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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