#occupyberkeley

[itsapunnyworld-blog]

I've posted up new footage from Occupy the Farm on Youtube. This is a pretty cool speech I filmed by the Vice President of United Native Americans, Quanah Parker Brightman during a post-raid convergence on May 9th, 2012. About 100 or so protestors marched from the North Berkeley BART station to the Gill Tract in response to the UC sending police officers shut down some of the gates on the Tract. Enjoy!

[itsapunnyworld-blog]

Occupy the Farm - Berkeley - 4/22/2012 (Earth Day)

Here's a little taste of what 300 community members can accomplish within a couple of hours. "Today we are reclaiming this land to grow healthy food to sustain our East Bay communities. We envision a future of food sovereignty, in which farming is accessible and familiar part of urban life, in which available land is used for sustainable agriculture to meet local needs. We're starting with the Gill Tract because: * These are the last five acres of Class 1 soil in the East Bay. 90% of the original land has been paved over and developed, contaminating the land for generations to come. * Students, professors, and community have been fighting for decades to save this amazing land from development, and use it for sustainable urban agriculture. * UCB Capital Projects currently holds this land and has slated it for rezoning and development in 2012 [aka Whole Foods will destroy it] * Meanwhile, the university is using the undeveloped land for genetic research which could be conducted in numerous other university-owned locations. * The Gill Tract is a unique, last-of-its-kind resource for sustainable urban agriculture food production, research, and education." I'm working on a video compilation of the day of action. Stay tuned...

[soapboxderby]

Visit Original Link

Bo Laanan of the Occupy Berkeley movement joined us on Soapbox Derby to discuss the eviction of campers at Civic Center Park on December 22, 2011, as well as the future of the movement in the coming year. Occupy Wall St. West - Cracking the Corporate Piggy Bank Friday, January 20th, 2012 Justin Herman Plaza, San Francisco http://www.occupywallstwest.org Links: http://www.occupyberkeley.org facebook.com/occupyberkeley

[proclus]

occupyberkeley

[isthiswhatdemocracylookslik-blog]

Police brutality at Occupy Berkeley 1:10am 12.22.11

[jonathanamato-blog]

The inventor of pepper spray says that Police are abusing their power and pepper spray was never meant to be sprayed on people who weren't a harm to the public or officers.

[occupycali]

"November 28th – In solidarity with UC Davis , UC Berkeley, CUNY Schools and all students who are defending their right to protest against rising tuition cost and out of control student debt. We ask you to STRIKE! No work, no school – please join together in a central area of your choosing and stand up against the VIOLENCE and SUPPRESSION that is happening in our schools.

Please abide by the Pledge of Non-Violence to Participate in the Student Strike:

We are an open, participatory, democratic, horizontal, peaceful, and nonviolent movement.

We are not a leaderless movement, we are a movement of leaders.

As a nonviolent movement, we have agreed to refrain from violence against any person, from carrying weapons, and from destruction of property.

We reject violence, including property destruction, because we recognize that it undermines popular support and discourages the broadest possible participation among the 99%.

We believe nonviolence promotes unity, strength of message, and an environment in which everyone’s voice might be heard.

We affirm that it is the personal responsibility of every individual participant in our movement to promote and maintain nonviolent discipline and to intervene to prevent violent action by anyone in our movement."~OccupyColleges (http://occupycolleges.org/all-student-general-strike-november-28-2011-2/) There is a running list of over 50 colleges that will be participating in this general strike tomorrow. #Solidarity

[theamericanbear]

After a police assault on non-violent student protesters — whose only arms were the ones they interlocked — Robert Birgeneau, the chancellor at Berkeley, issued a statement saying:

It is unfortunate that some protesters chose to obstruct the police by linking arms and forming a human chain to prevent the police from gaining access to the tents. This is not non-violent civil disobedience. By contrast, some of the protesters chose to be arrested peacefully; they were told to leave their tents, informed that they would be arrested if they did not, and indicated their intention to be arrested. They did not resist arrest or try physically to obstruct the police officers’ efforts to remove the tent. These protesters were acting in the tradition of peaceful civil disobedience, and we honor them.

What Birgeneau objects to is resistance in any form and interlocking arms in defiance of an advancing line of police is indeed an act of resistance.

But more than that, it is an act of solidarity and nothing threatens institutional power more than unity among ordinary people.

When burly police officers thrust night sticks into the chests of young students, this is not simply what is euphemistically called a “show of force,” but instead seems to be a display of “forward panic.”

In the kind of police violence that sociologist Randall Collins has dubbed forward panic, a cauldron of pent up tension suddenly erupts. Among Collins’ insights is that because people (including police and soldiers) universally have high-threshold inhibitions that restrain them from becoming violent, when those inhibitions suddenly fall away, the targets of violence will most often be those who are perceived as weak, unwilling or incapable of hitting back. Fear targets the easiest opponent.

This is the micro-social context in which the police lash out, but at the same time there is a broader context that fuels the fear of those who have been invested with the power of the state.

In the face of mass resistance, the primary line of defense for the police is not their weapons or shields — it is an idea already under challenge: that the state is more powerful than the people. And once the fault-lines in that idea have been exposed, the power equation is in jeopardy of suddenly being reversed.

Read more →