« Occupy Cal » : affrontement à Berkeley – 15 novembre 2011

U.C. Berkeley Chancellor Sends in Riot Police to Batter Students

counterpunch.org

NOVEMBER 15, 2011

by MICHAEL LEVIEN

Berkeley

The word ‘clash’ is often deployed in media coverage of protests that result in violence. Thus, the Thursday headline of U.C. Berkeley’s Daily Californian read: ‘Protesters, Police Violently Clash.’ The San FranciscoChronicle’s coverage at least specified the subject of the verb: “authorities twice clashed with protesters.” However, the word is still entirely inappropriate for describing the events that took place Wednesday on the U.C. Berkeley campus. It implies an ambiguity about the directionality of violence that was entirely lacking in the day’s events. The truth, which has been partially captured on video, is that with the authorization of U.C. Berkeley administrators, riot police brutally beat entirely non-violent student protesters.

To set the stage, hundreds of students had come out to Sproul Plaza—where the Free Speech Movement began—to protest proposed fee hikes of 81 per cent that would bring U.C. tuition from $13,000 to over $22,000. The argument of the students was simple: the banks caused the financial crisis, the financial crisis caused the budget crisis, and therefore the banks, not students, should pay for it. Instead of balancing the budget on the backs of students by raising tuition and making public education inaccessible to working and middle-class students, the state should tax the banks, corporations and the top 1 per cent of income-earners to refund public education. Read more…

MICHAEL LEVIEN is a graduate student in Sociology at U.C. Berkeley.