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Thursday, May 24, 2012
Thousands support UC Davis students; Katehi speech fails to move crowd
by deb belt, published on November 21, 2011 at 10:20 PM
Storyline: Sacramento News
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Police were absent from the Occupy UC Davis rally at noon today in the quad as thousands of students and community members united in a show of solidarity with students who were doused with pepper spray by campus police during a nonviolent protest Friday.
Students and faculty both used the rally to call for the resignation of Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi.
Students involved in Friday’s attack took to the mike with accounts of being paralyzed with fear and pain from police brutality. Several students said they were threatened with being shot by the police. Others testified they were pulled from the group, pepper-sprayed and arrested without any care or treatment for the spray that temporarily blinds victims.
The rally was an open forum for calls for nonviolence, relief from rising tuition and change to a system where “the greed of 1 percent is bleeding the economy dry.”
Students of color clearly noted that police violence is nothing new in their community.
One of the most impassioned pleas came from Nathan Brown, an assistant professor in the Department of English who urged the resignation of Katehi.
“The same tactics of obfuscation and back peddling are used every time there is an act of police violence in this country,” he said. “This is no place for an administrator who orders a show of force upon a peaceful protest.”
Nearly 69,000 have signed a petition asking Katehi to resign.
Several members of the English department joined Brown in calling not only for Katehi’s resignation but for all police force ordered off campus unless invited.
Chants of “say it, don’t spray it” and “whose university, our university” among the burgeoning crowd gave way to chants of “let her speak.”
Katehi took the stage and students were silent for the second time since her “walk of shame” from campus on Saturday
Friday
. Videos of the pepper-spray incident and Katehi’s walk went viral.
“I am here to apologize,” she said. “I feel horrible. I don’t want to be the chancellor of the university we had on Friday.” In a speech lacking the passion and sizzling rhetoric of previous speakers, Katehi told the crowd it was her responsibility to earn their trust. The crowd did not respond to her words.
Students from UCLA, UC Berkeley and the Occupy Oakland Movement also spoke in support. They noted police violence recently used in Oakland and Berkeley.
“We affect change through whatever channel is available, said one student. “New York has Wall Street; we have this university. Do not underestimate the power this university has and that we have to change the system while the world is watching.”
See more photos at Rik Keller Photography
Editor's Note: Corrections have been made to this article after publication.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6xrMZwnS-o
Worth watching... subscribe if you like it.
http://www.youtube.com/user/MrParkerEast
every student who attend that institution.
By the way, the officer in question, Lt. Pike, gets paid $100,000 a year to perform these difficult duties.
The reasons are spelled out specifically in the article. Where is the campaign to oust Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau of UC Berkeley? Telling, I think.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGagKL_tvS8
As shown in this video the police have been surrounded and protesters demanded the police release people that were arrested after assaulting officers sent to take down tents. The protesters clearly chant the officers will be allowed to leave after they release their arrestees.
If anyone wants to have an honest dialog about what occurred there, then the entire incident must be disclosed, not the the officers using pepper spray.