Monday, November 7, 2011

The Occupy Movement is Coming Home to UC Berkeley « Student Activism #ows

The Occupy Movement is Coming Home to UC Berkeley « Student Activism:

The Occupy Movement is Coming Home to UC Berkeley

This fall’s wave of “Occupy” actions centered on the Occupy Wall Street encampment in NYC has drawn on many recent movements for inspiration, from the Arab Spring to the mass uprisings of Greece and Spain to the last few years’ campus occupations and street protests in Britain and the occupation of the Wisconsin state capitol in Madison.

But to anyone who has been focused on American student organizing in the recent past, “Occupy ________” has until recently meant one thing above all: California.

Since the fall of 2009, student activists in the University of California and Cal State systems have staged dozens of demonstrations and actions, many of them culminating in occupations of campus buildings. Well over two hundred students have been arrested.

The OccupyCA movement has evolved over time, and has tended to differ in some significant ways from its