Occupy Davis

http://www.sacbee.com/2012/04/06/4395011/hed-here.html

Prosecution of UC Davis protesters sparks anger, occupation

By Darrell Smith
dvsmith@sacbee.com
Published: Friday, Apr. 6, 2012 – 12:00 am | Page 1B
Last Modified: Friday, Apr. 6, 2012 – 8:32 am
Several dozen UC Davis students are protesting the upcoming court date of the “Bankers’ Dozen,” the 12 students linked to demonstrations in January and February that shuttered an on-campus U.S. Bank branch.

About 400 students rallied Thursday afternoon at the university’s Memorial Union to speak out against allegations of conspiracy and blocking access filed against the dozen in late March by Yolo County prosecutors. The event was peaceful and no incidents were reported.

Students and supporters then marched across campus to Mrak Hall, chanting “Drop all charges,” occupying stairwells and the building’s lobby. Some students quickly set up tents and tarps planning to bed down for the night.

“We don’t know what might be planned,” university spokesman Barry Shiller said. “But, we’ll be patient, monitor the situation this evening and plan that the building will be open for business when people return in the morning.”

However, Claudia Morain, a campus spokesperson, said this morning that the students had been cleared out by 6:30 p.m. Thursday.

The dozen protesters cited in March face an April 27 court date in Yolo Superior Court connected to blocking the entrance to the on-campus bank branch.

The conspiracy allegation carries a maximum penalty of a year in jail. Each of the 20 access allegations filed carries a maximum six-month jail term.

Minnesota-based U.S. Bank closed its University Union branch Feb. 28, potentially severing an agreement with UC Davis that gave the campus its first bank branch.

Bank officials later cited Occupy protests and the university’s refusal to disperse demonstrators as reason for the closure.

Following strongly worded exchanges last month, UC Davis and U.S. Bank continue to work to repair their rift over the bank’s decision.

Shiller this week described the university’s talks with the lender as “cordial conversations.”

“We’d love the relationship to be salvaged,” Shiller said, adding that UC Davis students would lose out if the bank branch remained closed.

But students say the protests center on the bank’s presence on campus, its relationship with the university and what they see as the continuing privatization of the university.

Many students declined to identify themselves Thursday, afraid that university authorities would retaliate. But some carried placards that read “Fighting privatization is not a crime.”

Others, including history graduate student Andrew Higgins, said the university is using county prosecutors as cover to appease U.S. Bank, avoid a repeat of the public relations firestorm that erupted after last year’s pepper-spraying of UC Davis students by campus police, and to quash free speech.

“This administration is relying upon the state to deal with the protests. Because of the bad PR, they feel they can’t address that,” Higgins said.

UC Davis’ Shiller denied the assertions, saying the Thursday rally was “a great demonstration of protected, expressive free speech. Had the bank protest been similar, we’d have no issues here.”

The dozen, he said, “are accused of well beyond that.”

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/04/06/4395011/hed-here.html#storylink=cpy

On April 4 at 11 am Eco-Occupy will convene “Occupy the Forest,” a rally starting in Cesar Chavez Park in Sacramento (between I and J streets, and 9th and 10th streets) to draw attention to the massive clearcutting that is devastating California forests and to call upon the agencies responsible for protecting our forests to halt the destruction and require sustainable logging practices.

Eco-Occupy, created as a working group within Occupy Sacramento, is an alliance of individuals, environmental groups and Occupy groups working to restore sanity and reverence to the relationship of human beings to the earth and all its inhabitants. Eco-Occupy draws attention to and opposes human and commercial activities that value profit over life and are destroying our planet, and promotes desperately needed, sustainable alternatives.

Many thanks for the Council’s unanimous resolution to support Assembly Joint Resolution 22. It is something to be proud of when your city takes a stand for something so right.
AJR 22, proposed in January by Assembly members Bob Wieckowski (D-Fremont) and Michael Allen (D-Santa Rosa), calls on the U.S. Congress to pass a constitutional amendment to overturn the 2010 Supreme Court decision on Citizens United vs Federal Election Commission. This was a momentous decision that allowed corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money in our elections. In the two years since this decision, we have seen a grotesque growth in campaign spending and an ever coarsening of political campaigns.
How right is the Council’s decision? On 2/17/12, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer were quoted in the Washington Post of 2/18/12 as calling for the Court to revisit their Citizens United decision. These Justices said that experience since this decision does not bear out the majority opinion that corporate expenditures “do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.”
Following on this theme, a NY Times editorial on 2/22/12 calls on the Court to reconsider their “their disastrous Citizens United decision.”  The court has an opportunity to revisit their 2010 decision in a Montana state case before the court that pits corporations wanting unlimited spending vs the Montana Supreme Court that upholds corporate campaign spending limits. Justice Ginsburg is further quoted: reviewing the Montana case “will give the court an opportunity to consider whether, in light of the huge sums currently deployed to buy candidates’ allegiance, Citizens United should continue to hold sway.”  The editorial concludes, “A factual record would show that unlimited independent expenditures can have a corrupting effect, without qualifying as quid-pro-quo bribery. It’s hard to see how the court’s conservative majority could contend these expenditures pose no threat to American democracy.”
Clearly, Citizens United was a wrong decision and must be overturned if we are to keep our democracy. So thank you, Davis City Council, for that very right decision.
Mary M Zhu – February 22, 2012

On Tuesday, February 21, with a unanimous vote the Davis City Council passed a resolution in support of Assembly Joint Resolution 22 to Overturn Citizens United v. Federal Election Committee Supreme Court Ruling. By doing so, Davis joins the growing number of communities that have passed similar resolutions, creating a nationwide backlash against the U.S. Supreme Court’s January 2010 Citizens United ruling.

Thank you, Josh Jones and Jim Leonard, for spearheading this drive! Thank you to Mary, April & Jam who also spoke at the City Council meeting in favor of passing the resolution. Tom, Ian, Phillip and I were present to offer our support. So wonderful to see an informed citizenry in action! Wow! Just, Wow! And kudos to the Davis City Council of course!

Learn more about the Citizens United Ruling.

Letter to the Davis Enterprise, published Dec. 8, 2011

The title of your Dec. 2 story on Occupy Davis (“Rights vs. Rules”) is ironic in view of the US Senate’s latest draconian measures to further suspend the constitutional rights of those non-corporate persons known as human beings and citizens. Last Tuesday the Senate voted – with bipartisan support – to allow the military to detain terrorism suspects, including US citizens, on US soil and hold them indefinitely without trial.

As the latest and most alarming incursion into our constitutional rights, this continues a decades-long political program to increase the ability of authorities to monitor and ultimately silence whomever they see as a threat, bypassing constitutional protections with virtually no oversight or recourse.

Each step of the way, US citizens have gone along with the program, perhaps believing these measures are needed to fight the war on terror or the war on drugs or some other war, or expecting naively that they would never affect us if we obey the rules.

But what if the rules are changed so that what was lawful yesterday is redefined tomorrow as a terrorist threat? When do our supposed protectors start to become our tyrants? Does anyone feel safer because of the annoying and intrusive airport security measures, now including full body radiation scans and invasive pat-downs?

Each step of the way, the intrusion gets a little bit worse to see if we are still willing to tolerate it. We are like the frog in the pan of water being brought to a boil so gradually that we don’t notice until we’re practically cooked. When do we say “that’s enough!” and get out there with the Occupiers to take back our country?

Instead of continuing to argue about how the message is being delivered, let’s start talking as a community about the message itself. This is the truly urgent matter at hand, because what’s happening in the country – endless corporate impediments to sane and humane public policy, and militaristic responses to everything – is slowly cooking us all. The Occupy Movement, however we might critique it, is the wake-up call we desperately need.

Lorenzo Kristov