Occupy Movement Inspires Rise In U.S. Campus Activism - Reuters

[WillyT]

Occupy movement inspires rise in U.S. campus activism
By Noel Randewich
DAVIS, Calif | Fri Nov 25, 2011 3:17pm GMT

<snip>

(Reuters) - Violent confrontations between police and protesters at two University of California campuses have drawn a new cadre of students into the Occupy Wall Street movement and unleashed what some historians call the biggest surge in campus activism since the 1960s. While Occupy Wall Street protesters have a broad set of grievances that include income inequality and perceived corporate greed, many students have more specific concerns: soaring tuition, campus budget cuts, and fear of heavy student loan debt and lack of job opportunities upon graduation.

Student protests related to these issues have broken out sporadically on U.S. college campuses over the past few years, but the Occupy protests - and the police response to them - have swelled the ranks of campus activists in recent weeks. A crowd of about 2,000 students, professors and parents held a rally at UC Davis on Monday and called for university Chancellor Linda Katehi to resign after police last week pepper-sprayed students sitting passively on the campus quad.

Video of an officer spraying an orange-coloured pepper spray directly into the faces of cross-legged students circulated heavily on television and the Internet, prompting outrage as well as a wave of cartoon parodies. "We didn't really know what it was until we actually were here on the quad (quadrangle) seeing fellow students getting maced," said John Caccamo, an 18-year-old biology student at UC Davis. The campus, near Sacramento, is not known as a hotbed of activism. "This is the first time in the 11 years I've been here that students have said - 'Wait a minute, I need to wake up to where I am and what's going on,'" UC Davis art professor Robin Hill told Reuters at the Davis rally.

At UC Berkeley, a cradle of 1960s student activism, students and faculty members were hit with nightsticks earlier this month when campus police moved to break up an Occupy encampment. The president of the 10-campus UC system, Mark G. Yudof, said he was "appalled" by the Berkeley and Davis incidents and has hired William J. Bratton, former police chief of New York and later Los Angeles, to lead an investigation.

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More: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/11/25/uk-usa-protests-students-idUKTRE7AO0XB20111125

:kick:

[Rabrrrrrr]

1. Awesome! Once everyone is mobilized, the fat cats will have to listen.

[Zorra]

2. OWS, alive, growing, and kickin'.

And reccin' too.

[WillyT]

3. LOL !!!

:bounce:

:hi:

:kick:

[sam11111]

4. FREE COLLEgES-california before RR became Govn'r of state:FREE Collges

in the more Socialist parts of Europe...last I heard about ten yrs ago...not sure if still so.

History...you had to PAY for hi school until (roughly) 1912. Memory on that date very fuzzy.

[Broderick]

5. I can get behind this student uprising

I can't get behind some of the methodology like shutting down ports.

[socialist_n_TN]

10. Sorry, but actions like shutting down ports ARE

the necessary next steps. The ONLY weapon the working class has vs the ownership class is the withholding of their labor. That gets into the owners pockets and profits and fucking with their money is the ONLY way to make them pay attention.

That's the reason none of the protests in the recent past worked to change anything. They didn't challenge the capitalists "right" to profit. Strikes DO challenge this so-called "right".

So the question becomes, do you want to make a statement? Or do you want to WIN changes to the current status quo?

[nadinbrzezinski]

11. I hate to point this inconvenient fact

But the ten hour day, later the eight hour day, the weekend and other conveniences came from....yes strikes.

We are back n some ways.

[WillyT]

6. Kick !!!

:kick:

[WillyT]

7. Last Kick From Me...

:kick:

[Huey P. Long]

8. Occupy. -eom

[Huey P. Long]

9. Occupy. -eom