The times, they are a-changing...
Students protesting in the Quad at University of California, Davis
Photo Credit: WagingNonviolence.com
Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.
The tension in the University of California school system has obviously been brewing for some time, but now it's really come to a boiling point. I haven't really written about it here yet--it all feels so far away and hazy from the pointy-toed land of pasta and pizza--but I think now it's really become unavoidable. For those of you who don't know (though most of you do, I'm sure), there have been huge cuts to education funding in California, with resulting student fee increases that have outraged the student public. Protests have been going on since school started, in the form of mass sit-ins, rallies, and over a hundred people have been arrested at Davis alone, not even counting Berkeley or Los Angeles, who have also been very active on the issue.
Add to that the past week's hate crimes--a 'Compton Cookout' during Black History Month/noose hanging in the library at UCSD; a swastika drawn in the middle of the prominent Centennial Walkway and Social Sciences and Humanities Building and on a Jewish student's dorm door/the tagging of the LGBT Resource Center with words like 'fag' and 'gays go to hell' at UCD; the hecklers at UCI--and you have a recipe for high student tension.
So it's a little unfortunate, in a sense, that March 4th was the day of the student fee protests, particularly since rallies/protests in Berkeley have already gotten violent. The plan at Davis was intended to be a peaceful protest: an attempt for students to gather and block all of the I-80, with signs and chants declaring their purpose.
I have to be frank--I haven't been the biggest fan of the tactics being used. I almost feel as though some of the outraged students involved have an unnecessary sense of presumption: as if they are taking the mantle left by the children of the '60s and are now the riotous youth of our generation, and as such, of course they must rebel by breaking windows or trashing the homes of prominent administrators instead of lobbying our state government or looking for institutional solutions. With the romanticized idea of hippies and activists (not intended to be offensive, as I consider myself an activist as well--just one more prone to work through the system instead of against it), a lot of my peers seem to think that the best way to solve the issues that we face is by using attention-grabbing, and sometimes controversial, tactics. Oftentimes the tactics used hurt the cause they initially intended to support. For example: earlier today, all the fire alarms were pulled in every building on the UC Davis campus, effectively circumventing the very thing that students are paying money for--their classes. The same thing has also happened at Berkeley (which, given its reputation, is unsurprising: simply going to Berkeley gives some students a misplaced sense of being an 'activist' just because of its history of student activism, i.e. 'I don't need to sign that petition, I go to Berkeley, I'm already an activist'. Reality check: you're not an activist just because you study at a school where activists once studied. You're an activist if you actually do something to aide the causes you believe in. /rant).
It doesn't quite make sense to me that these things should be done: why on earth, if we are paying tens of thousands of dollars to study at these institutions, would we then waste our precious classtime? Or, even worse, force our peers to waste their precious classtime? By all means, protest--sit in the Administrative Building after hours to get media hits, march through campus with signs and chants--but don't, for god's sake, advocate hypocrisy. I believe 100% in your cause--how could I not? But I dislike what you do to try to get your point across.
Police and protesters clash. Photo Credit: California Aggie
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.
What is occuring today is a tactic that I don't know how I feel about. While I think it's incredible that they have enough people there to legitimately block the I-80, and while I think it is great that people are active and not apathetic about an issue that affects our lives so much, I also think that the I-80 doesn't really have anything to do with the issue at hand, and neither do the people who are being blocked by the students. It seems, a little bit, like punishing the innocent. Either way though, I understand the need for media attention: what is the point of protesting if no one listens to the words you say?
But, tangents! When I set out to write this post I had intended to write about the police's response to this event, not the students' decision to do it. In response to the disruption, California Highway Patrol has begun to beat, taze, and tear gas the protesters there. I am simultaneously horrified, a little sad, and a tiny bit wishing I was there to see it (not in a morbid sense--in the sense that this is a pretty historic event in our lives as students, and I wish I could be there with my peers). I really do feel like this is a huge moment for us, with 'us' being UC students in general, not specifically the protestors or UCD students. I wrote earlier of a sense of presumption displayed by protesters in regards to this movement, and this is one of those moments where I can feel that same presumption.
After all, look at my peers: they are out there fighting for their education during a time where some students go to public school for free, gratis thanks to their governments (and the taxpayers, of course, but being fiscally liberal I really don't have an issue with that). Yes, their tactics may at times not be the best or the most effective. Yes, sometimes they can be extremist and even exclude other students in their attempt to help them. They can be belligerent, stubborn, blinded, presumptuous, haughty, human. But they are out there, doing things to change a situation they find apalling. In some senses, our movement (and I use 'our' loosely because, though I am a student and support the concerns, I'm obviously unable to actually organize and participate) is a little bit like that of our predecessors.
Violence does strange things to perception. Would I feel this way if the protesters had done what they intended to do, and then left eventually, no harm come to them, easy as you go? Probably not. There is a feeling that brutality in response to an event makes it somehow more commendable, especially if the motivation for the event was a good one, ignoring the actual execution of the action.
It makes me a little wistful, though--here I am in Rome, missing the tumultous, explosive events occuring in my very own tiny cozy cow-filled home. Ma! Che sono dicendo? Again, as in my last post, there I go with the spoiled brat act...I should be thankful, I am in Rome. So I will end this long, long post with the hope that if any of my friends are out at the protest today (and I am sure some of them are), they are safe and unharmed. Also, I invite anyone who has suffered through this long rant to comment with their own opinions of what's been going on over in California.
And I'll now go to bed so that I can wake up bright and early to visit the Vatican Gardens. Ciao, belli...
Edit to add:
click here for a video on the rally/protest yesterday