A Report from the Jan 19 Regents Meeting Protest at UCR

This first hand report is from UC-AFT field rep., John Bruning.  Check "This Week's News" on the left side menu for more media coverage of these events.  I think this was probably the most confrontational we've seen students in a long time, maybe even more than anything down here during the 09/10 year.  

Police showed up in a massive show of force, about 120 police from UCPD, Riverside PD, and Riverside County Sheriffs, who had grenade launchers and other "less-lethal" rifles, which were used on students throughout the day. nts tried to push police lines to get into the building (riot police had EVERY entrance to the building blocked, so that no one could get into the meeting), dragged steel barricades around to block the Regents' vehicles and police lines, surrounded three Regents in their vehicles as they were leaving, and at several points had police surrounded. 

At the very end of the day, even after the Regents had all snuck out (see ://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlkOmRoCMCs), students encountered a police column and chased the police, who beat several students and arrested one for no apparent reason.  The students stood their ground against the police as the police shoved their way through the students to hold their position.  Then students were able to push the police back from two directions up a staircase into a building, all while chanting "Go fight crime!"  One interesting innovation for this meeting was the "Book Bloc", which has been used in Oakland but is new for us here.  Students made shields painted to look like book covers from seminal works, including several Chican@ literature titles that were recently banned by the Tucson School District.  In addition to drawing attention to defunding of the Humanities, they also protected students as seen in the video above.

I think it's worth mentioning again that the UCPD once again used (and mis-used) dangerous weapons against peaceful students.  Today, police shot 4-5 students with pepper ball rounds, which are designed to be shot at chest level, to knock the wind out of the person and cause them to take a deep breath of essentially pepper spray.  Instead, they were shot at students' upper legs, which, aside from the dangerous proximity, caused them to collapse at the feet of police. 

Students handled the situation remarkably well, carrying fallen students out of harm, with medics tending to them.  I helped carry one student out, who had been shot twice in each leg and was screaming in pain.  More students were jabbed and hit with batons.  Guns were casually pointed at students throughout the day, and batons were held menacingly, with one end always pointed out at students, ready to jab them as we saw at UC Berkeley last Fall.  Many of these police have been on the frontlines of past attacks; Officer Kemper from UCI, who pointed his gun at students at the November 2010 Regents meeting at UCSF, was on the front lines of these confrontations, along with a number of UCI and UCLA police who clubbed and tazed students at the November 2009 Regents meeting at UCLA.  Lt. O'Connell from UCLA, who directed the arrest of 14 of my students for camping last November, seemed to be giving orders for police to attack students.

So, once again, the Regents expelled all the students from the meeting following public comment, made their decisions behind lines of riot police, and snuck out of the building to avoid having to make contact with their students and workers.

John