Job Discussion Forums

[Guy Courchesne]

Follow up on the UC Davis incidents...

http://bicyclebarricade.wordpress.com/2011/11/19/open-letter-to-chancellor-linda-p-b-katehi/

Open Letter to Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi
Posted on November 19, 2011 by crank

18 November 2011

Open Letter to Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi

Linda P.B. Katehi,

I am a junior faculty member at UC Davis. I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, and I teach in the Program in Critical Theory and in Science & Technology Studies. I have a strong record of research, teaching, and service. I am currently a Board Member of the Davis Faculty Association. I have also taken an active role in supporting the student movement to defend public education on our campus and throughout the UC system. In a word: I am the sort of young faculty member, like many of my colleagues, this campus needs. I am an asset to the University of California at Davis.

You are not.

I write to you and to my colleagues for three reasons:

1) to express my outrage at the police brutality which occurred against students engaged in peaceful protest on the UC Davis campus today

2) to hold you accountable for this police brutality

3) to demand your immediate resignation

Today you ordered police onto our campus to clear student protesters from the quad. These were protesters who participated in a rally speaking out against tuition increases and police brutality on UC campuses on Tuesday�a rally that I organized, and which was endorsed by the Davis Faculty Association. These students attended that rally in response to a call for solidarity from students and faculty who were bludgeoned with batons, hospitalized, and arrested at UC Berkeley last week. In the highest tradition of non-violent civil disobedience, those protesters 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, students at UC Davis set up tents on the main quad. When you ordered police outfitted with riot helmets, brandishing batons and teargas guns to remove their tents today, those students sat down on the ground in a circle and linked arms to protect them.

What happened next?

Without any provocation whatsoever, other than the bodies of these students sitting where they were on the ground, with their arms linked, police pepper-sprayed students. Students remained on the ground, now writhing in pain, with their arms linked.

What happened next?

Police used batons to try to push the students apart. Those they could separate, they arrested, kneeling on their bodies and pushing their heads into the ground. Those they could not separate, they pepper-sprayed directly in the face, holding these students as they did so. When students covered their eyes with their clothing, police forced open their mouths and pepper-sprayed down their throats. Several of these students were hospitalized. Others are seriously injured. One of them, forty-five minutes after being pepper-sprayed down his throat, was still coughing up blood.

This is what happened. You are responsible for it.

You are responsible for it because this is what happens when UC Chancellors order police onto our campuses to disperse peaceful protesters through the use of force: students get hurt. Faculty get hurt. One of the most inspiring things (inspiring for those of us who care about students who assert their rights to free speech and peaceful assembly) about the demonstration in Berkeley on November 9 is that UC Berkeley faculty stood together with students, their arms linked together. Associate Professor of English Celeste Langan was grabbed by her hair, thrown on the ground, and arrested. Associate Professor Geoffrey O�Brien was injured by baton blows. Professor Robert Hass, former Poet Laureate of the United States, National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winner, was also struck with a baton. These faculty stood together with students in solidarity, and they too were beaten and arrested by the police. In writing this letter, I stand together with those faculty and with the students they supported.

One week after this happened at UC Berkeley, you ordered police to clear tents from the quad at UC Davis. When students responded in the same way�linking arms and holding their ground�police also responded in the same way: with violent force. The fact is: the administration of UC campuses systematically uses police brutality to terrorize students and faculty, to crush political dissent on our campuses, and to suppress free speech and peaceful assembly. Many people know this. Many more people are learning it very quickly.

You are responsible for the police violence directed against students on the UC Davis quad on November 18, 2011. As I said, I am writing to hold you responsible and to demand your immediate resignation on these grounds.

On Wednesday November 16, you issued a letter by email to the campus community. In this letter, you discussed a hate crime which occurred at UC Davis on Sunday November 13. In this letter, you express concern about the safety of our students. You write, �it is particularly disturbing that such an act of intolerance should occur at a time when the campus community is working to create a safe and inviting space for all our students.� You write, �while these are turbulent economic times, as a campus community, we must all be committed to a safe, welcoming environment that advances our efforts to diversity and excellence at UC Davis.�

I will leave it to my colleagues and every reader of this letter to decide what poses a greater threat to �a safe and inviting space for all our students� or �a safe, welcoming environment� at UC Davis: 1) Setting up tents on the quad in solidarity with faculty and students brutalized by police at UC Berkeley? or 2) Sending in riot police to disperse students with batons, pepper-spray, and tear-gas guns, while those students sit peacefully on the ground with their arms linked? Is this what you have in mind when you refer to creating �a safe and inviting space?� Is this what you have in mind when you express commitment to �a safe, welcoming environment?�

I am writing to tell you in no uncertain terms that there must be space for protest on our campus. There must be space for political dissent on our campus. There must be space for civil disobedience on our campus. There must be space for students to assert their right to decide on the form of their protest, their dissent, and their civil disobedience�including the simple act of setting up tents in solidarity with other students who have done so. There must be space for protest and dissent, especially, when the object of protest and dissent is police brutality itself. 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. That is why I am calling for your immediate resignation.

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. And I want you to know that this is clear. It is clear to anyone who reads your campus emails concerning our �Principles of Community� and who also takes the time to inform themselves about your actions. You should bear in mind that when you send emails to the UC Davis community, you address a body of faculty and students who are well trained to see through rhetoric that evinces care for students while implicitly threatening them. I see through your rhetoric very clearly. You also write to a campus community that knows how to speak truth to power. That is what I am doing.

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,

Nathan Brown
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Program in Critical Theory
University of California at Davis

[Sashadroogie]

The Capitalist Piggies show their true faces. It isn't saccharin at all...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-15810021

[johnslat]

Dear Guy,

Nathan Brown - a teacher with balls (and he writes quite well, too )

Regards,
John

[artemisia]

[teacheratlarge]

johnslat posted

[johnslat]

Dear teacheratlarge,

1. I don't think you necessarily want to reform laissez-faire capitalism, . .
. . "

1. "To paraphrase Churchill, capitalist market economies open to trade and financial flows may be the worst economic regime--apart from the alternatives. However, while this crisis does not imply the end of market-economy capitalism, it has shown the failure of a particular model of capitalism. Namely, the laissez-faire, unregulated (or aggressively deregulated), Wild West model of free market capitalism with lack of prudential regulation, supervision of financial markets and proper provision of public goods by governments."

http://www.forbes.com/2009/02/18/depression-financial-crisis-capitalism-opinions-columnists_recession_stimulus.html

2. "Some delinking between business and politics would be helpful, but I see this happening in many other places (with sometimes the military being the corporations)."

2. I'm not quite sure I understand the second half of your compound sentence. Do you mean that you see that "delinking between business and politics happening in many other places?"
If so, where would those places be?

3. "More enforcible financial regulations per chance?" Yes, please see my reply to number 1.

"You keep focusing on whether the dissenting posters have a large number of financial assets, . . . ."

I do? You mean, I'm so clueless that I think ESL/EFL teachers who post on Dave's are part of the 1%?


"There are investigations under way."

And let's see if anyone is held responsible - besides a few very lower-level scapegoats, that is.

"�It�s a Food Product, Essentially�: Fox News Starts Spinning Pepper Spray Cops
Tonight, Fox News hosts Bill O'Reilly and Megyn Kelly got to talking about a UC Davis police officer's appalling use of pepper spray on nonviolent protesters over the weekend. Guess what direction the conversation took!
If you guessed "needlessly deferential to authority and dismissive to the suffering of protesters," you guessed correctly!

"I don't think we have the right to Monday-morning quarterback the police," O'Reilly says, "particularly at a place like UC Davis, which is a fairly liberal campus." God forbid! We'd never want to question Lt. John Pike's decision to generously and indifferently dust peacefully sitting protesters with pepper spray from only a few feet away. Especially given that Davis is, you know, a liberal campus! And, gosh, even if we were going to Monday-morning quarterback the police, shouldn't we remember, as Megyn Kelly tells O'Reilly, that pepper spray is "a food product, essentially"?

Now, look, Kelly and O'Reilly aren't saying the cops did the right thing! God, no! "I agree [the tape] looks bad," Kelly says. It's just that the protesters were sitting in a place where they weren't allowed to sit, so it's kind of their own fault! And in any event what right do we have to judge a cop for spraying a simple food product on the faces of a bunch of liberal college kids doing something criminal? You know? Maybe he was just trying to feed them?"


"By way of comparison, in some countries people need to write books in prison to get their stories told."

I think the whole point is that we're supposed to be a lot better than, say, Syria or North Korea.

Regards,
John

[teacheratlarge]

[johnslat]

OCCUPY THANKSGIVING!!!!!!

Happy Thanksgiving to all you USAans wherever you may be (the rest of you may - or may not - want to give thanks that you're NOT USAans .)

Dear teacheratlarge,

True, there is no completely laissez-faire economy/market, but over the past decade (during the George W Bush regime, actually) deregulation, lax oversight, and crony capitalism has pushed the US economy more towards that end of the scale.
The alternative? Modified market capitalism: Modified Market capitalism, controls greed and the human desire for riches through more regulation than the �let alone� philosophy of laissez-faire capitalism. By taking into account the fact that those who are stronger will try to oppress those who are weaker, modified market capitalism controls the economy and thus, society, with stronger regulation.

It's (as it so often is) a question of balance.


Regards,
John

[johnslat]

"Why this massive mobilisation against these not-yet-fully-articulated, unarmed, inchoate people? After all, protesters against the war in Iraq, Tea Party rallies and others have all proceeded without this coordinated crackdown. Is it really the camping? As I write, two hundred young people, with sleeping bags, suitcases and even folding chairs, are still camping out all night and day outside of NBC on public sidewalks � under the benevolent eye of an NYPD cop � awaiting Saturday Night Live tickets, so surely the camping is not the issue. I was still deeply puzzled as to why OWS, this hapless, hopeful band, would call out a violent federal response.

That is, until I found out what it was that OWS actually wanted.

The mainstream media was declaring continually "OWS has no message". Frustrated, I simply asked them. I began soliciting online "What is it you want?" answers from Occupy. In the first 15 minutes, I received 100 answers. These were truly eye-opening.

The No 1 agenda item: get the money out of politics. Most often cited was legislation to blunt the effect of the Citizens United ruling, which lets boundless sums enter the campaign process. No 2: reform the banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation, with the most frequent item being to restore the Glass-Steagall Act � the Depression-era law, done away with by President Clinton, that separates investment banks from commercial banks. This law would correct the conditions for the recent crisis, as investment banks could not take risks for profit that create kale derivatives out of thin air, and wipe out the commercial and savings banks.

No 3 was the most clarifying: draft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors.

When I saw this list � and especially the last agenda item � the scales fell from my eyes. Of course, these unarmed people would be having the shit kicked out of them."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/25/shocking-truth-about-crackdown-occupy?fb=native&CMP=FBCNETTXT9038

Regards,
John

[Sashadroogie]

I foresee the movement changing to one of armed resistance... Partisans, arise!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBbZA0ZQF6I

[johnslat]

Dear Sasha,

"I foresee the movement changing to one of armed resistance . . ."

I think (and hope) you're wrong about that because the way that Gandhi and King effected change - non-violent civil disobedience - is the right way to go.

Regards,
John

[Sashadroogie]

Dear Johnslat

I could be wrong. We will see. But your two examples came to a bloody end themselves. However, Christ-like they were, violence, or the threat of it, is always part of effecting change. Never was freedom granted to those on bended knee...

☭

[johnslat]

Dear Sasha,

Gandhi and Martin Luther King did come to violent ends, but they never engaged in violence. And their causes achieved most of the goals they had set.

Let the opposition engage in violence; in a more or less democratic society, that tactic is almost always counter-productive.

Regards,
John

[teacheratlarge]

sashadroogie posted

[Captain_Fil]

Police encounter "a horrible stench" at an Occupy encampment...

http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/30/9105583-more-than-200-held-after-police-raid-occupy-camps-in-la-philadelphia