students with pepper spray has been named. He is Lt John Pike pic.twitter.com/Omruh5oi
11 minutes ago F

@Ghostpickles is a reporter for Citizens Radio, an internet radio service.
- Phil Perspective on November 19, 2011 at 12:58 pm
  
  Joshua Holland of Alternet had the info last night. I posted it over at TGOS
utried on November 19, 2011 at 2:41 pm

It certainly brings back the phrase fascist pig. People used to be shocked by that term. Now, not so much.
cruzy on November 19, 2011 at 4:51 pm

Last time I stopped in on the tribune we were talking about the precedent set in the Humboldt County environmental protest case where sheriff’s deputies had swabbed the eyes of nonviolent protestors, including a child, with pepper spray.

Next time I stop by I see this…it’s like the Humboldt County sheriff circa 1990’s moved down to Davis. Disgusting.

It’s also disturbing that the UC campus police at so many campuses seem to be run by absolute idiots and populated with sociopaths.
Jan on November 19, 2011 at 6:37 pm

I was at an Ohio school when kent State happened in 1970. They closed us down, the Black Panthers showed up, we marched, we rallied, the National Guard was called into our campus (Bowling Green). I then hitch hiked to CA, hung out in the Haight. Learned alot of life lessons there.

This is eerily WAY too similar to 1970. Back in the day, we had tear gas, not much pepper spray.

If these universities don’t get a grip, we will have another Kent and Jackson State on our hands.

Just sayin’.
Mac G on November 19, 2011 at 7:19 pm

Here is a chilling picture of the Cop spraying.

http://i.imgur.com/J3AE5.jpg

Video from another angle

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6AdDLhPwpp4#!

You can hear the students choking in this vid.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxaLKsFdcjk
Brendan Skwire on November 19, 2011 at 9:03 pm

oh, they accomplished much more than that.
The chancellor’s biggest accomplishment is ensuring they get hit with millions in lawsuits.

Chancellor Katehi also managed to get a poet laureate of the US whacked with a baton, and there’s an open letter from a faculty member calling on her to resign (which also notes that a few faculty members were also beaten by the cops).

I think she’ll end up resigning: so that’s another accomplishment, fucking up her career.
TarheelDem on November 19, 2011 at 10:51 pm

Tonight through peaceful protest, the students exposed the Chancellor’s narrative that she was being held hostage as false. Exactly as the UCPD in riot gear were about to form up. The police withdrew.

They had surrounded the building so as to force her to walk out of the building through two rows of students. Then they got her to meet with one of the students who way pepper sprayed. That student personally showed her the eight-minute video and asked for her resignation.

The Chancellor walked out to her car through two lines of completely silent students seated on the ground. The narrative was a walk of shame. The Chancellor never looked at the students but looked straight ahead the whole time.

These students had one powerful tactical discipline about what they did.
- seabe on November 20, 2011 at 1:26 am
  
  These young men and women make me feel pride. This is the discipline that I wanted to see in other protests. Notice how much more powerful this is over heckling, barraging, and provoking. Sitting down, in silence. A walk of shame; she’s certainly earned it.
tb92 on November 20, 2011 at 12:44 am

Let them know what you think: http://police.ucdavis.edu/
http://chancellor.ucdavis.edu/contact.php
And here’s the petition demanding that the Chancellor resign: http://www.change.org/petitions/police-pepper-spray-peaceful-uc-davis-students-ask-chancellor-katehi
-to-resign#

Things Heat Up at UC-Davis

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