Student Protests at UCSC
There is a student protest at UCSC today (it’s probably still going on. I’ll post some pictures later on). In order to launch the protest a blog was started. I guess the organizers don’t want to continue to use their old sites (2). As usual with the protesters, planning was not their forte. The events section of their website stated for the event that is taking place right now:
April 29 – Escalation of Budget Fight Back
More details will be available soon.
Through collaboration with other organizations on campus we will be holding another rally and march similar in nature to our April 22 action. Our goal for this action will be to turn out more people in preparation for May Day and to demand that Community Studies and LALS professors not be cut! Planning for future actions are still in their preliminary stages, so take part and help shape the movement!
It’s the day of your protest. I think the time to post your more details has passed. Also, I’m not sure how signs against the corporatization of the UC campus will get more funds for the community studies and LALS professors. I’d be more sympathetic to the cause if these actions were more thought out. This action comes in the shadow of two horribly managed and implemented protests (tent University and the tree sit). Both protests failed to set a single unified goal and thus the protest ballooned out to encompass animal rights protests, justice in Palestine, anti-corporitization, greater student involvement in the budget and planning of the UC, anti science, anti-growth, and more. Talking to the UC officials was perceived as selling out and betraying the core values of the movement and thus negotiation was immediately thrown out and step one of Tent University, the tree sit, and the current thing is a student protest.I guess the big question for the current protesters is:
Are you willing to negotiate with the UC?
If the answer is yes, then that should be step one and lines of communication should always be open to the UC. If no then you have to pass laws through the state of California in order to effect the UC system or convince lawmakers to take up the issue or cave in to the anarchists in the group and try to bring down the government. Basically you would need to start collecting signatures or do whatever it is that anarchists do to bring down the government (apparently the government will fall with a brick through the window of a local KFC)
Honestly I don’t think the current protesters have thought through how to go from where they are now to where they want to be and the best way to get there. Protesting is easy and it feels like you are accomplishing something. Changing the way the UC system works would take a lot of time, energy, and work. The current protest is headed in the exact same direction as the tree sit and tent University.
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The tree sit exposed the corruption and corporatization of UCSC. It was a success because it made UCSC realize they could not get away with destroying Redwoods without public scrutiny. Tent University was a terrible public relations for UCSC showing brutality by police and making former Chancellor Denton rethink her position and priorities. Changing the system does take effort and time and protests turns the public’s eyes toward the issues. It is not the answer but a beginning. When Mandela was imprisoned in South Africa, “silly” UCSC protestors were demonstrating on his behalf on campus which eventually forced UC to divest their monies from the regime of Botha. It’s easy to sit back and do nothing and comment on protests but I think these students are choosing to stand up for their beliefs. What have you done to make life better on campus? Have you put your beliefs out “there” for public scrutiny?
Mark does a lot to put his beliefs out there. He’s written thoughtfully and extensively about the LRDP at UCSC as well as other issues. If anyone is interested in scrutinizing his beliefs, Mark does a great job of stating them as well as providing links to evidence. I think that one of his beliefs (and apologies if I’m putting words in your mouth, Mark) is that unfocused, disorganized protest does not do a very good job of bringing public scrutiny to anything.
The comparison of a small, multi-issue protest to the multi-campus (even multi-university) protests lasting weeks and including students, faculty, staff and members of the public at large that eventually lead to UC divestment from South Africa does not seem like a fair comparison. The South Africa divestment movement had specific goals and was well-organized. I don’t think Mark is criticizing protest as a way to motivate change, as the poster above me implies. The critique is far more specific: What is your goal, and what is the path to achieving that goal?
Specific answers to these questions should be defined, available to anyone interested in participating, and clear to anyone who sees the action.
I would argue that frenetic, disorganized action actually does more harm than would be achieved by doing nothing; If you wish to bring public scrutiny to something, make sure that when they look they can clearly see a message. Otherwise, the public becomes desensitized to action in general.
That was really well put Ben.
Tent University had many goals, but it originally wanted to democratize education. It rapidly ballooned to include many many other goals and was violently broken up by campus police. You can’t say that Tent University achieved its goals when it had a ton of things it wanted to do and none of them were to highlight police brutality. Advancing the original agenda of tent state was a failure. Just read the wikipedia page on tent state university and asses how well it pushed and achieved the changes it proposed at UCSC.
The tree sit also had many goals. Yes, one of the goals was a greater public scrutiny of University developments. That goal could be achieved by handing out fliers in downtown Santa Cruz or writing letters to the editor. Hell, handing out fliers underneath the treesit would have helped achieved that goal better, since it is hard to get people to scrutinize the University when they don’t know the goal of the treestters. Usually a treesit will attempt to get concessions from the people attempting to cut the trees down. In that respect, the treesit was a horrible failure. The University just waited for the treesit to lose focus, get off message, and lose the support of the majority of the students.
I don’t really see the current set of protesters having a greater amount of success achieving goals than tent University or the tree sit. Protesting the UC in order to force disinvestment in South Africa is a great example of a successful protest with a clearly defined goal. I’d support the current protests if they had that kind of focus. Perhaps they could protest the UCSC campus to take a specific action