The caption reads, “this is what democracy looks like,” and across the state, the story is the same, students protesting, barricading, and getting arrested. For those who worried about the future leadership of this nation, worry not, this generation is just as capable as your own of battling authority.
Assembly Majority Leader Alberto Torrico, who also is a candidate for Attorney General, has been going around the state, rallying with hundreds of students in favor of his bill, AB 656. The bill would create a 12.5% oil severance tax to generate $1.3 billion for higher education–25% for UC, 50% for CSU, and 25% for the Community Colleges.
Proponents of such efforts have argued that California is the only major oil producing state to not capture some of the oil wealth for public benefit. Texas generates $400 million for higher education through mineral and oil rights. In fact, the oil endowments have turned the University of Texas at Austin into a world class university. Alaska levies a 25% tax.
Said Assemblymember Torrico on Thursday:
“The UC Regents vote today to increase tuition 32% is not only deeply unfortunate, it is unnecessary. There is a solution that would prevent this increase and help roll back the high cost of public higher education. That solution is Assembly Bill 656, a bill I have authored that would raise up to $1.3 billion annually for the UC, CSU and CCC systems with a proposed tax on oil extracted within California.
California is in crisis – it is time that we put the special interests in their place and started doing what’s right for Californians. Our budget deficit has ballooned to $20 billion. The right solution requires a balanced approach: finding savings and new revenues. The Regents actions disproportionately impact our students. With this tuition hike, thousands of students will be denied their right to a quality, affordable education. There is no need for this to happen – AB 656 is a solution that will work.
AB 656 is a simple and fair solution to our education funding crisis – one that is already in practice in Texas and Alaska. As the author of AB 656, I am challenging the Regents and my colleagues in the legislature to support AB 656. We cannot afford to leave an entire generation of Californians behind.”
His release argues:
“While California struggles with record deficits, the oil industry has been enjoying record profits. Last year, Exxon Mobil earned a $45.2 billion profit, the most ever by a publicly traded U.S. company. And the year before was nearly as lucrative: Exxon profited $40.6 billion, Shell $31.3 billion, British Petroleum $20.8 billion and Chevron $18.7 billion.”
This gets me back to the main point though–the solutions that are likely to occur in terms of education have to involve the legislature and the governor. UC could re-distribute some of the money. They could certainly save some by cutting back on the salaries of top executives and shifting monies around, but the real problem is the ongoing state budget crisis.
It is ironic that the very day the 32% fee hike came down is the very day that the Legislative Analysts Office (LAO) came out with the projection of ongoing $20.7 billion deficits. That means more cuts and education is still the largest pot and a tempting target.
The legislature is making a huge mistake here. Education is an investment into our future–the future leaders of our government, of our economy, and the future workers. If we sacrifice our future to save our present, we are being foolhardy.
What the students need to do is descend on Sacramento by the thousands and have protests and get arrested in front of the Capital, so that everyone in this state turns on the news and sees the students and the images get seared into their consciousness. That act might, just might make a small difference. Anything short of that might be cathartic to the frustrations of the students tired of getting the short end of the stick, but in the end, people will soon forget the 52 students arrested at Mrak Hall. The students need to make everyone remember what happened and the only way that is going to happen is to continue the struggle.
Late last night we got word that Berkeley Students who had converged on Wheeler Hall by the thousands and forced a standoff that ended in 40 arrests with students subjected to rubber bullets, beatings with batons, and “being in the crosshairs of intensive surveillance and SWAT teams,” had passed the baton to Fresno State students.
The students began occupying their own library with similar demands. According to a release sent our late last night:
“The students and their supporters are conducting a “Study In” to protest tuition increases and reduced services on campus – the result of budget cuts, loss of professors and firing of support staff. In earlier media reports, officials said that arrests “not expected” but that there are no guarantees. Local media reported that negotiations are underway, but unnamed officials suggested, “they may be leaving in handcuffs.”
This is the legacy that this legislature and Governor have left. We have students on Friday night instead of going off to party are occupying the library in hopes of people hearing their cries.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
But where was the Governor, who is also a regent? He was on a uso style pre-senate run tour of Iraq and eating snitzel in Autria. Maybe he got briefed on economics while he was there from the Austrian school. God save us!
As for the students being willing to challenge authority it is fine but if they can’t afford the education they won’t be able to ask the correct questions, see where the real power lies, find where the money is going or be too in debt to do anything but work for the maintainance of the system as it is today.
As Everett Dirksen said during the sixties ” Let the kids yell, soon they will have mortgages.” If he could only have seen what would happen to those mortgages, but anyway, today it would be let the kids yell soon they will be too in debt to do anything but work two jobs.
Finally, You only look at the state, what about the feds and the fed, giving all the money to the banks, while everyone else is losing homes and jobs or being furloughed or having interest rates jacked up on their lines of credit. While returns on bonds are being lowered for seniors who won’t get a cost of living increase on their social security next year. For students, tuition is going up as they try to get training to become productive parts of society while the dollar is going down raising the cost of everything. Its like some big IMF austerity plan but instead of Argentina or Thailand its the USA’s turn letting the next generation of Milton Friedman’s Chicago boys run things into the ground with the students at UC being the first to the barricades who should be yelling tax the rich and redistribute the wealth and time for the jubilee instead of “This is what democracy looks like.”
Let’s see – students participating in a “study in” being arrested for trespassing and escorted from the University library in handcuffs. I encourage local administrators to follow through with their threats. It would be a perfect picture to illustrate what is happening to higher education in California.
The problem with using oil tax revenues is that other groups and interests have their eye on the same potential resource – state workers, law enforcement, community health organizations. It will be a fight over which interest group wins out.
It looks like the Democrats in Congress may finally be getting the message from the voters, “we’re mad as hell and won’t take this anymore!!!!”. Obama’s “change we can believe in” has up until now been a disappointment. He will have to get on board this change in the voters’ political mood or he is “toast”!!. Similarly, State Senate leader Darryl Steinberg has been “spineless” in confronting the Terminator and his cronies. He and our California Democratic majority had better get the CA voters’ message as well or they too will be out of a job.
I have been out if town during the protests so only have read the blog, but curious what visible role the new chancellor played? Can you provide info? Thanks.
This is an ironic title. If the protests are interpreted as a way to make decisions, then they aren’t democracy, they are ochlocracy ([url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ochlocracy[/url]): rule by the mob. As the Wikipedia page explains, ochlocracy can be a contradictory form of government, because different mobs might want different things.
The so-called alternative budget from AFSCME is a case in point. More than half of the money in this “alternative” would come from UC’s hospitals, either from a direct raid on profits or by gouging the salaries of doctors. If UC (unlike AFSCME itself) took it seriously,
you bet your boots that it would face another set of angry protesters.
Anyway, Ryan is certainly right that UC couldn’t expect any of the oil revenue from a new severance tax. However, he puts it too softly by saying that other interests would have their “eye” on that money. The whole state budget is a sinking ship. The legislature has no intention of bailing out students are thought to be able to swim, no matter how angry they are or how much noise they make. Which would you cut first, college tuition for the middle class, or kidney dialysis for the poor?
That’s a rather cynical interpretation of the actions. I see it more as the exercise of the right to dissent embodied in our constitution under the First Amendment in the freedom of speech more importantly “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Therefore I see the actions as the exercise of Democracy and the actions of the state in the cracking down on the exercise of democracy. But that’s just me.
Trespass isn’t peaceable assembly. The protesters who squatted in Mrak decided that peaceable assembly wasn’t good enough.
Trespass is an interesting concept when it’s a public building funded in part by the student’s fees. I know the law with respect to that, but philosophically I don’t think it is nearly as cut and dry.
It’s cut and dried all right. Mrak Hall may well be partly funded by student fees, but only a fraction of those fees come from the students in the protest. Mrak Hall conducts important business regarding other students who weren’t there. The idea was to disrupt university business, then blame the administration for those disruptions, and not just to make themselves heard.
At Berkeley, for comparison, the protesters took over a classroom building. Other students had classes in that building which had to be canceled.
Now, I’m not saying that ochlocracy is always wrong. In this case, I agree with it somewhat more than with the direct democracy that led to this mess. But ochlocracy is what they had in mind, not “peaceable assembly”.
I disagree, I don’t think any of them ever believed that the administration would give in to their demands, rather they hoped to gain public sympathy for their position by doing things that would generate sufficient media attention.
I concede that you could argue less radical intentions such as just wanting to generate media attention. The fact remains that it is trespass, that the point was to create a bigger effect by disrupting campus business, and that that isn’t peaceable assembly.
It looks like the Democrats in Congress may finally be getting the message from the voters, “we’re mad as hell and won’t take this anymore!!!!”.
What would you have Obama and the Democrats in Congress do to remedy this issue?
[i]What would you have Obama and the Democrats in Congress do to remedy this issue?[/i]
Obama should concede that he is a foreign-born Muslim and that Bill Ayers wrote his books. He and the Democrats should cut taxes. That will turbocharge the economy and get all of us out of this fix. 🙂
“What would you have Obama and the Democrats in Congress do to remedy this issue? “
The political momentum is now in the hands of the left(read populist)side of the political spectrum. Prediction: moderate centrist Democrats in Congress will be moving left in support of Health Care reform and taxing the rich to pay for it. In California, windfall taxes on the Oil corporations will be a good start and the Democrats will have to get behind it to save their jobs.
If UC Davis and UC Berkeley don’t want students to commit [i]misdemeanor trespass[/i] in their buildings — administrative or classroom — I suggest they adopt a UC Merced policy. That is, don’t send them to jail. Don’t fine them $200. Don’t suspend their rights to assembly. Rather, matriculate them out of Davis and Berkeley and into UC Merced. If they then want to take over a building at that campus, send them here ([url]http://www.csustan.edu/[/url]).
The cuts and student demonstrations made the front page of the NYT several days running and made national TV news (well at least the Newhour on PBS which is the only thing I ever watch). That is an accomplishment in and of itself even though I do think Sacramento is the real target.
We spend more on prisons than higher education in this state and many of these guards make far more than CSU or UC professors–now that is a crime!
This is a sad state of affairs. Some of the students have unrealistic goals, but it would be sadder still if these cuts occured and no one noticed. The media only pays attention to dramatic events–so we owe these students thanks for bringing these cuts to the attention of all.
During the Vietnam war protests, students briefly occupied the administration building at UC San Diego, locking themselves in. I grew up a couple blocks away, and remember seeing a phalanx of San Diego police lining the streets just off campus property, dressed in riot gear and prepared to attack.
The provost would not allow them to enter UC property. He then allowed the students to occupy the building — but cut off the power and water. After they’d used up the single flush on each toilet and eaten all the food in the vending machines (or run out of quarters), they decided to leave. It took about 48 hours, and nobody got hurt.
The UC is funded with public money, our tax dollars. Shouldn’t we be able to inspect the books – the financial records – to see how our dollars are being spent, where the “fat” is and how important savings could be made?
Greg said “I concede that you could argue less radical intentions such as just wanting to generate media attention. The fact remains that it is trespass, that the point was to create a bigger effect by disrupting campus business, and that that isn’t peaceable assembly.”
Yes its called civil disobeidience and follows in a great tradition of Thoreau, Ghandi, King and Chavez. If Bill Ayers had practiced it his name wouldn’t be a buzz word for the right. If Obama was a Muslim he would still be President and it was McCain who was born in Panama in the Canal Zone.
As for what the Dems and Obama could do: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091207/greider/print
And another thing they could do is bail out the states like they did the banks. That would help UC.
[i]The UC is funded with public money, our tax dollars.[/i]
Actually, only 1/6 of the state budget is from the state compact.
[i]Shouldn’t we be able to inspect the books – the financial records – to see how our dollars are being spent, where the “fat” is and how important savings could be made?[/i]
A classic example of not taking yes for an answer. The UCOP budget web site ([url]http://budget.ucop.edu/[/url]) has thousands of pages of budget documents and audits. Instead of analyzing them, some people would rather call the whole thing a big secret.
If anything, when UC or any institution goes out of its way to disclose finances, it just feeds the idea that the institution must be hiding something. Budgets on this scale are pretty complicated. Some people want an explanation that’s too simple to make any sense. They want a half-page chart with a big red circle labelled, “here’s where we’re wasting money”. It’s impossible, because everything that UC does is important to somebody.
Only 1/6 of the UC budget is from the state compact, I should have said. That’s not remotely a secret, no matter how many people say that they didn’t know.
[i]Yes its called civil disobeidience and follows in a great tradition of Thoreau, Ghandi, King and Chavez.[/i]
Civil disobedience is when you disregard an unjust law. No one truly thinks that it’s unjust for Mrak Hall to be protected by trespassing laws. If the students refused to pay their higher fees, that could count as civil disobedience.
No, Civil disobeidience is when you break a minor law to highlight a greater wrong like sitting in at Mrak to protest turning the tuition screw on thousands of students.
I think Mr. Toad is right, I remember as a child, people protesting Diablo Canyon in SLO by trespassing and getting arrested. That was civil disobedience but obviously they were not calling the trespassing law unjust. That is what Thoreau did, he protested taxation by refusing to pay. However, that is a very limited view of civil disobedience.
What the students need to do is descend on Sacramento by the thousands and have protests and get arrested in front of the Capital, so that everyone in this state turns on the news and sees the students and the images get seared into their consciousness.
David, This is probably the best comment in your piece. Such an action is best coordinated and originated from UC Davis and Sac State. Call the protest when the legislature is in session and have students skip classes to go to the Capitol. I’m sure faculty are frustrated enough to oblige. The invitation could be extended to other UC and CSU campuses, but it would be easiest for UCD and Sac State students. I hope there are some effective student leaders who could take up such an idea.
While the Diablo Canyon protesters may not have objected to trespassing laws in general, they clearly were saying that the site did not deserve to be protected by those laws if it meant that a nuclear power plant would operate there. That is at least closer to what Thoreau described than to the occupation of Mrak Hall yesterday. No one really thinks that Mrak Hall is an evil building that should be shut down.
That said, I agree that there is more than one theory of civil disobedience. I saw all that in Berkeley. In Berkeley, there are many who take such a broad view of civil disobedience that it amounts to ochlocracy: Protesters interfere with your business more and more until you do what they demand. That was what I saw on display in the Barrington Hall riot ([url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrington_Hall_(Berkeley,_California)[/url]). It was also why Barrington Hall had to be shut down.
$3,000,000 Reckless Spending @ UC: University of California President Yudof Approves $3,000,000 to Outsource UCB Chancellor’s Job
The UC President has a UCB Chancellor that should do the high paid job he is paid for instead of hiring an East Coast consulting firm to fulfill his responsibilities. ‘World class’ smart executives like Chancellor Birgeneau need to do the analysis, hard work and make the difficult decisions of their executive job!
Where do consulting firms like Bain ($3,000,000 consultants) get their recommendations?
From interviewing the senior management that hired them and will be approving their monthly consultant fees and expense reports. Remember the nationally known auditing firm who said the right things and submitted recommendations that senior management wanted to hear and fooled government oversight agencies and the public?
Mr. Birgeneau’s executive officer performance management responsibilities include “inspiring innovation and leading change.” This involves “defining outcomes, energizing others at all levels and ensuring continuing commitment.” Instead of demonstrating his capacity to fulfill his executive accountabilities, Mr. Birgeneau outsourced them. Doesn’t he engage University of California and University of California Berkeley (UCB) people at all levels to help examine the budget and recommend the necessary trims? Hasn’t he talked to Cornell and the University of North Carolina – which also hired Bain — about best practices and recommendations that might apply to UCB cuts?
No wonder the faculty and staff are angry and suspicious. Three million dollars is a high price for Californians to pay when a knowledgeable ‘world-class’ Chancellor is not doing his job.
Please help save $3,000,000 for teaching our students and request that the UC President require the UCB Chancellor to fulfill his executive job accountabilities!
[b]GK:[b/] [i]”Civil disobedience is when you disregard an unjust law. No one truly thinks that it’s unjust for Mrak Hall to be protected by trespassing laws.”[/i]
[b]TOAD:[/b] [i]”Civil disobeidience is when you break a minor law to highlight a greater wrong.”[/i]
The very term “civil disobedience” originates (AFAIK) from Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau refused to pay his taxes in order to protest slavery and the Mexican War. It was not the case that Thoreau thought taxes were unjust. He thought the fact that they were used to support a war he disagreed with and (more indirectly) to keep slavery going was unjust.
The Mrak protestors don’t have to think trespassing laws are unjust in order to violate them as a means of expressing their anger over the increase in student fees.
As such, I think TOAD and DG have it right: Getting arrested for violating the trespass laws is a form of civil disobedience, much as violating the tax laws was for Thoreau.
FWIW, back in 1984 or so, I went to Avila Beach (near SLO) with a bunch of UCSB rugby players — I played #1 Prop on a team which won the All-Cal twice, by the way — to protest the construction of Diablo Canyon. (My feeling was that it was imprudent to build a nuclear reactor atop a seismic fault. I am not universally against nuclear power, as long as the facility has a safe and sound way to deal with its waste.)
[/b]
[i]It was not the case that Thoreau thought taxes were unjust.[/i]
But he did think that slavery and the Mexican-American war were unjust uses of his taxes. No is really arguing that Mrak Hall is being put to unjust use. I suppose that there is some semblance of logic in that if Mrak Hall endorses UC’s fee hikes, but it’s really no more than slightly correct.
The Berkeley students cared even less whether the activity that they disrupted was in any way unjust. They disrupted classes.
[i]Getting arrested for violating the trespass laws is a form of civil disobedience[/i]
I agree that it’s a form of civil disobedience, by the rather loose interpretation that’s popular at some universities. But it’s a red herring in this discussion to talk as if there is only one theory of civil disobedience. There clearly isn’t, any more than there is only one theory of democracy or one theory of property or one theory of crime.
Here then is a question: Is there a theory of civil disobedience that would allow trespassing in Mrak Hall, but not in an abortion clinic? Let’s say that it’s a publicly funded clinic.
[quote]No is really arguing that Mrak Hall is being put to unjust use. I suppose that there is some semblance of logic in that if Mrak Hall endorses UC’s fee hikes, but it’s really no more than slightly correct. [/quote] For the protestors Mrak Hall is symbolic of “THE MAN.” They feel THE MAN is treating them unjustly by increasing their reg fees by 32 percent. Refusing to leave Mrak without arrest is their way of saying EFF YOU to THE MAN. As such, it is a form of speech. And far better to hold a non-violent protest than to damage property or try to physically harm other people.
I’m sure most of them realize that their protests and their arrest won’t change anything. But when people feel victimized it’s more salubrious to express that than to do nothing.
I understand their frustration. I’m very frustrated as an alumnus of two UC campuses that students have to pay so much for a quality public education, today. Yet because their trespassing required police time and related costs, I don’t think it’s appropriate for the DA to drop the charges or go easy on these kids. A protestor who decides to break the law ought to assume he will have to pay the prescribed price for his crimes.
“Here then is a question: Is there a theory of civil disobedience that would allow trespassing in Mrak Hall, but not in an abortion clinic? Let’s say that it’s a publicly funded clinic.”
Yes, if you are disrupting an abortion clinic your action could result in serious health issues of an individual possibly resulting in the death of a woman to prevent the death of a fetus. An action that could result in death, even to prevent another death, would not be considered civil disobeidience nor non-violent.
Isn’t Bain where Mitt Romney made all his money?
[i]Yes, if you are disrupting an abortion clinic your action could result in serious health issues of an individual possibly resulting in the death of a woman to prevent the death of a fetus.[/i]
You’re arguing on the basis of wild hypotheticals. I didn’t ask whether it was civil disobedience to blockade [b]all[/b] abortion clinics, just one of them. Moreover, abortion clinics generally aren’t equipped to handle life-threatening pregnancies — the emergency room of a hospital is a much more appropriate place for that kind of abortion anyway. You could equally well hypothesize that if protesters shut down an administrative building, then advisors who work in that building might overlook a failing student at risk of suicide. Yes it could happen, but the scenario is contrived.
Besides, the abortion protesters feel convinced that the life of the fetus a paramount health issue, which is the only life at stake in the vast majority of abortions. I don’t agree at all with their premise that abortion is murder. But if I did casually equate political trespass with civil disobedience and civil disobedience with democracy, then I don’t see why trespassing at an abortion clinic wouldn’t count.
Of course the penalties for the kind of protest you suggest have been raised exactly to prevent and dissuade the kind of protest you hypothesize. It would not surprise me to see the DA’s in LA, Yolo and Alameda Counties try to impose harsh charges against students to dissuade others from engaging in similar conduct at UC, not because they are worried about things getting out of hand over the fee increase, but, because they are worried that my first post my come to pass and that the students are just the first group to take to the streets in mass over the looting of the country by the banks, military contractors, health insurance syndicates and other financial interests that have grown rich while the many have grown poorer and poorer.
[i]just the first group to take to the streets in mass over the looting of the country by the banks, military contractors, health insurance syndicates and other financial interests[/i]
Like the developers and the big-box stores. Come the revolution, we will annihilate them first.
I hope that your sarcastic humor is as serious as this all gets. I said nothing about big box stores or developers so please don’t diminish my sense of outrage over the big picture and how the rise in fees for students fits into the whole. It is not unusual for students to be the first into the streets or take an active role in social unrest throughout the world. With so many people having lost all their property to default, furlough or unemployment and many others having lost life and limb in senseless wars that touch the lives of the young more than us old guys it should be no surprise that there are people who are disrupting the quiet peace of normal business activity. Maybe you think I am a crank but watch the law come down hard on some to scare the rest in an attempt to keep things from getting even more out of control just like in Iran by the way.
It would not surprise me to see the DA’s in LA, Yolo and Alameda Counties try to impose harsh charges against students to dissuade others from engaging in similar conduct at UC, not because they are worried about things getting out of hand over the fee increase,
When’s the DA election? If the DA does it just right, he could be responsible for a significant rise in student voter registration, and it may not be the result he would prefer.
Mr. Toad: It takes a lot more courage to face the miscalculations of direct democracy as they play out in Sacramento, than to make a blanket connection to a conspiracy of bankers and syndicates.
And wars don’t forget the draining effect of wars as Rep.David Obey points out so eloquently on ABC News. Don’t forget yesterday’s New York Times front page article about how the increase in debt will balloon debt service when interest rates normalize and the banks I mean the economy has been saved. Don’t forget Bush’s medicare drug benefit unfunded and unable to negotiate with big pharma for cost reduction. So yes the state has been led to ruin by the no new taxes mantra but the feds won’t help out because of profligate bankers and war profiteers among others looting the treasury sucking up all the cash while larding up the rich with lower taxes on income, capital gains and inheritance.
As Nouriel Roubini pointed out in a recent piece in the globe and mail. Ours is an economy of the rich investors and poor debtors. If the students are the shock wave of a debtor rebellion it could get quite ugly and out of control.