Got this email today from my son who is a student at a University of California campus. He was not at the campus where the protest was, but feels a kinship with them.
Edit: title
Body of email>
http://dmedia.ucsc.edu/~afrojas/TU/To Protect and Serve
This is not a very nice email, so I'm sorry for that,
however a very brutal event occured recently on the
UCSC campus.
You should watch this video, right here in
Californai UCSC. the Wed site is
www.ucsc.tentstate.com. Watch as police choke and
torture peaceful protesters.
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UC Santa Cruz Protesters Tell of Riot Police
Brutality
By Matthew Cardinale
YubaNet.com
Monday 25 April 2005
Over 80 student protesters are reported wounded by
Riot Police and 19 students were arrested, according
to phone interviews with two "Tent University"
organizers at UC Santa Cruz.
"Students had numerous bruises and contusions. And
figures I heard were 20 arrested and 80 wounded. My
girlfriend caught a baton to the chest unprovoked. And
numerous people witnessed a cop go into a frenzy and
basically dive forward into the crowd with a baton and
that's how my girlfriend caught a baton," Indigo
Moonstar, 23, a recent graduate of UCSC, said.
Moonstar is not his real name, but this is the name he
also gave to the Associated Press.
The seemingly pointless arrests and acts of state
violence occurred because of the University's concern
the students were violating the "No Camping
Ordinance."
The students had set up a Tent University to
protest student fee increases as well as the
exploitation of AFSCME service workers. The Tent
University, which was conducted all this week, April
18-22, included workshops on such topics as
environmental sustainability, nonviolent activism,
social justice, politics, and even yoga.
The arrests on Monday, April 18, prevented the
students from holding Tent University at the base of
campus during evening hours for the rest of the week
like they had originally planned, but the daytime
events proceeded without incident.
"For one, that's the most traumatizing thing I've
ever been through in my life," Austin Harless, 21, a
student organizer at UCSC, said. "Myself and others
have been changed. The effects have been extremely
pervasive."
"It's causing a lot of us to question our lives,"
Harless said.
"You have your assumed notions you hold about
freedom and the safety of the community and you see
the police choking your friends, you think, Who can I
call? But the police are the ones who are supposed to
be upholding the peace," Harless explained.
"I think it was atrocious. I think it was pure
fascism," Moonstar said.
"It was a completely unnecessary and inappropriate
response on the part of the University. There's been a
lot of discussion amongst us on what happened and why.
And the conclusion we've come to is it appears to be a
premeditated show of force on the part of the
University administration in response to the recent
resurgence of radical activism on our campus,"
Moonstar said.
"The way it works at UCSC campus is that from 7am
to 8pm, those are the hours of free speech. So we were
allowed to assemble in the field until 8pm," Harless
said.
"We also had two big shade tents in the morning
which were allowed because they are open air shade
structures. People had their own individual tents, but
they didn't put up the tents until after the 4pm
vote," Harless said.
"At 8pm we gathered again. Two administration reps
came in. Jean Marie Scott (Associate Vice Chancellor
of The Colleges and University Housing Services) and
Gail Heit (Associate Vice Chancellor for Student
Affairs)," Harless described. "They said, look, there
will be repercussions. Let's talk about
to] the quarry or camping someplace else. And people
were like, no, we decided earlier," Harless said.
"People started taking out individual tents and
putting up tents. People were playing drums," Harless
said.
"At that point they gathered in a group of
Administrators, and they started gathering and giving
the official order to disperse," Harless said.
"I was standing back and watching Administration
going through the crowd and giving the official order
to disperse, and they'd only talked to about 25% of
the people when a line of police cars rolled up in the
street, at least 8 to 10 of them, vans and stuff too,"
Harless said.
"It's interesting to note the Berkeley Police were
brought in to deal with us," Harless said.
"And there was a Paddy Wagon sitting on our campus
that said Berkeley Police on it, and so they'd been
preparing all day with riot police," Harless said.
"Some of us had police whistles. I ran into the
big tent and said POLICE ARE HERE, and people started
blowing their whistles," Harless recalled.
"In the fervor we said INTO THE NOME, which was
our Big White Tent Structure," Harless said.
"Everyone
ran into the Nome. We had held Nonviolent Direct
Action Training. There were those prepared to civilly
disobey, or lock down, and the rest were to observe on
the side of the tent," Harless said.
"At this point there were maybe 150 of observing
protesters total, plus 80 ready to lock down," Harless
said.
"There were 8 circles in the Nome that were locked
down to each other," Harless said. "We created
circles
where you're gonna sit down and link arms between
people to your right and left and you take your hands
and clasp underneath your legs," he described.
"At that point, the Riot Police moved in and made
a circle around the Nome, about 30 of them. They all
had Plexiglas helmets, shades, and they all had
batons," Harless said.
"There were 150 protesters surrounding the police.
Those police were facing outwards towards the
protester with their backs towards us," Harless said.
"At this point they proceeded to bring in groups
of 4 to 5 police. Including one guy who video filmed
everything," Harless said.
"And 3-4 police with thick gloves on. They would
come in, everyone would be shirking. And the police
with the gloves on would come in and start applying
pressure at people's throats and pressure points
around their jaw and started trying to pull people
upward. So they would do that to get you out of the
circle," Harless said.
"So they would do that and another would try to
break the clasping of your hands. All this, the pain
treatment, is an effort to break you from the circle,"
Harless said.
"A lot of people at that point went limp and
basically laid down on the floor not to be taken out
of the tent. Police would push your hand down trying
to fold it on yourself and twist it behind your back,"
Harless said.
"Our video of this Indymedia] has had 60,000 hits in the last 12 hours.
It's 6 minutes long and shows you everything I'm
talking about," Harless said.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
To learn more about Tent University, readers may
also visit the activists' official website at
www.ucsc.tentstate.com.
Matthew Cardinale is a freelance writer, activist,
and MA candidate at UC Irvine in Sociology. He may be
reached at mcardina@uci.edu.
<end of email
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