Day of Action protests on campus result in 17 arrests

March 3, 2011 11:00 am by Lance Knobel

Protests as part of a national Day of Action yesterday on the campus of University of California Berkeley resulted in 17 arrests late last night. The Day of Action was organized as a protest against cuts to education. Yesterday’s protests, gathering at most 200 students, were considerably smaller than in previous years.

The 17 had entered Wheeler Hall as part of the protest and remained in the building, sitting in a circle with their arms linked, following the 10 p.m. closing time. All 17 were arrested and charged with refusing to leave a building after closing hours. Three of the 17 were additionally charged with obstructing police officers in the line of duty. The three were named by UC Police as Elizabeth Bamaca, Jason Ozolins, and Michael Veremans.

The video above of an earlier stage of the sit-in in Wheeler Hall just before the arrests was made by UC Berkeley graduate journalism student Jake Schoneker. Schoneker’s other videos of the protests can be found here.

4 Comments

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  • Andrew

    If you want to “take action” then don’t sit around… go to Sacramento and persuade your politicians to balance the budget.

  • Eric Panzer

    Hear, hear! If these protesters want to sit-in somewhere, they should try the headquarters of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association or the California Republican Party.

  • Name Withheld

    Protests don’t seem to do much in America, since the country is too big for the people to organize the way they can in other countries.

    After the largest world-wide protests in the history of the planet to try to stop the invasion of Iraq failed completely, I have little reason to suspect that other protests in America will have much effect.

  • Eric Panzer

    Massive, exhilarating, and well-founded as the Iraq War protests were, even I have to concede that:
    volume level of the opposition != volume of opposition

    Tragically, most people were either complacent or supportive of the war. Right now, I think most students and voters are complacent about cuts to education.