Action Assembly

Nuff said.

As a student I am against the budget cuts but I have yet to see any of these protests do or accomplish anything useful except for piss people off and make them think we as students are crazy. If you do something, please make it meaningful. So far the blockades and occupations have accomplished only one thing, making it a pain to get off or around campus.

the kerr hall occupation demanded the rollback of 15% cuts to janitorial hours. this was in fact achieved.

furthermore, the state gov't's proposal to increase education funding by decreasing prison funding (not a good proposal, but a response nonetheless) came in the aftermath of strikes, occupations and disruptive protests which saw riot police called out on several campuses in november.

i agree there are problems with this movement but people are doing what they can where they are... read your history. collective disruptive actions are the only thing that gets any response from power, ever. and so what if people have fun doing it once in a while? do you really think these protests would go anywhere if people kept up the same kind of boring, solemn, serious gatherings that the same little group of die-hards has been having for years? where has that ever got us?

to the person who said "nuff said", you are a reactionary moron for thinking you can get away without even trying to back up your exceedingly flimsy points... nuff said.

Last month, you called for a night of action and a dance in the Baytree Plaza. I saw a dance.

Before that, the gathering at Humanites. Looked like another dance with some drunks doing some vandalizing

Before that, the original "action" at Baytree that precluded Kerr Hall; another dance, with about 95% of the participants leaving when the party ended nd the real actions began.

March 1st? Guess we'll find out soon enough, but I've predicted a repeat of same. (And on a sidebar? I find humorous irony in your outrage when the invitation itself calls for "dance through campus" and get "hella drunk".

Party on, my anarchist wanna-bes, party on!

by assuming that i, or that any particular set group of people is behind all the occupations, dances and etc. while there is clearly a bit of a 'milieu' emerging, to view it in terms of a formal organization or some fixed cabal of people is incorrect. i actually don't give a fuck about the dance parties or see them as particularly radical, but you know what? the goal here is not, in the activist model, to have a group of people creating exemplary actions of a noble, solemn, political character that muster public support or win a response from the university on this or that. it's much more about trying to spread self-organized activity in a decaying institution.. and you know, college kids will be college kids, they drink and dance. at least there is something mildly or potentially political in it, even if, you know, every single gathering of discontented kids doesn't turn into... oh, what is exactly that you want to see anyway? do you even have an answer? some final battle which turns public education free overnight? i think it's clear both that you haven't thought much about this, and that you know very little about the events you are describing.

A lot of these "actions" should be trying to sway public opinion (you know, the taxpayers who pay for the UC system), but instead they make us look like a bunch of lunatics. Dance parties? Nobody but the dancers thinks they make any difference. The fact that the ad for this event says "will we get hella druink?" speaks volumes about the lack of vision or goals. What do you think an ordinary person thinks when they read that?

I said the dance would have little if any relevance, and that it was entertainment couched as activism. I'll contend that this proved true.

Also of note is the reality that they used this same model at UCB and embarassed themselves and any pretense there might have been of "action". Instead, it was a bunch of drunken fools using vandalism as an excuse for "activism", and the primary result was to embarass those associate with the "actions" to the point that the organizers of March 4th are vigorously distancing themselves from the stupidity of the dance/riot participants.

So in reply to your proposal that "i think it's clear both that you haven't thought much about this, and that you know very little about the events you are describing"....?

I'll reply that I hit the nail on the head, that these dances couched as activism are nothing more than parties and jerk-off attempts to couch them as activism. And if you believe otherwise? Dance on CS, dance on; you obviously believe that its having an impact and changing the world for the better.

I don't. I think it's a bunch of self-indulgent upper middle class white snots, like yourself?....having a party.