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Another day, another protest.
I teach self defense to women on the Berkeley campus and in the Berkeley community – I think several of you know this. The class I teach is 12 hours long and the last portion of the class was scheduled for tonight, which included simulation. This is where the women in the class use the techniques they have learned in simulated aggressive incidents. The aggressors who work with us are UCPD officers (University of California Police Department). Earlier today, the two officers we were planning to work with tonight let my co-instructor know that they couldn’t make it due to protest activity on campus. This is not new news. Protests happen frequently here. There is actually a staff member who works in the Office of Student Life whose job description includes meeting with students who are planning to protest and letting them know how to protest ‘correctly.’ (To me, the idea of protesting correctly seems to run opposite of the idea of protesting, but whatever.)
Sidenote: Honestly, most people who work on campus were prepared for yesterday to be a day of lots of protesting activity. It was supposed to be a “National Day of Action to Defend Higher Education” but turns out that Cal didn’t really show up for that one. It’s midterm season, maybe students were busy?
Anyway. News of a protest today, nothing too alarming. Except that then in the middle of my afternoon meeting, I start hearing helicopters overhead. Hm. Helicopters don’t hover over Berkeley except where there is a bad traffic accident, or a big protest…like with the tree-sitters, or when students took over and locked themselves in an academic building. I’m thinking to myself, maybe this is turning into a bit of a thing.
Right before I leave to go teach my self-defense class, I get an email from the Chancellor’s Office, saying that one of the buildings on campus has been closed for ‘health and safety reasons.’ Which means, protesting. Turns out, somewhere between 8-10 students climbed out onto the fourth story ledge of a building, chained themselves to an ornamental vase and each other, and then refused to come down.
The helicopters hovered for 5 hours.
The students came down around 9 pm.
Welcome to Berkeley.
A few years ago there was a multi-day power-outage in Oxford and the surrounding area. As such, Miami canceled classes for a Monday because, well, they didn’t have power. They did by that evening and classes were a go for Tuesday on. That’s when students decided to protest. Well, maybe just 100 of them. They didn’t want classes until the whole city had power back (something that didn’t happen until Friday, though most of the city got it back Tuesday). Now, I’m all about students (people) having the right to make their opinions known, but it quickly became a joke around campus as a rather absurd reason to protest. I mean, we all already got a “free” day off…
Your story, though… helicopters? Intense.
I like how people at Berkeley are so used to seeing protests that it’s not a big deal. Similar to how no one here in NYC reacts to crazy things, because it happens all the time.