continued

Mixed cultural messages: what tents mean to us. What I hear you saying is that to students of color, tents mean displacement, to white kids it means groovy nature. So in some ways this is right and some ways wrong. Yes some of my friends (students of color) tents would mean displacement. The might remind them of some of their early life, living in flimsy temporary housing. Some of my friends that are students of color, the wealthy ones (yeah there is such a thing) tents are cool, cause it represents vacation. I know some white students from working class and poor backrounds, tents mean living out of a car, being homeless, and to some tents are cool (the wealthy ones). So part of what I'm saying is that things don't just easily line up along ethnicity. One side of my family is native american. There is nothing wrong with a tent as a symbol there and there is nothing wrong with the back to nature folksy message in it. Part of my critique of some liberal groups (all ethnicities) is that they have their certain agendas but who fail to see the common ground. Your example of mixed tent messages offers such an opportunity....a teach in about commonalities in a movement and to come up with symbols that can have a universal meaning. The tent IS a good message for symbolizing displacement, and I know a few white students who ARE living on couches or in the forest because they CAN't afford housing at UCSC. AND I think that tents can represent the issue of educational environment, and the environment in general at UCSC and santa cruz. It's not wrong to ask what impact our educational opportunities have. THat's part of the bigger question I think some of us are asking WHOSE UNIVERSITY IS THIS? WHO IS PAYING FOR THE RESEARCH and WHO IS BENEFITTING? WHO is THIS UNIVERSITY SERVING IN the big picture, and not just us with our degrees? I understand how some people might not like the tent as symbol but I want all of us to get away from either or thinking. You still should try and help build a movement because it's in the interest of all students to fight for a STUDENTPOWER movement in whatever final form/symbols (tent U, Students first, justice first===whatever) it takes.

The criticism that the action on Monday night "spoke for all students" and now some groups are rightfully angry makes no sense to me. I've heard this from a friend of mine and we even debated it for 5 hours before we finally decided to end the fight. I don't get this criticism at all. My point from above is that there is NO STUDENT organizing group at UCSC. At least not a single one that speaks for all students. Student government doesn't, the queer student groups don't, the student of color groups don't, the religious groups don't. So since up to now there is not a single group that speaks for "all" students, there shouldn't be direct actions on campus? Is that why someone is angry? I understand that the media reported the protest from a certain angle, a very simplistic angle that gave the wrong impression, the media always does that. But you can't NOT PROTEST just because you're afraid the media is going to get it wrong. Corporate media ALWAYS gets it wrong, that's their job! And what's more, I'd like to say the same thing I said to my friend, that her righteous anger might be better directed to 2 other places. One, to the corporate media who will ALWAYS maginalize any movement seeking a voice and more importantly to the UCSC administration who sent a clear message that if you students don't stay where we tell you to go (i.e. the quarry, the back of the bus, your classes) then we're going to beat or choke the crap out of you. What happened monday night was a clear power play. Get angry that you are old enough to die in Iraq (and lots of people of color and working class Americans are) but unempowered enough that some old administrator can have you beaten if you don't stay in your student place.

To the criticism that : without more sustained organizing and relationship building, and without some diversification of Tent U’s cultural coding, the space was not equally welcoming; it was overdetermined by the mores and manners of a parTo ticular subcultural milieu. I say stop with the crap. Seriously. Most of my friends, at least those of us with good grades (and I'm talking people of color) are on our way to grad school, law school, med school, etc. We are often examples of first educational success in our families. For some of us, we've spent our whole lives fighting the greater predominant culture and society. If you come from a working class backround (white or person of color) there isn't tons of help out there for you. Most of us went to bad schools, we've had to work lots of jobs prior to and during UCSC, we've been often told overtly or not that we're not likely to become a doctor or lawyer etc. You can't not fight simply because there's no welcome mat out from white people. I'm tired of hearing from certain people of color that they won't participate otherwise. How pussy is that? You need an invitation to participate? I don't care if rasta white boy doesn't send me a culturally appropriate message, or that trustafarian white girl thinks she's native american because she dropped acid and went to the moutains and had a visionquest. My whole life has been about being in the minority and if I spent it waiting for culturally appropriate symbols and good vibes from white folks I'd still be working at Burger King. If you think Tent U or any comprehensive student movement or agenda is a stupid idea, fine. But if you see the merits in a student movement and the beginnings are there, then you HAVE to participate and DEMAND your voice be heard.

Why did the cops choke students? I don't care if you NEVER want to participate in Tent U or find its name offensive. There WAS a clear message in what happened on Monday night and if you cant see it you have no right to call yourself a political activist. What happened was territorial pissing. It was the administrators showing us who runs the show. It was a not-to-subtle message to students to stay behind the ropes. If you have had to deal with the University before (and if you read some of the other threads) you know that NOTHING happens without having to deal with a bunch of red tape. UCSC administrators obviously had many meetings over what to do with Tent U and the various scenarios that might play out. The fact that cops were brought in from UCB (and they were the same cops used to quell UCB student protests) should show that this was a clear exercise in showing who was boss. I'm sure that there must have been discussions about at what point might police be called in to arrest and what level of force might be needed. WHO WAS INVOLVED IN THESE MEETINGS? T WHO DECIDED that students in tents needed to be choked? That should be the question every student demands an answer to!

In regards to this point.. ...Monday night was about a bunch of rich white kids facing off with the police for no clearly articulated reason beyond the romanticization of a rarefied radicalism.� Firstly, while Monday’s crowd was predominantly white, there were student of color participants ...particularly students of color whose communities are hurt most by the budget mal-distribution Tent U was meant to protest. On this point, the fact Tent U participants could choose to sit down, link arms, and risk arrest highlights a racialised division between the mostly white kids who have that kind of choice, and the mostly kids of color whose communities are subjected to police violence daily, and are not given the choice to walk away. This racialised division helps explain the ambivalence some student of color activists felt about the arrests and ensuing spectacle. I really really really want to get UN-PC here. But it pisses me off when things get too simplistic. First off, not all students of color are poor. There are a number of students of color in the UC system who come from well-off families. Many of my Asian friends at 17 had nicer cars then my parents did at 45. I'm not saying all Asian students are rich, I'm just saying that simple ethnic or racial profiling of economic success isn't accurate. Secondly, just because someone comes from a community of color doesn't mean that they are used to police violence. Who is feeding you this crap? Again, depends which community you're talking about. If you are talking african american, most of my friends have been pulled over "driving while black" whether they come from Hunters Point or Brentwood...it seems pretty universal. My Asian friends didn't experience police violence daily or even weekly or monthly or yearly. And if you are Cuban and grew up in Miami upscale you aren't subject to police violence and if you are Chicano it can depend on which community (migrant, working class, middle class, professional class) you are in which determines the level of violence you experienced. To say that white kids had more of a choice to get arrested is a simplistic statement which to me smacks of white guilt. Some of my relatives were involved in AIM and other first peoples movements. They are not wealthy and they have spent much of their lives living with white cultural and governemtal oppression. Once they started organizing a movement which sought power and empowerment, they became full on targets of FBI intimidation. They were not priv. white people and yet they chose to commit themselves to actions that could result in arrest or worse. Please stop reducing things to just people of color vs. white. Class affects alot of decisions, as does socialization.

The failure of tokenism . When talking to my relatives a few years back, in reference to the anti-iraq war protests, they told me about some of their earlier protests. They were telling me about how in one of their actions they were pressing to have more Native Americans on staff at a certain state college system. And they were slightly successful, meaning a 10 years later there was actually some native americans on staff and teaching. The only problem was that other than in a few instances, the Native Americans were conducting themselves the same way as the white administrators. To the extent that my relatives thought that having people of color would change the system, they were wrong. The people simply fit into the old system with a new face. Some wrote in another thread how the higher level UCSC administrators involved in this are white lesbians, a white female, and a Chicano. So on the face of it, you might expect some sort of restraint in the decision to arrest and how the arrests were carried out. But the reality is that no matter how you cut this, all the actors in this drama, acted just how you'd expect administrators to act. So what am I trying to say? I guess that part of my critique to this action is to pose the question as to what are the limits of single action politic and tokenism. Some of what I heard some people say is that tent u was too broad, or that tent U should have just been about one or two things ONLY. Something easily defined, something you could take to the legislature, like, vote yes on more student funding. But part of what I liked about Tent U and more important a larger student movement is to do what Martin Luther King did just before he was killed...which was to pose the larger questions, to connect the movements, to see how the need for civil rights coincides with a movement against a war fought by poor people against poor people. I want to stop looking to tokens as symbols of success (because they aren't) and start asking bigger questions. WHO DOES the University serve? And I'm not just talking about us getting our degrees? I mean, who does the research serve? Where is the student voice in decision making other than token voices on "foci groups." Where are administrators values lying? In perpetuating their jobs salaries positions vs. our needs and rights? What role does militarism and corporate needs play in UC vs. developing technologies that are environmentally sound, offer people empowerment etc? Yes these questions are broad and are not easily made into soundbites, but that will be the challenge in any movement that goes deeper than slogans and tokenism.