UC Berkeley protest ends with 41 arrests
xBruinBearx November 20, 2009 youtube.com
November 20th, 2009, UC Berkeley students surrounded and overtook Wheeler Hall to protest the 32% tuition hike and the financial mismanagement of UC Administrators.
The students were met with vicious police, and the students took a stand, chanting “Books not Batons”.
xBruinBearx youtube.com November 20, 2009
November 20th, 2009, UC Berkeley students surrounded and overtook Wheeler Hall to protest the 32% tuition hike and the financial mismanagement of UC Administrators. At the beginning of this clip you could hear a student get shot at point-blank range with a rubber bullet. Other students were assaulted with batons.
UC Berkeley Cops hitting students at Wheeler Hall protest.
kurtjimi27 11-20-2009 youtube.com
Timeline: 2 cops were walking a barrier segment towards Wheeler hall from the East. About 10 feet from the protest line, a cop pushed a student to the floor to get out of his way. At the protest line the students lock arms and the cops are unable to get through. At this point it gets loud, there is a lot of commotion, a cop swings a punch at a student (video starts around this point). After this incited the students to stay firm, many other cops began to arrive to help the 2, one cop took out his club and started jabbing students in the stomach which did a pretty good job at getting the students to back up a bit. Eventually cops go off to the left and meet little resistance.
youtube.com flameshad0w 11-20-2009
Berkeley Wheeler Hall Occupation, 3:10PM
A group of students locked themselves in Wheeler Hall of UC Berkeley to protest fee hikes, causing a lot of loud yelling and emotional display in the area.
thedailycal 11-20-2009 youtube.com
About 60 protesters occupy Wheeler Hall. The picketers rally around Wheeler Hall as the strike against the fee increase escalates.
11/20/2009 mercurynews.com Sandra Gonzales
UC Berkeley students rally in front of Wheeler Hall against proposed pay cuts, layoffs, and tuition increases on Friday morning.
In a striking scene of civil disobedience, dozens of students barricaded themselves inside a UC Berkeley building for more than 11 hours Friday to protest a 32 percent increase in student fees.
The dramatic display ended Friday evening with dozens of arrests, climaxing a week of civil unrest mirrored at other campuses around the state, including Davis and Santa Cruz, where hundreds marched for the third day Friday to decry one of the biggest fee hikes in UC history.
But it seemed unlikely that the protests are having any impact. Repeated budget cuts to the 10-campus system forced UC regents this week to raise the cost of an undergraduate education above $10,000 a year by next fall, triple the cost of a decade ago. The move followed a 10 percent hike earlier this year, employee furloughs and other cuts that UC leaders say are necessary because of a 20 percent drop in state funding.
Still, students continued to try to make their voices heard.
“We have tried going to Sacramento, we’ve tried less direct and less confrontational ways of getting our voices heard,” said UC Davis student Laura Mitchell of Palo Alto, who on Thursday joined a march of hundreds of students to the campus administration building, Mrak Hall. On Wednesday, police arrested 51 protesters there.
At about 7:30 a.m. Friday, about 50 students stormed the second floor of Wheeler Hall on the Berkeley campus, hunkering inside the building into the night as they used
Twitter posts and a bullhorn to communicate with a growing number of demonstrators gathered outside. About 11 hours later, police arrested 41 demonstrators on trespassing charges, including some nonstudents.
During the standoff, one of the protesters leaned out a second-floor window, telling the crowd below that the demonstrators would not relent until the university repealed the fee hike, made the budget more transparent and agreed not to charge the protesters. They also called for the firing of UC President Mark Yudof, who students blamed for the spiraling cost of an education.
As the day wore on, the scene became even more unruly as protesters pushed through steel barricades, and dozens of police and sheriff’s deputies in riot gear held them back using batons that set off chants against the officers. At least one officer was taken to the hospital, but the extent and cause of his injuries were unknown. Police, meanwhile, refuted claims that officers used unnecessary force.
Friday’s protests at Berkeley forced the cancellation of classes at Wheeler. Several other campus buildings also were shut down as a routine precaution. Outside Wheeler Hall, dozens of supporters gathered throughout the day as word of the protest spread.
The demonstrators hung a sign out of a window that read, “32 Percent Hike, 900 layoffs,” with the word “Class” crossed out in red.
At UC Santa Cruz, hundreds of students, staff and faculty crowded Clark Kerr Hall — the administration building — in a third day of protests Friday, forcing the campus to shut down the building. Students also occupied Kresge Town Hall, where they stayed overnight.
“We need to keep mobilizing and keep coming out here,” graduate student Mark Paschal yelled into a bullhorn. “It’s the only way — if we join together.”
…………………………
Bay Area News Group staff writers Lisa M. Krieger, Chris Metinko, Doug Oakley and Kristin Bender, and Santa Cruz Sentinel staff writer J.M. Brown contributed to this report. Contact Sandra Gonzales at 408-920-5778.
UC Police push back protesters as they move in barricades in front of Wheeler Hall. Students rallied on the UC Berkeley campus Friday to protest of pay cuts, layoffs and tuition hikes.
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