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UCDavis Bicycle Barricade 
This may be of interest/concern to you:
http://thedailyhavis.blogspot.com/2011/03/wtf-uc-uc-davis-police-and.html
As a UCD alum, I’m wondering if this letter could be circulated to the Alumni Assoc membership, to inform & invite further response. Anyone have that list to leak?
Ms Katechi,
Most likely I am older than you and most likely I have had a high regard for Educators than yrs you have been alive. My Father was an Educator, I was born above a one room schoolhouse in an apt that was compensation for the teacher, My Father. Your actions do not live up to the standards that My Father and others have held for generations. You have not exhibitioned concern for the safety of those in your charge, nor have you helped to create a respectful and welcoming environment for the students or the Educators. A great man once said, “sometimes you just have to know when to let go”. Now is your moment, in the interest of respect, safety and a welcoming environment, now is the time for you ‘to let go’.
BiLLD
A WAY OF LIVING
“Respect for the inherent worth and dignity of all”
I sent the following to Chancellor Linda Katehi this morning: Kent State University in Ohio has many wonderful programs and has accomplished much of value and merit in the past 41 years. But honestly, what do you think of when you hear “Kent State”? You think of John Filo’s Pulitzer prize winning photograph of Mary Vecchio screaming in horror over the dead body of Jeffrey Miller. That, for 41 years, has been the indelible image of Kent State. Yesterday, UC Davis made a name for itself nationally and internationally. Today, Wayne Tilcock’s iconic photograph of Lt. John Pike of the university police brutally spraying a line of unarmed, seated, peaceful students who were a threat to no one has been seen by millions the world over. People who never heard of UC Davis before yesterday now have that one indelible image to remember you by. For years to come, that image is what people will think of when they hear “UC Davis”. I hope Wayne Tilcock wins the Pulitzer for that photograph, he deserves it. I hope Lt. John Pike gets fired for his actions, he deserves it.
Hi, I’m Katie Bethell from Change.org. A petition was created at our site calling for the resignation of the Chancellor Katehi in response to the pepper spraying incident. http://www.change.org/petitions/police-pepper-spray-peaceful-uc-davis-students-ask-chancellor-katehi-to-resign
It’s growing exponentially right now and I thought it might be a good link for your post of Professor Brown’s open letter. Would also greatly appreciate it if you have contact with Professor Brown – we would love to include a comment from him in a press release we’ll be doing about this petition. Thank you!
Thank you and I will post far and wide!
dianna
I stand in solidarity. Thank you. Your voice is needed. Thank you. May the powers that be listen and act in accordance. Thank you.
An Open Letter to Chancellor Katehi:
Dear Chancellor Katehi,
Your campus police appear like Nazi stormtroopers in Friday’s video (see link below). The academic and civilian public awaits your resignation.
Chris Fradkin, PhD(c)
University of California, Merced
Chancellor Katehi’s Nazi Stormtrooper Video:
YouTube – Videos from this email
In watching the video of the brutal violence of the police against your students who were raising their voices in protest, tears rolled down my face in saddness and frustration. Please know I stand with you. Memories of Kent State came to mind and while I know there were no student executions by the police… this time- the violence against peaceful protestors is so very wrong on every level. I wanted to share this link in memory of Kent State;
Heather,
Elementary School Teacher,
How to contact Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi
http://chancellor.ucdavis.edu/contact.php
Chancellor Katehi,
I write to you as a graduate of UC Davis (2002) with a Ph.D. in music composition and theory.
I am appalled at the police brutality that was ordered and allowed on the campus quad on Friday, Nov. 18, 2011.
I stand with the students and respect their rights to free speech and the right to protest. What is a university but a place for free and unfettered speech? They have suffered too many tuition raises as it is and have an honest dispute. Your response and the response of the police was unconscionable.
I am outraged. I ask for your resignation, the resignation of the chief of police, and the resignation of the police office who pepper sprayed the students.
Sincerely,
Anne M. Guzzo, Ph.D.
UC Davis Alumna, 2002
Dear Colleagues,
There was an incident on the UC Davis campus yesterday where a group of peaceful student protesters were brutally removed by the UC Davis police. Many of you may have already seen videos or photographs from the incident or read about it in the news. In short, Lt. John Pike stepped over a line of passive student protesters who were sitting on the ground during a non-violent demonstration and callously and brutally attacked them with pepper spray. One of the students had to be treated for chemical burns because of the close range with which the pepper spray was used. The overwhelming video documentation of the event clearly shows that the police were not encircled, were not threatened, were not under distress. The only plausible explanation for the action he took is that they must have been under direct orders from UC Davis Police Chief Annette Spicuzza and Chancellor Linda Katehi.
If you have not already seen the videos, I encourage you to learn more about the incident from one or more of the following sources: The Huffington Post, The Davis Enterprise, BoingBoing and Forbes. In the wake of very public criticism, Chancellor Katehi has issued two statements, which you would have already received. Neither statement apologizes for her decision, both statements assert a point of view that is inconsistent with the overwhelming video documentation. The UC Davis Police Chief, Annette Spicuzza, was callous enough to tell reporters that she was “very proud” of her officers.
I invite you to join me in expressing discontent not only with the specific action that Chancellor Katehi took on Friday, but also in my attempt to articulate discontent with the UC administrative policies that specifically affect us as postdoctoral scientists and graduate students. These concerns are relevant to the cause taken up by the student protestors who have been brave enough to gain their voice.
I urge you contact the Chancellor here and to circulate this letter as you see appropriate.
I also urge you to file a formal complaint with the UC Davis Police Department here.
There will be a general assembly on the Quad Monday, November 21 at noon.
Jason Bell, PhD
Postdoctoral Scientist
Department of Microbiology
University of California
An Open Letter to Chancellor Katehi from a UC Davis Postdoctoral Scientist
Linda P.B. Katehi,
I am a Postdoctoral Scientist in the Microbiology Department at UC Davis, and a recent PhD graduate of the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology graduate group within the College of Biological Sciences. I am outraged by the police violence taken against student protesters in the quad late yesterday afternoon, and deeply disturbed by your response to the police action in the campus-wide email that you sent yesterday evening.
As a former graduate student and current postdoctoral scientist, I have been largely insulated from the University of California’s tuition and fee hikes over the past several years. I have largely felt as if the budget problem is not my problem. I have felt that as a member of the scientific community on campus, we essentially pay for ourselves and that we are protected in our ivory towers from the issues of legislative budget disputes and administrative problems. I have come to realize that I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Over the past two weeks, students and faculty have been protesting the fiscal mismanagement of the University of California. Make no mistake, these are not grievances leveled against the legislature. These are complaints against the UC Regents for excessively raising tuition above and beyond what is necessary to cover educational costs. These students have recognized that the ongoing privatization of the University of California is a much larger and systemic problem than the short-term budget cuts due to the current recession. The University has adopted a policy in which it collects tuition revenue from borrowed money for degrees that are increasingly losing value.
As postdoctoral scientists, we are not immune from these policies. The University takes an excessively large share of the grant revenue that we bring in. The University continues to train PhD candidates for jobs that don’t exist, and to use them as cheap labor both in our laboratories and our classrooms. As postdoctoral scientists, many of us are in a state of arrested development, held hostage in our careers by the University policies and failing science funding. Make no mistake, the University is part of the problem. The University now takes 54% of the research grants awarded to the university to spend on non-research overhead. Like the students who were protesting the tuition and fee hikes, I fail to see the value in that tithe. The University is failing its constituency. It is losing its value.
The work postdoctoral scientists and graduate students do, the data we collect, the things we invent, the mechanisms and processes we discover, the problems we solve and the innovation we drive is the foundation for the $684 million in research grants secured by our faculty mentors and colleagues at UC Davis alone. Across all of the University of California campuses, those research funds totaled $4.36 billion last year, representing nearly 20% of the total budget revenue for UC system. You will be hard-pressed to find any faculty member who would admit that the overwhelming success of UC researchers could ever be obtained without its workforce of nearly 6000 postdoctoral scholars and scientists.
For that success and those intellectual contributions, we are grossly undervalued, underpaid and much of our intellectual property is effectively stolen and often mismanaged. We are told that because we are still being ‘trained’ (despite the fact that we have terminal degrees in our fields), we are not entitled to the full value of our employment or the full value of the benefits that other university staff are entitled to.
The University recently called on all of its employees to voluntarily sign away these intellectual property rights because they realized that the language used to implicitly claim those rights in our employee contracts was too weak to be enforced after a ruling by the Supreme Court. In that case, Stanford vs Roche, the language of the Bayh-Dole was questioned and the implicit ownership of intellectual property created by its employees by the University was invalidated. Since the Bayh-Dole Act was passed, universities have held a staunch position that they own the intellectual property of all of their employees. While this position has certainly led to the protection of faculty and staff’s intellectual property in certain disputes, it has not always been beneficial.
Several legal scholars have been openly critical of this policy, including Arti Rai, Professor of Law at Duke University’s Institute for Genome Policy and Law and former Administrator of External Affairs at the US Patent and Trademark Office and Stephen Maurer, Professor of Law at UC Berkeley. In short, these policies have largely been blamed for stifling innovation by hampering university-industry partnerships due to the inability of these agents to compromise on technology transfer agreements. This has created an indifferent and sometimes hostile attitude towards intellectual property rights within academia. This was not the intent of the legislation. This harms innovation and innovators, namely the faculty, postdoctoral scientists and graduate students of our University.
We are told that the University is entitled to our intellectual property because they create an academic environment that stimulates and facilitates innovation through intellectual exchange and collegiality. On Friday, that collegial environment was shattered when you ordered police onto our campus to clear student protestors from the quad. As a result, Lt. John Pike brutally and callously maced passive, non-threatening students.
You paid Lt. Pike $110,000 last year. You paid you paid his commanding officer, Police Chief Annette Spicuzza $140,000.
You paid Dr. Nathan Brown, an Assistant Professor of English $64,000. You paid me, as well as my a postdoctoral colleagues, approximately $38,000. You paid my wife, a graduate student and English instructor $20,000.
You made $380,000.
Dr. Brown, my wife, my fellow 6000 postdoctoral scientists and our faculty mentors are the brain trust of this University. We are what makes this University valuable.
I fail to see the value that Lt. Pike or Chief Spicuzza bring to this brain trust. In light of your recent and woefully egregious decision to use force on students, I am beginning to fail to see your value.
I am aware of your efforts bring greater esteem and more funding for the sciences at our campus. You have been an advocate for science and engineering on our campus, and for that you should be applauded, even if your advocacy is a top-down approach. But there are some mistakes that cannot be overlooked. The incident on Friday has shattered your credibility, and you can no longer be expected to be an effective leader of this University.
You are in part accountable for this inexcusable police brutality. You ordered police onto our campus to clear student protesters from the quad. The protesters were on the quad after a UC system-wide rally on Tuesday, which was endorsed by the Davis Faculty Association. Our students were not only protesting the proposed 80% tuition hikes over the next four years, but also protesting the excessive use of police force against the students and faculty at UC Berkeley. In the tradition of non-violent civil disobedience, the protesters at Berkeley had linked arms and held their ground in defense of tents they set up beside Sproul Hall. In a gesture of solidarity with those students and faculty, and in solidarity with the national Occupy Movement, our students at UC Davis set up tents on the main quad. When you ordered police to remove their tents yesterday, our students sat down on the ground in a circle and linked arms to protect them.
In the many videos circulating on the Internet and through news outlets like the Huffington Post, you can see the police officers turn their backs to the students. They are not afraid that the students sitting on the ground are about to attack them. They are not afraid of the protesters. Without any provocation whatsoever, police pepper sprayed those students. The quad is a large, open space. The police could have walked around the seated students, but they did not. Instead they chose to spray the students to send a message: you have no power here. The pepper spray was not used as a means to incapacitate a violent crowd, but was rather used to punish the students who refused to move.
In your letter in response you insidiously write, “some of those involved in the recent demonstrations on campus were not members of the UC Davis community,” but in the ten arrests made, nine were UC Davis students. This was primarily an attack on your own students, who were protesting nonviolently. You should be ashamed to have called the police in and to continue to support their actions in your later email to the entire university.
In your letter in response to these events, you write the following: “the encampment violated regulations designed to protect the health and safety of students, staff and faculty.” I wish to point out that the Occupy Movement that is currently going on at Central Park in the city of Davis uses tents that are similar to the ones that were on the quad. Rather than using violence to expel this vague threat to our “health and safety,” the city of Davis has worked with the protesters “to harmonize the occupation’s presence with the park and surrounding businesses and ensure that all aspects of the encampment remain non-violent” (Bernie Goldsmith, quoted in the Huffington Post). The UC Davis student protesters were merely three blocks away from the encampment on the city of Davis’ property. What could be so dangerous about the student protesters, when the city protesters are obviously not a threat? Like Chancellor Birgeneau of UC Berkeley, you have chosen to draw the line at an important symbolic place. You both claim to “appreciate the substantive dialogue” that the students have initiated, but you act otherwise in response to students and teachers when they are actually occupying university space by staying overnight in tents. Those tents are important; they say we’re here, living here until something changes. Attacking the students to dismantle the tents is a violation of their rights to assemble and to free speech, not an action made to protect anyone’s health or safety.
Moreover, you say in your letter that the students offered you “no option but to ask the police to assist in their removal” (emphasis added). That is a false statement. Claudia Morain, a UC Davis spokesperson, told The Huffington Post that there were 35 police officers on the scene, 50 occupiers and 200 bystanders. The police could have arrested these nonviolent occupiers without resorting to such brutal methods, but they did not. The lesson to learn from these facts is that you were not forced to send in the police yesterday and the police were not forced to use brutal force against peaceful students, but in both cases, deliberate choices were made. You don’t get to act like your hand was forced.
Chancellor Katehi, I join with my wife and her colleague Prof. Nathan Brown in telling you: You may not order police to forcefully disperse student protesters peacefully protesting police brutality. You may not do so. It is not an option available to you as the Chancellor of a UC campus… Your words express concern for the safety of our students. Your actions express no concern whatsoever for the safety of our students. I deduce from this discrepancy that you are not, in fact, concerned about the safety of our students. Your actions directly threaten the safety of our students. Your actions directly threaten our collegiality.
I call for your resignation because you are unfit to ensure the safety of students at UC Davis. I call upon my fellow postdoctoral scientists to urge their faculty mentors to call an emergency faculty senate meeting for a vote of no confidence in your leadership.
Your actions of calling the police in and in supporting their misuse of force are inexcusable. UC Davis students are smart. They are driven, and they are kind. They deserve to be treated with respect and dignity. The chants of the students on the quad yesterday reflect how you should feel—you should be ashamed of the way that you have treated them.
Jason C. Bell, PhD
Postdoctoral Scientist
Department of Microbiology
University of California Davis
and
Claire Dawkins
PhD Candidate and Associate Instructor
English Department
University of California Davis
Open letter to UC Davis Chancellor Linda P. B. Katehi.
Chancellor Katehi,
I am writing to you today on what I feel is a matter of utmost importance. My grandfather Paulden Knowles, a world renowned agronomist who developed safflower oil all over the world, taught as a professor at UC Davis. Likewise my father Douglas Knowles Q.C. (queens council) graduated from UC Davis with a law degree.
My family’s ties to Davis have been long standing and over the years they have given in many different ways to the Davis community.
Take the Paulden F. & Dorathea I. Knowles Agronomy scholarship for Undergraduates for example:
This award was established in 1991 through a major gift from Dorathea Knowles and gifts from friends and colleagues of the late Paulden F. Knowles. Dr. Knowles was a world renowned and highly respected member of the Department of Agronomy and Range Science. His accomplishments as a teacher and oil crops breeder were widely recognized by the scientific and industrial community interested in the world’s oil crops.
As you can see my family’s ties to Davis are long standing and until today I had hoped to pursue my law degree at Davis as well, following in my fathers footsteps. Your actions and statements regarding the protesters on the quad, who were violently attacked and pepper sprayed in the face when sitting peacefully illustrate your lack of concern for student and staff safety on the the Davis campus.
I can say with complete certainty that if my grandfather was alive today, your actions and lack of duty you’ve shown in your position of authority would horrify him. As it stands you very well may have caused my father to roll over in his grave.
I am absolutely sorry to say that if you retain your position as UC Davis Chancellor, then I will not be attending Davis as my law school of choice. It has never been my wish to attend an institution that demonstrates such little regard for the well being or safety of their staff and students.
As you clearly have not looked into what actually took place, I have taken the time to attach a video in which the incident is highlighted. Even watching it again still sickens me. I am horrified that it was you (that should be protecting students and staff) who caused this and even further, tried to justify it after the fact.
Sincerely,
Ian Knowles
I admire your strength in supporting the morals and beliefs that your forebears have instilled in you and your family. Sometimes it is most effective to vote with your feet as well as your wallet. Think about whether your family chooses to financially contribute in this time, under this Chancellor and University Administration that would not only condone but order these horrendous actions against a peaceful student demonstration.
Dear Chancellor Katehi,
I am not a member of the UC Davis community, but I write to you this evening as a doctoral student of public policy at another university, as a young person, and as an engaged public intellectual. My conscience leaves me no other choice but to write to you this evening.
I write to you to call for the immediate termination of employment of Lt. Pike and Chief Spicuzza, and to call for your immediate resignation. I have copied these individuals on this Open Letter to you. I also write in solidarity with the sentiments expressed by Professor Brown, whom I have also copied on this letter. I have copied President Yudof and the UC Board of Regents, as well, so that this letter will find its way into the permanent records of the Board.
Your actions and the actions of those under your administration’s command have severed a critical bond between the university, its students, and the academic community beyond Davis. By remaining in your position, and by maintaining the employment of Lt. Pike and Chief Spicuzza, these sacred bonds are irreparable. Even in the most fervent attempts at justice, reconciliation is not possible while you remain in your positions. You must resign immediately.
You have indicated in your statement that you intend to establish a task force to provide to you a report of the activities leading up to this event. You must not be allowed to be involved in this task force. As one who authorized the use of violence against your campus community you have exhibited a strident failure of the moral and ethical leadership required to convene such a task force. Instead, this task force should be convened outside of the administrative structure of Davis. The Board of Regents should consider a system-wide investigation into tactics of police brutality after events at Davis and Berkeley.
Frankly, your statement is weak and ineffectual, wrapped in the hyperbole of leadership that masks thinly the failures of your administration on this issue. Your careful words, in effect, blame students for the use of pepper spray, expiate the police, and expunge you of guilt at the same time. It is very disturbing. The cultural logic of victim-blaming is a dangerous and proto-fascist tool intended to exert a power over victims that coerces them into collusion with the perpetrators of violence. What results is the double-bind of contemporary power: victims are subject to violence, then blamed for it, which reinforces their marginality and allows the cycle to continue. You have the opportunity to help halt this cycle, but you must resign now.
Ultimately this is not primarily a question of guilt or innocence, which are concepts wrapped up in traditional liberal notions of justice. This is a question of repairing the damage you, Lt. Pike, Chief Spicuzza, and your administration have perpetrated at Davis and beyond. An exculpation of your guilt is not possible in light of widespread evidence. The violence you have underwritten on your campus reverberates across geographic and ideological boundaries. It has a chilling effect on university life and the promise of young minds to create a more verdant and just society. This important work cannot continue while you continue to hold your office. You must resign immediately.
The highest ideals of the university are at stake, Chancellor. The promise of the university as a public square has no room for the leadership you evince in your actions. You ought not have the opportunity to work with students and young people in the future. You have broken the bonds of trust and respect that are the hallmarks of public higher education, and these will not be repaired easily. Demonstrate your support and solidarity with the university community at Davis and beyond by resigning immediately.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said “a true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, ‘this way of settling differences is not just.’ This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of people normally human, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love.” His words are prophetic tonight. Your actions and the actions of your administration cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. There is no room for your actions in the The Commons of the university.
In closing, I quote from Professor Brown’s letter to you: I call for your resignation because you are unfit to do your job. You are unfit to ensure the safety of students at UC Davis. In fact: you are the primary threat to the safety of students at UC Davis. As such, I call upon you to resign immediately.
Sincerely,
Ryan Schowen
Doctoral Student in Public Policy
Union Institute and University
In regards to the “incident”, as the Chancellor chooses to call it, I have strong opinions. It was not an “incident”; it definitely was a concerted, heavy-handed attack on peaceful protestors who were unarmed, non-threatening and PEACEFULLY providing support to a cause and also to provide support to their fellow students at Cal who had been beaten with batons.
Although the first “reports” put out by the Administration to excuse their horrendous attacks on the PEACEFUL protesters was that the police officers were being “surrounded” and “threatened” by the protestors, when the videos started appearing everywhere it became immediately evident and clear that this was NOT the case. The police officers involved in this torture were NOT ever in any danger of harm or threat. Now I see that the Chancellor, because she cannot deny the proof to the opposite of what was first claimed, is backtracking from her original statement that these “tactics” were justified to protect “all students in the community.” Caught in a web of untruths, now she claims that there will be a task force formed to review procedures. Meanwhile, students were TORTURED and no one will be held accountable. I, personally, believe that the Chancellor, who obviously had the last word about what would be “acceptable” tactics to unfold on the unsuspecting and unassuming PEACEFUL protestors, should be held accountable in the first and only person–if that includes resignation, sobeit.
As a mother of a minority student on campus–who has already faced a number of race-related incidents on campus in this short quarter at UCD, I no longer have any trust or faith in the Chancellor. Hate crimes (now “excused”–come on, a noose is, as anyone with any educated history knows is directed at the African Americans on campus (of which my son is one), as definitely “not a race crime”–because how would that look in incident reports that parents look at when they research where to send their minority student) abound with no punishment. Yet, PEACEFUL demonstrators are tortured and the torture is excused as “necessary” by the Head of the Campus. I pay big dollars to send my son to UCD, and it only keeps going up and up each quarter–not each year, but each quarter. It is obvious to me that these increases in fees all around are NOT to the benefit of the student at this campus. Is it spent on outside storm-trooper police?
I was once proud to say that my son was a UC Davis student. Now I am ashamed to admit that he is AND I also do not feel that my son is now, nor will remain, safe on the UC Davis campus. My disappointment in the Chancellor and whomever it was who advised/helped her make this irrational and anti-student decision should be ashamed. My son and I will have to have many long discussions on whether it is advisable for him to remain on a campus that is neither student nor minority-student friendly, let alone respectful.
Jean Fields
“Well-Behaved Women SELDOM make history.” Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
“Here’s to the crazy ones. The rebels. The troublemakers. The ones who see things differently. While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do” Apple, Inc.
This is a letter I sent to Lt. John Pike:
To Lieutenant John Pike:
This is not the first, and certainly won’t be the last letter you receive about your behavior yesterday at UC Davis, but I write to you in solidarity with my fellow UC Davis students to express my deep, deep fury with your actions against peaceful students yesterday on the quad.
I am a recent alumnus from UC Davis (graduated in June, 2011) and my younger sister is currently a sophomore at Davis. When she was deciding which college to go to, I wholeheartedly endorsed UC Davis because I saw it, and still see it, as one of the premier institutions for intellectual curiosity and development, where students are respected, protected, and encouraged to be free-thinking and analytical members of our society. I told her Davis was not only a superior academic institution, but an incredibly safe and welcoming community to be a part of. Not once during my years in college did I ever feel threatened or afraid for my own safety. I trusted my university to provide me with the best education and the best, safest, and most enriching place to live, and until recently, they have done just that. But you, Mr. Pike, along with those that you work for, have essentially tried to take everything we are taught, everything we work for and everything we believe in, and pepper sprayed it to the ground. I say tried, sir, because you tried and failed miserably. Despite what you may think, that kind of power does not come in a bottle of mace.
The videos and photos and memories of you casually spraying the very humans you have sworn to protect will be immortalized in the history of our generation, forever reminding us of why we fight and of what we believe in. It is the people like you, so drunk with power and so detached from moral behavior that have led us to where we are, and until people like you make right what you have made so terribly wrong, we will not give up. Your behavior was despicable. Last night, tonight, and every night from now on, while you lie in bed awake, thinking about the incredible harm you have done to your fellow citizens, to the young men and women that could very well have been your own children, we will be in our beds, in our camp sites, in our quads, growing stronger, wiser, and more prepared to confront those like you, who seem to take pleasure in the barbaric and animalistic behavior that you call “keeping the peace.” So, Mr. Pike, thank you, for showing us how ugly humanity can get and how strong we have the potential to become.
I believe in my Alma Mater. I believe in the students and professors at Davis that are brave enough to believe in something and strong enough to face it head-on. I am sorry you do not have that kind of valor. May you live with this forever:
Sincerely,
Catalina Fries
University of California Davis, Class of 2011
These honest, gentle statement deserves to go viral.
I give thanks and all due respect for:
(Assistant Professor
Department of English
Program in Critical Theory
University of California at Davis), Nathan Brown’s, articulation of the points that should be understood by all American’s, as they are by so many of Mr. Brown’s colleagues, all the way from the United States President, the School Janitor or a disenfranchised casualty of our ‘system’, we are after all, what we hold onto and cherish.
This statement by Yudof might also interest you. Posted on his FB page. http://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-g-yudof/statement-on-student-protests/10150370976853379
Statement on student protests
by Mark G. Yudof on Wednesday, November 16, 2011 at 2:45pm
I am proud of UC students who are speaking out with passion and conviction in support of public higher education across the state. I was moved last night by the sight of thousands of students who peacefully demonstrated in UC Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza, and by those who traveled to Sacramento to protest state disinvestment in our colleges and universities.
Free speech is in the DNA of the University of California, and public protest is an important part of our history. Free speech is often contentious, as is democracy. I want all of our students to know that I fully and unequivocally support their right to protest peacefully.
At UC Berkeley, a process is in place to review the violence of last week. Like Chancellor Birgeneau, I was distressed by what I saw, both as a parent and as president of the University of California. Whether there or elsewhere, I have absolute confidence that our chancellors will do what is right and necessary to ensure that the campuses where our students live and learn provide an environment for robust but peaceful discourse. The safety of our students must be protected, always.
In difficult times like these, it sometimes can be too easy to lose sight of the larger picture. UC students, faculty, staff and our regents all share a passion for the University and its role in shaping a better society. We also suffer together the strains caused by what has been a long pattern of state disinvestment in the University of California. And, as a result, we should stand together in common cause to do everything in our power to convince the state’s political leadership that higher education represents not a cost, but the most enlightened investment any state can make.
I also want to offer the heartfelt sympathy of the entire UC community to the family of Christopher Travis, the student who died of wounds suffered yesterday at the Haas Business School in a shooting incident unrelated to the Sproul Plaza activities. It is an absolutely tragic situation for all involved, for Mr. Travis, the students who were placed in jeopardy and the staff and police who quickly responded and took action.
what a beautiful response to the outrageous hypocricy and brutality, all forms of fascism spread by non-responders
This is an open letter that we wrote to the faculty, asking for their continued support in this movement.
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Dear Faculty,
It is undeniable that today we stand at a pivotal point in our history. Public education is in need of transformation, and our actions as students are at the forefront of initiating this movement. Indeed, student action has always been a catalyst for social change.
It is crucial to have the support of students and staff. Therefore, this document is a request for professors to work with students as they actively and effectively propel this movement. We hope to open lines of communication between students and faculty, to greater facilitate participation both inside and outside of the classroom. This movement is integral for our education and the education of future students.
We acknowledge the faculty support in this movement to improve our education. This is a formal request for continued faculty support that extends beyond the classroom.
As you may know, the recent UC Davis student, professor, and faculty activism is inspired by the proposal to raise UC tuition 81% by 2015. We also act to express solidarity with the brutalized UC Berkeley students and faculty who were peacefully demonstrating as a response to said tuition hikes.
The events of this past week have proceeded as such:
• We marched to and occupied Mrak Hall.
• We rallied in San Francisco against tuition hikes, a statewide effort.
• We set up tents and rallied on the quad.
• We wrote a resolution that ASUCD passed which confirmed our student government’s support.
• We peacefully demonstrated on the quad and were met with police brutality.
• We peacefully assembled outside of Chancellor Katehi’s press conference.
• We actively support those who were pepper sprayed, arrested, hospitalized and present at the rally.
Many students have been heavily involved in the movement, which considerably taxes students’ time. Educators can support those who are highly involved in the protest by working with students to come up with alternative policies regarding deadlines and absences. Educators can support those who are not as highly involved by encouraging student dialogue and informing students of upcoming actions.
One specific course of action that we would recommend would be bringing classes to the quad on Monday, November 21st beginning at 12:00 pm. There will be a general assembly pivotal to the progression of the budding educational reform that has taken root at our university.
We attend this university to grow as young adults and we do this not only in our lecture halls, but also amongst the university community as a whole. As many of our professors have taught us, our education extends beyond lectures and assignments. By writing this letter, it is our hope that the dialogue between faculty and students is strengthened so we can collaborate in solidarity.
Sincerely,
Concerned UC Davis Students
Action Hotline: (530) 302-5223
Clarification That Further SUpports #Occupiers:
#occupiers are practicing NON VIOLENT DIRECT ACTION. They are responding to law that is criminal– (as did the CIvil RIghts Movement participants when they stood up to Jim Crow)–not breaking a law they believe unjust (Civil Disobedience). Our justice system and gov’t are criminal and in bed with criminals. The people are standing up and calling out criminals within the constrainst of the law.
Chancellor & police should be fired if they won’t resign.
A Message I sent to Katehi. Thank you to the Davis community- the basis for the inspiration of this letter.
Chancellor Katehi,
Allow me introduce myself so you may see my intention for writing to you today.
My name is Amanda Alonzo. I am a second year undergraduate student studying Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behaviors at the University of California, Davis. I am one of the hundreds of students at UCD who face the correlated pressure of finishing their undergraduate studies as quickly as possible in order to escape the immense increase in tuition fees. Attending a four-year research university was a plan implanted upon my sister and myself by our mother since childhood. Needless to say, my moving 400 miles away from home in Los Angeles to UC Davis in pursuit of my education and career goals is one of the proudest and hardest moments of her life.
I particularly admire my mother and am fortunate for her financial prioritizing. My mother is an educator, teaching biology to students at middle school and high school levels in LAUSD while teaching education to graduate students. She graduated from USC with a B.S. in Biological Sciences in 1979 and furthered her education with a Master’s in Education Administration. As a former student and college graduate, she worked three jobs for most of my life due to the immense student loans, which she continued to pay well into my childhood.
I repeat: My mother graduated from a four-year university in 1979.
Two degrees and a permanent job at a school in LAUSD did not suffice for the debts she accumulated 20 years prior. On top of the ballooning student loans, teachers suffered giant pay cuts. One of my most consistent memories growing up as a child of an educator were teacher strikes, boycotts, and the tired, almost hopeless look on my mother’s face on the first day of every month.
As a single mother, she often works more than one job in order to provide my sister and me with the best education. She continues to do so today to pay for my college tuition so that I may not be entrapped by student loans and dues for as long as she did; stipulating that I complete my undergraduate studies in four-years. Unfortunately, due to tuition hikes, she was forced to ask me to take out a few loans.
I am fortunate enough to have a mother who is willing to sacrifice so much of her life so my entry into the career world will not be as difficult as it was for her. On top of working to pay for my education, she has dealt with the stress and physical exhaustion of fighting for over twenty-five years for the right as a teacher to educate, and the rights of her students to receive an education. As well as being a firm advocate for education, she strongly believes that a safe and healthy learning environment for a student is crucial in the development of independent thinking and achievement. My mother has gone to great lengths to foster such an environment for me as a child,- and hopes that I have found, and will continue to find, such environments for myself in my future endeavors. This was a main reason why I fell in love with and chose to study at UCD.
I also have witnessed what a difference a healthy learning environment can have on an individual other than myself. I served as an avid volunteer with a non-profit organization, City Year, for most of my high school career. I worked in urban areas in Los Angeles to foster a healthy community and safer learning environment for underserved and underrepresented elementary, middle school, and high school students. As a high-school leader, myself and 175 other high school students gathered each weekend for a day of service which often included beautifying a school or neighborhood, tutoring or mentoring younger students, or even putting together workshop days in which we created tools and taught strategies to students on how to effectively speak their mind and work with their peers to initiate change in their community. By simply surrounding them with a positive atmosphere and creating a safe and open environment for them to speak their minds and act for their rights to a just education and community, City Year was able to deviate the paths of hundreds of students in Los Angeles into furthering their education and pursuing a college degree at a four-year university. More importantly, City Year turned students into student leaders, able and confident enough to speak up for their rights. We feel this is a huge step towards achieving their dreams and giving back to their community. Unfortunately, recent events that have unfolded here on campus have given me doubts.
Ma’am, I am one of the thousands of students and millions of people you harmed with your actions on Friday.
No, I did not attend the protest, nor did I see first-hand what happened. However, I cross that quad every day. I interact and engage with those students, whose beautiful chants could be heard from my classes, every day. I listen and learn from the professors, whose support on the quad displayed their dedication and sacrifice to their students. The harm you unnecessarily called upon them in effect harms the community and the learning environment of everyone associated with this university and campus. How can I go home and advocate for a higher education to those students, who suffer from abject poverty and unhealthy and unsafe living environments, when my own learning environment is no safer?
Furthermore, how can I advocate for higher education when it may put them in the same financial situation they suffer at present?
I wish to conclude with some statistics, much of which you are probably familiar:
• First, tuition at a UC has more than doubled since 2000. Interestingly, class sizes have increased but there has been a decrease in TAs. Fewer classes are offered each quarter and so students are prolonging their graduation date. Where could all that funding be going?
• Secondly, while teachers and professors are being laid off, more senior managers are being hired, making it a 3:6 professor to senior manager ratio, with an even more drastic delta in 2010. Recently, UCD has laid off many professors some of whom teach in impacted areas of study such as biology.
• Lastly, the average college debt for a college graduate is $24,000. Only 50% of students graduating in 2006-2010 will find full time jobs. If education is an investment for the future careers of students, how is it that the absurd amount of debt is not enough to find a steady job for all students?
Student debt and the economic crisis in education has been a problem for many decades. Everyone is affected by it. Education is built upon the shared ideas and innovations exchanged between those around us. It is an opportunity for each person to develop as an individual and, moreover, give back to their community. Entitlement and greed shut these doors of opportunity, stunt the learning of individuals, and stifle the growth of community.
Chancellor, I hope you understand the dire affects of your actions on Friday on not just the students of UCD but people everywhere. You have created an unsafe learning environment and in essence ostracized yourself from the UCD community. Moreover, I also hope you understand that you still hold a thin amount of influence to change the obstructed path education is being driven towards. I urge you to use it in mending your ties with the students and community of UCD.
Thank you for your time. I look forward to hearing you speak on Monday, November 21.
Sincerely,
Amanda Alonzo
I agree that these protesters were not treated respectfully by the campus police. Calling for the resignation of the Chancellor is overkill. I am quite sure she did not directly authorize the police to use pepper spray on the protesters. I am paying thousands of dollars a year for my child to get a degree at U. C. Davis, so far I consider it money well spent. The demonstrators should be in Sacramento protesting, not disrupting those students who would like to be educated in a peaceful environment. The tuition increases can be linked to money spent by our foolish politicians in Sacramento. ( Bullet train between Fresno and Bakersfield?) They (the politicians) are out of control. Protest where it counts, in front of our seats of government. Leave the colleges alone to teach those who want to learn.
The administration uses the same rhetoric: they want us to believe that they are on our side, that Sacramento is the problem. Please see: http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2009/meister211109.html , http://distributioninsensible.tumblr.com/
“US Federal Appeals Courts ten years ago declared pepper spraying peaceful protesters to be an illegal violation of their 4th amendment rights to be free from excessive force and that officers who cause such felony assault are liable for their actions and do not receive protection of sovereign immunity as their actions are excessive use of force which the 4th amendment prohibits.”
http://pathstoknowledge.net/2011/11/21/pepper-spraying-peaceful-protesters-is-illegal-excessive-force-so-says-us-federal-appeals-court or http://wp.me/ps3dI-1nW
Here is the link to the UC Regents meeting on Monday at the UC Davis campus. Please look at the agenda, action and discussion items they are hoping to cover on the 28th.
http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/regents/regmeet/nov28.html
I propose a visually strong, non violent and effective way to show peoples disgust with the events at Davis and at locations nationally.
Simply look at the Chancellor or the police when you see them, firmly say, “you are not here” and then turn your back to them. You could leave out the sentence if you think its best not to say anything. Picture the walk at Davis the other evening when Katehi walked past the silent students and then imagine if everyone had simply stood up en masse and silently turned their backs to her. The effect would have been dramatic and effective. .
I seriously doubt this will get published (so much for “free speech”), but here goes:
“Dear President Yudof,
I am writing to you as a female academic concerned about the double standard & sexism currently on display within the University of California system.
As you well know, two separate incidents of alleged police brutality, one at UC Berkeley and one at UC Davis, have caused quite a problem for the UCal system. In the case of the Berkeley incident, police used batons to violently beat back a crowd of admittedly unruly students. In the case of UC Davis, police are accused of pepper-spraying sitting students who impeded a sidewalk.
I am a supporter of free speech and the right to assemble, but I am concerned about the unequal treatment that Chancellors Katehi and Birgeneau have received, and may continue to receive.”
Read the rest of my letter at: http://peacocksandlilies.com/2011/11/24/open-letter-to-president-mark-g-yudof-university-of-california/
Support Letter from North Brooklyn, NY:
Davis Dozen NOT GUILTY
In January 2012, eleven UC Davis students and one professor staged a sit-in at the campus branch of US Bank. This particular branch shut its doors on February 28th. It was not until April that charges were brought against the Davis Dozen. According to the Dozen’s press release: “the charges against them serve to position the university favorably in a potential litigation with US Bank.”
How are we to take the retroactive criminalization of the Davis Dozen seriously? How are we to take the obstruction of movement in public space seriously when it no longer exists? UC Davis fully reveals this as it defends a now scorched space in the name of its breached, co-dependent relationship with a private bank, who only sees students as new customers in the university’s host body.
The Davis Dozen now face criminal charges of up to 11 years each in prison and $1 million in damages. THE UNIVERSITY IS FUKT (Financialized-University-Komplex-Technocrats)
FUKT has fully invested in the indentured risk society that it reproduces. FUKT’s efforts to criminalize dissent in the interest of hedging its own institutional liability is shameless. The action against its own students and faculty unabashedly unveils the educational institution as a confluent space for socializing governance and economic neo-liberalism. Who needs schools to learn this?
On May 10th the Davis Dozen pled NOT GUILTY.
…NOT GUILTY of the egregious and exaggerated charges levied against them in court by District Attorney Jeff W. Reisig – a despicable toiler for the corporate state and its interests – urged by the equally despicable UC Davis administration.
…NOT GUILTY of the “obstruction of movement in public space” – This space clearly no longer exists. The ground on which the Davis Dozen gathered is nothing more than a space of increasing privatization underwritten by a factitious figment of “the public.” What is the condition through which something like “a public” should be seen to come together as a unitary entity? We say a group that consciously decides to clear a space, to sit down together,creates something public more than any bank queue.
…NOT GUILTY of “conspiracy to commit a misdemeanor” – The act committed unfortunately fit a script prepared by the University of California President, Mark Yudof in his recent ‘travel advisory,’ which not only criminalized dissent in advance of any act of non-compliance, but managed to criminalize mere proximity to dissent. This advisory should be paid particular attention to, since it generated a context of guilt in advance of any action. It was a declaration of self-arrogated power to pre-emptively indict whoever: ‘Conspiracy is Fucking Everywhere!’
But the Davis Dozen are also NOT GUILTY in a deeper, more profound sense related to the imperative for disobedience and non-compliance with the normal functioning of a system of social relations based, precisely, on guilt and debt – words with deep etymological ties. The utterance ‘not guilty’ must be extrapolated from a merely juridical speech act to become an emblem of opposition to guilt and debt as the logic of capitalist social relations. ‘Not guilty’ must be seen to apply to anyone who struggles against the privatization of all forms of sociality, finance’s globalization of risk, and the displacement and foreclosure of huge swaths of the population. It must be seen to apply as much to the militants who sit down in the corporate atriums of banks that happily drive the population into debt slavery, as to anyone who feels a pang of nausea when coming home to find a credit card, student loan, mortgage or hospital bill in the mail. ‘Not guilty’ is not the sign of the beautiful soul, but a sturdy middle finger to the false prospect that one can finally absolve oneself of debt under the capitalist system.
We, who have no other name than the inculpable, the debtors who refuse to pay because we are not guilty, stand in solidarity with the Davis Dozen in the struggle against the theological narrative that Capitalism has taken-up to its own religious ends. The cultic psychosis of capitalism as the one and only true religion spreads through blind self-contradiction, without any horizon other than the infinitely deferred bottom line, and those who make the slightest trespass will be made an example of, as is happening currently to the Davis Dozen.
The bankers, their courts and their police enforce and preserve a nexus of debt that hangs together in the very misery of the social relations that they service and reproduce. The withering of the corporate state has led only to the full empowerment of increasingly personalized forms of government and control, of social domination based on identification with other parties whose very medium of existence is debt – as evidenced by the empty and stupid network of interrelated gadgets and readymade identity templates that constitute the totally administered and privatized definition of ‘society’. The corporate financialized system is guilt. It is guilty. It is guilty of the guilt that serves as its internal logic.
The origination of unending debt-slavery and industrial-professional individuation is one thing – but with this embarrassing slip of the Real, the collapse of the Ivory Tower reveals the heretofore hidden path for its students – a straight matriculation into an inescapable prison. Who are the new wardens?
FUKT may force branded debit-identification cards onto us, but with each purchase-verification we feel the true subtraction of our existence. How long can the intellect of the academic body be rendered as a docile resource for technological and financial extraction? The life force you seek is no longer.
The brutality of the situation is fully transparent: A silent, juridical execution of the not guilty. Pepper spray can be tasted, but this most recent assault slowly seeps through the campus like a gas to kill us in our sleep.
Signed,
Friends of Octopus
Hotel Abyss
#Upallnight
Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?t27p8r37u67skca
Sign Petition: https://www.change.org/petitions/uc-davis-and-us-bank-davis-dozen-not-guilty