The Political Context of the March 5 Rally in Sacramento

My speech at the March 1 Rally at UC Davis:


Last time I gave a speech at a rally, as a graduate student, I just winged it and it didn’t go so well--so today I wrote some things down.  I want to talk mainly about the political situation surrounding public education and some new openings in the political context.

Since I arrived here a decade ago, I’ve watched the California legislature and Governors Davis, Schwarzenegger and Brown systematically de-fund the greatest public university system in the world.  Meanwhile, the university has tried to balance its books on the backs of the students.

Over those ten years, many of us (students, faculty, staff and sometimes administrators) have organized, lobbied and protested but the cuts have just kept coming.  In the last three years, the Great Recession has made California’s budget crisis even worse, the cuts have been deeper, and the tuition increases have been just ridiculous.

Part of the problem is Prop 13, the 1978 ballot initiative that required a 2/3 supermajority for any increase in California’s taxes.  This allowed a minority of Republican legislators to hold a blue state hostage to their anti-tax, anti-government, anti-equality agenda and forced us into a budget crisis.  Unfortunately, Californians seemed in no mood to repeal Prop 13 despite the deterioration of California’s public services (and especially its schools).  And any attempt at repeal would certainly be countered by a massive corporate advertising blitz.

It’s a bleak picture.  But lately things are looking up a bit. The Democrats are currently two seats away from a 2/3 supermajority in both the Senate and Assembly and the November election may allow them to achieve it.  In 2008, Californians gave a citizen’s commission (rather than the legislature) the power to draw legislative districts.  Under these new districts, the Democrats will most likely pick up enough seats in the State Senate and MAY be able to do so in the State Assembly.  Two of the closest Assembly races are local.  The 8^th District in East Sacramento County where three Democrats face off against two Republicans and the 9^th district in Elk Grove/Lodi where UC Davis Med School Professor Dr. Richard Pan faces off against two Republicans.  The top two vote getters in the June 5 primary will go on to the November election.

Another development is both hopeful and terrifying.  Governor Brown has placed a referendum on the November ballot to temporarily raise income taxes for the wealthy and sales taxes for everyone.  If the measure passes, he promises an increase for higher education of 4 percent per year for three years.  But if it fails, more cuts.  The measure appears to have the support of a slim majority of the voters at this moment, but only if two similar initiatives are removed from the ballot.

If the Democrats do win a supermajority, the battle to restore UC funding will still be at the beginning.  Democratic legislators, like most politicians, are cowards and many have bought into the Republican argument that tax increases retard economic growth.  We will need to pressure them hard--both during and after the election.  The Governor’s commitment to higher education is also suspect.

We also must pressure the UC and UC Davis Administrations.  Unfortunately, the administration has a very narrow view of politics. It is resigned to meekly lobbying legislators for funding, failing miserably, and then raising tuition.  It has not yet committed to campaigning for a new legislative majority that can re-fund the UC System and forcing that majority to do so.  We must demand such a commitment from the regents, UC President Mark Yudof, and our Chancellor (who happens to be on the defensive right now). 

The protests have been making a difference.  They caused Yudof and the regents to back off the latest round of tuition increases, for the moment.  And 74% of Californians now believe that state funding for higher education is inadequate.  Unfortunately, only 45% are willing to pay higher taxes to restore funding. 

We need to help Californians understand that new revenues will be necessary if we hope to preserve affordable higher education.  We also need to convince them that the benefits of affordable higher education do not just go to individual students but to all the lives they touch. Affordable public education helps Californians to live more prosperous, healthy and meaningful lives, it helps them understand and participate in their democracy, it promotes social mobility and equality of opportunity, and it promotes economic and cultural growth.

The occupy movement has so far remained non-partisan and non-electoral in order to avoid being co-opted by the Democrats and in order to seek deeper levels of change than simply electing a new slate of legislators beholden to corporate campaign contributions. 

That’s probably wise for occupy, but the movement to defend higher education pre-dates occupy and is bigger than occupy.  There are roles and responsibilities for all of us. 

As a movement, we must work at all levels—though not everyone must work at every level—protesting, changing public opinion, lobbying elected officials, and winning elections.  At this moment, we have a political opening—Let’s use it.

I want to end with the names of three websites that I think are especially useful (just google them): ReFund California, Remaking the University, and Fight for your Education.  I also have links to all of these on my blog: after-dinner critic.

Town Hall Meeting on UC System protest policing, February 10

The UC Office of the President is holding a Town hall meeting at UC Davis on protest policing in the UC System on Friday February 10 from 4 to 6 p.m. at the Conference Center Ballroom, adjacent to the Vanderhoef Quad at the campus’s south entry.

Last November, President Mark G. Yudof appointed UC General Counsel Charles Robinson and UC Berkeley School of Law Dean Christopher Edley Jr. to lead a systemwide examination of police protocols and policies as they apply to protests at all UC campuses.  The meeting is part of this examination.

A New Quarter Begins at UC Davis #occupyUCDavis #UCDavis #Katehi

Here is an update on the UC Davis situation that I wrote with Sara Augusto (a Ph.D. Candidate in my department) for Dissent's blog.  It discusses the positions of supporters and opponents of Katehi, as well as Katehi's interactions with students in the aftermath of November 18th.

CUCFA Letter to President Yudof on Bratton

Dear President Yudof,

The Council of University of California Faculty Associations (CUCFA) protests your decision to hire the Kroll Security Group, and its Chairman William Bratton, to conduct what you call an independent investigation of police violence at UC Davis. We take no position here on Mr. Bratton's personal qualifications; our objection is to the conflicts of interest of Kroll Security itself, which is already a major contractor with UC on security matters. According to its website, Kroll's services are not confined to securing databases and facilities from attacks by criminals and terrorists. It also protects many global financial institutions and other multinationals against threats to "operations" that may come from public criticism and direct political action.

By deepening UC's links to Kroll, you would be illustrating the kinds of connection between public higher education and Wall Street that the Occupy UC movement is protesting. Kroll's parent company, Altegrity, provides data-mining, intelligence and on-the-ground security to financial institutions and governments seeking to head off and defeat both private sabotage and public protest. In addition, Altegrity's parent company, Providence Private Equity, is a major global investor in for-profit higher education companies that benefit from the decline of publicly funded higher education.

We already know that Kroll has provided security services to at least three UC campuses for the past several years. This in itself would disqualify Mr. Bratton from participating in the investigation you propose, even if the role of Kroll and its affiliated companies in defending the financial sector against OWS did not raise further questions about its pro-Wall Street and pro-privatization bias.

A truly independent investigation that would allow UC to provide a credible response to the events at Davis (and the other campuses) needs to address several questions that would not be seriously considered if you hire Kroll.

*       What was your role and that of UC General Counsel in the events at Davis? Did you, as a distinguished first amendment scholar, tell chancellors and campus police chiefs that protests (especially protests against UC's own policies) are "part of the DNA of this University" that should not be addressed using the same techniques that UC has developed (likely with the help of Kroll) to deal with terrorists, shooters, and cyber-saboteurs? (Even if you have been a zealous defender of the rising student movement to restore public higher education, such a conclusion would not be credible coming from an investigation tainted by Kroll's conflicts of interest outlined above.)

*       What was and is the role of Kroll in helping banks and public institutions (including UC) investigate and defeat movements such as OWS and their campus counterparts? Is Kroll now acting as a liaison between universities, city governments and the Department of Homeland Security in defending the financial sector against protests occurring on what used to be considered public spaces? Are protests against Wall Street in such spaces now considered a threat to the security of the nation, the city and the public university? (The growing securitization of public space has been a major obstacle to first amendment activity since 9-11.)

*       How much money has UC and its individual campuses paid to Kroll for security services? Were these contracts issued as sole source contracts or was there open bidding? Were Kroll's services confined to protecting, for example, the privacy and integrity of data systems and faculty and staff conducting animal research or did they extended to what Kroll's website calls "organizational threats" arising from "the dynamic and sometimes conflicting needs of the entire campus population"? (This could be a description of the student protests that you rightly regard as "central to our history" as a university.)

*       What led to the issuance of false and misleading statements by University of California officials (Chancellors and their assistants, spokespeople, and police chiefs) in the aftermath of police violence at Berkeley and Davis? Did you encourage these efforts at spin control? (Dishonest statements seriously damage the university as an institution devoted to truth and protect only the individuals whose decisions are in question.)

The broader issue is how protest can be part of what you characterized as "our university's DNA" when the right to protest is not formally recognized within the university's own codes of student and faculty conduct. It could be and should be. The CSU student code states explicitly that "[n]othing in this Code may conflict with Education Code Section 66301 that prohibits disciplinary action against students based on behavior protected by the first amendment." If such language were included in the UC code of conduct, students would have a clear first amendment defense against disciplinary action arising from peaceful political protest-and there would be strong grounds for questioning the legality of a police order to disperse a peaceful protest from a public site on a public university campus. The explicit incorporation of constitutional limits on UC's power to break up
demonstrations that threaten its march toward privatization would go a long way toward recovering UC as a public, rather than a private, space. We urge you to see that the UC codes of conduct are amended to parallel those in place at CSU.

Events at Davis and the other campuses have shown the University of California in a negative light, and we agree strongly with the need for an independent investigation. We believe, however, that your appointment of Kroll to investigate the university's response to last week's protest could itself become a basis for new protests, and that you should ask Speaker Pérez (or someone unaffiliated with the University) to appoint a genuinely independent committee with representatives from student, faculty, staff and civil liberties groups. Such a committee should be given a specific charge to investigate and report on all of the questions set forth above.


Robert Meister,
President, Council of UC Faculty Associations
Professor History of Consciousness and Political and Social Thought, UC Santa Cruz