Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building
1301 Clay St, Oakland, CA 94612
USA
1 PM PRESS CONFERENCE in front of the building.
2 PM HEARING in Judge Yvonne Gonzalez-Rogers’ Courtroom.
(bring your ID to get into the building)
Defend Student Protesters’ Free Speech Rights! Stop the Resegregation and Privatization of UC Berkeley!
Defend the Right to Public Higher Education for All!
Fight Police Brutality! A Badge is Not a License to Brutalize and Kill!
UCB student and community protesters have a right to bring the UC Berkeley administration, UC Police, and Alameda County Sheriffs to trial for brutalizing student protesters on UC Berkeley’s campus during the Occupy Wall Street movement!
Demand Judge Yvonne Gonzalez-Rogers rule in favor of an open and public trial, not an individual judicial “summary judgement”!
DETAILS: The Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) will present our case against the UC administrators, UC Berkeley Police (UCPD), and Alameda County Sheriffs Officers (ACSO) responsible for the brutal police riot on peaceful student protesters on November 9, 2011 when students at UC Berkeley tried to set up an encampment in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement. Students protested to oppose income inequality, to defend public education, and to restore affirmative action at UC Berkeley. To this day, the UC administration and the police are defending and justifying their attack. They want to protect their prerogative to repeat this kind of brutal censorship of student political protest when it is aimed at furthering equality and integration.
BAMN has filed a federal lawsuit (Felarca v. Birgeneau) on behalf of 21 student and community activist Plaintiffs against UC Berkeley (UCB) administrators, UCB police and Alameda County Sheriffs for police brutality, false arrests and violation of their free-speech rights. In our lawsuit against UC Berkeley administrators and police, we intend to put the former Chancellor and the top administrators responsible for the attack, together with the police officers and supervisors in charge, on the stand to have to answer, publicly and under cross-examination, for their decisions and actions that led to a police riot on peaceful protesters.
All the evidence uncovered in BAMN’s case shows that the UCB administration were completely responsible for the police violence on Nov 9, 2011 because they were afraid of the movement growing on campus that could unite with the Latina/o and black communities of Oakland and wage winning struggles for public education. The administrator defendants deemed the political speech of the student movement so hostile to the financial and political interests of the university’s private donors and corporate investors that their response to the specter of Oakland uniting with the student movement at UC Berkeley was to have riot police violently suppress and attempt to disperse the demonstration by force.
Thousands of students gathered to defend the tents that had been put up by Occupy Cal from the administration’s efforts to take them down. Videos of baton-wielding police beating students and even some professors, while the protesters held the line and refused to retreat, went viral and gained national media attention.
The UC administration authorized the use of batons against the student protest in violation of its own policies on November 9. Then UCB Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, sanctioned the use of indiscriminate force to terrorize and disperse the second protest action on that day, even as public outrage over the earlier violence was growing. The UCB anti- Occupy policy was so fanatical that students were banned from even walking through the campus with tents,bullhorns or “signage” of which the administration disapproved. People across the country were shocked that police would brutally beat peaceful protesters at UC Berkeley, the historic site and center of the Free Speech Movement of the 1960s.
The UC Berkeley administrator defendants claim they have the exclusive and unfettered right to dictate any and all “time, place, and manner” restrictions on student political speech. To absolutely no one’s surprise, these restrictions are only ever invoked against the most progressive and popular student political speech – against the fee hikes, against privatization, against the increasing racism, sexism, and inequality at UC Berkeley and in this society.
Chancellor Birgeneau made clear that the decision to suppress Occupy on the campus and to shut down the movement was also fueled by fear of the campus being “taken over” by “outside anarchists” on to the campus. Other members of the Chancellor’s “Crisis Management Team,” in charge of formulating the policing policies for the day, referred to their fears of “intransigents” coming to the campus. The term “non-affiliates” was also used as code to describe the people and politics they were hostile to and wanted to keep barricaded off from the campus. This was understood among them as code for denying people from Oakland access to the campus. The variety of demagogy against ‘outsiders’ has never had anything to do with protecting the right of students to govern their own campus and fight for their own interests. It’s a defense of elitism, of racism, of discrimination against immigrants, and in end it’s a reflection of the administration’s fear of its own students and their potential to join and lead a national movement. UC Berkeley is the world’s premiere public university because of its history of radical student protest and the gains won and enforced by the student movement. All the hallmarks of a great university – academic freedom, social criticism, honest scientific inquiry, and a dedication to the ideals of democracy, equality and justice – were won by struggles waged on this campus and in our communities.
In contrast to the fear and pessimism of the University, the anger and optimism of the new generation of civil rights and immigrant rights leaders are already propelling our whole society in the direction of freedom and equality. The explosive and militant mass resistance in Ferguson, Baltimore, Oakland and Berkeley show that the status quo is becoming increasingly unviable and volatile. In the Bay Area, BAMN played an active, and at times, crucial leadership role in the Oakland and Berkeley marches to win justice. BAMN is building a movement that can connect our campus with the ongoing struggles of minority, progressive and oppressed people around the world. The growing inequality and polarization in the United States and across the world means no shortage of struggle in the next period of history. Whether these struggles win or lose is a question of leadership – it’s up to us and what we do. Come fill the courtroom for this court case, where the power of the people can make and shift history!
LINKS TO OUR UCPD POLICE BRUTALITY TRIBUNAL:
Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/
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Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration & Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN)