$25.00 donated in past month
|
11/20 7am: At least 40 students have occupied Wheeler Hall on the UC Berkeley campus and are asking supporters to come out to the hall to show support. UC Police have surrounded the building as a "crime scene".  Video
On Thursday, November 19th, the University of California regents approved a 32% increase in undergraduate fees, pushing fees to over $10,000 a year for the first time. Student regent Jesse Bernal was the only vote in opposition. Protests, including the occupation of four buildings, have taken place November 18th and 19th at UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, UC Davis, San Francisco State and San Francisco City College. Students occupied Campbell Hall at UCLA, Kresge Town Hall and Kerr Hall at UC Santa Cruz, and Mrak Hall at UC Davis.
On Wednesday at UCLA, one protester was reportedly arrested after police struck students with batons and another person was reportedly tasered.
About a hundred students were arrested on Thursday at UC Davis. UCSC's Kresege Town Hall and Kerr Hall are the only buildings that remained occupied Thursday evening.
Read More
1 |
2 |
3
Berkeley:
 Photos:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
Video
San Francisco:
Photos:
1 |
2
Santa Cruz:
 Hundreds Demonstrate at UCSC Against 32% Fee Hikes |
UCSC Students Occupy Administration Building and Issue Demands
Los Angeles:
LA Indymedia Coverage
See Also:
Students, faculty & workers protest U of Calif. hikes, cutbacks
|
Democracy Now: UC Regents Approve Major Tuition Hike
|
Doug Gilbert is Free! Support him Friday in Court!
Previous Related Indybay Feature:
A Call for Days of Action Against the Tuition Hikes
On November 19th at around 2:45 PM, UCSC's Kerr Hall, which contains the offices of the administration, vice-chancellors, and chancellors, was occupied by students. Hundreds of students who are occupying the lobby created a list of demands which was read and given to UCSC's Executive Vice Chancellor David Kliger and Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Felicia McGinty. The prior day, November 18th, hundreds of students occupied the Kresge Town Hall.
Thus far, police have not taken action to end either protest and the overall attitude of the students has been passionate but calm. Students hope their actions will gain them more solidarity with the rest of the campus, Santa Cruz, people throughout California and beyond.
UCSC Expands Occupations | UC Santa Cruz Students Occupy Kerr Hall
Previous Indybay Coverage: Hundreds Demonstrate at UC Santa Cruz Against 32% Fee Hikes
On November 14th, students in the EA Hall Middle School MEChA Club held a free community arts event at the Brown Berets Bike Shack warehouse in Watsonville. The event was initially supposed to be held at the city owned Youth Center, however City Staff were opposed to a fee waiver for this event due to the "political nature" of the bands lined up to perform. This has created a stir with some conservative people in the community who are afraid of anything that promotes Mexican or Xicana/o identity.
On November 13th, students at UC Santa Cruz conducted a study-in at the Science and Engineering Library. Due to budget cuts, both of the large UCSC libraries have severely reduced hours which detrimentally affects employee pay and students with study needs late at night.
Students attempted to enter the building during normal library hours, but were denied access without handing over student ID to administrators at the door to keep until their later departure. People are not typically required to provide identification when entering the library.
Read more and watch video | newUC
Rainbow Theatre, the only multicultural theatre arts troupe in the UC system, will be kicking off their 16th season on November 5th and continuing through November 15th. In the tradition of Teatro Campesino, the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and Theatre of the Opressed, Rainbow strives to bring the untold stories of people of color to light.
Raj Jayadev writes: "On Oct. 24, the San Jose Mercury News released the video of a San Jose State math major getting beaten and tased by the San Jose Police Department in his home on Sept. 3, 2009. Police were called to the scene after 20-year-old Phuong Ho allegedly wielded a knife during an altercation with his roommate. All the viewer can hear, in between groaning cries of pain and calls for mercy, are the cracking sounds of the batons as they meet 20-year-old Phuong Ho’s head and body, and the torturous zapping of a Taser gun. It is, in a word, disturbing."
"Ho, who through his attorney has filed a civil rights complaint with the FBI, is also facing misdemeanor charges of exhibiting a weapon and resisting arrest. He was not armed when police arrived, and became the recipient of the beat down when he bent down to get the glasses that fell off of his head.
"As a member of a local community group that has been calling on police accountability in San Jose for years now, I have been receiving multiple emails with the subject line, “San Jose’s Rodney King.” They don’t mean the person. They mean the moment. The comparison is natural since both incidents contain the same basic patterns: unarmed men of color excessively beaten without cause by numerous police officers -- and it is all caught on video.
Read More
Silicon Valley Debug: Vietnamese Community Association Responds to Police Beating of San Jose State Student |
Raj Jayadev: "What Would Have Happened If Dr. Gates Was Arrested in San Jose?" |
SiLiCoN vAlLeY dE-bUg
On October 30th, Doug Zuidema, Director of Judiciary Affairs at UCSC, notified a collection of students that they were potentially subject to disciplinary proceedings. Occupy California writes that, "The University increasingly functions like a police apparatus: taking surveillance photos at protests, compiling dossiers on individuals, modifying response protocols and manufacturing phony charges against students and workers for kangaroo courts." Read more
See also: A Three Day Student, Worker and Faculty Strike Starting on 11/18
On October 26th, Free Radio Santa Cruz hosts The Maestr@s spoke with James Loewen, a researcher, author, teacher, and history-doer. His latest book is a how-to guide for teachers, with the aim of reclaiming history from boring dates and names, and replacing a vibrant sense of connection to the past. Teachers for Class War airs every Monday at 6pm on FRSC 101.1 FM.
Jim Loewen is best known as the author of Lies my Teacher Told Me, a hugely influential look at 12 leading high school history texts comparing what they prioritize, what they leave out, and what they just plain make up. He's also the author of Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism. Lowen's latest book is called Teaching What Really Happened: How To Avoid the Tyranny of Textbooks and Get Students Excited About Doing History. Read more and listen to the interview
On Free Radio Santa Cruz, The Maestr@s spoke with a fellow media activist, Oaxaca City resident, and parent of a school aged daughter about the state of education in Oaxaca, Mexico, where teachers mounted and led a massive uprising in 2006. They discuss the effects on schools and school children, three years later.
Read more and listen to the interview
UC Financial Crisis: Big Picture and Practical Actions is a public forum occuring at UCSC's Classroom Unit 2 on Thursday, October 29th from 7-10pm.
Two of the featured speakers have been particularly devoted to investigating the University of California's finances. Stanton Glantz of UCSF, is the author of The Cigarette Papers, which has played a key role in the ongoing litigation surrounding the tobacco industry. He is now working with the Keep California's Promise, an organization to restore the Master Plan for higher education, and has turned his investigative skills to the administration and financing of the UC.
Robert Meister is the President of the Council of University of California Faculty Associations (CUCFA) and director of the Bruce Center for Rethinking Capitalism at UCSC. For a decade he has been an active critic of the privatization trend at UC and an advocate of the shared governance tradition. His open letter to UC students "They Pledged Your Tuition" and subsequent writings have been widely circulated. Read more
See also: Monday, Nov. 2: Worker & Student March Against Budget Cuts
On October 21st, Fresno State saw one of its largest mobilizations since the 1960s. The student walkout was in protest against the recent fee increase of 32% (fees go up almost every year typically by around 10%), class furloughs (pay more get less), over-crowded classrooms, faculty layoffs, staff layoffs, a corrupt administration, a corrupt Associated Students, Inc., which refuses to represent the students, and the entire California State University (CSU) system. The CSU master plan from the 60s promised free education to all, but the university is now run like a for-profit corporation.
A rally was attended by 300 students and faculty who spoke and expressed their shared rage. This was followed by a march of well over 600 students chanting things like "no cuts! no fees! education should be free!" and "hey! hey! ho! ho! [university president] Welty's gotta go!". This march went down Shaw from Maple to Cedar and around the Shaw/Cedar intersection several times before rallying in front of the school.
After the march, a group of students took a list of demands to President Welty's office on the 4th floor of the library -- during the rally there were many references to Welty's tower where he could look down on his subjects and maintain inaccessibility. The students were initially met by campus police who blocked the elevator saying they had to make sure it was okay to come up, so the delegation instead took the stairs. Once the small group made it up, it was met in the hallway by campus police who said President Welty was not there. As this dialogue was going on, students just kept coming out of the elevators, and by the end the students had moved forward nearly 30 feet and 80 students were clogging the hallway leading to the administrators' offices. Welty's assistant explained that the president was at a meeting. The students responded "fine, we'll wait" and all sat down.
Read More
Article and photos
On Thursday, September 24th, actions against the budget cuts, fee hikes, layoffs and furloughs at University of California campuses took place throughout the UC system. Workers, graduate student employees, students and faculty held a strike, walked out, and demonstrated in defense of public education and fair labor practices. Pickets, rallies and general assemblies took place from 6am onwards on the UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz campuses.
|
|
