Over 5,000 Students Strike at UC Davis

Over 5,000 people took back the quad at UC Davis on Monday, in response to a police pepper-spray attack against students who had amassed in the quad last Friday as well as against fee increases in the UC system.

Tens of thousands of have called for the UC Davis Chancellor to resign, although Linda Katehi has refused. We find the liberal discourse of either "Katehi has failed and must resign" or "allow Katehi to lead in this moment of crisis" to miss the point. People like Katehi aren't 'leaders,' they simply manage the university to function as an essential part in the reproduction of capitalist society. They exist to keep the opposing forces and class interests within the university from tearing themselves apart. We are not against this, we want to hasten it. To push, as some friends said, "The university struggle to it's limits." For us, this is not a struggle for cheaper or even free education, but instead another battle ground in the war against capital. When Katehi sent the police to clear the grass of protesters camping in the UC Davis Quad, it wasn't a poorly thought out decision to attack "free speech," but an attempt to stop people from blocking (or attempting to block) the university from functioning as such. Police violence is nothing new and neither is police violence directed at students, even white middle class ones (Kent State anyone?) Anyone who comes into to take Katehi's place will do the same because that is the role of bureaucrats like her the world over. A new Chancellor will make new promises and perhaps a cop or two will even be fired but the system will remain the same and students that continue to struggle will continue to be attacked until we get rid of the police. It is simple as that.

It is interesting that during her two minutes in front of the GA of thousands at UC Davis, Katehi mentions how she remembers in her home country of Greece the brutal massacre of students in 1973. This attack forced the Greek state to make the university police free-zones. Many within the current student occupation movement have also pushed for police off of campus (at least, at the UCs). At the last Davis general assembly a resolution for a cop-free campus was defeated. But of course, if some students wish to see such a thing happen they're going to have to do it.

Creating cop free zones will not come out of thin air, but the negation of what exists currently and the taking and holding of space. Just as Occupy Oakland was able to create a cop-free zone through their occupation, so must students through theirs. We do not support calls for Katehi to resign because that implies that we ever believed that she or her ilk should have been their in the first place. She should not step down, she should be overthrown. The administration should not change, it should be destroyed. The campus should not pass to "new management," but the facilities, the buildings, and the entire university should be taken over and used by the workers, the students, and those in the surrounding community as they see fit. But we do not wish to see the university to be run 'democratically' or be 'self-managed.' We are not looking for a more 'student controlled' version of a school in capitalist society, we are looking to take and use what the university has to offer for ourselves and those we care about. We want the apparatus of the school to be taken over and used by those that are there in that area, so that those subjects within it (workers, students, teachers), destroy the separations between themselves and begin to hold, use, and occupy the space in common; meeting their needs directly.

UC Davis is an artery of capitalism; creating future technocrats and managers of all facets of social life. Just think of everything that exists at the university now, from housing to green-houses. Do we really think that it should just sit there only for a select few with the funds or the desire to take on massive debt? We should refuse to recreate the human labor that gives life to it, to occupy the space, and to begin to destroy what is not needed and takeover all the rest.

The students at UC Davis have power now - but it is only because they have taken that power and refused to budge on the wishes of those that they struggle against. We must also state that we invite everyone to come and occupy the university in Davis as well. After all, since universities are places which are built, at least in part through all of our stolen wages (i.e. taxes) and they exist to produce the future social managers and bosses which will lord over us and help develop the next cancer causing chemicals or chemical weapons, why shouldn't we force the university to bend to our will? Set up communal kitchens, open up the quad for mass meetings, enjoy the heated pool - make the space yours for those that you associate and care about. Break down the walls of this ivory tower. But don't wait for a 'police investigation' or for someone to resign. We already know where that democratic deception will lead. The only power is the one that we create and the only freedom is the one we take.