On Police Brutality

I've been fielding a lot of backlash rhetoric over the protests on March 4th. I had expected as much. I can understand why the students not participating in the protests would be pissed about facing blocked roads, late buses, and canceled classes. I fully expect that most people don't know enough about the history of social movements in America to accept that disruption is a necessary part of protest, especially when you're dealing with fighting a structural problem. I understand, too, that images of students facing police officers isn't one that will get most of the general public behind the cause. But the general public has never been behind any campaign for social justice, really-- Whether we're talking about women's rights, civil rights, or workers' rights, activists who ended up on the right side of history were in the minority during their day, and faced backlash from their peers as well. Still, even knowing that I can only convince so many people of the merits of direct action, I'm still going to try.

So the first line of rhetoric I want to combat is the notion that protestors are misdirecting their anger by confronting law enforcement officers, and that the police are just "doing their job" when they beat the crap out of unarmed students and shoot rubber bullets at them.

To be clear, I'm not one to condone strategies like blocking freeways. That's a risky and dangerous move, and one that's not going to make a whole lot of sense to too many people. As a citizen, I am also exceedingly law-abiding, and hesitate to even jay-walk most of the time. But I do see confrontations with law enforcement as a necessary part of insisting on structural change. A friend of mine, who's also a professor at my university and a leader in these demonstrations, wrote a really great note on Facebook that explains why. I'm reposting it here.

Spring and All (on 7:06 of the Aggie TV video, the question of police brutality, and conditions of possibility)

by: Nathan Brown

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=346915612345&ref=mf

A friend in the Aggie TV video linked above (one of the most lucid and committed actors at UCD this year) says that by blocking the freeway, the cops are just doing their jobs. She is exactly right. That is the structural situation.

But what does this mean?

A sequence: with March 4 approaching, structural antagonisms seem to contribute to the eruption of a series of hate crimes across the UC. The LGBTRC at UC Davis is vandalized. Anger at these crimes builds along with anger at the exclusionary logic of the UC budget cuts. On March 4 one of the most active staff members at the LGBTRC, Laura Mitchell, plays an important role in protest actions (as she has in past actions). The cops apparently target her for arrest. At 7:06-7:07 of this video, while she is already lying on the ground after having been clubbed, punched, and kicked, one of them deliberately reaches for her head and smashes it against the pavement, hard.

Obviously this is totally unacceptable. Obviously the officer in question should be identified and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But the paradox of state power is that the fullest extent of the law also includes his action. In all seriousness: this is also the police just doing their jobs. And that recognition should be our starting point in tackling the question of 'police brutality.'

The rhetoric of police brutality is important, because it brings to the fore the university's reliance upon the repressive apparatus of the state to impede collective resistance and to beat individual political actors into submission (though this hasn't worked, in most cases, this year - students and workers HAVE NOT submitted in the face of police intimidation and violence).

But police brutality needs to be recognized as the rule, not the exception. Any determined and principled resistance to violence, intimidation, exclusion, and oppression (whether those operate through the exclusionary logic of the university, or elsewhere) will be met with more of the same - intensified to an unbearable degree, as at 7:06 of this video. Smashing someone's head into the pavement the moment they resist is STANDARD PROCEDURE.

This doesn't mean the students should do anything they can to avoid confronting the police, as the liberal faculty of SAVE, for example, seem to think. It means that - insofar as one wants to force genuine structural change - there is no avoiding the constitutive entanglement of university policy with the brutality of the state. And that entanglement has emerged clearly, over the course of the year, as the necessary site of resistance. The capacity of the police to repress the struggle to transform the university - and to repress the passage of that struggle beyond the university - cannot be accepted as an unalterable fact. It has become increasingly obvious that the capacity of the movement, in its various manifestations, to press through police repression, is the condition of possibility for any real transformation of the university and the structures in which it is embedded (and reproduces).

That's why I think the moment in this video when students press through the police line and continue forward is the most moving and important thing - the most NECESSARY thing - that has happened all year. And that's why, for me, the incredible courage of everyone in this video, and of their counterparts in Oakland, and of everyone else who fought back on March 4, has become the very substance of Spring.

March 4th Day of Action

This Asian Girl Prof moonlights as a Militant Asian Woman.

Today was a nation-wide Day of Action to protest the defunding of public education. For details on all the various factors behind California's public education crisis, go HERE. For a blog that updates on student activism across the nation, go HERE.

I am, in just about every way, a product of the University of California system. My dad graduated from a UC as a foreign student in the 1970s. I got my BA from a UC, and am currently finishing my PhD at a UC, where I also teach. Many people in my family also claim UCs as their alma maters. So this day was important for me, politically, professionally, and personally.

There were a series of protests going on in the fall, when the UC Regents decided to institute a 32% fee increase for undergraduates. I participated in a lot of them-- I gave speeches at rallies, posed questions to administrators at their town hall meetings (aka bullshit PR stunts), served in an "advisory committee" of sorts that was supposed to dialogue with the Regents (who never showed up because they don't give a shit) and occupied buildings. So when the March 4 Day of Action was called, which would include students and educators from all school systems: UCs, CSUs, community college and K-12 systems, I knew I was going to be there.

At my campus, a group of students headed toward a freeway onramp leading to campus. A barricade of police and CHP officers met us there. The police very quickly resorted to violent tactics: batons, tear gas, rubber bullets. That was my first exposure to tear gas. That's some nasty stuff.

Later we also blocked off a major intersection near campus, which was a gathering that also eventually dispersed. All in all, the protests were fairly peaceful on our campus. (That is, aside from the popo beating the shit out of students.) No one, aside from one woman who was detained at the freeway standoff and later released, was arrested. I'm kind of relieved. I've always been tempted to throw myself to the cause at these things, but I've never felt ready to get myself arrested. Frankly, the idea of spending a night in jail terrifies me. Especially as a small woman of color.

It was awesome seeing some of my students at the protest. For most of them, this was their first protest. I told them that they were bound to learn more from being there than in any class they could attend, including mine. Most of them dispersed once they saw the popo break out the tear gas. But some of them stayed on, even after I told them repeatedly that they should feel free to leave whenever they want. One of them said, "No, I want to stay. This is important." That was pretty awesome. Especially because that kid is kind of a tweaker and I never would have expected he would turn into an activist. But he also told me that he never expected that his college experience would turn out like this.

There are plans for more actions tomorrow. I hope the momentum continues. I've been googling for coverage about what happened nationwide, and have been amazed at how many campuses got themselves organized today. Here's hoping for the start of a revolution. March FORTH!