A Series of Tubes

So I had written up about 90% of a post about the rumblings happening on various blogs about another potential occupation.  The main evidence for this is the posting of a new manifesto entitled “this is our emergency“.  I had to scrap a majority of my original post because the rumblings of a new occupation are no longer rumblings, they are a reality.  Recently the UC regents approved a massive student fee increase.  There were large protests blocking traffic to the University yesterday.  After a day of protests, a portion of the protesters decided to occupy the Kresge town hall.

The main entrance to campus (with this and the west entrance blocked, no traffic can enter or leave campus)

A meeting at the Kresge town hall after the initial protests

Before addressing the new manifesto and the New occupation, I would like to point out briefly some other recent events.  At UCSC there was a semi occupation of the Science Library that started on Friday the 13th.  I’m not 100% sure when it ended, but I didn’t see much if any of it still there on Monday.  I call it a semi occupation because there are apparently library staff participating and University officials retained control of the doors.  Postings regarding this action can be found here:

http://thenewuc.wordpress.com/

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/11/14/18628646.php

Being unsure of the specifics of the Science library occupation I cannot comment with any detail beyond what is posted by others.  I do, however, want to pour over the latest manifesto by the occupiers entitled “occupation: a do-it-yourself guide“.  This is a blueprint as well as a philosophical justification for occupying buildings

The Manifest gets going under the heading Why Occupy? First it tells the reader what other actions have been attempted, and how they have failed to achieve their goals.  Specifically:

-The strike on September the 24th had a picket line that did not block traffic.  Although not stated in the manifesto, the strike failed to achieve a rollback of budget cuts or a decrease in student fees.

-Berkeley protests saw their supporters dwindle after each successive meeting

- Activists interrupted a regent’s board meeting, were removed by the police, and nothing changed as a result of this action

These three actions failed to net any positive change, and are identified as failures in the manifesto.  This self criticism and analysis is a bit of a departure from the original manifesto which was essentially a rehashing of old communist pamphlets.  The part I was most impressed with was the following:

“No decision making body has the power to give us what we want…The deans and chancellors making the cuts are subordinate to the UC president.  The UC president is subordinate to the Board of Regents.  The Board of Regents gets its funding from the legislature.  And the hands of the legislature are tied by the California constitution, which require a two-thirds majority to raise taxes.”

This is the ugly truth of the situation.  Of course they left out the fact that everyone in the chain from the Regents down is an appointee, with the governor appointing the Regents to 12 year terms (that’s some serious job security).  The people in decision making positions are so removed from any sort of oversight or democratic process that it is far more common for those in charge of the UC to make self enriching decisions instead of decisions that are in the best interest of the UC.  This naturally breeds a lack of confidence in the leadership of the UC system.

So considering that I have been disappointed with the previous manifesto for its vague nature and a thinly veiled attempt to spur some sort of communist revolution, this well thought out argument and description of the problems facing the UC took me by surprise.  Of course it didn’t take very long for the manifesto to loose my support.

Since the manifesto begins with a rejection of other forms of protest due to their inability to net any sort of positive result, I assumed that the manifesto would lay out some sort of plan with which an occupation, unlike other strategies, would net a positive result.  Unfortunately there is no plan.  In the manifesto the author writes “It is simply because we are at the University, we have occupied a building and we begin with what we know.”  After this quote is a list of successful occupations in Mexico, Latin America, France, Chicago, and South Korea.  How an occupation will overcome the difficulty in obtaining a positive outcome, as described in the beginning of the manifesto, is not addressed.  If a rally or a negotiator will not accomplish anything, how will an occupation be any different?  This is the unanswered question that lies at the heart of the problem the UC system faces.  The line from an occupation to a reversal of fee increases is actually made less clear after reading the manifesto since the beginning lays out problems that the middle fails to address.  The end of the manifesto talks about how to block doors and doesn’t touch on the philosophical underpinnings of the occupation.

The current occupation at UCSC is at the Kresge town hall.  I think the Kresge town hall is sort of a community room for kresge college, which is stereotypically the hippie college.  Essentially the occupation is a gathering of like minded people in a supportive college in a  room that doesn’t hold classes.  The occupiers could possibly have even filled out some forms to use the room through the college, but then it would be a University event instead of an occupation.  Basically this is one of the least confrontational rooms to occupy since it is not an administration building or a building used by graduate students.  My expectation is that the University will ignore this new occupation in a manner similar to the treesit.  The Kresge town hall is tucked off into the corner of the University (the campus map describes its location as “The Kresge Town Hall is located in the northwest corner of the campus“).  A person would have a hard time finding the occupation if they didn’t already know the general location of it.  My guess is that eventually the number of students at the occupation will thin out and then, during an academic break, the University will clear out the occupation.

Essentially the occupation is at the raising awareness stage.  We’ll see if it gets past it.