Occupy UC Davis readies for ‘long road’ ahead
The Occupy UC Davis encampment may shrink this week, but protesters won’t be pulling up stakes altogether.
At a general assembly held Sunday, protesters voted to take down some group structures, like a kitchen tent. It will be left to each person camping on the Quad to decide whether to pack up by the end of finals week on Friday.
A handful plan to stay through the holidays to keep watch over a large geodesic dome and “hold the space,” senior Willie Roberts said Monday.
“The people who have been taking care of food and logistics wanted to go home and spend some time with their families,” he said.
Roberts said the smaller size of the camp shouldn’t be taken as a sign of diminishing commitment.
“This is a long road. We’ve gotten a running start, but it’s going to take a certain amount of patience,” he said.
Last week, about 100 tents flapped in strong winds. The number of protesters, however, dwindled somewhat as students readied for fall-quarter final exams.
Roberts said protesters plan to conduct a series of open meetings around the time UCD’s winter quarter begins on Jan. 6. Classes resume Jan. 9.
Their goal, Roberts said, is to make “a diverse student body feel that it’s their campus and that they’re taking their education into their own hands.”
A handful of protesters also are occupying Dutton Hall, where financial aid offices are located. They set up inside Nov. 28, the day of a general strike and a UC Board of Regents meeting, vowing to remain until Dec. 12.
At a special meeting of the Davis division of the UC Academic Senate, held Friday, Chancellor Linda Katehi said her administration is taking its dealings with protesters day by day.
She had been speaking with deans about the encampment and hoped to bring faculty into the discussion, she said.
“We’ll see how it goes through the holidays, because a lot of the students will go home and may not come back to it,” Katehi said. “If they come back to it and they want to stay there, I think we as a community need to ask the questions: Do we feel comfortable having the encampment there?
“If the answer is ‘yes,’ then we may have to define the conditions under which we would like our students to stay there. If the answer is ‘no,’ we will also have to discuss what that means. We are trying to just monitor it and make sure our students are safe.”
Protesters have continued holding teach-ins and group meetings. They have passed, among other things, a vote of no confidence in Katehi.
They also have voted to break any ties with the Democratic Party, in part because Democratic mayors and others have played a role in crackdowns at other Occupy camps around the country.
The protesters, most of them students, are opposing record-high tuition and UC’s shift from state to private support. The cost will push college beyond the reach of more Californians, they say, and leave others buried under student loan debt.
Those complaints dovetail with the broader messages of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which decries the consolidation of money and power into the hands of fewer Americans.
After Nov. 9, when UC Berkeley police used batons on student and faculty protesters on that campus, use of force shot up the Davis protesters’ list of grievances.
Then, on Nov. 17, Occupy UC Davis set up camp on the Quad. The campus let the protesters remain for a night, in violation of a ban on overnight camping, then, citing health and safety concerns, sent police in to clear the camp the following afternoon.
Amateur videos of the police arrest and pepper-spraying of protesters, who sat down before police and locked arms, went viral in hours.
On Nov. 21, as many as 5,000 people joined in a rally on the Quad.
That night, protesters rebuilt their camp. They have remained there ever since.
— Reach Cory Golden at cgolden@davisenterprise.net or (530) 747-8046. Follow him on Twitter at @cory_golden
Short URL: http://www.davisenterprise.com/?p=112960
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Posted by Cory Golden
on Dec 5 2011.
Last Login: Wed 22 Feb 2012 01:49:41 PM PST
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