The following is an analysis by Advance the Struggle of the occupations and demonstrations spreading across California.

Fully armed, a line of 10 swat team police marched up to the picket line. Half-stunned by their presence, the crowd of supporters hesitatingly jeered the cops. In unison and on command the pigs charged forward and shoved the picketers to the ground. Throughout the day there were various refusals to accept these attacks; they ranged from hurling verbal abuse at the cops with chants like “Fuck the Police,” to acts of physical resistance such as refusing to sit down at the urging of cops and fellow protesters, to minor incidents of exchanging blows with the pigs.

Some of these bold acts of resistance were deplorable to those protestors whose go-to chants were “Peaceful protest! Peaceful protest!” as the pigs violently attacked students.  One chant was even directed to the cops themselves: “We are fighting for your kids! We are fighting for your kids!” This brings into sharp relief the widespread confusion about the role of the state in the anti-budget cut movement.

Let’s be clear that the state, with its armed police and military forces, carries out its brute force when peoples’ consciousness begins to transcend capitalism’s ideological chokehold. What has been clearly demonstrated this past week is that resistance to the budget cuts is a class struggle that immediately brings us into confrontation with the force of the state.

The image of a protester violently resisting police brutality has certain activists blaming the victims of the brutality, pleading with militant protesters: “Why are you antagonizing them?  You’re only making it worse!”  It is an image that represents a political fact that we have been too slow to acknowledge – that education sector budget cuts are a particular point of a struggle involving the whole working class; a struggle against a crisis that presents itself to us as an increase in the overall disciplining of the working class; discipline which seeks to keep workers in line generating profits – especially when we refuse to go on as normal as everything around us falls apart. The escalation in the capitalist state’s corrective violence manifested on the UCB picket line is behind other seemingly disconnected government actions: the murder of Oscar Grant, ICE raids, and the wars in the Middle East. Behind every policy is an army of police.

The occupation of Wheeler Hall at UCB last Friday was a testament to the value of confrontational tactics. The common fear that a bold, confrontational action will look ridiculous and isolate the movement is proven to be out of date.  Thousands of students played a spontaneously active role fighting the fee hikes and budget cuts. This action was incredibly democratic, inspiring, and educational because it materially mobilized the power of the people present at general assemblies held the day before. The occupation and the struggle to support it acted as a teachable moment by highlighting the farce that is the capitalist, liberal-democratic state.

The liberal-democratic state is a tool of the capitalist class, a means of bourgeois rule that by definition we, the working class, are shut out of. The question is: how do we resist government policies from our position completely outside the official, “democratic” framework of the state? In the campus movement, the two primary answers to this question have been popular organizing (general assemblies) and militant resistance (occupations). What happened last week at university campuses across California was a step toward a synthesis of these two approaches. UCB’s occupation was approved at a general assembly. This is a good development, but as this synthesis is reached a new contradiction presents itself: what is the role of the education sector (especially university students) in generalizing this wave of campus resistance towards including the rest of the working class? What active steps can students take to introduce the practice of militant struggle independent of ruling class structures?

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The following was originally posted on Occupy California. We are including several videos along with the article. Special thanks to Alex and Maria for the videos.

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The Regents of the University of California voted, at UCLA, on 32% fee increases for students from November 17 – 19. (The CSU trustees are also meeting on these dates). Students through out the state of California are in an uproar.

UC Santa Cruz: over 500 students are occupying the Kresge Town Hall as of 3:45pm, Wednesday.

the details: hundreds of students rallied at the two entrances to campus shutting it down for several hours. Another group of 300 students entered into the Kresge Town Hall to create an organizing space around the budget cuts. Later in the evening, students at the entrances joined the others in the Kresge Town Hall. Currently, the space is being used to plan further actions.

UPDATE: As of 3pm, Thursday, UC Santa Cruz’s main administrative building, Kerr Hall has been occupied. Check out this indybay article!

Thursday 5:45pm: still occupied, discussing the night.

Thursday 6:30pm: Alma Sifuentes, Dean of Students has arranged to not call the police (the time frame is unclear) as long as students remain non-violent and do not create physical barricades.

Thursday 6:50pm: The administrators refused to provide a written-copy of the previous agreement.

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The following is a summation of a series of counter-protests that took place at the University of Houston by Student for a Democratic Society at UH. These demonstrations we the first major demonstrations at UH in a long time, and brought together many new radical students and organizations. Special thanks to SDS and SFO for mobilizing these counter-protests!

This Monday morning the “Genocide Awareness Project” set up a disgusting and dishonest display in Butler Plaza in front of the MD Anderson library in the heart of the University of Houston Campus. The Genocide Awareness Project is put on by the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform their website (which is full of pictures and videos of aborted fetuses, and is also somewhat transparent in posting Tax returns which indicate that the only 4 compensated staff people are men) which is a California based non-profit organization that travels the country putting up photos of aborted fetuses.

They describe themselves as follows:

The Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) is a traveling photo-mural exhibit which compares the contemporary genocide of abortion to historically recognized forms of genocide.

So, they have photos of dead prisoners at a Nazi concentration camp, and a black man hung from a tree surrounded by white folks in the US South and a picture of an aborted fetus, with the caption “ungentile, unwhite, unborn.” This is a gross distortion of what genocide means, a falsehood designed to provoke emotional responses.

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Houston has a large population of Salvadoreños, people originally from El Salvador or have family ties to El Salvador. CRECEN (Centro de Recursos Centroamericanos) is the city's largest group speaking out for people of Central American descent, and it's been active on many important issues over the years. Now there's a national mobilizing effort of Salvadoreños, which may be felt in Houston soon.

by decolonize

The Washington Post reports on a major meeting last week of over 150 Salvadoreño community organizers from across the United States, gathering to talk about ways of consolidating organizing efforts.

The Post's N.C. Aizenman writes organizers attending the First Salvadoran American Leadership Summit were aware of needing to move from the service model many organizations have embraced and instead aim to expand their political influence. Aizenman acknowledges some challenges:

For all the event's optimism, there are some daunting obstacles to transforming the numerical strength of Salvadoran Americans into political clout. According to an analysis of Census data by the Pew Hispanic Center, 47 percent of U.S. residents of Salvadoran descent are not citizens. And 26 percent more are citizens but are still children, leaving only 27 percent who are currently eligible to vote. And it was perhaps telling that much of the discussion at the conference was in Spanish.

RaceWire (which linked the Post article) says organizers will make naturalization a key issue.

How should we view this kind of strategy? Is ability to vote and citizenship really where oppressed people will find political power? And at the same time, if it is not, what importance is there to fighting for that right even short of our ultimate goals? El Salvador itself has struggled with electoralism and its failures. Though the country declared its independence from Spain in the 1800s, military dictators and repressive juntas ruled it for years. The Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) waged a 12-year war against the regime, and became a political party in 1992, following a peace accord.

The summit comes at a time when Latinos are growing more concerned over bigotry in the immigration debate. Marisa Treviño notes Univision's Jorge Ramos called U.S. President Barack Obama on the issue on his program Al Punto. Citizen Orange alleges a trend of 'progressive' politicians selling out undocumented immigrants after paying lip service during campaign season.

In Houston, youth activism on these issues has emerged out of groups like the Houston DREAM Act Coalition, which hosted a summit Sept. 12 at UH-Downtown.

What can we learn from the beginnings of this struggle, and the history and experience of the Salvadorian people? What is our role and responsibility as revolutionaries in all of this?

We are reposting the following message from "Occupy California." This is the fourth student occupation and in a year, and is part of an overall escalation of the student movement that is happening throughout the country.

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We are occupying this building at the University of California, Santa Cruz, because the current situation has become untenable. Across the state, people are losing their jobs and getting evicted, while social services are slashed. California’s leaders from state officials to university presidents have demonstrated how they will deal with this crisis: everything and everyone is subordinated to the budget. They insulate themselves from the consequences of their own fiscal mismanagement, while those who can least afford it are left shouldering the burden. Every solution on offer only accelerates the decay of the State of California. It remains for the people to seize what is theirs.

The current attack on public education – under the guise of a fiscal emergency – is merely the culmination of a long-term trend. California’s regressive tax structure has undermined the 1960 Master Plan for free education. In this climate, the quality of K-12 education and the performance of its students have declined by every metric. Due to cuts to classes in Community Colleges, over 50,000 California youth have been turned away from the doors of higher education. California State University will reduce its enrollment by 40,000 students system wide for 2010-2011. We stand in solidarity with students across the state because the same things are happening to us. At the University of California, the administration will raise student fees to an unprecedented $10,300, a 32 percent increase in one year. Graduate students and lecturers return from summer vacation to find that their jobs have been cut; faculty and staff are forced to take furloughs. Entire departments are being gutted. Classes for undergraduates and graduates are harder to get into while students pay more. The university is being run like a corporation.

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