I usually don't post personal experiences like this on my blog, but I felt that this was necessary...
Thursday November 18, on the UC DAVIS main quad area where many students gather peacefully to talk and eat lunch and just generally hang out, was turned into Occupy UC Davis. At 3 o'clock, at the center of the quad around 70-80 UC Davis students put up 30 tents to occupy public space. By our rights as students and Americans we have the right to assemble, but putting up tents supposedly disrupted the daily activities of the public University. We made it through the night with the police watching vigilantly from all sides, but did not intervene due to a request from chancellor Katehi. We all awoke to a cold early morning and left our tents and did our daily business. Occupy UC Davis then held a general assembly at 12:00 noon to discuss future action. We were given an ultimatum to leave the quad at 3:00 o'clock. As most of the tents remained present even after the 3 o'clock deadline the atmosphere began to become unnerving. We were addressed by the chief of police of UC Davis to please vacate the area or be subject to arrest. Almost all stayed and held their ground. As 30 to 35 riot police armed with batons, pepper spray, and rubber bullet guns (and guns) started to march towards us, we took the majority of our tents threw them in a circle and surrounded them in solidarity with arms linked. The riot police began to approach our circle and showed the intention to arrest. As the circle began to chant "WHO'S UNIVERSITY, OUR UNIVERSITY" "WE ARE THE 99% and SO ARE YOU" it drew and motivated many other students to join in the cause. As the police began to rip through the human chain and disassemble and rip apart the tents in the middle of the circle, a new circle formed around the police and we the students began to chant "LET THEM GO" in hope to free the already arrested. The riot police at this point had no place to turn and with all the students chanting (peacefully) began to feel uncomfortable at the least. The main pathway to their paddy wagons and police squad cars had been blocked with a human chain. The police first threatened them to move to the side or they will be shot with rubber bullets, but then resorted to threaten us with pepper spray. Us the students taking up the main path of the police to get back to their vehicles then were pepper sprayed in the face with three big swipes!!! Fortunately, for me personally I was not shot directly in the face with pepper spray, but did catch the drift of it, which made me cough horrendously. Unfortunately, for many of my friends and comrades this was not the case and got direct shots of it... After this happened, the police made a dent in the human chain and began to move out of the circle. Students began to chant "SHAME ON YOU" and "WE ARE DOING THIS FOR YOUR CHILDREN"... As more and more students began to realize that this was a student cause and not just a bunch of crazy people camping on the quad of UC DAVIS they joined our cause with force and we had huge numbers chanting, "WHO'S UNIVERSITY? OUR UNIVERSITY!" Slowly the angered students began to chant and push the police out of the quad and recapture the space that is publicly ours!!! Eventually the police receded and the student body reclaimed the campus... 12 NOON on the Quad on Monday will be the beginning of a new Occupy UC DAVIS... It should be interesting!
Please watch the two links I will post here...
The first from CBS Sacrmento which is located towards the bottom of the page, just press play... : http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2011/11/18/officers-arresting-occupy-protesters-at-uc-davis/
The second from youtube of one of the students recording what had happened: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmJmmnMkuEM&feature=related
This was an unfortunate event, hopefully this will help people realize the uneasiness we carry as students on a daily basis...
1 comment:
Hey Lonny. I'm so sorry that you have had to endure this kind of police brutality! We are also occupying here in Honolulu (deoccupyhonolulu.org), and although we have yet to be physically attacked, 8 of us were arrested on the first night, and we are facing eviction, and being constantly subjected to a culture of fear created by the military and police presence here in Honolulu, especially with the APEC meetings we had here last week. Let me know what we can do here in solidarity with UC Davis!
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