“I know what I am doing. I’ve been in law enforcement for twenty-nine years, and how many years have you done it?”
   These are the arrogant mutterings of someone who needs to seek regular employment.  Who hired this bird, when, and for how much a year?  I have not forgotten the last UCPD ‘sex-porn and breaking and entering scandal’ at the Moffit Library by on duty UCPD officers.  Doesn’t sound like anything has changed there or further upstream in all of this time.  

“Join those of us who are pledging to put our bodies with, or in between
the U.C. Police and the students to discourage U.C. Police from further
violence. Please email Alejandro Soto-Vigil if you are willing to make
this pledge at asoto-vigil@cityofberkeley.info”

Is Kris Worthington going to participate? Awesome!

video of the UCPD in action on 9 Nov, a must see: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=buovLQ9qyWQ 

“I think most people would consider that to be “provocation.” Provocation for assault? No, I don’t think most people would consider blocking access to tents to be provocation for physical assault in response.

http://www.dailycal.org/2011/11/12/police-use-of-force-draws-nationwide-condemnation/

For UC Berkeley graduate student Alex Barnard, the most
disempowering moment of Wednesday night was not when he was repeatedly
hit with a police baton, cracking one of his ribs. Instead, the most
disturbing moment of his experience came afterward, when he says an
officer told him he had “no rights.” [... more at link]

tweedle-dee and tweedle-dumb of berkeleyside .. c’mon guys, get a life.

“A few boo boos and nasty looks from the cops”

You obviously have not watched the video carefully.  The worst violence is around 0:50, where a student has been separated from the rest of the group and fallen to the ground, and two or three police officers repeatedly batter him while he is down.  I don’t think you would dismiss your own “boo boos” if you were speared in the spleen or stomach, like many students, or if you were beaten while you were down, like one student.

You obviously also do not care about how much increased tuition has reduced the opportunities of low-and-moderate income students.  You criticize UC students because they can afford the high tuition, and you ignore those who are qualified to go to UC but are not there because they cannot afford the high tuition.  If you have such contempt for students who can afford UC’s tuition, then you should join these protests and help try to lower tuition.

You obviously also are the last person who is qualified to comment on the “legacy of civil disobedience.”

I wonder if you criticize the Koch brother for being obscenely wealthy as adamantly as you criticize these UC students for being middle class.

How about you do something about those damned helicopters and deal with the business of the city rather than the university.

wonderful intelligent commentary ST.  agree or disagree with them, I don’t think you could characterize either one as tweedle-dee or tweedle-dumb.  aside from a love of scatology, you haven’t exactly distinguished yourself here.

Isn’t there a noise ordinance [to apply to helicopters].

The city lacks jurisdiction.

I’ve mailed my council man, who is Kriss. I’m tired of Berkeley feeling like a war zone every time an event happens on campus.

This is a letter from a grad student Cal describing police violence against well respected and beloved professors Robert Hass, Celeste Langan, and Geoffrey O’Brien:Letter to friends and family regarding the recent police violence at UC Berkeley
by Irene Yoon on Saturday, November 12, 2011 at 1:02pmDear friends and family, As I’m sure many of you have heard by now, this past week at UC Berkeley, several thousand students, faculty, and employees of the university came together to protest a proposed 81% tuition hike, increased privatization of the UC system, and the troubling conflicts of interest demonstrated by Board of Regents members’ private business interests and their responsibilities to advocate on behalf of the UC community with the State government. While, for example, the governing body of the UC Regents (publicly appointed officials of the State of California) and campus administration have decided that the burden of making up losses in the budget crisis should fall heavily on students through rapidly rising tuition (the current figure is already triple what it was ten years ago) and on members of faculty and staff who’ve received reductions in pay and increased workloads–or have been laid off entirely, the current Regents have invested at least $1.5 billion of the UC’s money in projects in which many of them personally hold significant stakes and, of course, also authorized $3 million in bonuses to top administrators last year alone. These are some of the reasons why so many people (myself included) gathered together on Wednesday to stand in peaceful protest in front of Sproul Hall. In addition to organizing numerous teach-ins, a rally, march, and campus-wide walkout, students also hoped to set up a two-day encampment in the spirit of the other Occupy movements around the country to create a public forum for discussion and education about the current financial situation of the university and the condition of public education in the country today. All day, the crowd was gathered in explicitly peaceful assembly to petition our government for a redress of grievances. As the university first responded by the early afternoon not with administrators to enter into dialogue but with hundreds of riot police, some students even took the time to recite the first amendment to police and protesters alike.  Whether or not you agree with the reasons for the protests, however, I would hope that you would all at least share my horror at what followed. As hundreds of students linked arms to form a human chain around the one tent they had (the few others they had tried to set up were ripped down and confiscated by the police with no warning earlier in the day), riot police began beating them mercilessly without warning or provocation. Some of you may have seen the following clips already: Here, you can see the police suddenly start to attack the protesters without cause. The young man in the front that they keep beating even after he’s unable to get up is a first-year graduate student in my department named Josh Anderson. He was the first of a number of students that had to be taken to the hospital that day. As you can see from the video, neither he, nor any of the other students being beaten with batons strike back at the police with violence. Instead, you can see him, barely able to stand, gingerly raise a peace sign after being repeatedly struck on the head, neck, ribs, and legs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buovLQ9qyWQ In the following video, the first woman (in pink) that the police drag out of the crowd by her hair is Professor Celeste Langan, a beloved professor of British Romanticism and media studies in my department and director of the UC Townsend Center for the Humanities. As she places herself in front of students, the police approach her with batons. She repeatedly told the police not to beat her but arrest her instead. You can see here that they responded by dragging her out by force and throwing her to the ground. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNHXuf6qJas&feature=player_embedded When the police violence occurred again later that night, they broke the ribs of another English professor, poet Geoffrey O’Brien. When the police wouldn’t stop beating him even after he too had fallen to the ground, a good friend and fellow graduate student, Ben Cullen, rushed in and demanded that they stop. The police, in turn, rained multiple blows on him, bruising his ribs as well. And just in case it’s not clear yet that the violence was not just against ‘some kids looking to make a fuss,’ the police also thought it necessary to jab 70-year-old former Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Hass several times in the stomach with a baton as well. I could go on with more horrifying accounts and recorded footage of the brutality the UCPD and Alameda County Sheriffs inflicted upon my friends, professors, and students, but I will stop here to say that for all the mainstream media coverage after the day’s events alternatively insisted upon UC protesters “violently clashing with police” or the fact that police were forced into “nudging” students with batons– 1) I’ve never been more proud to be a UC Berkeley student seeing the firmness with which every protester held to his or her commitment of nonviolent resistance. More beautifully and successfully perhaps than its Occupy counterpart in Oakland, the Cal protesters responded instead throughout the evening with chants of “Peaceful protest!” and even briefly, “Bubbles not batons!” (Yes, a few of the gathered students started some impromptu bubble-blowing in the crowd around midnight. Got to love them hippy kids, right? But, seriously. I do.) The idea of protesters clashing with police implies violence on both sides. That was absolutely (and to be perfectly honest, given the police’s behavior, quite surprisingly) not the case. 2) As for the AP’s account of police “nudging” students with batons– well, Steven Colbert does a nice job of lampooning what is already patently ridiculous about that here: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/402024/november-10-2011/occupy-u-c–berkeley?xrs=share_fb Hundreds of faculty and graduate student instructors, myself included, have signed the following open letter to UC Chancellor Robert Birgeneau who is responsible for the police response: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/uc_berkeley_teachers_condemn_violence/In addition to making a statement of no confidence in the UC Regents and administration, many of us are also demanding the resignation of Birgeneau and the UCPD Chief of Police, Mitchell Celaya. The ACLU and National Lawyers’ Guild have demanded records of the events from the UCPD and Alameda County Sheriff’s offices. Please consider helping by contacting either Chancellor Birgeneau’s or Chief of Police Celaya’s office to voice your concern, demands, outrage– whatever. More concretely, you can ask for their removal from office, for their compliance with the ACLU and National Lawyers’ Guild’s requests, for Chancellor Birgeneau to make the investigation of excessive violence open to external review (it’s currently being delegated to an in-house board), or, y’know, for the university to stop terrorizing members of the community that both comprise it and whom the UCPD are supposedly there to protect. Parents and loved ones of Cal students– or at least this one!– feel free to call and simply say, “Hey, I’d like you not to beat my child/friend/loved one who is a student at Cal and/or to think it would be okay to do so, please. Thanks.”  Anything you could do to help would be much appreciated. This violence is not only of a physical nature against the students, faculty, and employees of Cal, but also against the very idea and purpose of higher education itself. It cannot be allowed to continue. Their information is below.  Office of the ChancellorEmail: chancellor@berkeley.eduPhone: (510) 642-7464Fax: (510) 643-5499Location & mailing address:200 California Hall, MC#1500University of CaliforniaBerkeley, CA 94720-1500 Chief of Police Email: mjc@berkeley.eduPhone: (510) 642-1133 Much thanks and love,Irene

The Daily Planet reports that the Mario Savio memorial lecture, by Prof. Robert Reich, will be moved to Sproul Plaza Tuesday, at the request of Occupy Cal. 

Let’s see if Birgeneau will order the police to bash one of his own professors – a professor who is better known and more widely respected than Birgeneau himself.  I can just imagine the chancellor’s press release: “For a professor to give a lecture is not non-violent.” 

Warning to Prof. Reich:  Do not link arms with anyone, or the police will consider you violent and will come at you swinging their batons.

“The Mario Savio Memorial Lecture and Young Activist Award Board of
Directors and Robert Reich, the scheduled lecture speaker, have been
asked by the Occupy Cal General Assembly to transfer the event to the
Mario Savio Steps in Sproul Plaza at 8 p.m. Tuesday evening, instead of
holding it inside Pauley Ballroom. …it was
unanimously agreed that we would be violating our mission statement (see
below) to reject the request.”
http://berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2011-11-12/article/38804?headline=Mario-Savio-Memorial-Lecture-on-Tuesday-in-Berkeley-Will-Be-Moved-to-Sproul-Plaza–

You are either 1) truly confused, or 2) someone who derives unseemly sensual pleasure from violence. I hope and pray that it is the former.

Wow, really — a council member lives in another city?  

But that’s not what Councilman Worthington said.
Councilman Worthington said that the action was “unprovoked,” which is a provably false statement.

Even if you agree with his views about the Police action, playing fast and loose with the truth in such a pointless way isn’t a good thing.

A “tweet” from tonight’s raid on Liberty Square (aka Zuccotti park):  “Can we please stop with the ‘what country is this’ comments? Many communities in NYC have been under NYPD attack for years”

Just like the trees at the stadium this protest is on private property…just because it is a U.C. Doesn’t mean it’s public property. Go try to protest or cause trouble at a DMV sometime (state property) you’ll be in handcuffs so quick you won’t know what happened UC cops are doing them a favor letting the protesters exercise their “voices” , keep it clean or take it to the street. There was a reason people’s park was used in the 60′s , but I guess that is too scummy even for the protesters. The whole movement is losing focus and losing support because of their actions…speak with your dollars and boycott the businesses you’re against that means stop being hypocrites and get rid of your smartphones
Last time I checked AT&T & VERIZON ARE BIG BUSSINESS & the Ceo’s are not part of the 99% also the north face tents that the protesters are using comes from a big corperation that manufactures their products at sweatshops in Asia

Berkeley city council spends all their time trying to save the rest of the world and don’t have anytime left to actually do their jobs

…with some fava beans and a nice chianti…

The action was police violence.  It is a provably true statement, based on videos .  Yes.  don’t play fast and loose with the truth.