UCSC attempts to thwart nonviolence training; activists prevail

UC Santa Cruz officials attempted to shut down a nonviolence training on campus March 31, declaring that discussing direct action and civil disobedience at a public university would be a violation of state law. But despite losing the room where the training was to take place, as well as the entire training team, we somehow managed to hold a successful six-hour training Saturday for more than 60 people interested in participating in upcoming mass actions against the Free Trade Area of the Americas and Vandenberg Air Force Base.
The Santa Cruz Coalition Against the FTAA had planned to hold the training at the Oakes Learning Center. The room had been reserved by students more than a month ahead of time, and arrangements had been made for members of the Just Cause Law Collective to lead the training. But early Friday evening, half a day before the training was to take place, Oakes College Administrative Office Dave Dodson contacted a member of the Coalition and stated that the event would be prohibited.
"The Mass Action training which you have advertised for March 31 through flyers and on your website cannot take place at the Oakes Learning Center," Dodson wrote in an email to Coalition member Jesse Nason. "It is contrary to university regulations and state law for the university to host or appear to sponsor a political event of this type."
Dodson also stated that because the name of the student organization that had reserved the room did not appear on the flyer, an additional infraction had occurred.
After a number of frenzied phone calls, we decided it would not be fair to ask the law collective to travel from the Bay Area to Santa Cruz since it was unclear if an alternate location could be found on such short notice. Katya Komisaruk, founder of the law collective, attempted to get Dodson to change his position, but to no avail.
"I pointed out that forbidding free speech activity on the basis of its content was not only illegal, but also fundamentally at odds with the university’s mission to further education and the free exchange of ideas," said Komisaruk, who has represented demonstrators arrested at mass actions in Seattle, Washington D.C., L.A. and elsewhere. "I urged him to reconsider and to seek counsel, before committing an irrevocable constitutional violation. He refused."
We decided to move the training outdoors and make do with the expertise that we have within the Santa Cruz activist community. We stayed up late the night before and developed a format that included everything from a debate on nonviolence to how to do "soft" lock downs to how to deal with reporters and police. We also distributed packets with legal and medical information, and did overviews on those topics. We met in a shady clearing beneath a canopy of trees. Everyone got free lunch. It was perfect.
Many of the people who attended the training have never been to a major protest before. They left feeling empowered and confident and connected to the movement that we are all working to build.
"The university can try to shut us down, but we proved that we've got the imagination and the resourcefulness to overcome whatever obstacles they throw up,'' said Nason. "I can't wait to see what we can do in Quebec and at Vandenberg."