Two people were arrested when police from the University of California at Berkeley and other agencies disbanded the Occupy Cal encampment on the steps of Sproul Hall early today, a university spokesman said.
The two men were arrested for failure to disperse and unlawful lodging, UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof said.
Occupy Cal protesters set up an encampment of about 15 tents Tuesday night after a general assembly attended by more than 1,000 people voted by a margin of 89 percent to 11 percent to do so, protesters said.
A previous attempt to set up an encampment last week was thwarted by UC Berkeley police and officers from other agencies, whose aggressive tactics have been criticized by Occupy Cal protesters.
UC Berkeley has a policy against allowing camping on campus, but police didn't act immediately to remove the tents that were set up Tuesday night.
Mogulof said university officials and police monitored the situation and waited for a time when they thought it would be safe and effective to remove the tents.
He said they decided that 3:30 a.m. today would be a good time to take action, and he said the removal of the tents was "very peaceful" and there weren't any confrontations.
Occupy Cal protesters were given hourly warnings by police that the encampment was illegal and they were subject to arrest, Mogulof said.
The protesters were given time to take down their tents, Mogulof said. They also were given time to take away two pianos that they had set up on the steps of Sproul Hall for music sessions, he said.
University staff members cleaned the steps of Sproul Hall after the tents were removed, according to Mogulof.
He said about a dozen protesters remained in the area as of early this afternoon.
A speaker at the general assembly Tuesday night said there would be more general assemblies at Sproul Plaza at 6 p.m. every night.
It appears police in riot gear arrived at the "Occupy Cal" newly established encampment on the University of California at Berkeley campus this morning.
Footage from a livestream video at the campus showed police lined near Sproul Hall around 4 a.m. where Occupy Cal protesters had erected about 15 tents in violation of the university's ban on camping.
Occupy Cal protesters began setting up the tents at about 8:30 p.m. Tuesday after the group's assembly voted in favor of doing so. A previous attempt to set up an encampment last week was foiled by university police, with the assistance of Alameda County sheriff's deputies.
The videographer filming the encampment and police action this morning said two people were arrested after many of the protesters had left when police arrived before 4 a.m.
A group "mic check," or community check-in, after the police raid confirmed that one UC Berkeley student was arrested, along with a protester from "Occupy Oakland."
Twitter reports indicated police dismantled tents and moved protesters away from the Sproul Hall steps.
Around 4:25 a.m. a small group congregated near Sproul Hall and briefly chanted, "Whose university? Our university!"
Someone spoke to the small crowd and said he was upset that protesters were kicked out of their tents, but overall the raid was peaceful and police were not violent.
A student who was fatally shot by University of California at Berkeley police on Tuesday after allegedly brandishing a gun appeared to be troubled, university officials said today.
Capt. Margo Bennett of the university's police department said friends and family members of 32-year-old Christopher Nathen Elliot Travis told police that "his behavior changed the last few weeks."
However, Bennet said there's no information about why his behavior changed.
Bennet said a campus police officer shot Travis after he brandished a Ruger 99 mm semiautomatic handgun in a third floor computer lab at the Haas School of Business shortly before 2:30 p.m. Tuesday.
"His actions are from someone who was troubled," she said.
Bennet said several university police officers responded to the computer lab after a business school staff member reported seeing what appeared to be a gun in his backpack.
She said a video of the incident that investigators reviewed today confirmed officers' statements that Travis ignored several orders to drop his gun.
One of the officers shot and struck Travis multiple times after he pointed his gun at the officer, according to Bennet.
Nine other students were in the room at the time and three were in the officer's line of fire, she said.
Those students were quickly removed from the line of fire before the shooting, Bennet said.
Four officers, including the officer who fatally shot Travis, have been placed on paid administrative leave pending an investigation into the shooting, she said.
Travis's gun was registered in his name in San Jose, Bennet said. However, there's no indication he had a concealed weapons permit, she said.
She said Travis was a trainer in standard operating procedures for security guards. But she said investigators haven't yet been able to determine if he ever worked as a security guard.
University spokesman Dan Mogulof said Travis was in his first semester as an undergraduate at the business school after transferring from another university.
He said information about Travis's previous college experience isn't available at this time.
Mogulof said it appears the shooting was an isolated incident and had nothing to do with the Occupy Cal protest that was occurring in another part of the campus.
Dozens of protesters have pitched a tent inside a Bank of America branch in downtown San Francisco this afternoon and are refusing to leave.
At about 2:15 p.m., at least 100 protesters rushed into the branch on California Street near Davis Street, taking it over. They stood inside the branch chanting, "We are the 99 percent."
University of California at Berkeley graduate student Elise Youn said one of the aims of the march is to "make the connection" between the business interests of certain UC Regents and their work on the board.
The marchers were focusing on three regents: Richard Blum, chair of Blum Capital Partners; George Marcus, who heads a national commercial real estate brokerage firm; and Monica Lozano, who is a Bank of America board member.
At about 2:40 p.m., police ordered the protesters, some of whom had been standing on desks in the bank, to disperse.
Police in riot gear scuffled with protesters, shoving them out of the way to access the building's doorway. Some people had been trying to exit the bank and others were blocking the officers' path as they tried to enter.
Many of the protesters left the bank, but about 30 of them remained inside as of 3 p.m. and had erected a tent in the middle of the floor.
Some wore bandanas and some were standing on desks.
Hundreds of other protesters were sitting in the middle of Davis Street, which is shut down.
Meanwhile, members of a 24-Hour Fitness across the street watched the activity from their treadmills.
As of 3 p.m., no arrests had been made. A large crowd had gathered in front of the bank where protesters marched this afternoon to call for more funding for public education.
The "ReFund Public Education March" was organized in part to protest the cancellation of the UC Board of Regents meeting in San Francisco this week.
The meeting was cancelled because of fears that violent protests would occur, according to the regents.
"The 1 percent on the Board of Regents cancelled their meeting because we demanded they do the people's business," read a statement posted on the Occupy SF website about the march.
"So now we're going to where they do Wall Street's business," the statement read.
The site states that there would be a noon gathering at Justin Herman Plaza and a 1 p.m. march on banks, followed by a 4 p.m. "People's Assembly for Public Education" at the State Building at 455 Golden Gate Ave.
Around 1:30 p.m., the protesters sat down on Battery Street between Pacific Avenue and Broadway, blocking traffic.
Some protesters chanted, "Education must be free. No cuts, no peace." Marchers included a number of students and members of public-sector unions.
CONTACT: San Francisco police (415) 553-1651
EDITORS PLEASE NOTE: Images related to this story can be obtained from the following Bay City News Service Web links: www.baycitynews.com/images/ProtestersInBank11.16.11.jpg www.baycitynews.com/images/ProtestersInBankII11.16.11.jpg
California State University faculty from throughout the state are pouring in to two of the system's 23 campuses this morning to participate in a one-day strike to protest the cancellation of contractual raises for CSU faculty as tuition increases for CSU students, union officials said.
California Faculty Association spokesman Brian Ferguson said that as of 9 a.m. today, hundreds had already gathered outside CSU East Bay in Hayward, one of the two convergence points today for CSU faculty, along with Dominguez Hills in Carson.
Ferguson said faculty and students are arriving at the campus from as far north as Humboldt and as far south as Fresno, and that half of the professors at CSU East Bay have pledged to participate in the picket line. He said nearly two-thirds have pledged not to cross picket lines.
Ferguson said the union hopes to cancel all CSU East Bay classes today.
"Obviously that's not going to happen, but the vast majority of classes, as far as we can tell, are going to be empty today," he said.
CSU East Bay spokesman Barry Zepel said that the campus is open today, and that unless an instructor notifies students that a class has been canceled, students should assume their classes will still be in session.
He said nearly 600 classes are scheduled for as many as 8,500 students between 6 a.m. and 5 p.m. today, the hours of the strike.
But he said the school has not been officially informed about how many faculty members may be striking.
In addition to faculty and students, Ferguson said the strike has received support from K-12 public school teachers and other unions.
Close to 100 K-12 teachers from Oakland, San Leandro and Castro Valley arrived at the picket line before their classes today, and the Teamsters union and delivery drivers have been honoring the strike by not making deliveries to the campus today, Ferguson said.
A statement released Wednesday by the California Nurses Association encouraged union members to join CSU picket lines today as well.
CFA treasurer Susan Green traveled to CSU East Bay from Chico this morning, and said there was a busload of about 50 faculty members, students and local public school teachers behind her.
Green said she has found that CSU students are supportive of the strike.
"We say the faculty working conditions are student learning conditions," Green said, adding that students have seen the effects of state budget cuts in larger class sizes and shorter office hours.
"They also realize that the rhetoric of putting students first isn't true if you're always putting faculty last," Green said.
A commenter on the Daily Cal web site has found a video of Chris Travis, the student who was shot yesterday by UC police for allegedly brandishing a gun in the computer lab at Haas Business School.
A man who was shot by University of California at Berkeley police after he allegedly brandished a gun at the Haas School of Business on Tuesday has died, university officials said today.
The man, identified by the university as 32-year-old Christopher Nathen Elliot Travis, died Tuesday night at Highland Hospital.
"We're very saddened by this new information," university spokeswoman Claire Holmes said.
Travis was an undergraduate transfer student, according to the university.
UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau and business school dean Rich Lyons told business school students about Travis' death at a special meeting at 8:30 a.m. today, she said.
Grief counselors are at the school to talk with students, Holmes said.
She said Travis was from California but she didn't yet know which city he was from.
The shooting happened around 2:25 p.m. Tuesday in a third-floor computer lab after officers responded to a report of a man with a weapon.
Birgeneau said a female staff member was taking the elevator up to the fifth floor when a man who was in the elevator with her reached into his backpack and she saw what appeared to be a gun.
She was "extremely concerned" and notified her supervisor, who called police, said Birgeneau.
UC Berkeley police Chief Mitch Celaya said police received the call at 2:17 p.m., and by 2:19 p.m. several officers had arrived at the computer lab.
He said that when the officers made contact with the man, he "pulled a firearm out in a threatening manner."
They ordered him several times to drop the weapon, and one officer, fearing for his life, opened fire, Celaya said.
No officers or students were injured.
Birgeneau said there were at least four other students in the lab when police arrived.
Celaya said officers yelled at the man to drop his gun numerous times but he failed to comply with their orders.
Celaya said there is no indication the shooting was related to the Occupy Cal protests happening elsewhere on campus.
He said the shooting was the first on the campus since a shooting at the Bear's Lair pub in the 1980s.
The Occupy UC crowd filled the center of Sproul Plaza.
Steven Finacom
Steven Finacom
Sproul Plaza as Robert Reich delivered the Mario Savio Memorial Lecture.
Steven Finacom
Tents were first set up in the middle of Sproul Plaza, then carried through or lifted over the heads of the crowd and repositioned in the steps.
Steven Finacom
Steven Finacom
Occupy UC and Occupy Oakland protestors combined for the evening events.
Steven Finacom
Steven Finacom
Thousands remained in the Plaza after 10:00 PM, watched by UC Police on the edges of the crowd and from the balcony of the Student Union, which was still festooned with “Occupy” signage from the lunchtime rally.
Steven Finacom
Scores of spectators climbed onto the hyperbolic paraboloid rooftops of the Chavez Center on the northwestern edge of Sproul Plaza.
Steven Finacom
One demonstrator bought a stuffed Cal bear, with an “Occupy” T-shirt to the General Assembly.
Thousands gathered on Sproul Plaza last night after a day of campus teach-ins and protests to re-ignite the “Occupy UC” movement. The evening “General Assembly” of protesters was preceded by marches through Berkeley that originated on, and returned to, the campus and the arrival of a contingent that had marched from the dispersed Occupy Oakland encampment.
After work I watched the beginnings of the General Assembly, which convened at 5:00 pm. I returned to see the conclusion hours later when there was a mass vote to reinstall a UC-prohibited tent city on Sproul Plaza. The vote to start the encampment again, with tents, was endorsed by 1,267 individuals, which organizers said represented 88.5% of those voting.
I estimated that more than a thousand people were sitting in Sproul Plaza at the time, with probably another thousand or more others standing on the periphery. The crowd grew as the night went on.
“Seeds of resistance have been planted, and we will not be moved” one of the Assembly facilitators told the crowd, to cheers. “Power to the people, y’all. We’re here to stay,” concluded another as the tents were set up. Immediately after the vote tents appeared in the middle of the crowd and Plaza.
The Assembly was followed by the annual Mario Savio Young Activist awards program, which decamped from its scheduled venue in Pauley Ballroom to the steps of Sproul. Lynne Hollander Savio, Mario’s widow, spoke, as did all three of this year’s winners.
They were followed by Professor Robert Reich who spoke about the growing imbalance of economic power in the United States, concentration of wealth, and the consequent dangers to representative democracy. He told the Occupy protesters he was proud of them, of Berkeley, and their movement.
As Reich finished his remarks and three UC Police officers videotaped the crowd from the Pauley Ballroom balcony of the Student Union, several tents were shifted through the crowd from the center of the Plaza to the Mario Savio Steps immediately in front of Sproul Hall.
The crowd was in an upbeat, even festive, mood. When “I Will Survive” was played over the sound system, many broke into dancing on the steps. Although there were Occupy Oakland protesters in the crowd, and a fair number of older adults, it was manifestly a UC student occasion; it was readily apparent that the vast majority of those present were current students, both among the participants, and the curious spectators.
Many raised their hands when asked by the facilitators if they were willing to spend the night.
I’ll write in more detail about the evening and what the speakers said at a later date, when I have the chance. In the meantime, here’s a sequence of photos from the evening.
Occupy Cal protesters began setting up tents at Sproul Plaza at the University of California at Berkeley campus again tonight after 88.5 percent of the group's general assembly voted to support the action.
A small group of tents had been set up by 9 p.m. but UC Berkeley police, who thwarted an attempt to set up an encampment last Wednesday, stood by and didn't take any immediate action to remove them.
Occupy Cal members have accused police officers of using excessive force last week, when 39 people were arrested.
UC Berkeley spokeswoman Claire Holmes said tonight that, "We don't want a repeat performance of last week and we want to focus on maintaining safety on campus after the shooting at the Haas School of Business."
She was referring to an incident shortly after 2:15 p.m. today in which campus police shot a man who allegedly was brandishing a gun. The man was taken to Highland Hospital in Oakland but there has been no word on his condition.
Holmes said university officials and police will assess the situation on Sproul Plaza as the evening progresses before deciding how to respond to the new encampment.
About 3,000 people gathered in Sproul Plaza for the general assembly and to hear a speech by professor of public policy Robert Reich, who served as Secretary of Labor under President Clinton.
Reich was to deliver the 15th annual Mario Savio lecture in honor of the former student who started the free speech movement on the UC Berkeley campus in 1964.
"It's a wonderful gathering," Holmes said.
As of 9 p.m. the atmosphere was calm and there weren't any arrests.
Before the vote on setting up an encampment was taken there were speakers who took both sides of the issue.
A man who said his name is Alex and who's a graduate student in sociology said he was beaten up by UC Berkeley police last week and he supports trying to set up tents again because they seem to be an important symbol to university officials.
A woman who identified herself as Amanda said, "We should continue to stay to assure that we have a truly free university."
She said, "Without tents we can't stay if it rains."
Amanda also said protesters need food tents and "with tents we can take care of each other and ourselves."
But a man who said his name is William said setting up tents again and risking arrest might take away from what he said is the group's greatest resource, which he said is its intelligence.
He said that if the protesters only set up symbolic tents the size of grocery bags they might have more success in getting their overall message across than if they insisted on setting up real tents.
A woman who announced the results of the vote in favor of setting up the tents said, "The seeds of resistance have been planted and we will not be moved."
The woman said Occupy Oakland members will meet at 6 p.m. Wednesday and every following day even if there are arrests tonight.
Tuesday. After seven days in a hoosegow in Yellowstone, Indian medicine on the res, and three failed Peoples Park tree-sits, Berkeley's Running Wolf is back on top at Frank Ogawa Plaza, where the latest tent encampment was removed.
Ted Friedman
Littlebird, last month during the latest ill-fated tree sit in People's Park.
Ted Friedman
Tuesday at Frank Ogawa Plaza, Oakland, where the latest tent encampment was removed early Monday, and groundskeepers graded it. Running Wolf says the grading is to allow Oakland to blame occupiers for destroying the lawn that was there.
At the latest evacuation of campers Monday from Oakland's Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, the epicenter of Occupy Oakland, a lone protester was able to escape the police evacuation.
Maybe that's because he was up a tree.
The lone protester was Zachary Running Wolf Brown, 48, a native of Berkeley, a recently announced Berkeley mayoral candidate, and an elder in the Blackfeet tribe of Montana. With his latest,protest, Running Wolf takes his candidacy to new heights.
Saying he won't descend, until Oakland "co-operates" with the occupation of Ogawa Plaza, Running Wolf has settled in for another record-breaking tree-sit.
Berkeleyans may recall the media madness that was the Oak Grove tree protest, Dec. 2006 to Sep. 2008, the longest urban tree-sit in North America. Running Wolf organized and ran the controversial protest.
Sensing, Saturday night, the impending clearing of the plaza (there had been several orders to vacate the encampment), Brown went up a forty foot tree to rig two platforms, occupy the tree, and await events on the ground.
When police removed the tent encampment early Monday, Running Wolf was already installed in the tree.
By Tuesday, Running Wolf was receiving admiring visitors, offering political advice, and receiving so much food--passed up by rope in a canvas shoulder bag--he had to decline some of it.
Police with point and shoots joined tourists with point and shoots. The scene was almost festive.
The lone vigil in a tree, at 14th and Broadway, adjacent to the plaza, had been contemplated for several weeks, according to Running Wolf--perhaps in response to a failed tree-sit in People's Park last month which involved Indian tricks, an Eagle feather, and evil spirits.
The failed People's Park tree sit, the seventh in two years and the third since January, may have fallen victim to evil spirits.
In January it was a stabbing that ended the protest, and a few months later an inexperienced tree-sitter plunged from a tree and broke her back, as reported in the Planet.
The latest failed People's Park protest was perhaps the most bizarre. Littlebird, self-styled "poet in a tree," apparently was talked out of the tree, after more than an hour of sweet talk with a university policeman, ending the struggling protest. This was the first time a cop in People's Park had been so successful in ending a tree-sit.
Running Wolf, accepting full responsibility for mismanaging the tree-sits, vowed to fight on. "We've had seven tree sits in People's Park, and we'll hold many more," he boasted recently. "We like sitting in trees. That's what we do," he added.
To see him lounging on his platform Tuesday giving pep talks to the crowd, you'd think trees were home to him--like Tarzan.
But where did Tarzan go wrong when Littlebird went AWOL?
The whole story becomes curiouser. See, it wasn't Littlebird who walked out of the tree, according to Running Wolf. Littlebird had left the tree earlier, because he had said from the start he'd only sit for a few days. Running Wolf admitted he was busy with Occupy S.F.--where he made the evening news--and had failed to provide Littlebird a stand-in.
And we still haven't got to the Eagle feather, and Indian medicine rituals.
According to Running Wolf, he was coffee-ing at the Cafe Mediterraneum, where he is popular with the owner, who wants to rid People's Park of people like Running Wolf, when a friend rushed in to say police were trying to talk to Littlebird in the tree. Only Littlebird wasn't there, (unknown to police, no one was there) and that if they learned Littlebird wasn't there, they'd pull down the platforms.
Rushing to the scene, Running Wolf, deployed an old Indian trick. He pretended to be talking to Littlebird, who had flown the coop, as two UCPD officers looked on. Now Running Wolf had to act fast. He had enlisted a Littlebird replacement, Sun Shadow, at Occupy S.F., but needed to coax him some more.
A 12 string guitar, from a donor in Oakland was offered, on loan, to Sun Shadow (a guitarist) as incentive. Don't call it a bribe. But Running Wolf attached an Eagle feather to the guitar strap to ensure the guitar would be returned.
As Running Wolf instructed me, "Eagle feathers always come back."
If only Sun Shadow had not succumbed to reason. According to the U.C.P.D. officer who out-reasoned Sun Shadow in a sweet-talk dialogue lasting more than an hour, Shadow believed the tree he was occupying was slated to be felled. No way, argued the officer, and if you come down you won't be cited. You can walk away. Sun Shadow walked, and university police confiscated the riggings and platforms.
But Running Wolf sees this as a victory because Sun Shadow returned the guitar and the Eagle feather.
"The Eagle feather came back," Running Wolf laughed, and "that's a win."
Just another action in the busy schedule of the P.T. Barnum of Bay Area protest.
Running Wolf had recently returned from his Blackfeet reservation in Montana, a momentous visit in which he "dropped medicine," an Indian ritual not to be confused with dropping acid, hoping to overcome an Occupy Oakland decision to ban tree-sitting.
"We needed to elevate," after all the eviction threats at Ogawa, Running Wolf said Tuesday.
But instead of elevating, RW, as he is called by friends (or just Zach), spent seven days in some hoosegow near Yellowstone National Park on a car tail-light beef that escalated. The car belonged to a friend.
It took the intervention of Tony Serra, a well-known S.F. civil liberties attorney, to spring RW. Back at his Medhead haunt on Telegraph, RW was at his up-beat best, but the friend who had accompanied him to the rez was visibly shaken by the ordeal.
Installed in his latest high-visibility tree-house Tuesday at Ogawa Plaza, Oakland, RW is back on top.
Julie Sinai, the long time chief of staff to Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates, is resigning to take a job as the new director of Local Government and Community Relations at UC Berkeley.
She’ll replace Caleb Dardick, who abruptly resigned from that position earlier this year after two years to take a job with an environmental non-profit in the Sierra foothills, near his family home.
In a widely circulated and forwarded email this week addressed to “Friends and Colleagues” Sinai announced her departure. She’ll leave the Mayor’s office on November 30, take a month off, and start work at UC Berkeley on January 2, 2012.
The Mayor’s website says Sinai “serves as the Mayor’s policy advisor on youth, education, jobs, health, social service issues, inter-government relations and is the press contact for the Mayor's Office.”
The office of Government and Community Relations at UC Berkeley has a mission defined as “…to demonstrate the value of UC Berkeley as the nation's leading public research university to elected officials, government agencies, the local community, and the public at large; to assist governmental entities in the development of public policy; and to increase public support for the University and UC Berkeley's interests.”
Some of the projects on the local government website include “Student Neighbor Relations” including dealing with party noise in off campus student housing and student discards at the end of the semester, the Chancellor’s Community Partnership Fund which gives grants to community groups, the CalNeighbors Newsletter, and management of People’s Park.
The local government office website still lists Dardick as Director, although he left months ago for a job as Executive Director of the South Yuba River Citizens League in his home town of Nevada City. His father, a former County Supervisor there, died in May.
Sinai is not the first individual to make the jump from a city position to the UC administration. Dardick himself had worked for Berkeley Mayor Shirley Dean before coming to the University. In the 1980s Daniel Boggan, Jr. the Berkeley City Manager, resigned to take a Vice-Chancellor’s position at the Berkeley campus. In the 1960s Berkeley Police Chief William Beale became the UC Police Department Chief at Berkeley.
Here’s the text of the e-mail Sinai circulated:
“Greetings Friends and Colleagues,
I apologize for the mass email, but I wanted to let you all know that I’ve accepted the position of UC Berkeley’s Director of Local Government and Community Relations.
As you are likely aware, I left the Berkeley Unified School District in 2002 to work with Mayor Bates on his top agenda issue of youth and education. Now, with all levels of education massively under siege from multiple fronts, I’ve decided that this is where I need to refocus my professional efforts. This position gives me the opportunity to work for accessible and quality education by strengthening the partnerships between the University and Berkeley, the East Bay, the greater Bay Area, and the private sector.
I want to extend the warmest of heartfelt thanks to Mayor Bates for letting me have the honor of serving him and the City of Berkeley for these past nine years. These have truly been the some of the most fulfilling years of my career. Mayor Bates is a visionary leader who has the rare ability to transform his values and ideas into actions and results.
I also want to thank the wonderful team we’ve had in the Mayor’s Office – Calvin, Sbeydeh, Nils and Cisco – for sharing their commitment, expertise, and good humor. It has been a joy to work with this dynamic people over the years.
I look forward working in my new capacity with the City Council, City staff, 2020 Vision for Berkeley’s Children and Youth, the East Bay Green Corridor Partnership, and all our community partners to make Berkeley, Cal and the East Bay the best place in the world.
My last day in the Mayor’s Office will be November 30th. After a relaxing month of December, I will begin my new position at UC Berkeley on January 2, 2012.”
Kaulin Krebs, 24, a junior at UC Berkeley, heard shots but did not directly witness the shooting in the computer lab.
A UC Police officer guards the entrance to Haas School of Business after the shooting.
contributed photo
Haas Business School students were confined in the building during police investigation of today's shooting.
At 2:15 this afternoon a person alleged to have a gun was shot by UC Berkeley Police in the computer lab of the school's Haas Business School, according to UC Police Officer Alex Yao. The victim's name has not been released. Yao said at a 3:15 press conference that he is now being transported to Highland Hospital.
Kaulin Krebs, 24, a junior at UC, said he was just going into the lab when he heard what sounded like about ten shots. Looking into the room, he heard someone say, "Drop to the ground, a guy has a gun," and saw about 15 of his fellow students crouched on the floor. He did not see the person who was shot, but he said that it appeared to him that no one else had been shot, which was confirmed by Officer Yao.
"All students and faculty have been evacuated," university spokesman Dan Mogulof said. "The suspect, who was brandishing a weapon, has been taken into custody."
The shooting happened in a third-floor computer lab.
Mogulof said an employee spotted what appeared to be a weapon in the suspect's bag and told a supervisor, who then contacted police.
Haas School of Business spokesman Lyle Nevels said he was working on the fifth floor when he heard something was happening and headed downstairs to the computer lab.
He said he saw the suspect, whom he described as a man in his 20s weighing about 180 pounds, sitting at a computer terminal. He said the man didn't look out of place in the lab.
Nevels didn't see the shooting but said several police officers showed up at the computer lab and he heard at least one yell "Drop your gun, Drop your gun!"
He said he then heard several shots fired.
No more information has been released at this time, but in answer to questions at the press conference Yao said it was "an isolated incident" not necessarily connected to the Occupy Cal protest going on at the same time.
Hundreds of protesters blocked traffic on Bancroft Way near the University of California at Berkeley this afternoon.
The protesters marched through campus and had filled the street at Bancroft Way and Telegraph Avenue at about 2:30 p.m.
They carried signs, some reading "Make banks pay," and "Student power."
Afterwards, the march moved on to downtown Berkeley.
The protesters are part of the Occupy Cal movement, which drew about 2,000 University of California at Berkeley students and workers to a noon rally at Sproul Plaza today.
The crowd is expected to be joined later today by Occupy Oakland protesters, who are scheduled to march from Frank Ogawa Plaza to the campus at 2:30 p.m.
Occupy Cal protesters will hold a general assembly at 5 p.m., at which they are expected to decide whether to make another attempt to set up an encampment on campus.
Protestors will call on bank execs on higher education boards to “make banks pay” to end cuts to higher education
Following widespread student protests and an emerging #OccupyCal movement calling on higher education board members to make banks pay instead of cutting funds to higher education, thousands of students will converge on the corporate offices of the UC Regents in the San Francisco Financial District and at the CSU Trustees' meeting in Long Beach on Wednesday.
The location of the convergence in San Francisco was changed yesterday to reflect the UC Regents’ decision to cancel their meeting, previously scheduled to take place on Wednesday at UCSF Mission Bay. The thousands of students, teachers, and others who planned to go to the meeting will gather at Justin Herman Plaza in San Francisco, followed by a march on banks and corporate offices of the UC Regents and ending with a People's Assembly for Public Education at the State Building. Students in Southern California will proceed with the planned convergence at the CSU Trustees meeting in Long Beach, where the Trustees are set to consider proposed fee increases for the 2012-2013 academic year (see full schedule and site contacts below).
Last week, over 10,000 students across California took to the streets, blocking traffic and marching on banks, demanding that bank executives and other corporate elite on the three boards overseeing California’s higher education system sign a pledge to make banks pay to stop cuts to higher education. Over 14 college campuses saw protests and rallies including Fresno State, CSU Sacramento, UC Davis, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, UC Santa Barbara, UCLA, CSU Long Beach, UC Riverside, UC Irvine, UC San Diego, San Diego State and San Francisco City College. The Berkeley protest ended when police used violence against the students and workers, who continued to be non-violent in the face of the baton-wielding police. On Tuesday, Berkeley students and faculty held a general strike to reject the actions taken by police and continue to call on higher education board members to sign a pledge to make banks pay to refund higher education.
Many members of the university boards hold leadership positions at some of the nation’s biggest banks, financial institutions and corporations, which are the target of nationwide Occupy protests – including Monica Lozano, UC Regent and Bank of America Board Member. As these banks and their executives continue to profit, the California higher education system has suffered deep budget cuts resulting in the layoffs of thousands of teachers and workers, cuts to research projects vital for progress in public health and other areas, and record tuition hikes that have caused students – especially students of color – to drop out or delay education plans.
The effort is being organized by Refund California, a statewide coalition of students, teachers, homeowners, workers, community members and faith leaders working to make Wall Street banks pay for a crisis they helped to create.
Leading up to last week’s protests, the coalition sent a letter to the members of the Board of Regents of the University of California, the California State University Board of Trustees and the Community Colleges Board of Governors, calling on them to sign a pledge saying they will support five specific demands that will make banks pay their fair share to stop cuts to higher education, restore needed state revenue and improve the economy for California families. The demands include a federal sales tax on Wall Street financial transactions, which would generate needed revenue for education, and the reduction of underwater mortgage debt, which would put more money in the pockets of middle class families.
**LOCATION DETAILS**
SAN FRANCISCO
Convergence on corporate offices of the UC Regents in the San Francisco Financial District
12 pm - Rally at Justin Herman Plaza
1 pm - March on banks in San Francisco Financial District
4 pm - People's Assembly for Public Education at the State Building, 455 Golden Gate Ave
Site contact: Charlie Eaton, 510-220-1520
LONG BEACH
Convergence at CSU Trustees Meeting, Chancellor’s Headquarters, 401 Golden Shore Drive
8:30-9:30 am - Students arrive at meeting (Trustees expected to vote on fee cut around 10am)
Immediately following - March on banks along Ocean Boulevard, ending at Wells Fargo, 111 West Ocean Boulevard
Site contact: Bahar Tolou, 323-899-3399
FOLLOW THE PROTESTS ONLINE:
Facebook – “Like” Make Banks Pay California for updates, links, pictures, and videos.
Twitter – Follow @ReFundCA and the hashtag #makebankspay
Students, workers, faculty and community members rallied on the University of California at Berkeley campus today as part of the Occupy Cal strike.
Last week, hundreds of people who participated in a Nov. 9 general assembly on the campus voted for a campus "strike" to be held today.
More than two-dozen teach outs, workshops and performances were scheduled between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. People converged on Sproul Plaza at noon, and a general assembly is scheduled for 5 p.m.
According to the university, the protesters have renewed a call for establishing an encampment, which campus administrators have said is prohibited.
Members of the Occupy Oakland protest were expected to march to the Berkeley campus, meeting at 2:30 p.m. at Frank Ogawa Plaza, according to the Occupy Oakland website.
Robert Slaughter, who said he was one of the demonstrators who was arrested during the Nov. 9 Occupy Cal protest, spoke about his arrest and detention at a rally near campus at Bancroft and Telegraph avenues.
Slaughter, a student at St. Mary's College in Moraga, had been issued an order to stay away from the Berkeley campus. He claims he was racially profiled and harassed by police and sheriff's deputies, and that after his arrest he was separated from the rest of the protesters in county jail and was held longer than anyone else.
This evening, an annual lecture that honors the memory of Mario Savio, a key member of the 1964 Free Speech Movement that began on campus, was moved to Sproul Plaza from its original location in Pauley Ballroom, which is in the student union across from Sproul Hall.
Robert Reich, professor of public policy at UC Berkeley and former U.S. labor secretary, will deliver the annual memorial lecture at 8 p.m. on the steps of Sproul Hall.
UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau on Monday issued a statement about last week's protests and granted amnesty to the students arrested for attempting to prevent the removal of the occupation's tents.
Birgeneau also announced the creation of a review board to assess the police response to the protests. Several people, including Slaughter and Celeste Langan, a tenured associate professor in the English Department, have accused police of using excessive force.
"When the student in front of me was forcibly removed, I held out my wrist and said 'Arrest me! Arrest me!" Langan wrote in a blog post about her experience.
"But rather than take my wrist or arm, the police grabbed me by my hair and yanked me forward to the ground ... The injuries I sustained were relatively minor ... but also unnecessary and unjustified," she said.
A group of University of California at Berkeley students and community protesters who say they were victims of police brutality during a Nov. 9 "Occupy Cal" demonstration announced today their lawsuit against the university and multiple UCPD police officers.
Ronald Cruz, a lawyer with the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration and Immigration Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary, or BAMN, said today that the organization is planning to file the suit on behalf of seven protesters who claim to be victims of police violence and false arrests.
In the lawsuit, which Cruz said BAMN plans to file later this month, the plaintiffs will also call on Chancellor Robert Birgeneau to resign.
University spokeswoman Janet Gilmore said this afternoon that university administrators were unaware of the planned lawsuit and declined to comment on any pending litigation.
Gilmore said Birgenau plans to issue a memo to the campus community today related to the Occupy Cal movement.
"The police repeatedly beat students, especially women students, in the ribs, stomach, arms, legs and face," UC Berkeley senior and BAMN organizer Matt Williams said in the statement released today.
Yvette Felarca, a BAMN national organizer, said she was one of the first women targeted by police during the Nov. 9 protest. A now-viral YouTube video shows a police officer yanking her by the hair, Felarca said.
Felarca said she is still recovering from a beating she endured at the hands of UC Berkeley police officers that day.
"I was one of the people beaten pretty badly -- and I saw so many other people, especially women, who were viciously attacked and I feel very much that it's a matter of principle that we have to hold those police officers accountable, and hold the chancellor accountable," Felarca said today. "Nobody had the right to beat us, much less police ordered by administrators."
Cruz said Felarca has been instrumental in bringing together many of the students who say they were victimized or falsely arrested by UC Berkeley police officers that day.
The number of plaintiffs in the lawsuit may grow as BAMN organizers are considering finding more protesters who were victimized by campus police on Nov. 9, he said.
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit plan to join thousands of other UC Berkeley protesters Tuesday in an Occupy Cal strike with a planned afternoon march from Oakland to the UC Berkeley campus, Cruz said.
Robert Slaughter, a political science major at nearby Saint Mary’s College, was one of those arrested during the 'Occupy Cal' protest on the night of Wednesday, November 9th. Slaughter, who is Black, was subjected to what appears to be a clear case of racial profiling.
Slaughter has been charged with three misdemeanors and has been issued a stay-away order from the Berkeley campus, but he plans to hold the UC administration to account by speaking about his arrest and detention at a 2:20pm rally just off campus on Bancroft and Telegraph during the upcoming student strike on Tuesday, November 15th.
After being thrown to the ground and beaten by police in the process of arrest, he was separated from the rest of the protesters in County Jail and held longer than anyone else.
After being bailed out by the UNITE HERE hotel workers union on Friday afternoon, Slaughter, who had never been arrested before, recounted how Alameda County Sheriff’s deputies had harassed him: “They yelled at me ‘what gang are you in!?’ and ‘where are your tattoos!?’”
Rob was put in a separate area that held black and brown people who were there for gang related activity. The initial holding cell was filthy with urine and fecal matter.
The kind of violence exhibited by police against peaceful protesters at Occupy Oakland and Occupy Cal in the past weeks is unnecessary and intolerable. We (a group of mathematicians at UC Berkeley and SF State) are taking a stand against police brutality by doing what we do best: mathematics! Come to our anti-police-brutality teach in on Wednesday, November 16th from 11am to 5pm. We will be lecturing at Dwinelle Plaza (just north of Sather gate).
We are being support by the wonderful folks at the MGSA! They have been so kind as to make us a great poster.
Abstracts
Introduction to Tropical Geometry: Instead of addition and multiplication, tropical arithmetic uses alternative ways of combining numbers. I will describe some basic features of tropical geometry, which is the study of the solutions to equations in these alternative operations. If time permits, I'll describe how tropical geometry makes an appearance in some interesting places, like mathematical biology.
The Mathematics of Altruism and Civil Involvement: Mathematics can, and should, inspire hope! No one person has the power to change everything, but simple order-of-magnitude calculations can often show that altruistic behaviors like voting and civil involvement have a huge expected impact. For example, if the goal is to benefit yourself, voting probably isn't worth the 30 minutes it takes out of your day, but if the goal is to benefit others, then well-informed voting can be a highly effective charity, equivalent to something like turning $1 of your own money into $1000 for your country. We'll also talk about how to represent doing-your-part activities (like half-vegetarianism, carpooling, recycling, and saving water) as "curve moving", which looks and feels a little like moving a mountain all by yourself.
Introduction to the Riemann Hypothesis: The aim of the talk is to familiarize the listeners with one of the greatest unsolved problems of the century. In order to be able to formulate the Riemann Hypothesis, I will define the Riemann-Zeta function and present some of its properties. Moreover, I will try to explain the importance of the Riemann Hypothesis in modern mathematics.
The Plank Problem: This talk will address a simple question with an obvious yet hard-to-prove answer: Is it possible to cover a disc with a number of planks whose total widths are less than the disc's diameter?
Geometry, the Majority Vote and the Power of Agenda Control: Many political choices, such as budget decisions, can be represented as points in space. This has huge consequences for the dynamics of the majority vote: An individual with the power to control the agenda (to decide which bills are up for vote) can lead voters to agree to *anything* of their own free will!
FAQ
Q: What is the nature of the teach in? A: We will be giving introductory lectures on a number of exciting mathematical topics. Each speaker has chosen his or her own topic; some topics were specifically chosen to have more direct societal relevance, while others were chosen because they are just plain cool.
Q: How does this do anything about police brutality? A: We could host a debate about exactly when what forms of violence are justified, and if linking arms constitutes nonviolent protest, etc. Instead, we'll leave that to the experts, and do what we are expert at: mathematics. However, throughout the day, we'll be reminding listeners why we are outside instead of cooped up on the top floors of Evans Hall. We do not condone the kind of violence used by police against students at Occupy Cal on Wednesday, November 9th. We hope that our presence at Dwinelle will make this statement loud and clear.
Q: What can I do to help? A: Come to the lectures! Invite your friends, students, family, and enemies! Bring snacks for everyone. If it looks like it will be cold, bring tea and blankets to share.
Q: Why aren't you doing this on Tuesday during the general strike? A: Firstly, some of our lecturers had other obligations on Tuesday. Secondly, while many of us sympathize with Occupy Cal, we are promoting a distinctly different message, namely, a condemnation of police brutality.
Q: What about the Occupy Regents on Wednesday? A: We don't want to discourage anyone from attending the Occupy Regents protest. If you were planning on doing so but now are torn between going there and coming to our teach in, please go there. We believe that there are a large number of people who will be interested in our teach in who weren't planning on going to Occupy Regents.
Links
Petition condemning police violence for teachers at UC Berkeley.
An open letter for memebers of the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department.
The University of California Board of Regents announced today that it is canceling its meetings in San Francisco this week because of "credible intelligence" indicating that violence was possible.
The regents' announcement follows criticism that University of California at Berkeley police were overly aggressive in responding to "Occupy Cal" protests on Wednesday that drew thousands of people and resulted in dozens of arrests.
UC regents were scheduled to meet at UC San Francisco's Mission Bay campus on Wednesday and Thursday.
But Board of Regents chair Sherry Lansing, vice chair Bruce Varner and UC President Mark Yudof said in a statement today that "late last week, University of California law enforcement officials came to us with concerns about credible intelligence they had collected in advance of the Board of Regents meeting."
"From various sources, they had received information indicating that rogue elements intent on violence and confrontation with UC public safety officers were planning to attach themselves to peaceful demonstrations expected to occur at the meeting," they said.
Lansing, Varner and Yudof said it appears there was a real danger of "significant violence and vandalism."
"They have advised us further that this violence could place at risk members of the public, students lawfully gathered to voice concerns over tuition levels and any other issues ... They recommended to us, in the strongest of terms, that we cancel or postpone the meeting as scheduled," the statement read.
They said the meeting would be rescheduled, possibly at another venue, and that they would announce the date as soon as possible.
They declined to disclose details about the intelligence or the potential violence.
The agenda for this week's meeting included updates from UC staff members on several initiatives that have been launched in an effort to offset state disinvestment in the university and provide alternate revenue streams beyond tuition and taxpayer support.
They said that work will continue to go forward and "contrary to some public misperceptions, a tuition increase was never a part of the agenda for this meeting."
Leading up to protests at Wednesday’s UC Regents and CSU Trustees meetings, strikers will call on UC, CSU board members to sign pledge to make banks pay to end cuts to higher education . [Editor's Note: The Regents' meeting has been cancelled.}
Following excessive police force used against last week’s protests to make banks pay to end cuts to higher education, Berkeley students and faculty will strike on Tuesday to reject the actions taken by police and call on higher education board members to sign a pledge to make banks pay to refund higher education. The all-day strike will include a massive non-violence training at noon, a 2pm rally at Sproul Plaza followed by a march on banks in downtown Berkeley, and the reestablishment of the Occupy Cal Encampment (see full schedule of events below).
The effort is being organized by Refund California and Occupy Cal as part of a Refund California week of action. Refund California is a statewide coalition of students, teachers, workers, homeowners, community members and faith leaders working to make Wall Street banks pay for a crisis they helped to create.
Last week, over 10,000 students across California took to the streets, blocking traffic and marching on banks, demanding that bank executives and other corporate elite on the three boards overseeing California’s higher education system sign a pledge to make banks pay to stop cuts to higher education. Over 14 college campuses saw protests and rallies including Fresno State, CSU Sacramento, UC Davis, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, UC Santa Barbara, UCLA, CSU Long Beach, UC Riverside, UC Irvine, UC San Diego, San Diego State and San Francisco City College. The Berkeley protest ended in an attack by police on non-violent protestors and nearly 40 arrests.
Statement on the Nov. 15 UC Berkeley Student Strike by the Partners of ReFund California:
Today we announce a student strike at UC Berkeley on Tuesday, Nov. 15th to reject the excessive police force used against our protests to make Wall Street – and the corporate elite on the boards governing our universities – pay for refunding public education. Some faculty are expected to join the student strike, and the actions will add to the growing momentum for statewide convergences at the CSU Trustees meeting in Long Beach and the UC Regents meeting at UCSF Mission Bay on November 16th.
We call on the UC Regents and CSU trustees to devote their meetings on November 16 to a discussion of how they - many as corporate leaders - can carry out the ReFund California Pledge to make the 1% pay to refund public education. The CSU and UC boards should open the meetings to all as equal participants. And we ask that they promise not to use police force against nonviolent mobilizations at these meetings and during the Tuesday strike.
There is a crisis today for California’s students and their families, but not for the Wall Street and corporate elites who control the economy and dominate the governing boards of California’s universities.
California leads the nation in tuition increases with nearly 100 percent rise in tuition costs since 2008, inflating student loans to $1 trillion nationally. We keep paying the price while Wall Street and corporations are left off the hook. We didn’t cause the economic crisis—they did.
That's why we call on the board members and executives of our universities to sign the ReFund California pledge to support real solutions to fund public education and improve the economy for California families. They should join the community whose interests they say they represent instead of irresponsibly using police force to silence our freedom of expression.
Signed,
Academic Professionals of California, CSU - Mobilizing Committee AFSCME 3299 - UC patient care and service employees Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment
Berkeley Faculty Association
California Nurses Association Communities for a New California The Council of UC Faculty Associations
SEIU 721 - Southern California school and public service employees SEIU - United Service Workers West
Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan said police will allow protesters to re-enter Frank Ogawa Plaza late this afternoon but will remove anyone who tries to camp out there.
He said the police sweep at the plaza early this morning went more smoothly than the raid three weeks ago, in part because he said no one threw rocks at officers this time.
All of the protesters were gone from the plaza, except for Zachary Running Wolf, a tree-sitter raised in Berkeley who is perched atop a small wooden platform in a tree there.
Jordan said police are leaving him alone for now as they look into what his legal rights are to be there.
This morning, he could be heard shouting from the tree, "This is native land. I'm not coming down."
Thirty-two people were arrested in the raid this morning, and another person was arrested around noon for spitting at an officer at 14th Street and Broadway.
Police spokeswoman Johnna Watson said that in addition to spitting at officers, that man threw a gallon of water onto them and knocked down barriers at the plaza.
Jordan said that once the city finishes cleaning up the plaza, people can't be kept away because it is a public space. But he said police will monitor the plaza all night to make sure tents aren't set up again.
He also said that if anarchists show up tonight trying to cause trouble, "We intend to have sufficient officers to arrest people who break the law."
Jordan said officers from other agencies will be available again tonight if necessary.
This morning, Oakland police were assisted by officers from the San Leandro, San Francisco, Hayward and Fremont police departments, and sheriff's deputies from Alameda, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties.
Jordan said nearly 100 Oakland police officers and 300 officers and deputies from other agencies participated in this morning's enforcement. No injuries were reported to officers or protesters, he said.
City Administrator Deanna Santana said Oakland is paying between $300,000 and $500,000 for today's mutual aid.
Oakland is paying in full for the assistance, since the raid was a planned event, Jordan said. However, if protests get out of hand tonight, that would constitute an emergency and a mutual aid agreement would be activated, meaning Oakland wouldn't have to foot the whole bill for the response.
Occupy Oakland protesters plan to hold a rally at 4 p.m. today.
"We expect a large, peaceful rally," Jordan said.
He said police will "facilitate" the rally by escorting protesters as they march from the Oakland Public Library to Frank Ogawa Plaza.
Jordan said there are about 25 tents at a second encampment at Snow Park, near Lake Merritt, which is about half a mile away from Frank Ogawa Plaza.
He said police plan to remove people in the tents from the park eventually but that it's not a high priority now because "Snow Park has never been a problem for us since there has been no violence or drug dealing."
Crews were still cleaning up Frank Ogawa Plaza early this afternoon.
Hundreds of "Occupy Oakland" protesters have gathered in Frank Ogawa Plaza this evening for a general assembly meeting after their encampment was dismantled by police this morning.
City officials released a statement late this afternoon saying that the plaza was open to the public after crews completed debris removal at Frank Ogawa Plaza less than 12 hours after this morning's raid at around 4:30 a.m.
Public works personnel removed more than 27 tons of debris and about eight tons of green waste, according to the city.
As of 6 p.m., the protest has been "very peaceful," according to police spokesman Jeff Thomason.
There are more officers at the plaza this evening then there were on Oct. 25 after the city's first raid on the encampment, Thomason said, however their presence is still moderate.
City officials said this afternoon that there will be a strong police presence at Frank Ogawa Plaza 24 hours a day and that mutual aid is available to assist Oakland police this evening.
City officials also said that they are monitoring activities at Snow Park, where about 25 tents were set up as of this afternoon. The Snow Park encampment will be cleared in the near future, authorities said.
Thirty-two people were arrested this morning in what appears to have been a largely peaceful police sweep of Frank Ogawa Plaza to clear out the Occupy Oakland encampment that has stood outside City Hall for weeks.
At a morning news conference at the city's Emergency Operations Center after the raid, Police Chief Howard Jordan said only nine of the people arrested are Oakland residents.
He said there were no injuries to police officers or protesters.
"I'm very proud of the way the officers acted today," Jordan said.
Oakland police were assisted by officers from the San Leandro, San Francisco, Hayward and Fremont police departments, and sheriff's deputies from Alameda, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, he said.
City Administrator Deanna Santana said Oakland is paying between $300,000 and $500,000 for today's mutual aid.
Mid-morning, cleanup crews were going through the disassembled encampment and there were no protesters in the plaza, except for a man who has climbed a tree and refuses to come down, Jordan said.
Jordan said the city is looking into the man's legal rights to be there before trying to remove him.
Meanwhile, city employees were being told not to come to work until 10 a.m., and residents are advised to avoid visiting City Hall today unless they have urgent business there.
Downtown merchants were being asked to consider delaying the start of their work days as well.
Mayor Jean Quan sounded hoarse as she spoke at the news conference, saying a number of protesters left the encampment voluntarily before police moved in.
"We met with multiple groups within the camp and asked them to leave," Quan said. "Many of them have, and I want to thank them for that."
She asked people throughout the Bay Area to respect the city's decision to shut down the encampment, and refrain from engaging in "destructive acts."
After the camp was raided the first time on Oct. 25, protests downtown turned violent, resulting in injuries to both police and protesters, and downtown businesses were damaged.
In response to a reporter's question, Quan also briefly discussed the departure of her unpaid legal adviser Dan Siegel, who resigned over Quan's decision to raid the camp.
She said she and Siegel went to college together and sometimes disagree.
"He's moving on, I'm moving on," Quan said.
The mayor admitted to being tired today.
"As the mayor of Oakland, this has been a very difficult situation," Quan said.
She said she believes the "Occupy" movement is morphing into a movement larger than just encampments, but that the protesters who were removed from Frank Ogawa Plaza today are trying to find private property to move onto.
In the meantime, some of the campers have relocated to Snow Park, near Lake Merritt.
Jordan said there is no plan to raid Snow Park today.
Santana said city officials hope to have Frank Ogawa Plaza cleared and available for public use, including demonstrations, by 6 p.m. She said, however, that camping will not be allowed.
Jordan said there will be a "strong police presence" at the plaza.
"We are going to be having a very strict no-lodging policy," he said.
Police moved in on Frank Ogawa Plaza beginning at 4:30 a.m., and by 5 a.m. officers in riot gear had blocked streets surrounding the plaza.
Rumors had spread among Occupy Oakland protesters that a police raid was imminent this morning, and protesters gathered in the street at the corner of 14th Street and Broadway early this morning to wait for police action.
Protesters announced on the Occupy Oakland website that they plan to reconvene at the Oakland Public Library at 125 14th St. at 4 p.m.
Police plan to hold another media briefing at 1 p.m.
Lynne Hollander Savio has informed people on the Will Call list for the Mario Savio Memorial Lecture, this year to be delivered by Professor Robert Reich, that the event, orginally scheduled for Pauley Ballroom on the UC Berkeley campus, has been moved to the Mario Savio Steps in Sproul Plaza. It will take place at 8 p.m. on Tuesday.
Here is the text of her email:
The Mario Savio Memorial Lecture and Young Activist Award Board of Directors and Robert Reich, the scheduled lecture speaker, have been asked by the Occupy Cal General Assembly to transfer the event to the Mario Savio Steps in Sproul Plaza at 8 p.m. Tuesday evening, instead of holding it inside Pauley Ballroom. This is in protest against the use of excessive police force against non- violent demonstrators who were peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights to free speech in a symbolic encampment. Although we recognize that this change of venue may pose a physical hardship for some of the attendees, it was unanimously agreed that we would be violating our mission statement (see below) to reject the request. Depending on the exact circumstances at the time, a somewhat shortened presentation of the Young Activist Award will be held, and the award winners will speak.
The following efforts are being made to ensure people's comfort and safety as far as possible.
1 - The students are planning to erect a few tents on the grass in front of one side of Sproul Hall at 6 p.m. Based on past experience, they believe the police will either seize the tents pretty immediately or wait until late at night. In other words, a confrontation is very unlikely to occur during the period of the lecture, especially with a large number of people in the Plaza.
2 - Professor Reich is likely to start speaking at 8:40, not earlier. This will be preceded by the Young Activist Award speakers.
3 - the students intend to set up an area with chairs for those in need. If you can sit low down and still get up, please bring a cushion or a low beach chair. All of the rest of the audience will also be asked to sit on the ground so as not to block the view..
3- Dress warmly. Rain is not expected. The temperature is likely to be in the low 50s.
4 - There will be amplification.
Please do not attend if you feel the circumstances would be too difficult for you. We also want you to be aware that it is possible (though the students feel it is unlikely), that if the tents are taken down earlier, the atmosphere might remain too charged and too chaotic for the lecture to be held.
If you contributed to the Lecture fund in order to secure seats in the reserved section, you may choose between having your donation refunded or letting us keep it and receiving a CD of the lecture, if one can be made.
We apologize for your inconvenience and disappointment, but, as Mario Savio said: There comes a time...
Thank you for your interest and your support.
Lynne Hollander Savio and the Board of the MSML&YAA
Mission Statement: To honor the memory of Mario Savio and the spirit of moral courage and vision which he and countless other activists of his generation exemplified;
To promote the values that Mario Savio struggled to advance throughout his life: human rights, social justice, and freedom of expression;
To provide a forum where young people can connect with older activists to understand their common ideals and find inspiration and nourishment for activism today;
To recognize and encourage young activists engaged in the struggle to build a more humane and just society.
Police began withdrawing from Broadway at around 6:30 a.m. today, after blocking off Oakland's Frank Ogawa Plaza and arresting people remaining in the plaza.
Police are in the process of dismantling what remains of the Occupy Oakland camp that has occupied Frank Ogawa Plaza for most of the last month.
Police blocked off the plaza shortly before 6 a.m. today with lines of riot police. Most protesters had already moved into the street at 14th Street and Broadway before police arrived.
One protester [identified by the San Francisco Chronicle as Zachary Running Wolf of Berkeley] climbed a tree in the plaza and has remained there for several hours. It was not immediately clear if police arrested him when they blocked off the plaza.
Protesters on Broadway chanted and played music as they watched police dismantling the tents.
"We've got the power, people power" protesters chanted as arrestees were led out of Frank Ogawa Plaza.
Some of those arrested were from the camp's Interfaith Leaders tent, who held a vigil tonight waiting for police to arrive.
Dozens of Oakland police, assisted by Alameda County Sheriff's deputies and several other local police agencies from as far away as Pacifica and Foster City moved into the area around Frank Ogawa Plaza this morning to enforce continuing violations in the plaza related to the encampment, according to city of Oakland officials.
Police moved in beginning at 4:30 a.m. and by 5 a.m. officers in riot gear had blocked streets surrounding the plaza.
Rumors had spread among Occupy Oakland protesters that a police raid was imminent this morning, and protesters gathered in the street at the corner of 14th Street and Broadway early this morning to wait for police action.
The 12th Street BART station in Oakland remains closed thi s morning due to the police activity in the area, BART officials said. Protesters announced on the Occupy Oakland website that if the camp is evicted they will reconvene at the Oakland Public Library at 125 14th St. at 4 p.m.
Occupy Oakland amassed at the same library on Oct. 25 after a raid earlier that morning forcibly evicted protesters from the camp.
Dozens were arrested as police tore down tents, dragged sleeping protesters out of the area, and reportedly used smoke grenades and tear gas to disperse campers.
Protesters had occupied the plaza in front of Oakland City Hall since Oct. 10.
After gathering at the library in the afternoon, protesters marched back to 14th Street and Broadway, just outside of the plaza, but were blocked from proceeding by barricades and dozens of riot police.
Police used smoke grenades, tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the protesters, who reconvened and returned to the corner repeatedly throughout the night.
After the raid drew international media attention and many criticized Oakland Mayor Jean Quan and interim police Chief Howard Jordan's handling of the protests, police presence was minimal the following day and protesters were allowed to return to the plaza.
After staging a one-day "general strike" that peacefully shut down the Port of Oakland on Nov. 2, smaller protests that night again ended in confrontations with police involving tear gas.
Dozens of downtown Oakland businesses were vandalized during the clashes, and pressure began mounting for city officials to again remove the camp.
The Oakland Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce issued several statements that said the ongoing encampment was harming downtown businesses, a claim which protesters disputed.
After 25-year-old Kayode Ola Foster was fatally shot near the camp on Thursday, Quan and police increased pressure for protesters to leave the plaza peacefully.
Police have issued several eviction notices over the last several days, demanding protesters immediately leave the area, but many protesters have remained camping in the plaza.
The man killed in Thursday's shooting near the Occupy Oakland encampment has been identified as Oakland resident Kayode Ola Foster, Oakland police said this evening.
Foster, 25, had been staying at Frank Ogawa Plaza in the protest camp, according to his family, said Officer Johnna Watson.
Foster was killed just before 5 p.m. in the 1400 block of Broadway on Thursday.
Witnesses have said the suspect was also a frequent resident at the camp in the days before the shooting. He has been described as a male African American, 20-25 years old, 5 feet 9 inches tall and 150 pounds with short hair. He was wearing a white t-shirt.
Police are also seeking a second suspect, described as an African American male, in his 20s to 30s, 5 feet 9 to 5 feet 11 inches tall, 250 pounds and wearing long dreadlocks with red tips. He may have had a tattoo on the back of his neck, and was wearing a black hooded sweatshirt.
Oakland Police and Crime Stoppers are offering a reward of up to $10,000 for information leading to an arrest and conviction in this shooting.
Anyone with information is asked to contact major crimes unit at (510) 238-3529.
Pressure on Occupy Oakland protestors increased today, with police issuing a third notice this afternoon ordering protestors to vacate the area-and all city parks.
The most recent notice notifies protestors that they do not have permission to stay on any city property or parks, including Frank Ogawa Plaza, Lafayette Square Park, Jefferson Square and Snow Park.
Some Occupy Oakland activists issued a statement this afternoon noting that there were rumors some protestors might have met with the mayor and discussed moving the protest to Jefferson Park. However, the group indicated that if such a conversation had taken place, it did not represent Occupy Oakland's General Assembly-and the city's notice to vacate does not exclude any parks.
Protestors were issued a formal notice to vacate Frank Ogawa Plaza on Friday after a fatal shooting near the camp.
A man in his early 20s was killed just before 5 p.m. in the 1400 block of Broadway in Thursday's shooting. His identity is being withheld pending notification of next of kin.
Police said today that the suspect, described as a male African American, 20-25 years old, 5 feet 9 inches tall and 150 pounds with short hair, has been a frequent resident at the encampment over the past several days.
They are also seeking a second suspect, described as an African American male, in his 20s to 30s, 5 feet 9 to 5 feet 11 inches tall, 250 pounds and wearing long dreadlocks with red tips. He may have had a tattoo on the back of his neck, and was wearing a black hooded sweatshirt.
Police also issued a warning on Saturday to members of the media, noting that a member of the media had been assaulted while reporting on the shooting on Thursday. Police said an anarchist blog had also called for violence on the media, and warned news personnel that their safety might be at risk.
Police have also reported that emergency personnel were called to the camp at 4 a.m. Friday to assist a 20-year-old man who seemed to be suffering from an overdose.
That same day, at about 7:25 a.m., police responded to a disturbance where people were reportedly armed with 2x4s in front of City Hall.
Also, ongoing problems with vandalism have been reported near the encampment.
There were 160 tents today, down from 180 on Nov. 8, according to Quan's office.
For insight into the Occupy movement, one of the best places to look is Tricia Shapiro’s new book on the movement against mountaintop removal – Mountain Justice, published by AK Press in Oakland.
When young urban anarchists joined with longtime Appalachian residents in the Mountain Justice Summer campaign of 2005, Shapiro signed on as the campaign’s chronicler. She sat in on strategy sessions and scrambled up a mountain during the night with demonstrators. She listened. She asked questions. She recorded what people said, and she understood what she heard.
An experienced author of young adult histories and biographies under the name Tricia Andryszewski, Shapiro had written about the movements for civil rights and gay rights. She had described the devastation of the Dust Bowl. She wrote then as a historian.
For Mountain Justice, she has written as a reporter, and the movement could not ask for a better one – she is both sympathetic and honest, frank about the disagreements that arose, clear about the failures as well as the successes.
I wish the book had included images of the devastated wastelands that were once tree-covered mountains. They are a graphic symbol of what happens when corporate power meets political power: the target of the Occupy movement. But those images are abundant on the web (see http://ilovemountains.org/multimedia#photo_gallery).
What Shapiro has given us is a powerful story—its end not yet in sight. When I talked with her recently in Asheville, she said she had thought the book would be just about Mountain Justice Summer – that it would be a story with a clear end. Instead, she found herself still writing several years later, following the twists and turns of the struggle against coal companies and government agencies until finally, the story unfinished, she ended the book:
“The fight against MTR in Appalachia is also a fight for better choices for all of us. Free people are choosing to engage in that fight not just to defend their own freedom….but also to make it possible for more and more of their fellow citizens to freely chose to live, in grace and comfort, in ways that are good for the land and its people everywhere. Their fight is our fight too.”
(Carol Polsgrove is author of Divided Minds: Intellectuals and the Civil Rights Movement. For her interview with Tricia Shapiro, see http://carolpolsgrove.com.)
As Occupy Oakland vies with Occupy Manhattan for world-attention, and Occupy Cal revives memories of the sixties' Free Speech Movement (40 arrests in two days), Occupy Berkeley is struggling to find its voice amid a vast national movement of same-sayers.
Will the real Occupy Berkeley please stand up?
After more than a month, the still fledgling Occupy Berkeley movement is positioned to carry the banner of the City of Berkeley into the battle against money-sucking corporations.
With nary an arrest, and the support of the City of Berkeley and its police, Occupy Berkeley may be starting to see its strength--longevity and community activism.
Discussion at Thursday's planning meeting--the ideological core of OB--focused on whether to merge with Cal or stick to its own principals. As some dedicated participants in the small meeting (20) are realizing, OB speaks for Berkeley while OC speaks for university students.
While some OBers note that Cal is a big chunk of Berkeley and entitled to its fair share of representation, others say the students' issues are narrow--especially tuition complaints. Some see OC as an upstart. "It's too early to judge them; they just started," said a Thursday member of the general assembly.
The divide--if it is a divide--is currently a hot topic on the Occupy Berkeley Google Groups discussion forum as it was at Thursday's planning meeting. The competition from a nearby occupy movement (Cal), which has not yet acknowledged OB as comrades-in-arms, may be facilitating OB to define itself.
Occupy Berkeley is presently a homeless encampment . Berkeley and Oakland homeless citizens pitched their tents in October when it became apparent that OB had succeeded in encamping despite a city directive against overnight camping.
Although initially there were tensions between the homeless encampment and the occupiers, those tensions have eased as homeless citizens have voluntarily worked in occupies' interests--and their own.
A key person from the homeless encampment has pitched his commodious tent with Occupy and has emerged as a key security resource, who recently rid the encampment of troublesome drug users, who had encamped at the South east corner of Civic Center Park near a Berkeley High School lawn lunch-spot.
According to the unsung hero, the departure will keep police Chief Michael K. Meehan, his lieutenant, and Mayor Tom Bates from stumbling over syringes as they make their regular goodwill tours of the park.
Camp security, which has its own reports at general assemblies, although untrained and mostly un-appointed, has done enough of a good job that Chief Meehan told me Tuesday at City Council, he regards the encampment, "an effective protest."
Emerging late Tuesday from city council, OB's neighbor, I walked into the middle of a camp security "intervention", enforced by OBers encamped that night, and homeless campers. The fracas involved an alleged sex-offense, a tempest in a tent, in the OB tent encampment, but involving homeless citizens of Oakland.
Another unsung hero from the homeless encampment forcefully escorted the alleged perp from the camp. When the accused returned, he was finally yelled out of the park by Raven, self-appointed head of camp security.
Ersatz or not, it worked. It's all good at camp OB. For now.
City manager Phil Kalmarz told me Tuesday he plans no actions against the camp, and that from the city manager's point of view "things are going well in the city's maintenance of the park." Asked whether his hands-off policy could burden his interim successor (Kalmarz leaves office Nov. 25th), Kalmarz replied, "I'm against burdens."
City Councilmembers Kriss Worthington, Max Anderson, and Jesse Arreguín succeeded in a "baby step" towards council endorsement of OB with the passage Tuesday of a council approval of a Cal Faculty endorsement of the national anti-Wall Street movement.
With all this support from the City of Berkeley, the ball is now in OB's court.
In fact, OB is feeding and supporting a tent city of homelessness sandwiched between old and new City Hall. Sometimes the favor is returned, as when the homeless cooked up a meal and delivered it to the general assembly last week, or when homeless citizens participate in GA.
Occupy Cal, which is in conflict with its university's encampment policies, and having its tents regularly confiscated, is unable to provide community services. Some OBers have suggested the city reimburse them for their social service activities.
Another faction within the GA recommends aligning with as yet unformed "regional spokescouncils," and "affinity groups" which might stage large regional actions. But, according to another participant, an "inter-communications working group" has "dissolved" like other working groups, which have either languished or are re-forming.
A discussed action to "shut down Chase" downtown has been postponed until next week, while issues involving a co-operative downtown action with Cal can be resolved.
The Chase action, which is now being vetted for effectiveness by the GA, may have grown out of the charge from a camp key-person (there are no leaders) that OB was "wimpy and ball-less." Some of the big balls have been caught up in the hormonal upsurge at Cal and may not return to allegedly "ball-less" occupy.
Hormones or homeless? Stay tuned as Berkeley's indigenous Occupy community writes a new chapter in Berkeley's history of political activism.
University of California at Berkeley police on Thursday defended their actions during demonstrations on campus the day before when the newly formed "Occupy Cal" movement drew thousands of people and resulted in dozens of arrests.
The protest became violent Wednesday night when police arrived to dissemble the makeshift encampment.
Police arrested 39 people Wednesday, including 32 students and a UC Berkeley English professor. An additional protester, who is not a student, was arrested Thursday morning for attempting to prevent an officer from removing a tent he had put up earlier that morning, UC Berkeley police Capt. Margo Bennett said.
Protesters were warned before Wednesday's unrest through an email Monday from UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau that said camping on campus property and occupying buildings would not be tolerated.
Bennett said, "Our charge was to make sure there were no tents. In the course of moving those tents we met resistance ... some people resisted us more than others.
She said, "The goal was not to arrest people, the goal was to bring down the tents," Bennett said.
Officials said that all of those arrested were charged with willfully obstructing, interfering, or delaying police action, and all but one were cited with failure to leave an unlawful assembly. Two of those arrested were charged with battery on a police officer.
Bennett said that police would take no further action as long as there were no tents.
"That's the deal. They have the right to come talk and speak as much as they want but they cannot camp," she said.
When asked about videos circulating of what protesters allege was excessive force in Wednesday's raid, Bennett said, "We're going to review it" to see if it was appropriate or if there are areas to be improved on.
Since the arrests, the occupation has stayed fairly peaceful. The group met Thursday night at a General Assembly where group decisions are made through a vote.
Protesters have called for a student strike on the UC Berkeley campus for Tuesday, and are planning protests to coincide with the UC Regents meeting at UC San Francisco's Mission Bay campus on Nov. 16 and 17 to protest proposed tuition and fee hikes, and to more generally protest cuts to public education throughout California.
One Berkeley World War I memorial stands along University Avenue next to a battered flagpole at West Campus. It was placed in “Remembrance of the boys of the Burbank School who gave their lives for humanity during the Great War.” Seven names are listed.
Steven Finacom
A 1939 plaque on a chipped base and memorial giant sequoia at the Berkeley Rose Garden near the tennis courts honor a commander of the Grand Army of the Republic.
Steven Finacom
The oldest veterans memorial on the UC Berkeley campus is the Mitchell monument, honoring a 19th century Congressional Medal of Honor winner who later served as the campus armorer, maintaining weapons for the University’s Cadet Corps.
Friday, November 11, 2011 was a work or school holiday for many in Berkeley, including this writer. But it’s probably safe to say that very few people in Berkeley commemorated the date either for the original reason it was established, or for its later, broadened, purpose.
Now it’s called “Veteran’s Day”, an occasion for generic recognition of servicemen and women. Before that, it had a more specific meaning.
Combat on the Western Front in World War I—then called the “Great War”—ended with a negotiated armistice on the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.” or November 11, 1918. The day was designated by most of the Allied powers as a permanent memorial occasion, called Armistice Day or Remembrance Day.
Like many cities, Berkeley once commemorated Armistice Day with ceremonies and parades. There were solemn flag raisings, cannon or rifle salutes boomed in Downtown, and veterans and various other contingents marched along Shattuck. In the 1920s and 30s hundreds of locals would regularly participate in what was called the “Service on the Waters”. A chartered ferryboat took them out on the Bay where they dropped wreaths and flowers in a ceremony designed to remember airmen and seamen killed in service.
Local events often centered on Berkeley’s Veterans Memorial Building, completed in 1928, and sited prominently on one side of what was then only a proposed civic center park site. The building housed offices and meeting spaces for Berkeley’s numerous veterans groups. The large auditorium was, for decades, one of the most heavily used facilities in Berkeley, ensuring for generations that locals would be familiar with the memorial.
Berkeley veterans included organized groups of Union Army (Grand Army of the Republic) Civil War veterans, Spanish-American War veterans, World War I veterans, the Veterans of Foreign Wars. The GAR men had pride of place, and some were alive in Berkeley well into the 1930s, more than seven decades after the end of the Civil War. Berkeley even hosted, in the 1930s, two “encampments” of GAR men and their families and supporters.
There were also many local affiliate or “auxiliary” groups, including women’s organizations representing spouses, mothers, and/or daughters of servicemen. Some worked hard to remember and honor veterans. Others, from the newspaper accounts I’ve read, seemed to have devolved into primarily social clubs or organizations from which the living could derive prestige from association with the dead.
Berkeley also had many war or veteran memorials from different eras from a Spanish-American war cannon that once stood Downtown to California Memorial Stadium. Last year I identified eleven memorials on the UC Berkeley campus alone, which a UC Media Relations staffer organized into an on-line slideshow that can be seen here.
Off-campus, Berkeley also once had numerous veterans’ monuments. The largest of course is the Veterans Memorial building itself, but there were also many plaques, memorial trees, and other smaller monuments donated and dedicated over the decades. My guess would be that there were at least a dozen veterans and war memorials dedicated off campus in Berkeley, and most likely many more.
As far as I know there is no comprehensive list of these, and many have fallen into disrepair or even been obliterated. Most are on public property but I’m not sure that anyone in local agencies off the UC campus pays much attention.
If you go to City Council meetings you’ll pass several largely unnoticed veteran’s monuments. In the lobby of old City Hall, for example, there’s a 1940 stone bench honoring GAR veterans. Outside the building are several trees and monuments at the northwest corner of MLK, Jr. Way and Allston Way. They were put there as prominent memorials, but now attract little attention. There are plaques in place honoring tree plantings that no longer seem to exist, and other trees that have no plaques, but appear to be memorial plantings, as well as unidentified memorial fragments.
I’ve come across mentions of many of these monuments in old newspaper articles and other accounts, and by happenstance. John Aronovici at the Berkeley Historical Society has done good work unearthing local veteran’s monuments and memorabilia.
This year alone I noticed two monuments I’d never seen before. At the Berkeley Rose Garden there are two towering giant sequoias just east of the tennis courts, apparently planted as a Civil War memorial; sadly, one of them had its roots partially chopped up by a repaving project. And on University Avenue, outside the largely vacant old West Campus, there’s a curbside monument to former students of Burbank Junior High School who served and died in World War I.
The most recent off-campus veteran’s memorial in Berkeley is a plaque to local servicemen who died in Vietnam. Country Joe McDonald wrote a description of the project to create the Berkeley Vietnam veteran’s memorial in the 1880s and 90s, here.
Some years ago I participated in an ad hoc committee that worked to revive a local Veteran’s Day event in Berkeley. A few were held, but then the activity died out again. During that process I realized that, as with most historical issues and causes, people are primarily interested in those anniversaries with which they have a personal connection (a side prediction; a half century from now, almost no Americans will be participating in, or paying much attention to, “9-11” commemorations).
The veterans on the Berkeley committee were largely Vietnam era servicemen. They were very respectful of those from earlier conflicts, but their identification and enthusiasm was largely focused on connecting with veterans and issues from their own war. That’s quite understandable.
I also understand that many locals have a justifiable distaste for the overly political “patriotism” that can overlie activities honoring veterans and provide cover for hard right ideologues to promote their destructive agendas.
As many others have pointed out, during the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts “supporting our troops” has all-too-often become the self-contradictory mantra of those who are most enthusiastic about putting those same troops indefinitely in harm’s way in conflicts with murky motives, justifications, and outcomes.
Yet it should be possible, particularly in cities like Berkeley, to honor servicemen and women for their personal risk and commitment and at the same time avoid jingoism. But that can only come about if people view memorial commemorations as something worth doing even if they weren’t personally involved.
As Vietnam veterans age and pass away, veterans commemorations will largely center on Gulf War, Iraq, and Afghanistan veterans around the country, and it will be generally left up to “someone else” to remember earlier conflicts and veterans.
Who that will be in Berkeley, I don’t know. But take a moment during Armistice Day / Veteran’s Day to remember.
Steven Finacom is the current president of the Berkeley Historical Society. He wrote about Berkeley’s connections to the Civil War in the April 12, 1911, Planet.
A man in his early 20s was fatally shot near the "Occupy Oakland" encampment in downtown Oakland this evening, a police spokeswoman said.
Officers responded at 4:57 p.m. to the shooting at 14th Street and Broadway, directly in front of the protesters' encampment, although at this time there is no apparent connection between the shooting and the demonstration, police spokeswoman Johnna Watson said.
"At this time it does not appear to be related," Watson said, but added that the shooting is still under investigation.
Watson said no suspects are in custody and the victim had not been identified as of 7:30 p.m.
Nyake Tarmoh, 31, a protester with the Occupy Oakland movement, said he witnessed the shooting while standing in line at the camp's food tent. Tarmoh said he saw six suspicious-looking males, between the ages of 15 and 22, walking around the camp and they appeared to be looking for someone.
The suspects spotted the victim standing near portable toilets and they ran over, punched him and beat him while he was on the ground, according to Tarmoh.
Tarmoh said the suspects became aware of the fact that some Occupy Oakland members were watching and stopped.
The victim got up and was running away from the suspects when one male with dreadlocks and a black hooded sweatshirt pulled out a gun and shot him in the head, according to Tarmoh.
Tarmoh said he saw two of the suspect run into a BART station, while the shooter ran down Broadway.
He said camp medics rushed to give the victim first-aid before an ambulance arrived and took him to a hospital.
Tarmoh also stressed that the shooting was not related to the encampment. "They are not part of the Oakland movement," he said.
Occupy Oakland members had been planning to hold a party tonight to celebrate its one-month anniversary but have decided to cancel the festivities out of respect for the victim, protesters said.
Barucha Peller, who is part of the Occupy Oakland encampment, said the shooting happened next to the camp, not in it.
"The only direct Occupy Oakland involvement was in order to provide emergency first-aid services," she said.
Motorist Drew Sowyrda was driving west on Telegraph Avenue on his way to the gym when, as he was passing 27th Street, he saw "cop cars driving faster than I've ever seen through the traffic."
"Right at the junction of Broadway and Telegraph they stopped a white car and pulled out the driver at gunpoint," Sowyrda said.
He said the male driver was handcuffed and put into a police car, and he overheard police explaining to two female passengers in the car that there had been a shooting.
He said they began to block off Broadway at that point.
BART spokesman Jim Allison said the 12th Street station in Oakland was temporarily closed this evening as police searched two trains for possible suspects.
Some people ran into the station after the shooting and it was initially believed that they were suspects, Allison said.
However, officials have since determined that those people were "probably just frightened" and wanted to get away, he said.
The station reopened at around 5:25 p.m.
Several city officials showed up at the scene after the shooting, including Police Chief Howard Jordan and City Council President Larry Reid, who was among council members who held a news conference Wednesday saying the encampment must go.
After learning that Occupy Oakland medics had helped the person who was shot tonight, Reid said, "I appreciate their efforts to help save the life of the victim in this situation."
Although many at the scene insist the shooting wasn't related to the encampment, Reid said it should be part of the larger conversation about the camp.
"I think it puts us in a position of having to look at this problem in a more comprehensive manner," he said, saying that there were knife fights on 14th Street earlier this week.
Early this afternoon, Mayor Jean Quan said that a plan to remove the encampment "has to be done thoughtfully" and "has to take time."
Quan said she wants to "continue dialogue" with protesters who have been in Frank Ogawa Plaza for a month before the city takes any action.
Chief Jordan told reporters earlier today that, "I'm not at liberty to announce if and when we'll take any action" to remove protesters from the plaza.
City Councilman Ignacio De La Fuente, who is one of the members urging the immediate removal of the encampment, said, "We're waiting for the mayor and her administration to deal with the situation but it gets worse and worse every day."
De La Fuente said he thinks the longer the protesters are allowed to stay at the plaza the harder it will be to remove them.
"More and more people are camping out in the plaza, not less," he said.
Earlier today, the mayor's office released a statement saying that three to five electrical breakers had been tripped on Monday on 14th Street and the interior plaza bench areas.
City officials said staff has not been able to check the light poles to see what tripped the breakers so they have not been reset.
Tonight, the lights were still out and a number of protesters at the crime scene were angrily yelling, "Turn the lights on," saying that the darkness leads to more crime.
Others lit candles all around the scene of the shooting, and one man sat cross-legged and meditating near the police tape.
Protesters in the burgeoning "Occupy Cal" movement at the University of California at Berkeley are continuing to congregate outside Sproul Hall on campus today after demonstrations on Wednesday drew thousands and resulted in dozens of arrests.
As of 3:30 p.m. today, demonstrators remained on Sproul Plaza continuing to occupy the space and waiting for today's General Assembly meeting at 6 p.m., though no tents were pitched on the lawn outside of the administration building.
Two UC Berkeley police officers were standing guard in the area where protesters tried to set up tents Wednesday, said Ramon Quintero, who was arrested during Wednesday's demonstrations.
Quintero was one of 39 protesters arrested throughout the day Wednesday, in demonstrations that lasted well into the night. Quintero was arrested during initial confrontations between police and protesters during the afternoon, when police used clubs to break through lines of protesters who linked arms to protect several tents pitched on the lawn.
Quintero said he moved to stand in front of the police because he saw a young girl he knew and was worried she would be hurt as police in riot gear moved in.
He said he was worried she would not be prepared for the police response. "I've been here for three years and I know the UCPD are more violent than any police department I've seen in action," Quintero said.
Quintero said he is currently a research fellow at the university, and received a degree from UC Berkeley in geography and ethnic studies in 2010. He said that the confrontation with police left him bruised and sore today, and that when police attempted to arrest him they tore his clothes off and ripped his hair. He said that he spent hours in a small holding jail used by the UC Berkeley police, and was released at about 2:30 a.m. today.
He views the confrontations as an attempt to stifle free speech on campus. "Of course that has to be challenged, because we can't let people in power define what free speech is," Quintero said.
Quintero said a total of six were arrested in his group, identified by UC Berkeley police as students Sonja Diaz, Zahinde Atli, Timothy Fisken, Zakary Habash, and one faculty member, English professor Celeste Langan.
Throughout the night, 33 more were arrested as protesters continued pitching tents in the plaza, and police moved in to tear them down. Of the 39 arrested, 32 were students at the university, and six had no affiliation with the campus.
Officials said that all of those arrested were charged with willfully obstructing, interfering, or delaying of police action, and all but one were cited with failure to leave an unlawful assembly. Two of those arrested were charged with battery on a police officer.
Demonstrations started with picketing and "teach-outs" in the morning, followed by a rally and brief march at noon, and a general assembly meeting at 1:30 p.m., when protesters voted overwhelmingly to establish an encampment. Protesters were warned by an email from UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau on Monday that camping on campus property and occupying buildings would not be tolerated.
At one point during the confrontations, Harry le Grande, vice chancellor of student affairs, addressed the crowd and told protesters they could gather in Sproul Plaza 24 hours a day for the week, but no tents, sleeping bags, or sleeping would be permitted.
After a vote, protesters rejected the proposal, and continued attempting to establish a camp that police would later move in to tear down.
A handful of protesters were still in the plaza early this morning, guarding a lone tent that still remained on the steps of Sproul Hall. Protesters have vowed to gather throughout the day, and to hold a general assembly meeting tonight at 6 p.m.
Protesters have also called for a student strike on the UC Berkeley campus for Tuesday, and are planning protests to coincide with the UC Regents meeting at UCSF Mission Bay on Nov. 16 and 17 to protest proposed tuition and fee hikes, and to more generally protest cuts to public education throughout California.
From Sgt. Mary C. Kusmiss,BPD Public Information Officer
Thursday November 10, 2011 - 10:45:00 AM
We are writing this as we have received inquiries, calls and emails and wanted to offer accurate information to those who have questions or inquired.
There has been some widespread confusion as to the law enforcement entities that were involved in the Occupy Cal events of last evening. Members of the City of Berkeley Police Department (BPD) were not part of any mutual aid or assistance last evening/night. We have received calls and emails about our presence there. Out of respect and policy, we defer to UCPD to speak to their jurisdiction, activities and what assistance they sought.
City of Berkeley Police department (BPD) did manage the protest/demonstration during a part of the afternoon of November 9, 2011 when the group of several hundred marched onto City of Berkeley streets which are our jurisdiction. Groups have often done this when protesting or demonstrating in the past. BPD had bike officers, motor officers, parking enforcement officers and patrol officers to maintain community safety, the safety of participants, officer safety and to monitor the group for any unlawful activity. There was much verbal energy but no arrests were made. It went fairly smoothly. BPD managed the march until the group returned to UC campus.
Police have dismantled an encampment at the University of California at Berkeley tonight and protesters continue to hold their ground.
Officers in riot gear forced their way through a crowd of demonstrators who were chanting "peaceful protest" and "Who's university? Our university" at around 9:30 p.m.
Protesters said more people were arrested tonight in the second confrontation with police.
Earlier today, at around 3:40 p.m., dozens of police pushed their way through a human chain using their batons and began taking the tents down, leading to scuffles between police and protesters.
Six people had been arrested as of 7 p.m. and protesters were reporting that some demonstrators were injured during the police raid.
Shortly before 4 p.m., police withdrew and the protesters quickly reestablished an encampment.
University officials told the protesters they could use the site as a gathering spot for the week but could not camp out.
Protesters tonight continue to face off with police who are standing in front of Sproul Hall.
Tents, to right of Sproul Hall entrance in Sproul Plaza, U.C., are what's left of a larger encampment which was raided earlier today. The tents and the banners on Spruoul Hall, to right, are in violation of UCB restrictions, according to a UCPD spokesman. Later there was a clash with police.
Ted Friedman
Portion of a larger group (more than 500) before police clashed with a converging crowd
Ted Friedman
Sproul Plaza earlier Wednesday. Crowd of more than 1,000 in distance. Expect confrontations over tents and banners as evening becomes morning
A day designated to “Occupy Cal” included dawn to dusk protest activities on the UC Berkeley campus on Wednesday, including outdoor classes, a large noontime rally, a slightly smaller but still vigorous march to the Telegraph Avenue Bank of America, debate and establishment of a small tent occupation on campus, and a mid-afternoon confrontation with UC Police which resulted in removal of some of the tents and a few arrests.
As dusk fell and a full moon rose over the Berkeley Hills, three news helicopters thrummed above Sproul Plaza and hundreds milled about two tents set up after the afternoon occupation.
Most of the protest occurred quite close to my campus office so I was able to take a late lunch to watch part of the rally and march. Later, when shouting arose I stepped outside for a short mid-afternoon break to watch the tent confrontation, then returned after work to see what remained.
Two photo essays will be posted here, a combination of my pictures and other contributed pictures. The first essay traces the events of the day in roughly chronological sequence. The second shows the wide variety of protest signs that were hoisted during the demonstrations.
My rough estimate was that the lunch hour Sproul Plaza crowd numbered over a thousand active participants, and perhaps as many curious and interested spectators. The short Southside march included hundreds, and perhaps three or four hundred reassembled on campus and were involved when the tent confrontation occurred. Evening saw several hundred participants and curious passersby in Sproul Plaza and on the Mario Savio Steps.
The Telegraph marchers left the campus at Bancroft and Telegraph, moved down one block to Durant while Berkeley Police motorcycle officers stopped north and eastbound traffic, chanted in front of the entrances to the Bank of America branch, then turned eastbound up Durant before returning to the campus.
Protest and rally activities then centered in the Sproul Plaza area, particularly around the northwest corner of Sproul Hall.
Good event-by-event coverage of the protests can be found on the Daily Californian website and live blog, especially the on-going evening events as UC administrators met with the students. Go to http://www.dailycal.org/ for the most recent stories and for the live blog see http://www.dailycal.org/2011/11/09/live-blog-day-of-action-2/
The protestors are following some of the protocols of the rest of the “Occupy Movement” including no formal leaders, “General Assemblies” where speakers are heard and mass votes are taken, and crowd members repeating the sentences of speakers so what’s said can carry to the edges of the audience. Calls of “Mic Check!” are shouted out when someone is about to speak.
The protestors voted to endorse two proposals at the afternoon General Assembly. They’re posted on Daily Cal website here:
The UC Berkeley official NewsCenter also posted an on-going blog with updates on activities, which can be found here:
See the sidebar of that blog for links to official statements by Chancellor Birgeneau and other campus leaders, and “messages” from the Graduate Assembly and the ASUC.
In an especially Berkeley scene, UC Berkeley Police Prius patrol cars were lined up in the morning along Bancroft Way next to police vans and news vans.
Steven Finacom
The mid-day rally on Sproul Plaza attracted thousands, many of them with protest signs. There were short speeches.
Steven Finacom
“Make Banks Pay” was a common sign at the rally, as speakers focused on the role of big financial institutions in the economic collapse.
Steven Finacom
As protesters rallied, police temporarily stopped traffic on Bancroft to move an Alameda County Sheriff’s bus into position on Barrow Lane behind Sproul Hall. These buses are typically brought to large protests where numerous arrests are possible.
Steven Finacom
Berkeley Police bicycle patrol waited for the march down Telegraph Avenue and attracted the attention of perennial Berkeley protestor, Zachery Running Wolf.
Steven Finacom
A solitary homeless woman panhandled in front of the Telegraph Avenue branch of the Bank of America in the quiet minutes before the march began.
Steven Finacom
The march out of Sproul Plaza briefly paused at the Bancroft Way edge, then surged down Telegraph with a fringe of photographers keeping pace in front.
Steven Finacom
A protestor wrapped “Caution” tape around the B of A façade.
Steven Finacom
The march arrived at Telegraph and Durant. Marchers chanted in front of both bank entrances, while Berkeley Police stopped traffic. The marchers then headed up Durant.
Steven Finacom
Minutes after the protest passed, customers were back at the B of A ATM machines, which had been festooned with signs.
Contributed Photo
After the march, many of the Occupy Cal protesters returned to Sproul Plaza where they gathered in small discussion groups, then convened a “General Assembly.”
Contributed Photo
The “General Assembly” voted to set up a tent encampment on the lawn in front of Sproul Hall.
Steven Finacom
Later in the afternoon UC Police and mutual aid reinforcements in riot gear moved out in force from Sproul Hall and formed a picket line along the northwest front, with protestors closely massed in front.
Steven Finacom
Some police were armed with projectile weapons.
Steven Finacom
Protestors formed a wall in front of the tents in an angle of the lawn, north of the Mario Savio Steps.
Steven Finacom
The police extended their line around the corner and took apart some of the tents. It was at this point that a number of arrests occurred. There was considerable shouting and chanting, some jostling, and protestors pulled at least one of the tents over their heads and above the crowd to keep it away from the police.
Steven Finacom
Police carried fragments of the dismantled tents around to the basement of Sproul Hall while the crowd heckled and chanted.
Steven Finacom
One protestor who had previously been sitting on a windowsill of Sproul Hall was arrested.
Steven Finacom
After 5:00 pm, as dusk fell, two tents were reestablished on the lawn, as hundreds of protestors and spectators talked in small groups. Only a few police were visible at that point.
Steven Finacom
Protestors around the tents were interviewed by a press of media, and food supplies were stacked up. One protestor appealed to the crowd to keep the area clean and neat.
A photo chronology of the November 9, 2011 “Occupy Cal” Day of Protest
A simple “SOS” appeal against the backdrop of Sproul Hall and the Sather Campanile.
Steven Finacom
A flyer put up on the tents. “We Are Not Camping. This Is Our Permit”, against a backdrop of the Bill of Rights, highlighting “We’re assembly peaceably to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Steven Finacom
“The Regents are the 1%.”
Steven Finacom
“I Poo on the 1%”, held by a Cal parent and his baby.
Steven Finacom
A Cal blue and gold ship goes down in a sea of sharks.
Steven Finacom
Cal Associate Vice Chancellor for University Communications Claire Holmes circulated through the crowd passing out “Support Public Education” stickers, which many put on (some upside down).
Steven Finacom
“Arab Spring, Chilean Winter, Meet The American Fall.”
Steven Finacom
“If I Had $ To Waste I Would Have Gone To Stanford.”
Steven Finacom
A simple “Occupy.”
Steven Finacom
“Companies should donate to education through their taxes.”
Steven Finacom
“Berkeley Law: we object to the mismanagement of our University.”
Steven Finacom
“Education Shouldn’t Be A DEBT Sentence” and “UC Education Was Free! It Still Should Be!”
Steven Finacom
“81 % Fee Hike (is) The Death of Public Education.”
Steven Finacom
An outline of student tuition woes.
Steven Finacom
A multi slogan sign, including “Help The Suffering BEFORE the Privileged.”
Steven Finacom
“ReFund Public Education” next to “Tents Are Free”.
Steven Finacom
“$250,000 DEBT Is Not A Future.”
Steven Finacom
The flyers put up in advance of the protests, featuring a bear climbing the Sather Campanile.
Steven Finacom
One of the protesters at yesterday's "Occupy Cal" demonstration...
Steven Finacom
“We Should Do This More Often”, hoisted in the midst of the throng of ralliers.
A sampling of the creative signs at the November 9, 2011, “Occupy Cal” Protest. Captions provide the text of the signs.
Carol Denney, a frequent contributor to these pages, is fond of saying that the reason the Free Speech Movement took place at the University of California at Berkeley was NOT because free speech flourished on this campus. Quite the contrary: it’s been the tradition at Cal, going way back in pre-history before I was an undergraduate, for arrogant administrators to try to keep the lid on student speech. It could be described as a form of hubris (a ten-dollar word I learned in Cal’s English department): “we’re the top …students are damn lucky to be here…so they should shut up and drive.”
At the University of Michigan, another school I had the opportunity to observe in the 1960s after I graduated from Cal, the bosses took the opposite tack. By and large, they ignored student protests, so there were never any major riots on the part of either students or police. Eventually the more radical students got bored, founded first SDS and then the Weathermen, and went off to tear up Chicago instead, which was much more satisfying—and now like Bill Ayres they’re almost all professors somewhere or other.
But at Cal, as we called it back in the day before the name of the town was appropriated by the university’s PR department, decision-makers have always provided satisfying opposition to student action which has historically stimulated more student action. And the current crop of well-paid administrators is keeping up the tradition. Lots and lots of them, including Chancellor Birgeneau ($428,712.84) who okayed the police action last Wednesday where heads were bashed and stomachs jabbed with batons, are firmly part of the richest 1%, and they have no qualms about asserting their power over impecunious and mouthy students because of it.
The new availability of on-line video might possibly change that. The whole world has watched last week’s police misconduct at UC on YouTube, linked by many publications including this one. Even the Faculty Senate, sometimes slow off the dime, has taken up the inquiry into the use of excessive force, according to Professor Brad DeLong’s blog.
The next few days will reveal whether today’s administrators have learned anything from the past or will be condemned to repeat it. I wouldn’t take any bets that they will do the smart thing.
Meanwhile, the Occupy encampments in Oakland and New York City have been busted. Loyalists are regrouping, with and without tents and with or without the benefit of judicial support for their right to be in their chosen locations. This might be a good time to examine the value of the various forms of protest which have been employed.
Few, even its detractors, would argue that Occupy Wall Street was anything but brilliant. In a flash (well, a delayed flash in the ponderous national quasi-liberal media like NYT and NPR) everyone was made aware of the real causes of the problems besetting America’s underwater citizens: rampant speculation followed by shameless profiteering in the financial sector. The reason it worked so well, to appropriate a real estate industry cliché: Location, Location, Location.
Many copycat Occupys, including those in Oakland and downtown Berkeley, muddied the message a bit. The protestors showed that they were good liberals at heart, people who believe in the power of government to solve problems, by settling down in locations that symbolized government power rather than corporate hegemony.
Oakland’s city government should be the very last place for protesters to look for help with the ongoing financial tsunami, since it’s threatened with going under along with its citizens. In Oakland, the captains of industry, the malefactors of great wealth, have just about left the building. Occupy Piedmont would be a more appropriate symbolic site for Oaklanders.
Unlike some, I actually believe that Mayor Jean Quan is telling the truth when she expresses sympathy for the small-time merchants who have been harmed by the Occupy encampment—she’s not just squeezing out crocodile tears to aid her political position. As she’s fond of saying, her parents ran a mom-and-pop Chinese restaurant, so she knows about hard work for little pay, and the risks to family survival which small businesses near Oakland City Hall have faced from the Occupy settlement. The nascent movement will not benefit from harming people like this.
Downtown Berkeley is a joke—the 1%-ers around here live discreetly in the hills and seldom venture downtown. Around here, the giant octopus that threatens to devour the town and its residents, especially in West Berkeley and Strawberry Canyon, is the University of California—firmly part of the 1% if you look at administrative salaries and most regents’ more-than-enormous net worth. Our city electeds and the managers who run them are certainly guilty of tap-dancing to UC’s tune at every opportunity, so the little settlement in Berkeley’s Civic Center Park is not all that inappropriate, but participants now seem to be gravitating toward the on-campus action.
The Cal campus is ideal for occupation. As noted above, the people in charge can be counted on to make embarrassing mistakes which will bring major publicity. As of this writing all is Gemütlichkeit on Sproul steps, but sooner or later someone will slip up.
Yesterday’s noon rally was a love fest for young and old. The minute I arrived my buddies in Grandmothers Against the War hung one of their big signs around my neck, and for the rest of the event enthusiastic young people insisted that we pose for their cell phone photos. And even better photo ops abounded—you will see some of the products here.
Everyone did what they do best as a show of support. There was a terrific gospel/jazz group, seemingly students and their professor, who led the participants in song.
Later, an impromptu assemblage of a beat-up trumpet, a power megaphone used as a kazoo (didn’t know you could do that) and some improvised percussion instruments accompanied splashy dancing by what appeared to be an art class. When the trumpeter belted out “hava nagila” and the dancers segued into a sort of hora, George Lakoff, who was standing next to me, quipped “Occupy Hillel?” For a moment, I thought he might be right, because some of the artists were working under a structure woven from branches that looked like a sukka, but then I realized that it’s November already and Sukkot (the traditional Jewish harvest festival where such structures are featured) has come and gone.
The good vibes can’t go on forever. It’s serious business they’re about, these students, for all their charm and enthusiasm. One particularly good set of posters I saw featured individual regents and administrators with documentation of their copious links to corporate riches.
Central to all the injustices created by the unfair distribution of wealth in this country is the privatization of public goods, and the University of California is the poster child for that abuse. More and more of its funding comes from sources who expect to profit from participation, whose goal is not education of the young but enrichment of the old. See, for example, U.C. Berkeley’s deal with BP, the company formerly known as British Petroleum, amply reported on by the Planet.
Today’s students will inherit the earth, whether they want to or not. At Cal, they’re in a uniquely good position to make sure that it’s the right kind of world. Seeing the outpouring of support for Occupy Cal could convince me that they just might make a go of it.
Berkeley's small but vocal band of ignorami has been wondering aloud in venues open to them about what critics of last Wednesday's UC Berkeley police riot would have done instead. Here's a sample quote from an anonymous bloviator on a local site: "You'd think that people who were so worked up would have their much better solution at the ready, but I guess not. "
Well, actually, Ty Alper, Assistant Clinical Professor of Law and Associate Director of the Death Penalty Clinic at UC Berkeley School of Law, has explored the topic on Huffington Post.
He notes that "In response to November 2009 violence between police and protestors at UC Berkeley's Wheeler Hall, the Police Review Board issued a thorough, comprehensive report recommending all sorts of improvements to the way it handles exactly the kind of demonstration that occurred again on campus this week."
Unsurprisingly, Professor Alper concludes that the Review Board's advice was not followed on Wednesday—to say the least.
There's an interesting article in the San Francisco Bay View about the influence of business improvement districts in Oakland and elsewhere. A business improvement district has been approved for downtown Berkeley.
For an account of what happened late last night and lots of pictures, see Steve Leibel's blog post with overview of events & a little editorializing ...
Shock and Awe is a good description of the mood in the late night hours of last night’s City Council Meeting as a play was made to postpone redistricting until after the November 2012 election. Whether it was a strategy to form two student districts in order to unseat councilmembers Arreguin and Worthingtonm, or an attempt to consolidate two existing districts into one in West Berkeley to leverage development, or some other goal, it was, as Councilmember Worthington stated: “possibly the most thoroughly undemocratic motion ever before Council”.
The redistricting public hearing, while called prior to 10pm, was not heard until almost 11pm and then in a truncated, 1 minute per speaker/presenter manner. Following public comment, Mayor Bates determined that the matter before council was to either: 1)continue with the redistricting process, or 2) postpone it until after the 2012 election. A pending charter reform amendment proposed by student leadership and the creation of student districts was the impetus for the proposed postponement.
Earlier this year the process for redistricting was addressed in great detail and a decision was made by Council to accept proposed redistricting plans from the public and to complete the redistricting process in time for the November 2012 election. All has proceeded according to plan until last night.
Due to the very late hour, none of the plans were provided their 5 minute presentation and maps were not brought into Council Chambers for those watching the broadcast. The motion made by Councilmember Wozniak to postpone the redistricting process was supported by Mayor Bates and Councilmember Capitelli. Councilmembers Arreguin and Worthington voted against the motion and noted that, if tedistricting were postponed, almost 4,300 people would be disenfranchised – it would be stealing votes from the citizens of Berkeley. The remainder of the councilmembers abstained , with the only other comment coming from Councilmember Maio, “I am a supporter of the process. I am not prepared to make a decision tonight”.
A second public hearing is scheduled for January, which gives plenty of time for those councilmembers supporting postponement to develop a new tactic or convince those who abstained to support it. The democratic process, voting and the right to free speech are the basis for this county’s founding. Actions as represented by these late night tactics and disenfranchising voters are in blatant opposition of the core values that define Berkeley.
I’m 70 and on Medicare and Social Security. I still pay-in and I still work. I’m a semi-retired primary care doc now working part time at Alameda County’s Winton Wellness Center. Recently, I’ve spent some hours at the Medic tent at Occupy Oakland.
* * * *
Actuary tables predict that on average a 70 year old U.S. male will live about 8 years. By then I would have taken out about what I paid into Social Security. Elder citizens don’t cause public debt when we get paid back what we put into these funds unless someone hasn’t adjusted the deduction formula rates to account for longevity changes. But Congress and the Presidents who believe Capitalism’s thirst for concentrating power and wealth is far more important than the needs of the population, siphoned off and used up trillions from the Social Security trust fund and now plan to cut benefits to the 99%. Yes, out and out theft.
Over the past few years the public clinic where I work has seen many people who’ve lost their Kaiser (or other) Insurance when they were laid off or downsized or lost employment in a bankruptcy. And now many people who have been evicted or foreclosed, living on the streets, in cars, in shelters or with their adult kids (or visa versa). Capitalism’s 1% created this mess yet some of the “haves” seem unable to apprehend how they forced these terrible necessities on us. Among our patients are folks who were working and not mentally unstable, now becoming more and more dysfunctional. Such folks are all around us in society, and so they are part of any change movement.
And yet, while the current near collapse of U.S. Capitalism has been ugly for so many millions, what biased media and political elites suggest with rhetoric turning more critical of Occupy Wall Street --with talk of the unclean and unkempt homeless, the mentally disturbed, the drug users and the violence seeking anarchists-- is that the tent cities—rather than what caused them—have to be made to disappear. In this way they minimize the disgrace of the system’s out of control political-economic ethics and the crises in the lives of millions. They conceal that in the 1920s the political response of the disenfranchised, unemployed and homeless was exactly this: to set up tent cities all over the U.S. (called Hoovervilles to ridicule the President for his inaction). The mouthpieces for the 1% tell the 99% to work for better candidates. But truth is there will not be better viable candidates than Jean Quan or Barack Obama. This system is corrupt and locked down in “park.”
As Robert Reich and others have made clear, the outrageous economic inequality gap is not only wrecking any semblance of cultural coherence in the U.S., but seriously diminishes any chance of Capitalist economic recovery. The 99%—from the undocumented, to the unemployed to doctors forced to abandon their medical ethics under Wall Street pressures--are all under attack by this cruel culture of bottom line-ism seeking nothing less than to gamble away our futures in order to stay on top. Simply by the numbers, this imploding process can not be kept out of public sight, can no longer be repressed block by block. This is the message America’s Occupy Wall Street represents, an all-American message. The 99% seek visibility, a voice, and justice.
Hear this: public space and public discourse not only belong to the people but will be enlarged and validated with or without permission. In the S. F. Chronicle’s Insight section, November 13, Susan Gluss wrote condescendingly: “You have no unified message…Quit fighting for the right to camp out in a public park. This movement is not about holding ground.” But Ms. Gluss is wrong. As in Egypt’s Tahrir Square, holding public ground imparts precisely the Occupy movement message and is materially and metaphorically right on target—“the people” must become part of the political discourse.
Calling upon police forces to destroy Occupy tent cities can not put that genie back in the bottle. Telling the 99% to go back to electoral work in a political system (if not a job) that has shown little capacity to respond to the many crises confronting us is to shout at the wind. Saying Occupy needs clearer demands and focus, practical leaders and practical methods that work, is hollow nonsense.
“Progressive” politicians, like Jean Quan, whom I know personally, have chosen to rise up into positions of power in a political-economic system that often requires leaders to compromise their values in order to rule. Believing in the “good” matters only a trace at these moments when one’s appointed role is to enforce the order of the powerful. The Occupy movement might like to tell Jean, as well as President Obama, that “good intentions” are a currency without value.
Who knows what will become of the Occupy movement—so young, so diverse, so vibrant and so potentially divisible? But the anger and frustration of millions in trouble is not easily repressible without the U.S. becoming a more overt fascist state. There are, of course, many signs that this process has been developing—eg. particularly the abuse within, and unregulated privatization of, the prison system and the breaking up of the families of millions of honorable immigrant laborers. Obama has backed both. Occupy Wall Street is being attacked by media and politicians and police force. If we fall for the rhetoric about “threat to public safety and health”, a door to much wider repression may open under these conditions of dysfunctional rule. I urge that readers resist efforts to make the public ambivalent toward Occupy. If it’s our country, but money owns it and runs it all, what is left, people, but to occupy and then to fill the jails.
Marc Sapir is a family physician, former Medical Director of the Center for Elders’ Independence in Oakland, member of the touring group www.madashelldoctors.com (for Medicare for All), founder of the Berkeley High School Health Center, a former public health officer, a current AFSCME union member, the founder of www.retropoll.org. He can be reached at marcsapir@gmail.com
I am currently on the California State Democratic Party Platform Committee and am chair of the National Security plank. We are in the process of drafting the 2012 platform and I would like to get support for the National Security plank to say that we support reducing the military budget to a level that reflects our true defense requirements, as opposed to a world domination budget – I suggest $200 billion.
Our current projected level of military expenditures for 2012 is $1.03-$1.415 trillion , while the next highest spending county in the world on their military - China - "only" spends about $100B, less than 10% of us. And all other countries are far far less than that, including Russia, at around $50B (still an obscene amount of money but less than 1/20th of what we spend).
Our current budget deficit is projected to be $1.1 trillion, virtually the entire military budget.
Independent studies show that a true strong military defense (as opposed to world domination) budget would actually cost only around $160B. And yet we have people in Washington, including Democrats like Leon Panetta, who whine that we can’t even cut $30 or $40B a year from the military.
As Eisenhower famously said: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children....This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from an iron cross."
This is truer now than ever, but to spend over $1 trillion a year on the military is not simple theft; it is grand larceny from the people of the United States on a scale never before imagined.
Especially now, when we have massive unemployment. Every $100B reallocated from the military could employ 4 million people at the median wage of $26K/yr. [The US Military employs around 1.5 million active personnel. That’s around $660,000 per employee.] Reallocating $400B of military expenditures to employment could employ 16 million people. That’s more than the 14 million unemployed! This is how skewed our budget and politics are in this country. If we just acted somewhat rationally with respect to the military budget, we would have no unemployment and no fiscal problems whatsoever. We don't have a budget problem. We have a military budget problem.
Accordingly, I would like to propose that the National Security plank of our party platform call for reducing the level of military spending to a level more in keeping with our true defense needs and with the rest of the world, say $200B/year – still double our highest spending potential adversary.
Given the huge vested interests in the massively bloated military budget, I cannot do this alone. I need to be able to show as much support from rank and file Democrats as possible. If you want to support this effort, please fill out the online submission form . Do it under the "National Security" plank (there is a drop down menu on the form). Say that you want to reduce the military budget to $200B a year, or whatever other number you feel comfortable with. The deadline is November 18, so don't delay.
we are having quite a slice of occupy hot, fresh, wild, delicious occupy stir it up a nice hot cup of occupy share it with your friends and neighbors taste the fruit of all your labors be the first one on your block to occupy wind it up and set your clock to occupy tell the cops and tell the mayor you’ve become an occuplayer have yourself a slice of occupy
grab your tent and screw the rent come occupy join the slackers and the hackers occupy meet the folks who lost their homes meet the folks who never owned one meet the folks down to the bone you’ll find you’ll never be alone grab a sign and join the line at occupy admit you’re the 99 and occupy if your tent don’t get reception change your channel of perception have yourself a slice of occupy
don’t you love the great outdoors there’s no bureaucracy but your meeting might be endless it’s democracy – you gotta love it
don’t be late no need to wait just occupy have yourself a heaping plate of occupy hop on your bike and be the mike at occupy the rich are going to miss the fun but afterwards we’ll all be one lose your frown and dance around at occupy boot the blues and make the news at occupy this ain’t no occupy in the sky and there’s more to occupy than meets the eye come have yourself a slice of occupy (we really mean it) have yourself a slice of occupy
In a letter[2] addressed to Oakland’s Mayor Jean Quan on Nov. 8, two little-known entities, the Lake Merritt/Uptown District Association (LMUDA) and Downtown Oakland Association (DOA) implored Mayor Quan to “step up and provide cohesive, common sense leadership.” Cohesive leadership, according to these two organizations, means giving the Oakland Police Department a green light to eradicate the now month-old Occupy encampment. “It’s time for Frank Ogawa Plaza to be given back to the people of Oakland,” they conclude.
Who are the LMUDA and DOA? What gives them the authority to make such demands? Further, who are the “people of Oakland” referred to in their letter? If those occupying the plaza do not constitute the people of Oakland, then who are the rightful owners of this contested public space?
The privatization of public administration
“Lake Merritt/Uptown” and “Downtown Oakland” are not community associations or neighborhood groups comprised of Oaklanders with historic roots or identity in Oakland’s larger patchwork. Rather, they are business improvement districts, or “BIDs,” an apt acronym given their focus on commodifying and privatizing government and public space. Both LMUDA and DOA were founded in 2008. BIDs are commercial districts within cities where special taxes are collected on properties for use towards activities determined by the BID’s board of directors. As hybrid public-private entities, their explicit purpose is to increase property values and rents and to cultivate other profitable opportunities in designated geographic areas.
Because they have the power to levy and spend taxes, BIDs must be formed via a petition process and then by majority vote of businesses and property owners within the chosen area and finally approved by the City Council. However, once the BID is established, it largely operates under its own discretion. It does what it wants with its money, which can involve funding events, contracting for extra sanitation and trash services, and even hiring private security to patrol public space.
The Lake Merritt/Uptown District and Downtown District are two of nine BIDs established in Oakland since 2001. The others include Fruitvale, Koreatown/Northgate, Lakeshore/Lake Park, Laurel, Montclair, Rockridge and Temescal/Telegraph Avenue.
BIDs began to emerge nationally in the 1970s as vehicles for gentrification and the militarization of urban space. Laws enabling the incorporation of these districts have spread to nearly every state, and most major U.S. cities contain multiple special districts run mostly by real estate developers and large tourism and entertainment companies, with smaller businesses – restaurants and retailers – as junior partners. BIDs especially took off in the 1990s as real estate capital focused its energy on urban zones from which it had previously divested.
BIDs are a strategic response of real estate businesses to the political backlash against the Civil Rights Movement. Because much of the public sector was de-funded through tax cuts and capital and wealth were withdrawn into newly rich suburban enclaves buoyed by white flight or into private institutions, cities found themselves tax-starved and unable to raise revenues for the public services that many place-dependent businesses once depended on. Many small urban businesses were ruined.
BIDs are a strategic response of real estate businesses to the political backlash against the Civil Rights Movement.
Rather than fighting against these racist forces of disinvestment, most remaining local business establishments instead turned to a solution provided by consultants working for large real estate companies – privately run districts with special tax powers that don’t have to share the wealth. BIDs have the “advantage” of not requiring tax increases to support services that do not directly enrich the businesses paying the tax. These funds are not shared with populations outside the BID’s geographic boundaries and need not pay for things like schools or streetlights in working class residential neighborhoods.
The LMUDA and DOA districts are administered by nonprofit management corporations under contract with the City of Oakland. Each corporation is governed by a board of directors. The acting presidents, J.C. Wallace and Deborah Boyer, are employees of San Francisco-based real estate investment and management companies SKS Investments and the Swig Company, respectively. Both have speculated on properties in Oakland and stand to profit from increased rents generated by gentrification.
Before joining SKS, J.C. Wallace was a “relationship manager” with Wells Fargo’s Real Estate Group, responsible for a $300 million portfolio. John Bruno of the Los Angeles-based CIM Group, a real estate investment firm with over $9 billion in managed assets, sits on both boards, as do members of the San Francisco-based CAC Real Estate Management Co., Inc. The board of the DOA also boasts two employees of Los Angeles-based CB Richard Ellis, the world’s largest commercial real estate services firm, which owns much property in Oakland.
[3]
The Occupy Oakland encampment has brought some of the issues previously discussed only in the hood to downtown, where big business rightly feels threatened. – Photo: Dave Id, Indybay
Under the BID paradigm, property owners, many of them absentee corporations – not the people of Oakland – dictate the terms of services once considered the purview of the city administration. BIDs effectively remove services from the political arena, making everything from sanitation to security privately managed.
The LMUDA, for example, can circumvent the law enforcement pensions deadlock and yearly general fund budget shortfalls affecting the city’s police force and subcontract instead with the private security company Block by Block to provide additional security personnel in the downtown area.
A subsidiary of the SMS Holdings Corp., which made Inc. magazine’s list of fastest growing private companies in 2011, Block by Block specializes in staffing BIDs. Block by Block runs BIDs in 42 U.S. cities, including Berkeley, Oakland, Pasadena, LA, West Hollywood and Santa Monica. Block by Block’s non-union, minimum wage workforce effectively reduces the costs of city services for corporations and allows these same corporations to determine who benefits from these services, while undermining better-paid, unionized city employees who would provide services to all residents under the ultimate authority of elected officials, not private corporate boards.
A small gang of primarily non-Oaklanders
In their letter to Mayor Quan, LMUDA and DOA remark that the city needs to focus on “identifying the small gang of primarily non-Oaklanders,” those they deem responsible for property destruction, vandalism and skirmishes during the police riot that followed the General Strike. Ironically, most of the leadership of both BID management corporations take their orders directly from companies based outside the city.
This small gang of corporate directors and their associated companies are equipped with the resources needed to disrupt the encampment and discredit the organizing coming from the steps of City Hall. SKS, for example, has four lobbyists registered in Oakland since February 2011. SKS has maintained a lobbying presence in Oakland for years, most recently meeting with Mayor Quan to discuss what sorts of business development activities she envisions as the new mayor.
The interests of big business have become the law of the land.
The interests of big business have become the law of the land. The fictive “people of Oakland” invoked by the LMUDA and DOA are nothing more than the personified corporations who want to turn Oakland into a gentrified metropolis devoid of any real public space.
The people of Oakland vs. the product Oakland
“Since the early 1990s, there has been an explosion in private and public efforts to revitalize older urban, street-based business districts,” explains New City America Inc., the San Diego firm that wrote the legislation to establish both the DOA and LMUDA and has spearheaded similar efforts in 61 other cities since 1995. “Historic downtown and urban neighborhood commercial corridors and urban mixed-use neighborhoods valuable for their setting for human experiences, places of social change and fond memories, are experiencing a renaissance.” But in order for this renaissance to take place, New City America advises that, “property owners … must take the first step – organizing themselves – to respond to the changes occurring in the evolution of our urban areas.”
The transition New City America and similar consultants are promoting – the neoliberal urban shift – ultimately boils down to the privatization of public space and the elimination of democratic politics from city budgeting and services. In the words of New City America:
“The business district must be seen as a product to be defined, marketed and sold to a target audience. A business district, just as a business product, is subject to the laws of supply and demand. The district must distinguish itself from other districts or malls because of its own unique assets and resources.”
The encampment at Frank Ogawa Plaza, now dubbed Oscar Grant Plaza, offers many alternative visions of what the people of Oakland desire for the future of their city. In the section of the Oct. 8 statement of the General Assembly addressed to the people, Occupy Oakland declared, “The purpose of our gathering here is to plan actions, to mobilize real resistance, to defend ourselves from the economic and physical war that is being waged against our communities.”
In the days to come, as speculation swirls regarding a second police raid and demolition of the encampment, the larger war rages on to determine who are the rightful people of Oakland, and whose vision will be adopted for a future as yet unwritten.
Adrian Drummond-Cole is a writer, organizer and musician who lives in Oakland. Darwin BondGraham is a sociologist and author currently visiting Occupy encampments across the U.S.; he can be reached at darwin@riseup.net[4].
[5] The police raid on Occupy Oakland was nothing new for this city: http://sfbayview.com/2011/the-police-raid-on-occupy-oakland-was-nothing-new-for-this-city/
[6] My thoughts on Occupy Oakland after the murder and one-month anniversary: http://sfbayview.com/2011/my-thoughts-on-occupy-oakland-after-the-murder-and-one-month-anniversary/
[7] Notes from Occupy Oakland : http://sfbayview.com/2011/notes-from-occupy-oakland/
[8] Call for GENERAL STRIKE Nov. 2 – plus Occupy updates: http://sfbayview.com/2011/call-for-general-strike-nov-2-%e2%80%93-plus-occupy-updates/
[9] Gang injunctions, unfettered police power gentrify Oakland: http://sfbayview.com/2011/gang-injunctions-unfettered-police-power-gentrify-oakland/
Darius Kemp, UCSA Communications and Organizing Director
Monday November 14, 2011 - 04:09:00 PM
The UC Student Association learned this morning that the UC Regents have cancelled this week’s meeting in response to concerns about public safety. UC students are strongly opposed to this decision.
“The decision to cancel this week’s Regents meeting came abruptly and without any consultation with students or other stakeholders. We do understand the concerns about public safety, yet the Regents also have a responsibility to the students and people of California to hold open meetings that allow for public access and participation. Cancelling the meeting is not a solution to any short term issues,” said UC Student Association President Claudia Magana.
UCSA would expect the UC Regents and UC Police Department to have better prepared plans to ensure that Regents meetings can take place, so that students and others can exercise their free speech rights, and that public safety is protected. “It is concerning that the UC Regents and UCPD were not properly prepared for this meeting, given the ‘credible intelligence’ that was gathered. UCPD deals with student demonstrations on a regular basis, and their top priority should be ensuring student’s ability to demonstrate safely. By cancelling this meeting, the UC Regents have done a great disservice to students, and our ability to participate in the governance of our University system,” said Magana.
UCSA is part of the ReFUND Coalition, made up of student groups, labor unions, and other stakeholders, which helped to organize the planned peaceful demonstrations for Wednesday. Along with the other members of the coalition, UCSA calls on the UC Regents to stand with us in advocating for new taxes on the wealthy and big businesses in 2012 and reforming Prop 13. “The UC Regents need to stand with us, not run away. In order to fully fund education, the state needs new revenue, and our UC Regents should support this goal. This is all that students wanted to hear this week from the UC Regents,” said Magana.
The University of California Student Association is the official voice of over 200,000 undergraduate, graduate, and professional students from the eleven UC campuses. It is our mission to advocate on behalf of current and future students for the accessibility, affordability, and quality of the University of California system.
Editor's Note: This was received by the Planet before the Occupy Oakland protestors were evicted, but some of the points made by the correspondents are still relevant to the discussion of what happened there.
I think you might find this exchange between a student and me about Occupy Oakland and the Oakland community of some interest. There is a rumor that there may be a new violent confrontation hours from now as the occupiers refuse to leave (the mayor had previously offered for us to be able to stay 24/7 but without tents--in other words, just as people coming to present our ideas, but not as occupiers. Let me hasten to add that I believe that the police riot 12 days ago was totally unjustified, and believe that the police who were involved should be sent to prison like others who violate the law. The violence of Oakland police is a daily reality for people of color in Oakland and many other American cities, and always a shock to everyone else because it is only when it happens to white people that the media stays on the story for more than a day or two!
So here is the letter I received on email this morning:
JORDAN ASHE wrote:
Dear Rabbi Lerner:
My name is Jordan Ashe and I am a student member of your Tikkun community. I attended the Oakland camp yesterday. I washed dishes, observed, and engaged in conversation. My children left sidewalk chalk drawings as gifts to the occupiers. It felt good to be part of the 99%. It felt good to give of myself to others and to see my legacy-my family-do the same.
To my horror, however, I observed and heard things that left me in a state of great concern. The 99% need healing, they need repair, they need transformation. The camp was ripe with hostility towards police. My conversations with the occupiers revealed little or any willingness to forgive and seek atonement from the police. Even more horribly, the occupiers seemed content to forget or even ignore the basic lessons our great non-violent leaders left for us. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said the most dangerous thing about violence is its futility. This great leader recognized that fighting violence with violent resistance leads to a continuing cycle of inter-generational trauma and hatred.
Yet many of the occupiers seemed ready for a violent fight-some welcomed it- and many more were unready to forgive. I fear this movement is in need of spiritual guidance less it lead to the same horrible cycles history has witnessed many times over. This guidance was sorely lacking at the occupation and even as I journeyed throughout the camp, I was unable to find a spiritual center. It is the lack of spiritual consensus and guidance that, I believe, is responsible for what I observed next.
The highlight of the day was a speech and a reading from the Egyptian movement that was followed by a "Solidarity March." The reading was disturbing to hear because its focus was on the justification for violent resistance. Although the need for violent aggression may be debatable in Egypt, it is not here in America. The activists of our past changed this county by being willing to die, not by being willing to kill. What shocked me more was that no one (including myself) booed or hissed. We sat there and many applauded. Worse followed.
A leader of a Palestinian youth group read his own speech. "Down with Israel," he said near the end of a speech that focused on past wrongs. There was resounding applause. Then one of the leader's crew standing next to me said "fucking Jews," and in the face of this I could stand it no longer. I told him that I believed it was racist to say that and that forgiveness and atonement is the only hope for peace in the middle east. I told him that I forgave him and he should be careful with his thoughts and words. I told him that my best friend is Palestinian and I am close to many Jews and I wished sincerely to see the differences reconciled for the sake of the innocent generations of the future. Then I had to leave because I was overcome with tears and wanted to scream out to the crowd (I wish I had). The Solidarity March went out shortly thereafter but some people stayed out of the march for the same reasons I did. After all, it makes no sense to march in a "Solidarity March," when the speeches before the march openly contradict the concept of solidarity.
I wish our American youth and people around the world would use the tools passed down by the legacy before them. Organized Non-Violent Non-Cooperation is a gift of strategy from our greatest activists. MLK, Gandhi, Cesar Chavez-these are men who changed the world by doing but not by killing and we squander their memory and their message when we ignore their teachings. How quickly the world forgets. To the religious and faithful and spiritual around the world (those like myself), I would ask: Does God want us to kill in God's name? Or, Does God want us to be willing to die in God's name? Shall we sacrifice the lives of others before we sacrifice of ourselves? Shall we win the battle against our external enemies yet loose the battle against our inner self? In the struggle against oppression, against fear, against the machine of death and war, perhaps our greatest weapons will be forgiveness, atonement, selflessness, and love. I hope people arm themselves with these weapons and I hope they fight back with all their might. I would give my life to that kind of fight.
I am not sure why I wrote to you. But I am sure that writing to you helped me put the sadness of this event behind me. Thanks for reading and for being there.
-Jordan Ashe
Law Student, Father, Husband, 99%er
Dear Jordan,
Thanks so much for this letter. I share your sadness at the distortions within Occupy Oakland.
I have been participating both in Occupy Oakland and Occupy San Francisco, and I feel that the Occupy movement nationally has made a tremendous contribution to our society. By formulating things in terms of “the 99%” it finally did what many other progressives have failed to do—namely, identify us as having a common interest in protecting ourselves from the class war that has been waged against us, all of us, for the past 30 years by the 1% and their representatives in the government, media, academia and military. So I remain a passionate supporter of this movement.
Yet some of the strengths that exist elsewhere are notably lacking in the core group that led people into the struggle in Oakland. Let me be clear, however: I know that at least 90% of the people who marched on Nov. 2nd during the General Strike and marched to the Port of Oakland are people who agree with you. But there is a determined group of violent self-described "anarchists" who ideologically believe in violence and seek it out. They correctly note that destruction of property is not the same as destruction of human beings, and they correctly note that the amount of violence against human beings built into our global economic and political systems makes any violence that they do pale in comparison. Moreover, the violence of the Oakland police has been a central reality in the lives of people of color in Oakland, and only stays in the attention of the media for more than a day or two when the victims are white (or in this case, a former US soldier back from Iraq and Afghanistan). So there is a built in hypocrisy when the media makes the story "the violence of the demonstrators."
But those arguments are, in my view, not good reasons to allow violence or provoke violence or property destruction by demonstrators, for two reasons: 1. We should be non-violent because it is the right way to treat other human beings created in the image of God, and should not seek to create circumstances in which police violence is inevitably triggered unless we do so by ourselves being totally nonviolent in action and words. I'm in favor of non-violent disruptions of oppressive institutions (e.g. a sit-in in the Bank of America or in a Wall Street firm or in a corporation involved in illegitimate foreclosures or in producing military equipment or at the State Dept or the various offices of the Immigration and Naturalization Services given their vicious processes) as long as we keep a 100% non-violent stance. I do not think people need to sit down and get arrested--though that works in many cases; it is also legitimate to do nonviolent disruptions using mobile tactics in which demonstrators disrupt and then withdraw to disrupt somewhere else--as long as the demonstrators avoid destruction of property or creating a situation in which violence is inevitable. Non-violence does not mean passivity, but it must mean a fundamental respect for human life and for the dignity of human beings, including those with whom we strongly disagree. Our actions must reflect that sense of respect for the humanity of the Other--because that is precisely what is absent from the policies and practices of the 1% and those who do their bidding. 2. Though breaking windows or destroying property is not the same as breaking bones, it is perceived by much of the American public as a wrongful act, and a movement that engages in that activity quickly loses public support and isolates itself no matter how much the American public agrees with its goals. That is why the FBI and other elements of the "security apparatus" of the US government have consistently planted their youngest employees inside social movements with the goal of trying to encourage acts of violence so as to provide an excuse to repress those movements with public approval.
But non-violence has not been the stance of the inner core at Occupy Oakland. I was deeply disturbed, and have withdrawn from active involvement with, a group of clergy who were meeting to discuss how they could assist in Occupy Oakland. At the third meeting I attended I proposed that we urge Occupy Oakland to officially endorse non-violence, train monitors to non-violently restrain violence-oriented demonstrators, and appeal to the majority of demonstrators to support these monitors to restrain the violence-oriented ones. To my shock, the clergy voted that down. They were only willing to endorse a resolution saying that they themselves supported non-violence, but they objected to the notion that they should call upon OO to share this same orientation.
Not surprisingly, then, a few days later when one of the participants at OO suggested a resolution for non-violence, without the active support of this clergy group the people who agreed with him felt silenced after some part of the crowd actively booed when he mentioned Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi's commitments and teachings for non-violence.
The dominant reason given by the clergy for their cowardice was that "we have no right to impose our view on those who are taking the risks of sleeping outside at Occupy Oakland; we should respect their process." But advocating is not imposing, and a movement that claims to speak for 99% of the population ought to have some mechanism to pay attention to the sensibilities of the people whom they claim to be speaking for! If those of us who have been in the movement, marched with the movement, and publicly advocated for the movement, do no have a legitimate voice in that movement, it seems transparent that such a movement cannot claim to be fighting for democracy. It thus undermines itself.
I watched this same thing happen in the 1960s and early 1970s when a small group of violence-oriented Weathermen, and the FBI agents who infiltrated the anti-war movement and a few of their more suggestible followers, managed to play an important role in undermining support for the entire movement by demeaning people who weren't ready to "prove their commitment" by violent or property-destroying acts. Not only did the violence provide public justification for an increase in repression of the anti-war movement, it also soured the millions of people who were attracted to the possibility of building a different kind of world based on love, kindness, generosity and caring for others. The mass of participants in our movement abandoned it once the violence-prone got the attention of the corporate media, and I fear that the same thing is happening now.
There's yet another twist in our current situation. The Occupy movement is meant to challenge the class war being waged against the 99% by the 1%. Sitting in front of a particular building to make that point was a useful tactic. But the people who are there have turned the tactic into a fetishization of the encampments, as though the movement was really about their right to set up tents and stay their all night, rather than about challenging the materialism and selfishness of the global marketplace and the lack of democracy in a society that allows the wealthy and the corporations to give endless monies to elect people (in both major parties) who in turn support the corporate agenda and the tax benefits for the rich. I personally believe that the city governments should actively help the demonstrators find a place to demonstrate in an area adjacent to the forces they are demonstrating against. But if they don't, we should not make that the center of the struggle, because there are a myriad of other tactics to keep the issue on the front burner.
I share with you a deep distress at the hatred toward Israel and/or toward Jews you encountered. I've seen little of that in the days that I've been down there, but I'm not surprised that a handful of people retain those feelings. Again, I feel it is the obligation of the clergy and the adults to stand up to this publicly, raise the issue and challenge those who misuse legitimate outrage at the current policies of the current government of the State of Israel as their excuse for delegitimating the State of Israel itself or for expressing anti-Semitism. While I fully reject the attempt to label all criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic, and have myself been subject to attacks and death threats from right-wing Zionists who have labeled me a "self-hating Jew," I do think that we should insist that our friends in the Occupy movement or any other activist movement of progressive bent challenge anti-Semitism or the double standard applied to Israel by a handful of people who thereby sully our movements and give ammunition to those who seek to discredit us entirely!
Warm regards,
Rabbi Michael Lerner,
Editor, Tikkun & Chair,The Network of Spiritual Progressives
After a mass rally and march of over 3,000 people, and repeated police assaults on the Occupy Cal encampment, the general assembly at UC Berkeley decided on the night of November 9th -- with over 500 votes, 95% of the assembly -- to organize and call for a strike and day of action on Tuesday, November 15. We ask that all classes be cancelled or held at Sproul Plaza.
The Open University strike is both a response to the University’s violent raid on the encampment, and an action against the defunding and privatization of public education in California.
We will strike to reassert our collective right to freely assemble, both at the University and elsewhere, so that we are able to build public spaces where we can discuss and counter the various crises affecting our communities. We stand in solidarity with the Occupy movement, and especially with Occupy Oakland, which has been, and may again soon be, repressed by the city of Oakland and the Oakland Police Department.
We will also strike to reaffirm our determination to fight for a truly public and free University, and for the refunding of all levels of public education and public services. Since the crisis of 2008, the UC Regents have accelerated their push to privatize the University, subjecting students to unsustainable levels of debt, excluding increasing numbers of students, and further re-segregating public education in California. The policy of privatization also subjects workers to layoffs, work speedups, and drastic benefits reductions. All these regressive transformations are forms of structural violence, which the police enforced against the assembled students, faculty, and workers on November 9th.
We call upon all sectors of public higher education in California to take actions on Tuesday, November 15th, up to and including strike actions, and to join the mass convergences on November 16th at the UC Regents meeting and the CSU Trustees meeting. We also call upon workplaces and K-12 schools to join us, either by taking actions at their sites or by converging on UC Berkeley and helping us to open up and transform the University from which most Californians have been systematically excluded.
We do not think that property destruction is a useful tactic and we ask those who join the Open University to respect this sentiment. At the same time, we do not think that it is a good strategy to use physical force against those who might engage in such acts.
Please join us on November 15th as we stop business as usual at our University in order to open up and transform our campus, and as we reestablish the Occupy Cal encampment.
Occupy Cal’s Demands
Local Demands
- Respect Free Speech, Including the Right to Set Up Tents. - Immediate Resignation of Robert Birgeneau, George Breslauer, Harry LeGrande, and Mitch Celaya. Democratic Election of their Replacements by Students, Faculty, and Staff. - Charge the Police Responsible for Brutalizing Protesters. No Use of Force Against Protests on Campus. - Amnesty for All Protesters. - Make UC Berkeley a Sanctuary Campus for Undocumented People. Pass the UC-wide Dream Act. - Equal Benefits and Retirement Security for UC Union Workers.
Statewide Demands
- Reverse the Fee Hikes, Cuts, and Layoffs To At Least Their 2009 Levels. - Refund Public Education and Public Services: Tax the Banks and Billionaires. Repeal Prop 13. - Full Implementation of Affirmative Action. Overturn Prop 209.
Nationwide Demands
- Stop the Privatization of Public Education. - Bail Out Schools and Public Services. Redirect Military Funding to Education. - Immediate Forgiveness of All Student Debt. - Repeal Race to the Top. - Stop the Attacks on Teachers Unions.
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Schedule for November 15 Open University Strike at UC Berkeley
8am-5pm: All day Open University activities (teach-outs, workshops, public readings, installations, etc.) at Sproul Plaza and surrounding areas.
Noon: Mass convergence at Sproul Hall and formal inauguration of day-long Open University.
Noon – 2pm: Teach-outs in Sproul Plaza.
2pm: Rally against police violence and other, related forms of violence, including dispossession, privatization, and debt.
2:30pm: March to Berkeley High and Berkeley City College. 5pm: General Assembly at Sproul Plaza.
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Endorsers of the Nov. 15 Strike and Day of Action
Occupy Cal, UC Berkeley Faculty Association, UCSF Faculty Association, UC Davis Faculty Association, UC San Diego Faculty Association, UC Council of Faculty Associations, AFSCME 3299, ACCE, California Nurses Association, Communities for a New California, UAW Local 2865 (UC), UAW 4123 (CSU), UC-AFT.
On Wednesday, November 16 there will be a mass convergence starting at 7am at the UC Regents meeting at the UCSF Mission Bay campus to protest cuts to all levels of public education and to call to refund California by making the banks and super rich pay.
An Open Letter to Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau, University of California, Berkeley
Cc: President Mark G. Yudof, George W. Breslauer, Henry Le Grande, Jonathan Poullard
Re: A concerned parent's objection to police in riot gear beating non-violent students on University grounds on the evening of November 9, 2011
I am a parent of a student at University of California, Berkeley. I was appalled to see police in riot gear using excessive force on the evening of November 9, 2011 against peaceful student protesters on the grounds of the University of California, Berkeley.
When I inquired as to who was responsible for sending the police in riot gear against students, I was told you are in command. If you are not to blame for this particular incident, your position, nonetheless, incurs responsibility. I am expressing parental, civic and moral disapproval of your actions.
As a parent I disapprove of your actions in the strongest possible terms. It is inappropriate for you to bring in riot police to harm non-violent students. I am angered that you have allowed police to use excessive force on these young people. In this incident, the students' welfare was in your hands and you failed miserably.
I offer civic disapproval in the strongest possible terms. As a young person in the Occupy Movement said, "If money is free speech, then tents are free speech." This logic is compelling. Riot police clearing student tents with force, is an abysmal over-reaction. Berkeley has strong ties to the Free Speech Movement. I ask you to remember this history.
I am expressing moral disapproval in the strongest possible terms. Your thoughtless and reckless treatment of young people is unconscionable. A Chancellor of a great University should have the ability to walk among students and talk to them. It is called education. It is called dialogue. These bright and engaged students may have something to teach you. They are our future. Try listening and perhaps they will listen in return.
Sending in riot police is a knee-jerk reaction that is unworthy of your office and of the University you serve. It is a shameful act. I am saddened to say, that if you sanctioned these police actions, then your approval of violence against students, has trampled the civic and the moral fabric of a great University. Not to mention, physically harming students. I am very disappointed as a parent, as a citizen and as a moral human being.
With all due respect, I ask you to cease using violence against peaceful student protesters at Berkeley. Their discontent is obviously part of a larger movement in our country to seek redress of grievances. It is time to listen to the students and not over-react. It is time to teach. Find the compromise that is needed so their voices can be heard and the security of Berkeley can be maintained. The future is theirs and they are trying to shape it.
I ask that a person of your eminence and standing in the community, reconsider your position from the standpoint of a larger and more inclusive picture of moral and civic responsibility. Education takes place all over the grounds at Berkeley, not just in the classroom. The police, under your guidance, can do better than to beat unarmed students. Use the least amount of force to secure Berkeley. Act with restraint. Act with the mental and physical welfare of the students in mind.
As a Berkeley parent, I ask that no more students be harmed.
Who: Ad Hoc Labor Activist Assembly of veteran Oakland area labor organizers What: Urgent Call to Alameda Labor Council for Labor Defense of Occupy Oakland Why: Threat of Imminent Police Action to Attack and Evict Occupy Oakland When: November 12, 2011
The following urgent proposal was unanimously adopted today at an ad hoc Labor Activist Assembly, and signed by more than 30 veteran labor activists:
We, the Ad Hoc Labor Activist Assembly, in light of the imminent threat of police action to evict Occupy Oakland, call on the Alameda Labor Council Executive Board to adopt and implement the following:
The Alameda Labor Council declares the Occupy Oakland encampment to be a sanctioned picket line. The Council's Executive Board calls on every one of its affiliates to immediately mobilize members to defend the encampment, dispatching pickets in shifts, beginning tonight (November 12) and continuing as long as the threat persists.
SIGNATURES (organizations listed for identification only)
Jack Gerson, OEA retired
Zev Kuithy, CFT
Susan Schacher, Peralta Federation of Teachers
Bob Mandel, OEA/AFT retired
Peter Brown, Peralta Federation of Teachers
Steve Miller, OEA
Loretta Franke, Operating Engineers retired
Jack Heyman, ILWU Local 10 retired
Stan Woods, Transport Workers Solidarity Committee
Kriss Worthington, Councilmember, City of Berkeley, District 7
Saturday November 12, 2011 - 05:39:00 PM
The U.C. Police Department recently used violence against Berkeley students, workers, faculty and community supporters on November 9. This was unprovoked, unexpected, unjustified and unreasonable. The General Assembly at the event had publicly and clearly committed to nonviolence, and the participants appear to have maintained their nonviolence despite the violence inflicted on them. The police clearly could have arrested individuals rather than repeatedly hitting them with batons and grabbing them by their hair. There are multiple videos documenting the police use of excessive force. The Stephen Colbert commentary mentions “spearing a small Asian girl in the spleen first” but there appeared to be a true reflection of diversity in Black, White, Asian, Arab and Latino students and workers equally assaulted by the Police.
I believe it is important for the community to stand up and speak out against this injustice. See suggestions below. To avoid confusion, the City of Berkeley Police have not been reported to be part of this violence, it is the U.C P.D.
U.C. Police also appear to have violated multiple people’s legitimate rights to free speech and freedom of assembly. There are reports of U.C. Police tearing down legally posted notices of the event. U.C. Police also confiscated at least one banner and a banner or poster at the event and the U.C. Police Chief declined to answer my questions why. Instead the U.C. Police Chief’s unprofessional response was “I know what I am doing. I’ve been in law enforcement for twenty-nine years, and how many years have you done it?” From the antagonistic tone of the response I knew this was an overly stressed person, but I counted on the Chancellor to provide leadership, so I emailed both the Chancellor and the Chief. Unfortunately the Chancellor was apparently out of town and has subsequently sought to justify the U.C. Police violence by blaming the nonviolent protesters. I was personally present for most of the afternoon and evening and saw only one-sided violence by the Police and none by the students. (Admittedly, some of that time, I was on my cell phone addressing blighted buildings, helicopter noise complaints, returning calls, and taking care of City business, but I still had my eyes and ears out for any problems on Sproul.)
As I stated in my email to the Chancellor before the U.C. Police violence: “ These students have made a firm commitment to no violence and no vandalism . The University should be commending the thousands of students that are participating. For many, this could be their very first political protest of their lives. They are protesting specifically for additional financing for the University of California. The University should support this enthusiasm and help encourage this to be an effective protest that helps the University and our country. “
I believe it is important for the community to stand up and speak out against this injustice. This is a moral issue, not just a political issue. There are multiple ways to help. These include:
1. Writing a letter or email to the Chancellor, and/or the media. Chancellor@berkeley.edu
2. Asking your friends or groups to write letters or sign petitions.
3. Become an observer to reduce the likelihood of violence when more people are watching.
4. Donate time or money to support these courageous students, and/or hold a fundraiser/educational event.
5. Show up on Sproul on Tuesday November 15 starting at noon. 2 p.m. is the rally and 5 p.m. is the General Assembly for the follow up event organizers have titled Open University
6. Join those of us who are pledging to put our bodies with, or in between the U.C. Police and the students to discourage U.C. Police from further violence. Please email Alejandro Soto-Vigil if you are willing to make this pledge at asoto-vigil@cityofberkeley.info
7. Advocate for dropping the trumped up charges against these nonviolent protesters.
8. Please feel free to contact me if you would like to help, or have any suggestions for what we should do.
Chancellor Birgeneau emailed the UC Berkeley Community on Thursday. I quote: “It is unfortunate that some protesters chose to obstruct the police by linking arms and forming a human chain to prevent the police from gaining access to the tents. This is not non-violent civil disobedience.”
The idea that linking arms and blocking officers is violent (what “not non-violent” means) is wrong, and taken to it’s logical conclusion denies the possibility of effective non-violent civil disobedience and justifies the use of force in response. This is bad thinking leading to bad policy and wrong action.
The Chancellor distinguishes between “true non-violent disobedience” and “not non-violent disobedience.” There is a difference, but the student’s disobedience is violent only if they prevent police from stopping a violent crime. Otherwise wherein lies the violence? If the linking of arms is violent on its own merits we are forced to conclude that violence stems from disobedience, and therefore there can be no disobedience without violence.
If this is true there can be no non-violent disobedience. And if this avenue is closed, then what recourse is left? The Chancellor’s position on this matter is dangerous indeed.
Somebody needs to report this story. During Chief Jordan's press conference Thursday someone yelled, "Turn on the lights," but Jordan ignored the comment and this issue hasn't hit the MSM yet. But it should. If OPD knew the camp was dangerous and deliberately turned off the lights, then they're culpable in the killing that followed. Tonight the lights are still off and it's pitch black in there. The Fire Dept has brought in a large floodlight to illuminate the area where the victim was killed. Evidently the Fire Dept is the only agency in town with any common sense.
The other day I was at a bus stop in Berkeley waiting for a bus to Oakland. The bus was late. I had already walked a distance to get to my stop. I kept checking the arrival time indicated on the bus route board. A fellow commuter looked at me and said, “Are you joining the protestors today to benefit the millions who live in Oakland? “I am going to a professional meeting,” I said, “but my method would be to peacefully ask those who are well-off to support the needy. I don't like to hurt anyone even they are hurting us all the time through their discriminatory actions. I believe in the Gandhian way of finding common ground. Activating natural kindness in people will take us closer to our goal. Until then we have to remain calm and peacefully demand our rights. We should not forget our human duties to others even when we are being taken advantage of.”
By then the bus arrived and my fellow-commuter and I got separated. But I kept thinking as I rode the bus that in the midst of all the confusion and discrimination prevailing today democracy is still alive in the US. The commuter and I were able to talk without any ill feeling between us.
After a day of demonstrations (Nov. 9) to protest increasing tuitions at a state funded university, to protest cuts in staff and curriculum in an era of horrendously large administrative salaries and bonuses, though not yet calling for a return of the university to an educational rather than career focus, students at UC Berkeley decided to "Occupy" the campus. They set up a few tents on Sproul Plaza, as occupiers had been setting up such encampments all over the country.
The UC police attacked the small encampment, tore down the tents, used their truncheons on anyone who got in the way, and arrested a few students. One woman, in the face of the vicious force the police exhibited, held out her hands to be handcuffed, and said "arrest me." She was charged with "resisting arrest." She wasn't the only one.
That evening, more students gathered on Sproul Plaza, with more tents. They set them up, and surrounded them with their bodies. There were some 300 people there. The university had said it would come and talk with the students. That is, dialogue with them. When the administration representatives showed up, they presented their conditions and left. They said, you can be here all you like, but we won't allow tents or sleeping bags. Then they turned and left.
The students had tents and sleeping bags, and decided to defend them. The police attacked later that night, and beat anyone in their way as they waded through the bodies to get to those tents and sleeping bags, and tear them out of the world. The students simply placed their bodies in the way of the police assault, in defense of the tents. They did not counterattack. There was no assault against the police. They simply tried to be a barrier between the police and the tents. It is so easy to say, and so difficult to think about. Many were badly hurt. One student ended up in the IC unit in the hospital.
The next evening (Nov. 10), the students had a General Assembly meeting to decide what to do. One proposal was that they set up the tents on the sidewalk outside the university. A university cop (a number were close by listening) then contacted one of the facilitators and told her that if the students set up tents on the sidewalk outside campus, they would be treated the same as they had been on Sproul Plaza.
From that moment on, the basic premise of the discussion was, "if we set up tents, we will be beaten."
That is, it wasn't, "if we do this, we will be breaking the law." It wasn't, "if we do that we will get a ticket." It wasn't, "if we do that, we will be indicted for insurrection." All those niceties of judicial procedure, in which an action, such as setting up a tent, is not a crime until it is proven that it violated the law – something which, in common parlance goes, "a person is innocent until proven guilty" – had been dispensed with.
To make this clear, if I am in a bar, and punch someone, I have not committed a crime of assault until it is proven through judicial procedure that I did not act in self-defense, but rather initiated an aggressive act.
But those niceties of judicial procedure are gone. Instead, people are beaten, and are told that they will be beaten right there in the street if they do a certain thing.
To beat someone under circumstances in which they cannot fight back, or defend themselves, because of either physical, social, or legal constraints, constitutes torture. It is torture because it is the immobilization of persons in order to inflict pain and the inflicting of pain on someone consciously to get something from them – whether it is information or obedience, it is the same process. For the police to beat people in the street or on campus is to torture them in public. For the state or the university administration to sanction such beating renders it state sanctioned torture. I am simply calling a spade a spade.
State sanctioned torture is a violation of international law, of international treaty of which the US is a signatory, and thus a violation of the Constitution of the US, which establishes ratified treaties as part of the law of the land (Article VI). It is unknown to me whether state sanctioned torture, such as the police beating people in the street or on a campus, is illegal according to US legislated law. It is possible that it is not, just as no Congress in the history of the US has managed to pass a law prohibiting lynching.
When the occupations around the country call for expelling the corporations and corporate power from our day to day politics and our elections, they are only calling for a solution to a part of the problem. We now can see, in the words of the campus police, that we have a government that is criminal, because it sanctions acts that have been declared criminal by international agreement.
Members of the Free Speech Movement Archives (www.FSM-A.com): Bettina Aptheker, Robby Cohen, Susan Druding, Lee Felsenstein, Barbara Garson, Lynne Hollander, Anita Medal, Jack Radey, Gar Smith, Jackie Goldberg and Barbara Stack
Friday November 11, 2011 - 02:58:00 PM
As veterans and historians of the 1964 Free Speech Movement that established the rights of students to freely express their concerns over critical social issues within the boundaries of the University of California's campus, we were shocked by the actions of campus police who seized banners from students peacefully demonstrating in Sproul Plaza and on the Sproul Steps.
We join Berkeley Councilmember Kriss Worthington in demanding that the banners be returned and that University Administrators condemn this unconscionable police assault on Free Speech.
The University is a commons dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. It appears that the campus police are in need of remedial education concerning fundamental protections offered by the US Constitution -- including First Amendment rights to Free Speech and Free Assembly that were clearly recognized and enshrined on the UCB campus 47 years ago on these very steps.
We further condemn the actions of the armed police who beat and arrested students and faculty. We deplore the decision of University officials who, once again, opened the campus to armed and club-wielding Alameda County sheriffs. And we applaud the inspiring example of the students who bravely and nonviolently held their ground against police batons.
You are getting internationally known public figures visiting and publicizing Oakland in a positive way. Are you people SERIOUS about trying to remove something you've been wanting for years to create?
You have been working for years for business to improve in Oakland. Now celebrate something positive, world-wide, and stand with Oakland-on-the-map in this historic moment. Many of us have been asking business owners in Oakland in a neutral way what they think of the Occupiers. By far the majority of answers have ranged from complete support and jubilence to "some customers seem a little afraid, but if the city and media would publicize what's actually happening, customers would realize it's safer and more lively than before."
Just a sampling of positive publicity has come from Tavis Smiley, Amy Goodman, CBS, CNN, KGO, and Egypt!
If you want to concentrate on what's not working, you can ALWAYS find trouble. Do you want to get rid of the Raiders because some fans always start fights? You have a vast number of allies within the Occupy encampment calling on disrupters to cease any vandalism.
Please do all you can to work with the Occupiers, many of whom are young. They have infused the country with hope that seemed dead! I know Ms. Brooks pitched a tent, but most also are aware that she has not actually needed to stay in it.
As far as any safety violations are concerned, work with the campers. They are, by and large, quite organized and on your side. You will doubtless have more not fewer public safety officers available for serious crimes elsewhere if you'd use the help you have here.
Virginia Browning
(employed in Oakland, and more frequent than before -- downtown Oakland customer)
I was thinking about Ted's "occupy yourself!" rant. I'd seen some people take offense at it and at some of Ted's other takes on Occupy. I was thinking about what to say to those people. It's this:
Ted's bent here is just run of the mill cynical nihilism. There's a lot of that around here, particularly among people of a certain generation. They think: Grass roots revolutionary change is impossible, wrong-headed, and pitiful -- don't you know? Anything that smells vaguely like ideology is almost certainly meaningless. Uncle Ted will share his views on the absurdities and vacuousness of the whole affair... he's seen it all unfold before.
Which is a perfectly reasonable position for Ted to take, even if he's wrong.
Remember that it is within living memory for many in Berkeley that, well, the revolution started more than 40 years ago. It even resulted in an apparently permanent occupation of People's Park. Yes, pretty words were spoken and parts were groovy but this was The Real Deal: the national guard used a helicopter to crop-dust parts of campus with tear gas; people were beaten; James Rector was shot to death in Berkeley, by the police, for no good reason, and Alan Blanchard blinded that same day by the same kind of buck shot fired from police rifles for the same absense of any good reason.
Against the outrages, hopes ran high. Not only were similar protests happening around the nation but, indeed, around the world. "Same song all around the world," crowed Abbie Hoffman, back from some travels.
Many organized factions competed for leadership, sometimes fighting among themselves and sometimes forming coalitions. Multiple flavors of marxists, hippies, multiple flavors of Black nationalists, and white liberals. Some militant, some not.
Imposing yourself as leadership was easier back then. If you tied into a national organization, you had an easier time communicating with people in other cities (in those pre-Internet days). If you tied into those organizations, you had easier access to money and you had a shiny air of authority. Hell, just having decent access to a mimeograph machine (you might have heard of them) gave one a measure of authority and power.
There wasn't much on TV back then so this revolution stuff was pretty stimulating!
There were competing theories, then as now, about what was happening politically. There were those who it seemed were just there for the party and the free food and the hook-up opportunities. There was then, like today, no easy answer to "why are they doing this? this causing a ruckus and such?"
For a while, the dissidents could believe that in spite of the organizational and ideological chaos, somehow it would all converge and things would Change with a capital C. It didn't. It kind of fell apart.
Sure, some changes happened. But...
It all turned very sour and people went their own ways and a lot, to this day, are rightly skeptical and cast a jaundiced eye over something like Occupy thinking "Yeah. Cute. Talk to me in a few years. I'll try not to say I told ya' so. That stuff never works."
Says Ted: "Occupy Yourself! [....] The occupation is over," and in between he fills in a kind of darkly sarcastic parody of the old "change begins within" mantra.
We feel your pain, Ted.
Now Ted, take a deep breath and go back to the Med and get the stories you're great at getting. Give this one a rest. And here's why:
Ted this isn't the same old same old. Things really are different this time. No, really. Stop chuckling. Geeze.
See, all the bad ways in which things fell apart back then -- the impossibility of naive political organizing -- the harsh limitations of protest ....
That's all in living memory. We're aware of that. We are familiar with those stories. We are not recapitulating those earlier days. We are taking them as informative background.
The young people today are, to put it simply, cannier than the young people back then. And also in better touch with one another -- less need for "leaders".
And you've got cynicism, Ted? Ha! You don't know cynicism. You're an amateur compared to the youth of today. You're a cynicism amateur compared to even me and I'm somewhere around half way between you and the youth of today.
It's in spite of widespread recognition that, really, Occupy can't possibly work -- that it's absurd to even try ....
It's in spite of knowing how similar efforts failed in the past....
People are choosing to, anyway, at least try. But try this time a little more cleverly. And clever we've been.
There is power in that. There is power in a movement that leads people to attempt the absurd -- because its the best option they can see on the table.
Counts vary, Ted, but how many 10s of thousands do you think came out to support the general strike and shut down the port of Oakland? And that was organized in a matter of days. It drew upon people from all walks of life. It was a direct and visceral convulsion of, yes, the middle class standing up in support of the protests and against the political and economic powers arrayed against the people. The general strike cowed the police and the city, Ted. Undeniably.
People on all sides are comparing this to a labor action of 1946 - not a 1968 protest. Something, you ought to admit in the end, is bigger and better this time.
The occupation is not over. It's barely just begun.
On tonight's news, they featured various segments covering protests at Occupy Oakland, Occupy Los Angeles, Occupy Denver, Occupy Seattle, Occupy New York, Occupy Austin, Occupy Chicago, etc. And tonight I was also a part of "Occupy Cal". And the university police charged into a mass of student demonstrators like they were going after bank robbers or bad guys instead of just students protesting HUGE tuition hikes. And the students stood their ground on Sproul Plaza against great odds.
The police seized tents and banners from the students -- and what do you know? The students seized them right back!
And, later, when there was a lull in between various attacks on students, I had a chance to talk to some of the cops. "Are other local police forces involved in this operation -- or is it only the U.C. police?"
"Just the university police, ma'am. Not the city police. But the chancellor stated that he would not allow tents to be erected on campus." And so the chancellor apparently chose to give an order to take the tents down.
Bad choice.
"I used to protest here at this very same spot back in the 1960s," I then told the boys in blue.
"Some things never change," one cop replied. Well, guess what? Things had pretty damn well better change -- or else!
Or else what?
Or else there will be a hit-and-run type of protest movement from the rest of us 99% -- that will go on and on and on at different places daily all over America until things DO start to change. The corporatists don't have the money or the manpower to control all of us everywhere. A non-violent hit-and-run guerrilla protest movement? Yay.
And I just heard that U.C. Santa Cruz students have also gone out on strike.
And will a plaza or university or town square or bank near you be next?
PS: U.C. students in Berkeley are very well-represented by their district's councilperson, Kriss Worthington, who was also on Sproul Plaza, backing his young constituents up. Here's what he told the Berkeley Daily Planet tonight:
"At the home of the Free Speech Movement, the UCPD appears to have suppressed Free Speech again! Please join us in questioning this behavior and challenge the UCPD to respect the Free Speech Rights of Occupy Cal."
Worthington then went on to admonish Chancellor Birgeneau and U.C. police chief Calaya for their violent actions against non-violent protestors. "I wanted to bring to your attention that banners with Free Speech content appear to have been seized by UCPD in front of Sproul Plaza. ...It is hard to imagine that such an act could occur at the exact location in Berkeley where the Free Speech Movement began." Worthington nailed it exactly.
"You can imagine that the sense of irony will not be lost on the public, that the UCPD violated the Free Speech rights of protesters at this particular location. ...These students have made a firm commitment to no violence and no vandalism. The University should be commending the thousands of students that are participating. For many, this could be their very first political protest of their life. They are protesting specifically for additional financing for the University of California. The University should support this enthusiasm and help encourage this to be an effective protest that helps the University and our country."
PPS: Of course it is unacceptable that police are violently shutting down freedom of speech at the very spot where the Berkeley Free Speech Movement was born. But even more unacceptable is the fact that free speech movements all over the United States are also being shut down -- here in America, in the Land of the Free.
I mean, seriously. With Veterans Day almost upon us, we can only speculate why our heroic troops fought and died in foreign wars -- if the very Freedom that they fought so hard for abroad is being violently shut down right here at home.
I have just finished watching some of the videos of the police attacking unarmed students on the UC Berkeley campus. The beatings are appalling. And the reappearance of "non-lethal" shotguns on campus inexcusable. (Question: Was the office who shot a demonstrator with a beanbag blast during the last campus incursion ever identified and held accountable?) But, in addition to seeing more evidence of deplorable police behavior, I also saw something new, remarkable and inspiring -- it was expressed in the decorum of the students.
In a powerful demonstration of nonviolent resistance, they held their ground -- despite repeated body blows from police batons -- and continued to calmly protest.
Instead of hurling obscenities, they tried to disarm the cops with reason. Many attempted to engage the police in "common ground" conversations. Chants directed at the police were positive -- "We are doing this for your children."
I may be reading too much into the videos but it looked to me as though the calm, resolute, nonthreatening nature of the students helped lower the anger and apprehension in the frontline of cops. After the initial charge and blows failed to scatter the students, the cops seemed to take a second look and started to realize that these young people were not behaving like thugs and lawbreakers but looked more like their own sons and daughters.
There was a lot of bravery on display during yesterday's confrontation, thanks to the students, no thanks to the armed police.
CALL President Yudof and Gov. Jerry Brown—keep calling and emailing.
Tell them you are a resident of California (and where you live) and a taxpayer!
Tell them the beatings yesterday of peaceful Cal students gathered at Sproul Hall, the Home of the Free Speech Movement is immoral and that is not how we want our tax dollars to be used. Tell them you will not support any Cal events or sporting events until the University supports students in their quest for an affordable education and stop the expansion of a corporate based privatized University that serves Corporations.
Please direct inquiries for the president's office to:
Office of the President University of California 1111 Franklin St., 12th Floor Oakland, CA 94607
Although President Yudof reads all correspondence sent to him, please be aware that such correspondence also may be read or answered by members of his staff or appropriate campus personnel. Please also note that the Office of the President retains copies of all correspondence sent to the president, and that all correspondence is considered a matter of public record and is, therefore, subject to disclosure under the California Public Records Act.
The Budget Control Act of 2011created the 12-member, bi-partisan Super Committee with extraordinary powers with the goal of achieving at least $1.5 trillion in budgetary savings over 10 years. What they ultimately decide -- or fail to decide -- by the deadline of November 23, 2011, will shape the economic future of this country for many years to come. Thus, it is important to know the identity of interest groups seeking to influence the Committee members.
The public has the right to know what members have ties to what industries or lobbies, not only in the past, but also since the Super Committee was formed. For example, public action committees (PACs) associated with lawmakers on the Committee have shown a surge of contributions, and PACs representing corporate biggies like Pfizer and Lockheed Martin contributed more than $83,000 during August alone.
After last year's U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, Super PACs are permitted to raise unlimited amounts of money from donors -- individuals, corporations and unions -- which can be used to fund political advertisements for or against federal candidates and to otherwise support or oppose candidates.
Lawyers and law firms were the largest contributors by industry, with nearly $32 million into election efforts. Securities and investment sector and health professionals placed second and third. Other top contributors include the conservative Club for Growth, Microsoft, the University of California, Goldman Sachs, EMILY'S List, Citigroup, and JP Morgan Chase. In short, there is much money going to the twelve Super Committee members.
MapLight has conducted an analysis of the total campaign contributions to the twelve members of Congress appointed to the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction. The totals by contributor can be found here .
At the same website, you can click on an individual Super Committee member to see an analysis of campaign contributions to that committee member.
As Jesse Unruh, former Speaker of the California Assembly, once said, "Money is the mother's milk of politics." Because of Citizens United, we can do little to stem the flow of money to politicians, but the public is entitled to know where the milk is coming from.
Greater white-fronted goose: why doesn't it fall over?
Someone once asked the science fiction writer Barry Longyear where his ideas came from. “Schenectady,” he replied. I think he eventually published a book called It Came From Schenectady. The column-writing process is similar. Ron and I recently had an article on the autumnal florescence of garden, AKA pumpkin, spiders in another publication. It drew a fair amount of reader response, one of which could be paraphrased: “If you know so much about spiders, how do birds manage to stand on one leg?”
I found an answer for him and responded. And then I thought: “This stuff is too good to waste on one email.” Hence today’s venture into biomechanics.
If you’ve spent any amount of time around birds, you’ll have observed the one-legged stance. Large waders like flamingos and storks are notorious for it, but waterfowl (see goose photo), shorebirds, and songbirds do it too. There are also, just to confuse things, a few genuinely one-legged birds around: usually seabirds and waterbirds. Spend a lot of time floating on the surface of the water with appendages dangling and something may take a bite.
At least one travel guide to Hawaii lists the one-legged owl among the islands’ extinct avifauna. This appears to be a garbled version of the long-legged owl, or alternatively the stilt-owl. There are no congenitally one-legged bird species.
Why do they do it? It’s all about thermoregulation, minimizing heat loss. There’s a part of the avian circulatory system called the rete mirabile that allows a counter-current heat exchange. The arteries that transport warm blood from the heart to the legs are in contact with the veins that return cooler blood to the heart. The arteries transfer some of their heat to the veins. Standing on one leg halves the amount of heat lost through the featherless legs. (But do birds with feathered legs, like the rough-legged hawk or the great horned owl, stand on one leg?) According to one study, flamingoes assume the one-legged posture more often when standing in water than when standing on dry land, and in cooler as opposed to warmer temperatures.
As for the how, I am indebted to the web site of Professor Doctor Reinhold Necker, formerly of the University of the Ruhr in Bochum, Germany, for his detailed explanation of why these birds don’t topple over (www.reinhold-necker.de/seite11a.html.) Necker says it’s long been speculated that long-legged birds like flamingoes, at least, had some kind of snapping mechanism that locked the intertarsal joint of the extended leg in place. However, such a mechanism has only been demonstrated in the ostrich, which does not stand on one leg. Other long-legged birds have a structure in the trochanter, where the femur attaches to the hip, that prevents the body from tipping over forward and stabilizes it against rotation toward the non-supported side.
Bear in mind that a bird’s leg is not quite like a human’s, although the basic structures are similar. Birds walk on their toes; what appears to be a reversed knee is actually their ankle joint. The true knee—the thick end of the drumstick—is concealed by feathers. When standing, a bird’s knees are flexed and the knee joint is near their center of gravity. The femur is nearly horizontal, held in place by the ligaments of the hip joint.
Necker also writes that birds have balance regulators in their inner ears, as we do. They also have an auxiliary equilibrium sensor in the lumbosacral region of their vertebral column that acts directly on the motor system of the legs.
So it seems to be a combination of bone structure and sensory apparatus that does the trick. None of this, of course, applies to the various human cultures that have adopted a one-legged posture, like those cattle-herders in South Sudan who used to be a National Geographic staple.
I am an indifferent viewer of sports. If another activity such as a movie, a concert, the theater, or a social activity beckons, I choose that activity over watching a game. However, I am interested in how the 49ers, the Raiders, Stanford and Cal football did. I therefore read the sports section of the newspaper or turn on ESPN for the latest scores. Recently, the media -- ESPN in particular -- has been overly absorbed in the Pennsylvania State University (PSU) scandal where Jerry Sandusky, a long-time assistant to now former PSU football coach Joe Paterno, allegedly molested eight troubled young boys over a 15-year period at times at PSU satellite campuses. PSU administrators knew about it but allegedly covered it up.
Unfortunately, very little media attention is being paid to the betrayals of trust that these young victims had for their mentor. The effects of this sexual abuse can include depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, propensity for further victimization in adulthood, and even physical injury to the child. What if anything, will be done for these already troubled children? Why hasn't the media focused on the effects Sandusky's alleged molestation will likely have on these young victims? Did PSU reach out to the parents of these children and offer the children counseling? Or would that be admitting liability?
I assume there will be many future lawsuits against Sandusky and PSU.
Unfortunately, the media frenzy surrounding the scandal is more a concern about the effect it is having on PSU, Joe Paterno's legacy, and even last Saturday's football game against Nebraska. There is no mention of what role big-time sports might have had on the coverup, or what kind of role models coach student-athletes at universities like PSU. I get the feeling that PSU just wants the scandal to fade away.
It is no secret that big-time college sports are fully commercialized. Billions of dollars flow through them each year. The NCAA makes money, and enables universities and corporations to make money, from the unpaid labor of young athletes.
PSU gets its share of the money pie. PSU's athletic department is a self-sufficient auxiliary unit of the university. The income generated by the unit is greater than its expenses. The PSU athletic department’s self-sufficiency places it in elite company. According to a report released by the NCAA, only fourteen Division 1 Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) schools reported profits from their athletic departments in 2009. PSU athletics made $18 million in profit in 2009-2010. No tuition money goes towards the PSU athletic department. In fact, the athletic department contributed $12 million to the University’s general operating budget in the form of tuition for all of its scholarship athletes. PSU must be worried about the effects the scandal will have on future fund raising for its profit-making athletic department
What should the role of a coach be at colleges or even high schools? The primary role should be to teach athletics. In turn, college athletes look upon their coaches as leaders, teachers, and mentors. Coaches teach discipline, teamwork, and sportsmanship. Coaches often become the face of the university, especially coaches like Paterno, the winningest college football coach in history. I wonder how much the average American knows about PSU other than its football coach was JoePa (an affectionate nickname for Joe Paterno).
The classical ideal of athletics is a sound mind in a sound body. Athletics should be about fair play, hard work, dedication, personal excellence, obedience to rules, commitment, and loyalty. However, a win-at-all cost mentality can lead to elitism, sexism, racism, nationalism, over competitiveness, abuse of drugs, gambling, and a number of other deviant behaviors. When the administration and coaches at PSU allegedly ignored and covered up the sexual molestation of children by one of its coaches, the true spirit of sports was lost. Can it be regained? Only time will tell.
PSU at one time was known as Happy Valley. Happy Valley is anything but these days.
—oh, celestial, soothing, sanctifying process, with all the high, sane forces of the sacred time, fighting through it, on my side. Henry James (1843—1916)
Written in the last decade of his life, when James was in a bad patch and trying to summon up the energy to get back to writing, this has the tone of fervent prayer. We don’t know what was troubling him; he was not the kind of writer who exposes his personal travails all over the page.
What we do know from this “prayer” is that James was not the kind of artist who said, “I can’t do my work because (someone or something) makes it impossible for me to think or work creatively!” He knew that sitting himself down to the work, the “soothing, sanctifying process,” was the thing most likely to bring “sane forces . . . fighting through it, on my side.”
In other words, that, when all else is wrong in the world (and it always is) one thing—the work—is always on my side, keeping me sane, and even, perhaps, producing something worthwhile.
He sets a vital example, not only for writers and artists, but for everyone, whatever the work—mental/physical, major/menial, interesting/boring—provided the work harms no one. The only people who are deserted by the “high, sane forces of the sacred time” are those whose work does harm, no matter what admiration and riches it may accumulate.
(Send the Berkeley Daily Planet a page from your own Commonplace Book)
Occupy Wall Street is getting positive reviews and is viewed favorably by most Americans. Does OWS indicate the US political process has hit bottom and Americans are ready for radical change?
Recent polls indicate that Americans view Occupy Wall Street favorably. Poll respondents have a more favorable view of protestors than they do of Washington politicians or denizens of Wall Street. What counts most is public sentiment on key issues and here, too, Occupy Wall Street seems to be winning. The most recent CBS News/New York Times poll asked: "Do you feel that the distribution of money and wealth in this country is fair, or do you feel that the money and wealth in this country should be more evenly distributed among more people?" 66 percent of respondents answered yes.
Nonetheless, it’s one thing to believe that money and wealth is distributed unfairly or that government is broken or that the US is spiraling downward, and quite another thing to say “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” Are American voters – the 99 percent – at the point where they are willing to take to the streets and join Occupy Wall Street? No.
Americans may be disgusted with the way things are going, but they’re not in enough pain to get up out of their easy chair and take action. That’s the conclusion VANITY FAIR contributing editor Michael Lewis reached in his article California and Bust. Lewis considered “the pressure point in American finance: the fear that American cities would not pay back the money they had borrowed.” “The states that had enjoyed the biggest boom were now facing the biggest busts.” Not surprisingly, the biggest problem is California. Lewis discussed California with former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the mayor of almost bankrupt San Jose, and the city manager of Vallejo that declared bankruptcy in 2008.
Mayor Chuck Reed remarked that San Jose suffers from “service-level insolvency,” adding, “I think we suffered from a series of mass delusions.” UCLA neuroscientist Peter Whybrow observed, “We’ve created physiological dysfunction. We have lost the ability to self-regulate, at all levels of society.” Lewis concluded that Californians “want services and not to pay for them.”
California’s situation reminded Lewis of “Bernard Madoff’s investment business. Anyone who looked at Madoff’s returns and understood them could see he was running a Ponzi scheme; only one person who had understood them bothered to blow the whistle, and no one listened to him.”
Occupy Wall Street is a collective exercise in whistleblowing. Judging from the number of ordinary folks stepping forward to describe how the American system has failed them OWS is asking us to recognize that the US economy has become a form of Ponzi scheme – where the wealthy 1 percent take money from the 99 percent with promises of returns that do not materialize. Sadly many of the 99 percent have been brainwashed to not listen to the grim truth.
Americans entered the twenty-first century hypnotized by three basic tenets of Reagonomics: 1. Greed is good:helping the rich get richer would help everyone else, 2. The free market is your friend: global markets were inherently self correcting and therefore there was no need for government regulation; and 3. Government is your enemy: trust the market.
Then came two calamities. On September 11, 2001, terrorists attacked the United States. The message from Washington to the 99 percent was “we’ve got this handled; go on with your lives; don’t worry, keep shopping.” Then on September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers Investment Bank filed for bankruptcy triggering a financial meltdown. Once again the message from Washington to the 99 percent was “we’ve got this handled; go on with your lives; don’t worry, keep shopping.”
The Reagan era sold the Ponzi scheme with its dogma that unrestrained self-interest ultimately benefitted everyone. But the Bush Administration took the same magical thinking to an absurd new level with its assertion that the US could engage in two wars and not pay for them. Then in 2008 the Bush White House told the biggest fib of all “we can’t hold any of the big banks responsible for the financial meltdown, because that would be bad for the economy, so we will bail them out but you, the average citizen, won’t be affected.”
More than a decade of dreadful leadership has produced the current crisis: the US is broken financially and politically. But during the same period many Americans were lured into a “cult” that preached: “self-indulgence is good,” “government is bad,” “debt is good,” and “You can enjoy government services without paying for them.” While many of the 99 percent feel the current system is unfair they’re stuck in a state of conditioned helplessness. As a consequence, they won’t be able to take action until they are deprogrammed.
Occupy Wall Street is a step in the right direction, but it won’t produce radical change until most of the 99 percent take control of their lives. That’s asking a lot. It’s unlikely to happen until conditions in the US get much worse.
Bob Burnett is a Berkeley writer. He can be reached at bburnett@sonic.net
Many people think that the main cause of relapse for a person with mental illness is noncompliance with taking medication. However, much of the time, persons with mental illness are doing everything they’re supposed to do (including taking medication, attending therapy, and being a participant in life) and yet a relapse still takes place. Furthermore, when noncompliance is a major factor in a relapse, it is not always something that happens on a mere whim. Often, the person with mental illness first deteriorated to an extent, and this led to the poor judgment of choosing noncompliance. A very large percentage of people with schizophrenia, possibly more than half, will have a relapse within a year of getting stabilized—and this is despite being medication compliant.
In my case, stopping medication against medical advice always preceded a major relapse. I was able to stay well for about six years at a time until I finally had a lasting realization that I could not stop the medication. My last total relapse into psychosis was in the spring of 1996. I hope to never have another relapse of this kind.
The experience of relapsing to psychosis and then coming back to tracking “reality” in a psychiatric hospital is like a chess player being checkmated, getting frustrated and knocking all the chess pieces off the checkered board. And then, another game can be played. (No, I am not under the misconception that that is how “real” chess players behave.) The comparison is like saying that the mind gets scrambled and then reset; the person with mental illness must in many ways start over.
During my second to last relapse, in 1990, I experienced coming back to reality upon watching a videotape of the movie “Field of Dreams” that was being played in the psychiatric ward. The experience of watching a movie relaxed me and also took me off the delusional track of consciousness in order to follow the story. Staff told me that night that they could start planning for my release.
I met the woman who would become my wife, Joanna, about a year before I experienced my most recent and hopefully last episode of severe psychosis.
The relapse that I experienced in 1996 was devastating; I lost a lot of ground in my ability to do things that many people take for granted. Upon being re-medicated, my delusions didn’t clear up nearly as fast. I felt as though my mind was scrambled. The vulnerability made me the dupe of some people’s jokes. In the years since then, I have grown stronger. At the beginning I had to deliberately do a “retraining” to clear up a lot of my mind’s delusions. In the first six months that followed the relapse, I spent several hours per day sitting in the back room of my apartment with pads of paper and pens, a portable radio, and massive amounts of coffee and cigarettes. I did exercises to learn once again how to think.
I came out of this training with more “marbles” than I originally had prior to the relapse. I don’t recommend the above process to anyone. For one thing, something that worked for me will probably not work for other people. Secondly, I continue to have other problems such as agoraphobia and sensitivity to getting stressed out. Furthermore, I began the retraining with considerable experience under my belt at meditating and at analyzing my own innards. Such a training as this doesn’t eliminate the need for medication. It merely installs “software” which is supported by a medicated and properly working brain.
Upon middle age, the prospect of going off medication and relapsing becomes a serious threat to physical well-being. There are severe stresses on the body that take place during a psychotic episode; stresses that someone past thirty will not always survive.
Relapsing and recovering is a huge setback from which it takes years, not months, to recover. However, it also provides an opportunity for relearning. It is not something you would voluntarily choose, any more than you would choose to have a car accident that gave you the near death experience that gave you new insights into life, but that also left you crippled. Relapses are best prevented, and being medication compliant is a part of how to accomplish that.
Living alone, in fiction, nonfiction and even children’s books, is generally regarded as unfortunate, something to be avoided. Being alone is assumed unpleasant, probably the result of misfortune. Aloneness is often associated with consolation, solitude, even secrecy
Neuroscientist John T. Cacioppo contends that chronic loneliness is an unrecognized syndrome. In his 2008 book, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection, he relates it to depression and offers reasons for it.
The first part of this column, then, is mostly about solitude vis-a-vis older and middle-aged people.
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Only-children (singletons)] often have a hard time and are likely to feel lonely, isolated and overwhelmed by their parents’ problems and to be accused of being spoiled. Their loneliness may carry over into adulthood.
When we met as University of Chicago graduate students in 1954, I was impressed by a fellow International House resident, a middle-aged, never-married, career Army officer. Henry and his twin sister had been orphaned, but he considered that she too had done well, because she had married and was at home with children. Despite the distance, his vacations were spent with them. They were home for him, so he was not alone. (I had not yet recognized the possible sexism in his equating feminine success with marriage and children.
Florida Pier was born in 1884 in Orange Park, Florida and educated at home. She grew up in Pittsburgh, and moved to New York at fifteen to become an actor. In 1910 she married John Scott-Maxwell and moved to her husband's native Scotland, where she worked for woman suffrage and as a playwright. They divorced in 1929 and she moved to London. An actor, writer of plays and short stories, and homemaker in her youth, at age fifty she began training as an analytical psychologist, studying with Swiss psychologist-psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961). She was in practice as an analytical psychologist in both England and Scotland, and she spent decades working as a therapist before she retired
The Measure of My Days is Florida Pier Scott-Maxwell’s most well known book, usually the only one in public libraries’ collections. It is the private notebook of a remarkable woman of eighty-two encountering the challenge of old age. It was published in 1968. This collection of sensitive and perceptive journal entries documents experiences and emotions while alone in her eighties, and includes a time of ill health.
Here’s a paragraph entry from The Measure of My Days that focuses on the positive side of living alone. Scott-Maxwell, a grandmother, is wondering if living alone makes her more alive. She believes it has made her more “natural.” She speaks of her “duty” not to be a problem for those who care for her. A few sentences later she questions, “I wonder if we need to be quite so dutiful.” She continues by speaking of a special feeling of life’s intensity and energy that she is experiencing in her eighties
“I wonder if living alone makes one more alive. No precious energy goes in disagreement or compromise. No need to augment others, there is just yourself, just truth—a morsel—and you. You went through those long years when it was pain to be alone, now you have come out on the good side of that severe discipline Alone you have your own way all day long, and you become very natural. Perhaps this naturalness extends into heights and depths, going further than we know; as we cannot voice it we must just treasure it as the life that enriches our days.
Later, she recalls a time when she had left her marriage. She begins to be aware of what every old woman knows.
“After a time of trouble I found a likeable flat which was to be my home. I had had a long need of one, so it was also my dead shelter. My daughter and I moved in one evening with two suitcases two beds, three pots of bulbs, a kettle and tea things. … That was many years ago, but only last year I passed a supermarket and saw coming out a slut [slovenly] of a woman. She was fat, unwashed, unkempt in hair and dress, with a large three-cornered tear in her overall [smock]. She looked large-hearted and vital, and as our eyes met something passed between us, we liked each other. ..We know who we are even though we lack the precise name for it.”
“I never understood myself less. The humid summer makes me listless, age empties me, and this nervous exhaustion proves me truly spent. I feel profound lassitude, yet I am not ill. If someone comes and I talked I call up energy that I do not possess, and I may pay for it with an aching head lasting two or three days. I must talk less, I must become laconic. A smile, a nod, how unlikely, yet excessive talk must be based on vanity, an assumption that you are the fountainhead of interest. Age insists that I be dull as a further disability. No one else will mind, perhaps not even notice. Others might prefer me silent. I will try.”
Her experiences have led her to believe that “Age insists that I be dull as a further disability.” What do you think of her conclusion that she will try to be silent?
Following hospitalization, surgery and a “nursing home,” she writes:
“I had one fear. What if something went wrong, and I became an invalid? What if I became a burden, ceased to be a person and became a problem a patient, someone who could not die? That was my one fear, but my changes were reasonably good, so all was simple and settled and out of my hands. Being ill in a nursing home became my next task, a somber dance in which I knew some of the steps. I must conform. I must be correct. I must be meek, obedient and grateful, on no account must I be surprising. If I deviated by the breadth of a toothbrush, I would be wrong.”
What do you think of Scott-Maxwell’s apparent willingness to be “meek, obedient and grateful”? Would she celebrate November as National Caregivers Month?
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Go to Google. Type: Alameda County Area Agency on Aging
The Area Agency on Aging (AAA) is the local arm of the national aging network. Federal, state, local governments, not-for-profit as well as for profit private agencies work together to advance the social and economic health and well being of elders (60 and over) in Alameda County. The AAA is based in the Alameda County Social Services Agency’s Department of Adult & Aging Services at 6955 Foothill Boulevard, Suite 300, Oakland, CA 94605. It provides free Information & Assistance by telephone (1-800-510-2020 or 510-577-3530).
The Advisory Commission on Aging (ACA), made up of representatives concerned about the needs and interests of elders in Alameda County, and appointed by the Board of Supervisors, the Conference of Mayors, and the ACA, works with AAA staff to develop, plan, and administer programs designed to assist elders and their caregivers in the county. I served on the ACA, while AAA staffer Louis Labat was its coordinator. In the August 17, 2010 Senior Power column, I reported on his retirement experiences
Every four years, the AAA prepares an Area Plan that directs the provision of services provided by community-based organizations for seniors.
Periodically, it conducts a Needs Assessment includes surveys that seniors (60+) fill out, consumer focus meetings with seniors (over 55), and key informant meetings with providers and other groups that work with seniors. The information from all of these activities is assembled and compiled in a publication that provides a detailed look at the demographics, issues and concerns of seniors in our community. The information is shared and is used to inform the development of planning for and providing services for seniors throughout the county. A wide response to the survey is necessary. You can assist by completing it online.
The Alameda County Area Agency on Aging also conducts focus groups attended by persons involved in providing services to the aging. I sat in on a Focus group last week led by Lisa Ho with Belinda LLaguno, who will be updating our Area Plan demographic data. Participants were asked three main questions:
1. What services or systems are currently working well for older adults in Alameda County?
2. What are the most critical unmet needs for older adults to help them live independently at home?
3. What other possible new services of partnerships can be fostered to address the unmet needs of older adults living in Alameda County?
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MARK YOUR CALENDAR: Be sure to confirm. Readers are welcome to share by email news of future events that may interest boomers, elders and seniors (define these any way you like!) Daytime, free, and Bay Area events preferred. pen136@dslextreme.com.
Saturday, Nov. 12, 2011. 12 Noon. Beef Bowl Anime Club meeting for adults. Albany Library, 1247 Marin Av. 510-526-3720 x 16.
Monday, Nov. 14, 11:30 A.M. & 12 Noon. J-Sei Center, 110 Carleton St., Berkeley. Lecture “Do You Have the Right Insurance?” Speaker: Darrell Doi-CLTC Financial Advisor. To place a reservation for the lecture and/or lunch, call 510-883-1106.
Monday, Nov. 14. 12:30 P.M. – 1:30P.M. Brown Bag Lunch Speaker’s Forum: Bob Lewis, Birds of the Bay Trail cosponsored by Albany YMCA and Albany library at 1257 Marin Av. 510-526-3720 x 16.
Monday, Nov. 14. 7 P.M. The Greek Isles-- History and Travel. Laura Bushman will talk about and present a slide show depicting the white washed villages overlooking the Aegean Sea. She will also address, briefly, the current economic condition in Greece.
Tuesday, Nov. 15. 1 P.M. Falls Prevention Discussion Group. Senior Injury Prevention Project. Participants will receive a Falls Prevention Manual and other useful, easy to read information. Mastick Senior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Av., Alameda. 510-747-7506
Tuesday, Nov. 15. 7 P.M. Author Showcase. Annette Fuentes, investigative reporter and author of Lockdown High: When the Schoolhouse Becomes a Jailhouse, is an op ed contributor to USA Today. El Cerrito Library, 6510 Stockton Avenue. 510-526-7512.
Wednesday, Nov. 16. 11 A.M. Outreach Specialist Colleen Fawley (510-981-6160) will visit J-Sei Senior Center, 1710 Carleton Way, Berkeley, to answer questions and take requests for books and magazines available from the Berkeley Public Library in Japanese and English. 510-883-1106.
Wednesday, Nov. 16. 12:15-1 P.M. The Nocturne. Faculty Recital: Louise Bidwell, Piano. Nocturnes by J. Field, Chopin, C. Schumann, M. Szymanowska, and Fanny
Thursday, Nov 17. 10 A.M. – 12 Noon. Free dental consultation with Dr. Alfred Chongwill. By appointment only. Mastick Senior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Av., Alameda. 510-747-7506
Thursday, Nov. 17. 12:30 P.M. Birthday Celebration. Mastick Senior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Av., Alameda. 510-747-7506
Thursday, Nov. 17. 1:30 P.M. Volunteer Instructor William Sturm presents “Musical Grab-Bag” medley of pieces by composers discussed in the Music Appreciation Class for 2011. Mastick Senior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Av., Alameda. 510-747-7506
Saturday, Nov. 19. 10 A.M. – 4 P.M. Friends of the Albany Library Book Sale, 1247 Marin Av. Includes sales of collectibles and holiday items as well as books. Please do not bring donations the week prior to the sale. 510-526-3720 x 16. Also Sunday, Nov. 20 11 A.M. – 4 P.M.
Saturday, Nov. 19. 11 A.M. Landlord/Tenant Counseling. Central Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge. 510-981-6241.
Sunday, Nov. 20. 1:30P.M. Book Into Film. An Education. From a chapter of Lynn Barber’s 2009 memoir of the same title. Central Berkeley Public Library. 2090 Kittredge. Free, but registration is required. 510-6148.
Tuesday, Nov. 22. 3 P.M. Tea and Cookies. Central Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge. 510-981-6236.
Wednesday, Nov. 23. 1:30-2:30 P.M. Great Books Discussion Group: John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley. Albany Library, 1247 Marin Av. 510-526-3720.
Wednesday, Nov. 23. 1:30 P.M. Gray Panthers’ monthly meeting. At the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst. Free. 510-981-5190, 548-9696.
Monday, Nov. 28. 2 – 3:30 P.M. “Vigee-LeBrun:Woman Artist in an Age of Revolution” presentation by Brigit Urmson. Mastick Senior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Av., Alameda. 510-747-7506.
Monday, Nov. 28. 7 P.M. Book Club. Silas Marner by George Eliot . Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. Free event. 510-524-3043. Each meeting starts with a poem selected and read by a member with a brief discussion following the reading. New members are always welcome.
Wednesday, Nov. 30. 12:15-1 P.M. Gamelan Music of Java and Bali. Performed by classes directed by Midiyanto and I Dewa Putu Berata, with Ben Brinner and Lisa Gold. UC,B Hertz Concert Hall. Free. 510-642-4864.
61 Arlington Ave. Free. 510-524-3043. An evening of knitting, show and tell and yarn exchange. All levels welcome. Some help will be provided.
Wednesday, Dec. 7. 6-8 P.M. Lawyer in the Library. Albany Llibrary, 1247 Marin Av. Free. 510-526-3720.
Monday, Dec. 19. 7 P.M. Book Club. Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey. Tey is known as the mystery writer for those who don’t like mysteries! Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. Free event. 510-524-3043. Each meeting starts with a poem selected and read by a member with a brief discussion following the reading. New members are always welcome.
Wednesday, Dec. 28. Great Books Discussion Group. Albany Library, 1247 Marin Av. Holiday lunch and selection discussin. 510-526-3720 x 16.
Around & About Theater: 'Rumi x 7' in Oakland; Beckett's 'Endgame' & 'Watt': Dublin's Gate Theatre in Berkeley; Virago's 'Shoot O'Malley Twice' at Stagewerx
—Translations of the medieval Persian poet and Sufi figure Jalaluddin Rumi have rivaled the record of Edward Fitzgerald's translation of 'The Ruba'iyat of Omar Khayyam' as the most popular book of poetry published in English. Rumi's longest poem, 'The Masnavi,' is told in great part by stories, illustrating what spiritual points he wanted to get across with secular folkloric color, often wry humor.
Golden Thread Productions—whose annual ReOrient festival of one act plays on the Middle East has been produceded in Berkeley—has joined forces with the Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California in Oakland to stage seven of Rumi's tales, like "The Elephant in the Dark" and "The Grammarian and the Boatman," in modern theatrical styles featuring clown and Commedia shtick by Hafiz Karmali, a splendid director, as the first in a series of programs he'll direct over the coming three years, entitled Islam 101—this Friday night at 7:30, Saturday at 3:30 and 7:30, at the Center, near the Main Library in downtown Oakland, staged in the sumptuous ceremonial hall of this old Masonic building, all in Moorish Revival style, just over a century old. 1433 Madison at 14th—kitty-corner from the Main Library—downtown Oakland. $10-$20. 832-7600; iccnc.org; goldenthread.org (There's also an exhibit of Rumi-related artwork at the Cultural Center.)
—Cal Performances is presenting "the other Dublin theater" besides the Abbey, the venerable Gate Theatre, founded in 1928 as purveyor of European modern drama while the Abbey presented an Irish repertory. Orson Welles, James Mason and Michael Gambon all cut their teeth as actors on the Gate's stage. In the '90s, the Gate presented the first-ever complete retrospective onstage of Samuel Beckett's plays, and also gave Harold Pinter's dramatic work its first comprehensive retrospective.
The Gate will play Beckett's greatest stage work, 'Endgame,' preferred by the author to his 'Waiting for Godot,' and a staging of passages from his early novel 'Watt,' both featuring famed, acclaimed Beckett interpreter Barry McGovern. 'Endgame' (directed by Alan Stanford) plays at 8 on Friday and Saturday, and at 3 on Sunday; 'Watt' (directed by Tom Creed) plays at 2 on Saturday, 8 on Sunday. (Thursday's show featuring both productions is sold out.) Zellerbach Playhouse, behind Zellerbach Auditorium on the UC Berkeley campus. $32.50-$65. Box office open 12-5 weekdays, 1-5 weekends, & an hour before shows. 642-9988; calperfs@berkeley.edu
—"A child's game, played by dissolute adults" is how Bay Area playwright Jon Brooks' ('Better Than Hitler,' 'Catcher in the Rye Cancelled,' 'The Opposite of Romance') new play 'Shoot O'Malley Twice'—premiered by Alameda's Virago Theatre Company at Stagewerx 433 in San Francisco's Mission District—has been described ... What starts out with the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers and ends up with "predestination, alternative realities, race relations, Robert Moses, quantum mechanics, besides baseball," is acted out in a sleazy hotel room by characters like psychic Billy Future and the Savannah Kid. Directed by Angela Dant. Thursdays through Saturdays at 8, through November 26. 433 Valencia, between 15th & 16th, San Francisco (not, as per a previous listing, on Sutter Street). $15-$25. 832-7600; viragotheatre.org—
Chris Quintos, Maria Giere Marquis, Luisa Frasconi, Caitlyn Tella
Truth be known, when you pass the big six-oh, sleep doesn’t come easy. Six am the eyes click open like some crazy baby doll and there is no rolling over to snooze. The tension –filled job, a world of worry, and the double espressos don’t help. By 8:30 pm dozing sets in. Not great for a theatre critic, but if my anecdotal observation is true, I seem to be the median age of the average theatre-goer, so it’s a good barometer. And when you see two or three plays per week, often one’s concentration slips, “watcher-fatigue” sets in, and the mind wanders. Thus, if I don’t doze, if I am rapt throughout, it is a good barometer of the quality of the production and performance.
At IMPACT THEATRE on a Thursday I was not bored for a moment and completely engaged with the performances in THE CHALK BOY by Joshua Conkel. Four talented young women, vastly unlike one another physically, temperamentally, even in vocal timbre, take an interesting but young playwright’s work and give us insight into the world and worries of high-schoolers in this early 21st C.
A classmate has disappeared, and he’s the most popular, cutest boy in the school. The disappearance of young men has been a regular, if sporadic occurrence in a small Northwestern town. The women’s involvement with Jeff Chalk, real or vicarious, is a pivot point of the play. Christianity, witchcraft, homoerotic love, vicious gossip and vindictiveness, preemptive spreading of rumors and reputation busters, the shifting friendships and allegiances of BFFs are all in play here.
Luisa Frasconi is the in-denial rebel looking for love. I’ve lauded this new actress’s performance in Impact’s “Romeo & Juliet”; she captures the eye and has never failed to give a shining performance. Maria Giere Marquis plays the Christian moral and scholastic exemplar with her own secrets; she shone in “Of Dice and Men,” and her transformations of character make you shake your head to remember it’s the same actor. Newcomer to Impact Caitlyn Tella delivers a cinematic naturalism that doesn’t happen often on the stage; portraying the would-be lover of the rebel girl in the throes of her first lesbian crush, it’s hard to take your eyes off her. Chris Quintos is the whining girl with that teenager drone, and does it so well and true that you want to smack her; she ping-pongs between vulnerability and emotional disconnect which is seemingly true of young women in this confusing time. Her comic portrayal of a snuffling wreck of a teacher with coke-bottle glasses is a blend of just real enough and caricature to invest your imagination and make you laugh.
The direction of Ben Randle in that band-box of stage underneath the pizza joint is easy and apt with no false moments of staging. He does not seem to have interfered with their natural talent and expression.
It is a bare set of a few hardback chairs, and backpack full of props. The green chalk boards lining the walls on which the women mark the play’s progress is a brilliant device, whether concocted by the playwright or the director. Monochromatic wavy special projected effects periodically are used well to translate dream states/drugged states that come straight from the experience of near-psychotic anxiety or chugging a bottle of Robitussin.
The writing is episodic and gives the women a template to revisit all the vicissitudes of adolescence they have recently graduated from. Most translations of female teenage angst in our culture are often cartoonish, from “Heathers” to “Mean Girls” to after-school specials. Only occasionally do we get a “Girl, Interrupted” foray into the stress of going through that confusing chrysalis. And too seldom are their circumstances investigated in the theatre. Young playwrights writing for young audiences is a genre Impact embraces, and their offerings are most absorbing and less pretentious than most new drama. More six-oh folks should go up to Euclid off Hearst and eat pizza, drink beer, and find out what’s in the minds of young folks these days.
THE CHALK BOY by Joshua Conkel runs Thu-Sun through December 10
Impact Theatre performs at La Val's Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berkeley
With Thanksgiving less than two weeks away, many of us are thinking Turkey, cranberries and pumpkin pie. Sadly however, the term "Thanks" has given way in recent years to "Spend", with department stores remaining open all day, followed by "Black Friday" -- an oxymoron if ever there was one. Despair not, friends -- there are a host of heart warming and traditional holiday programs awaiting your pleasure through November and into January, as you'll see from the list to follow.
Unless you're "Nutcrackered" out, you may want to see the S.F. Nutcracker Ballet, Dec. 9 - 27 at the War Memorial Opera House. From the ornate drawing room of a Victorian home to the dazzling halls of the 1915 Panama Pacific International exposition. (415) 865-2000. "The Christmas Ballet: Beyond Belief", Smuin Ballet, Lesher Center for the Arts, Nov. 26, 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. (925) 943-7469. "Hot Mikado", Masquer's Playhouse, Richmond, Fridays and Saturdays through Dec. 17, also 2 p.m. Nov. 20 and Dec. 4. $20. (510) 232-4031. "The Velveteen Rabbit", a tale of love, loyalty and hope. Novellus Theatre, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Nov. 25 - Dec. 11. Tickets start at $15. (415) 678-5956. "The Soldier's Tale", based on Igor Stravinsky's 1918 musical, directed by Tom Ross, through Dec. 18. 1/2 price tickets for people under 30. (510) 843-4822. Shen Yun (an exhilarating show of classical Chinese dance and music) Jan. 3 - 8, S.F. Opera House. (888-633- 6999). Dunsmuir-Hellman House, a 37-room Italianate revival mansion. The Hellman family lived there for several decades. Dec. 3 -4, 10-11, and 17-18. 2960 Peralta Court, Oakland. (510) 615-5555. Holidays at Ralston Hall Mansion, 1860's Italianate Villa, now the campus of Notre Dame de Namur. Nov. 20, tickets $45-50. (650) 508-3501. "The Laramie Project", a docudrama that explores the murder of a gay college student in Wyoming. Cal State East Bay, Hayward, Nov. l8-l9, 8 p.m. and 2 p.m. Nov. 20. (510) 885-3118. "Fella," an ecstatic phenomenon, radiating joy, with Shawn "Jay-3" Carter. Curran Theatre, Nov. 15 - Dec. 11. (888) 746-1799. Christ the King Annual Holiday Boutique, Sat. Nov. 19, 1 p.m. - 7 p.m. Sun. Nov. 20, 7 a.m. - 2 p.m. 199 Brandon Rd. Pleasant Valley. "A Christmas Carol" , Charles Dickens' definitive yuletide tale. Previews begin Dec. 1. Runs Dec. 6-24. American Conservatory Theatre, 418 Geary St. S.F. (415) 749-2228. Contra Costa Ballet (another Nutcracker!) Dec. 1, 7:30 p.m., Dec. 2 ,4:30 and 7:30. p.m. www.Contracostaballet.org. Finally, if you're not keen on preparing a big dinner, you can have a Thanksgiving Feast at the Claremont Hotel for a mere $89. (Children free!)
A bust of William Keith is grouped with several of his smaller, gold framed, paintings, in the exhibit.
Steven Finacom
A succession of green-walled galleries display 120 works of art by California’s master landscape painter, William Keith, through December 18.
With “Occupy” movements currently agitating our very urban inner Bay Area turf, it’s perhaps a strange time to think about bucolic landscapes. But there’s a good reason to switch mental gears, at least for a few hours, in the next month.
The expanded and renamed museum at St. Mary’s College of California is hosting a splendid exhibit of the artwork of William Keith the prolific, famed California landscape painter—and once-notable Berkeley resident, I should add—of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The exhibit, entitled “The Comprehensive Keith”, commemorates the centennial of the death of the painter in April 1911. It runs through December 18 and features well over one hundred of his oil paintings and some watercolors. Most are landscapes, but there’s also a selection of his lesser-known portrait paintings.
William Keith grew up in the same part of Scotland as John Muir where both were born in 1838. But they didn’t meet and become friends until 1872 when Keith went to Yosemite with a letter of introduction to Muir.
Keith captured in paintings what Muir expressed in words—the magnificence of the California landscape. The Sierra and the then-largely undeveloped countryside around San Francisco Bay gave Keith many of the settings for his best-known works of art—grand scenes of nature, sprinkled for scale with human influences—a few figures, a group of cattle, a wood cabin.
St. Mary’s has what is believed to be “the world’s most comprehensive collection of William Keith paintings” (185 works), thanks to Brother Cornelius, one of the faculty, who discovered Keith art in 1908 and became an avid collector, promoter and, later, the definitive biographer, of the painter.
In the exhibit you experience several stages of the development of Keith’s artistic style. First, as a younger artist he prolifically participated in the realistic recording of the amazing natural wonders of the West in paintings—some truly heroic in size—that carefully chronicled scenes down to individual leaves on an oak tree or the petals on a poppy.
His later art turns more impressionistic. The natural settings and detail are still recognizable, but conveyed in a much looser form. You could put some of these paintings anonymously in a show of Impressionist Masters and they would fit right in and very favorably compare.
Finally, as his skill and ability matured, Keith produced what is perhaps the most popularly recognized form of his art today—moody, evocative, landscapes, often drenched in shadow or light and focused down from mountain ranges and sweeping panoramas to the more intimate level of a forest glade, a mountain hillside, a meadow.
The quintessential Keith painting in this later era is a orange red sunset glowing through mysterious woodland, and there are a number of examples in the exhibit—but there are also scenes I didn’t know Keith had painted, such as the wonderfully titled “Joy Comes With Morning”, where white light floods through what looks like a redwood grove along a stream, or paintings of Alaska scenes.
There are other spectacular pieces that kept drawing my attention as I wandered through the exhibit. Keith painted marvelous skies and clouds. “After The Storm” from 1896 looks down a partially wooded vale at a distant landscape—overhead there’s blue sky to the left, shading into puffy clouds, then the trailing edge of a gray downpour, all depicted with amazing ability.
Keith executed thousands of paintings in his career. What’s as impressive is that after many of the paintings he had sold—and his entire San Francisco studio—were destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, he sat right down and started creating a whole body of both replacement and new work.
Much of that painting was done in his Berkeley studio and home, which stood on Atherton Street, where Edwards Track Stadium is now located and where he lived with his second wife, Mary McHenry Keith.
Is her name familiar to Berkeleyans? It should be. A pioneering woman lawyer in California, she was an ardent women’s suffrage advocate. It seems a tragedy that one of her political triumphs—the passage of votes for women in California in October, 1911—came just a few months after her husband died.
There are a number of named or recognizably likely Berkeley scenes in the exhibit including one of Strawberry Creek and others of the Berkeley Hills. Keith was a regular walker through the Berkeley campus, taking the train back and forth from Downtown to the San Francisco ferries.
If you’ve hurried or strolled through the Grinnell Natural Area on the campus following the footpath up from Center Street—well, that’s where Keith walked, too, a century and more ago.
The exhibit also includes some three dimensional items associated with Keith, including a Japanese bell he kept in his studio and a massively scaled wooden desk believed to have come from his Berkeley home.
Although 120 paintings may seem like a lot to take in at one viewing, the exhibit can easily be wandered in an hour or less.
There’s also a pricey ($45) but detailed soft cover book about Keith and his art available in the Museum gift shop.
IF YOU GO: The recently enlarged and renamed Saint Mary’s College Museum of Art (formerly the Hearst Art Gallery) is tucked away in the back of the country campus in Moraga. It’s not a long drive past the Caldecott Tunnel. Find your way from Highway 24 to the appropriately named Saint Mary’s Road, and follow it to the campus entrance at 1928.
Staff at the entrance / security kiosk can give you directions to parking adjacent to the Museum. Admission is a modest $5 per person, and the Museum is open 11:00 to 4:30, Wednesday through Sunday.
In addition to the Keith exhibit, there are two other small gallery spaces with varied displays.
