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Monday, September 12, 2011

Day 1, Sept 22 « occupy california

Day 1, Sept 22 « occupy california:

Day 1, Sept 22

from reclaimUC:

Day 1

September 22, 12 pm

Sproul Plaza [at UC Berkeley]

Resistance at UC campuses and other schools in California has certainly diminished since the powerful events of the 2009-2010 school year – its strikes, its occupations, its stand-offs with police. Emboldened by this fact, the UC administration have begun a fresh round of assaults – piling on thousands of dollars of fees, laying off thousands of workers, and signaling that they intend to continue with more of the same over the coming year.

We need to regain the ground of 2009 and 2010. But we’ll need to do more than that if we want to begin to win. We need to surpass those occasional days, and bring the university to a grinding halt for as long as it takes. As one text from 2009 put it – “We need to push the university struggle to its limits.”

These are remarkable times. From Greece to Chile, from Britain to Spain, government austerity measures provoke some of the most profound militancy in over a generation. And in each one of these cases, students and