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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message -----
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A
title=tanstl@aol.com href="mailto:tanstl@aol.com">David Sladky</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Sunday, March 25, 2012 4:29 AM</DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> Fwd: Stay-Away Orders - UC Berkeley and Its Lawful
Business</DIV></DIV>
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<DIV class=subheadlinestyle><FONT size=4>The November 9 Stay-Away
Orders</FONT></DIV>
<H1 class=article-title>UC Berkeley and Its Lawful Business</H1>
<DIV class=mainauthorstyle>by AMANDA ARMSTRONG and MICHAEL SHANE BOYLE</DIV>
<DIV class=main-text>We are graduate students and teachers at UC Berkeley.
Like thousands of other people here at Berkeley, we have participated in rallies
and demonstrations and marches against the privatization of the University of
California. In early March of this year, however, we each received letters from
the Alameda County District Attorney informing us that criminal complaints had
been filed against us. No details of the complaints were listed, only the
date we were to appear at Wiley Manuel Courthouse.<BR>When we called the DA to
find out our charges, we learned they stemmed from <A
href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/09/BA861LSR8G.DTL"
target=_blank>November 9, 2011</A>, the day riot officers assaulted hundreds of
students, faculty members, and workers for setting up tents on the lawn in front
of Sproul Hall at UC Berkeley. The planned encampment was to be established in
solidarity with the growing Occupy movement. It aimed to raise awareness of the
budget cuts at the UC. <A href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buovLQ9qyWQ"
target=_blank>Internet videos</A> of the brutal actions of police that day went
viral, foreshadowing the international scandal UC Davis police would cause just
a week later when they belligerently <A
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AdDLhPwpp4" target=_blank>pepper-sprayed
sitting students</A>. In a now infamous turn of phrase, <A
href="http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2012/03/02/on-privatization-and-brutalizing-campuses-or-why-chancellors-say-stuff-like-that/"
target=_blank>UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau</A> defended the pummeling
of the protestors at UC Berkeley by declaring their act of civil disobedience
(linking arms) to be <A
href="http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2011/11/10/message-to-the-campus-community-about-occupy-cal/"
target=_blank>“not non-violent.”</A><BR>That we were suddenly being charged for
participating in the events of November 9 struck us as odd. Four months had
passed. We had not been arrested on November 9, nor did we suspect that we were
under investigation. The UC administration had even <A
href="http://www.dailycal.org/2011/11/14/chancellor-promises-inquiry-into-police-use-of-force-amnesty-for-some-student-protesters/"
target=_blank>granted amnesty from student conduct charges</A> for those who
took part in the protest. We soon discovered that several friends (also
students) were facing similar charges. Like us, most of them had also not been
arrested that day. In total, 13 individuals have been charged, including a
professor of English, who, when surrendering herself for arrest on November 9,
was <A href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNHXuf6qJas" target=_blank>pulled to
the ground by her hair</A> by police. The various criminal complaints against us
include resisting arrest, battery of an officer, obstructing a thoroughfare, and
remaining at the scene of a riot.<BR>How the DA decided that we should face
charges is not fully clear–although it is evident that they are bringing charges
on the basis of recommendations received from UCPD, despite Chancellor
Birgeneau’s protestations to the contrary. As UCPD spokesperson<A
href="http://www.dailycal.org/2012/03/20/concerns-raised-regarding-methods-ucpd-used-to-gather-evidence-identify-nov-9-protesters/"
target=_blank> Lt. Tejada recently said,</A>“We make our case, and the district
attorney reviews the evidence, and if they feel they have enough evidence they
will move forward.” Furthermore recent reports suggest that even <A
href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/03/15/BAAE1NLG33.DTL"
target=_blank>campus health services</A> had a hand in the selection and
identification of protestors.<BR> <BR>Hundreds of people were on hand the
afternoon of November 9. Even more were present on Sproul Plaza when police
returned in the evening to again attack students and confiscate their tents,
bringing out a crowd of at least 2000. Nearly<A
href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/15/MN7V1LVH5N.DTL"
target=_blank> ten thousand supporters joined in a student strike</A> at UC
Berkeley a week later in response to the appalling actions of police. Why are
only 13 out of these thousands being charged? Is it a coincidence that some of
those targeted are highly visible organizers at UC Berkeley? Is the UC Berkeley
administration outsourcing the criminalization of dissent to the Alameda County
District Attorney, just as the UC Police Department outsourced the brutal
repression of dissent on November 9 to the Alameda County Sheriff?<BR>Of course
we are not taken aback by the situation in which we find ourselves. For months
now, the Alameda County District Attorney’s office has been vindictively
harassing anyone they suspect of taking part in the Occupy movement. Most
recently the DA has started slapping<A
href="http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_20134078/aclu-joins-fight-against-stay-away-orders"
target=_blank> stay-away orders</A> on almost any activist brought before the
court with ties to Occupy Oakland. This attempt to smother dissent through
judicial means is simply a less spectacular (and far less bloody) approach than
the hard-fisted tactics employed by their law enforcement brethren.<BR>Since we
knew full well how the judicial system is being geared to criminalize and stifle
dissent in Alameda County, we should not have been the least bit astonished when
our judge—without the slightest hesitation—granted the DA’s request to issue us
indefinite stay-away orders from the University of California. Nevertheless, the
stay-away orders first issued on March 19 took us all by surprise. Had
administrators of the University of California deemed us worthy of banishment
from campus, they could have used their own established protocols and procedures
to do so—something they have hardly been hesitant to use before. When
asked why the stay away orders were to be applied not just to the UC Berkeley
campus, but to all property owned by the University of California, the DA
responded that we are known to travel to other campuses to protest <A
href="http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2011/11/public-safety-threats-lead-to-regents.html"
target=_blank>meetings of the UC Board of Regents</A>. The light this response
sheds on the political motivation of the stay away orders should not be missed.
We are now disallowed from stepping foot on any campus in the UC system for the
simple reason that we might take part in political activity on UC property. The
timing of these stay away orders, it should be noted, is extremely convenient
for the UC administration: a major meeting of the UC Regents is scheduled at UC
San Francisco next week.<BR>In issuing these stay away orders, the judge granted
a narrow exception to all of us who are students, as well as a few other
exceptions to particular individuals (i.e. for living in university housing, or
for performing official union responsibilities). Those of us with classes and
teaching duties (which includes 12 of the 13 being charged) are allowed to visit
campus for “lawful business.” We can attend our courses and meet with our
students as usual. While a reasonable exception to an unreasonable order, this
further reveals how the stay-away orders have been constructed expressly to
eliminate our political engagement on campus. The stay-away-order-plus-exception
effectively distills our lives as students and workers from all other trivial or
superficial aspects. We are reduced to mere academics, without political or
social lives, whose sole purpose is to work and study and return home. We cannot
attend a lecture on campus. Or meet with a friend for coffee. Or stop to talk
with a former student. And we most certainly can’t attend any protest. The court
is permitting us to contribute to business as usual at the university so long as
we do not do anything outside of the strict delimitation of such business, as
long we do not attempt to challenge it in any way. We are made into model
students and workers, perfectly obedient, without the encumbrance of feelings
and thoughts beyond our academic work on campus.<BR>Potentially complicating
this analysis is the additional exception that one of us received for the
performance of union responsibilities. When this individual’s lawyer
initially spoke with the District Attorney, letting the DA know that his client
was an elected steward in the UC union of academic workers, the DA responded by
asking: “Union work is totally unrelated to occupy protests, right?” If
this question betrays a basic unfamiliarity with recent organizing on campus, it
also reveals something about how union activity is generally understood at this
historical moment. Union activity is imagined here as a form of labor,
performed by elected bureaucrats, who are recognized by management as the
legitimate representatives for, and regulators of, a particular workforce.
Such work appears unrelated to, if not in fact antagonistic toward, the
forms of non-hierarchical direct action practiced by the occupy movement.
When partitioned in this way from protest, union activity can evidently
appear as part of the lawful business of a student instructor, whose life is
thus distilled into acts of labor, some instructional and others
bureaucratic.<BR>Whatever the exceptions, we have little reason to trust that
the campus police will interpret the stay-away orders in any predictable or
consistent way. The actions of numerous <SPAN
style="TEXT-DECORATION: underline">John Pikes</SPAN> and <SPAN
style="TEXT-DECORATION: underline">Jared Kempers</SPAN> have taught us to never
underestimate the lengths the UC police department is willing to go to punish
campus protestors. We have little faith that the police will allow us to be on
campus without also harassing us. This is, of course, their “lawful
business.”<BR>For more on the charges and to support those being charged, visit
<A href="http://berkeleynov9.wordpress.com/"
target=_blank>http://berkeleynov9.wordpress.com</A>.<BR>
<DIV><EM><STRONG>Amanda Armstrong</STRONG> and <STRONG>Michael Shane
Boyle</STRONG> are graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley.
A third student who is also among the 13 people charged for taking part in the
events of November 9 contributed to this article, but preferred to remain
anonymous. The authors can be reached at <A
href="mailto:mandy.armstrong@gmail.com">mandy.armstrong@gmail.com</A> and <A
href="mailto:mshaneboyle@gmail.com">mshaneboyle@gmail.com</A>.</EM></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV><!-- end of AOLMsgPart_1_59a5127d-85cb-4a5e-8d4b-920a36423959 --></DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>