After the Fall Communiques

8/2/2019 After the Fall Communiques

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Communiqusfrom Occupied California AUTUMN 2009

PUBLISHEDFEBRUARY 2010


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OCCUPIED

califor

C A L I F O R N I A

OF

fall 2 0 0 9

CAMPUS LOCATIONS,

PRISONS, TOPOGRAPHY,

& OTHER POINTS OF INTEREST

MAP

Los Angeles

Santa Cruz

Davis

Fresno

Turlock

Irvine

San Francisco

East Bay

UCLA

CSU Fresno

CSU Stanislaus

UC Davis

UC BerkeleyBerkeley City College

SF StateSF City College

UC Santa Cruz

UC Irvine

CLASHES, MOBILIZATIONS,

DEMONSTRATIONS, &

OCCUPATIONS

U S A

M E X I C O

N E V A D A

C A L I F O R N

I A

locked down occupation

open occupation and/or sit-ins

march and/or rally

blockade

prison

N

S

W E

FullertonCSU Fullerton

PACIFIC

OCEAN

Sacramento


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This publication has been put togetherby a group o riends located in the BayArea who have been involved in some othe events chronicled within. Any lapses,

exclusions or ocus on this or that geo-graphical area or campus should be at-tributed to the location o the editors, theira liations and their political sensibilities.

Retrospection is always dangerous, es-pecially in those rare moments when the

uture is still alive. This is not a valediction,nor is it an attempt to centralize under asingular political line actions that in actinteracted according to resonance, a li-ation and riendship. The texts collectedhere were all anonymous, o ten authoredcollectively, and, with the exception othe introduction and conclusion, avail-able through zines and the internet. Thisis a di erent sort o archive. We thoughtit worthwhile to collect in one place the

wealth o writing that occurred this all,and to provide some critical contextual-ization or those who were not ortunateenough to be there. This is not a celebra-tion o the past, but an arsenal to be de-ployed in the immediate uture.

Thanks:

A.F.S.C.M.E. Local 3299, Bound Together Books, Fireto the Prisons, Folger Press, IndyBay, Little BlackCart, Modesto Anarcho, New School in Exile, NationalLawyers Guild S.F., Sabot In oshoppe, UA in the Bay

Photo Credits:

Celsa Dockstader: pages 3, 22, 33Courtney Hanson: page 23Kenneth Kouot: top o page 12Tae Lim: top o page 17Wes Modes: bottom o page 12

Omiso: top o page 20Andrew Stern: pages 18, 19, 20 (middle & bottom),21, 27

Bradley Stuart (Indymedia): pages 24 & 25

Special thanks to the photographers or their support!This project is or non-pro t use only & all photos arepublicly available online.We have attempted to obtain permission or the use oall photos in this publication . I youd like credit given toyour photographs in uture publications that is absentin this edition, please contact us.

The body copy o this publication is set in Bembo.Akzidenz Grotesk and Clarendon are used or titles,quotes, captions, etc.

Table of Contents:

1. We are the Crisis: A Report on the Cali ornia Occupation Movement7. Communique rom an Absent Future

12. Occupy Cali ornia, UC Santa Cruz13. The Beatings Will Continue, UC Santa Cruz14. The Necrosocial: Civic Li e, Social Death and The UC16. Carter-Huggins Hall: Occupation Statement and Post-Occupation Statement, UCLA18. No Capital Projects But the End o Capital, UC Berkeley19. Anti-Capital Projects: Questions & Answers, UC Berkeley21. A Call to the Future: From In and Around Occupied Wheeler, UC Berkeley22. Voices rom Wheeler Hall, UC Berkeley23. Refections on Kerr Hall, UC Santa Cruz26. Back to Mrak: An Assessment, UC Davis27. There Can Be Nothing Between Us Except Enmity, UC Berkeley28. The Bricks We Throw at Police Today Will Build the Liberation Schools o Tomorrow31. We are Still Here, San Francisco State32. No Conclusions When Another World is UnpopularAppendix: Occupation: A Do-It-Yoursel Guide

+ Inserts: Map, Action Timeline, Poster, More In ormation (Links & Further Reading)

afterthefallcommuniques.info

paper@a terthe allcommuniques.in o

Afterthe Fall:

COMMUNIQUSFROMOCCUPIED

CALIFORNIA

FEBRUARY 14, 2010


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11

In Greece, they throw molotovs in thestreet. For every reason under the sun:in de ense o their riends, to burn downthe state, or old times sake, or the hello it, to mark the death o a kid the copskilled or no reason. For no reason. Theylight Christmas trees on re. December isthe new May. They smash windows, theyturn up paving stones, they ght the copsbecause their uture went missing, alongwith the economy, a ew years ago. Theyoccupy buildings to nd one another, tobe together in the same place, to have abase rom which to carry out raids, todrink and uck, to talk philosophy. Thecops smash into packs o their riends onmotorbikes. They hold down the heads o their riends on the pavement and kickthem in the ace.

In Ssangyong, one thousand laid-o workers occupy an auto actory. They lineup in ormation with metal pipes, whitehelmets, red bandanas. Three thousand riotcops cant get them out o their actory or seventy-seven days. They say theyre readyto die i they have to, and in the mean-time they live on balls o rice and boiledrain. Besieged by helicopters, toxic tear gas,50,000 volt guns, they orti y positions onthe roo , constructing catapults to re thebolts with which they used to build cars.

In Santiago, insurrectionary studentsmark the 40th anniversary o Pinochetscoup by attacking police stations and

shutting down the Universidad Academade Humanismo Cristiano or ten days. Nomore deaths will be accepted, all will be avenged.In France, a couple o agitators dump abucket o shit over the President o Uni-versit Rennes 2, as he commemorates theriots o the 2006 anti-CPE struggle with atwo-minute public service announcement

or corporate education. The video goesup on the web. It drops into slow motionas they fee the mezzanine a ter the action,not even masked. Its easy, its light, its ob-vious. How else could one respond? Whatmore is there to say? We know your qual-ity policy.A cloud o thrown paper breakslike con etti in the space above the crowdbelowa celebratory fourish. The videocuts to the outside o a building, scrawledwith huge letters: Vive la Commune.

In Vienna, in Zagreb, in Freiburginhundreds o universities across central andeastern Europestudents gather in theauditoriums o occupied buildings, hold-ing general assemblies, discussing modali-ties o sel -determination. They didnt usedto pay ees. Now they do. Be ore the vac-uum o standardization called the BolognaProcess, their education wasnt read o apan-European ast ood menu. Now it is.Fuck that, they say. They call themselvesThe Academy o Re usal . They draw lines inthe sand. We will stay in these spaces aslong as we can, and we will talk amongstourselves, learn what we can learn rom

one another, on our own, together. Wewill take back the time they have stolen

rom us, that theyll continue to steal, andwell take it back all at once, here and now.In the time that we have thus spared, oneo the things we will do is make videosin which we exhibit our wit, our beauty,our sovereign intelligence and our collec-tive loveliness, and well send them to our comrades in Cali ornia.

In Cali ornia, the kids write OccupyEverything on the walls. Demand Nothing ,they write. They turn over dumpsters andwedge them into the doorways o build-ings with their r iends locked inside. Out-side, they throw massive Electro Com-munist dance parties. They crowd by thethousands around occupied buildings, andone o them rests her hand upon the po-lice barriers. A cop tells her to move her hand. She says: no. He obliterates her

nger with a baton. She has reconstruc-tive surgery in the morning and returns tode end the occupation in the a ternoon.We Are the Crisis, they say. They start blogscalled Anti-Capital Projects; We Want Ev-erything ; Like Lost Children, the better to

distribute their communiqus and insur-rectionary pamphlets. Ergo, really liv-ing communism must be our goal, theywrite. We Have Decided Not to Die , theywhisper. Students in Okinawa send themletters o solidarity signedProject Disagree .Wheeler, Kerr, Mrak, Dutton, Campbell,Kresge, Humanities 2.the names o thebuildings they take become codewords.They relay, resonate, communicate. Thosewho take them gather and consolidatetheir orces by taking more. They gaugethe measure o their common power.They know, immediately, that i they donot throw down, that i they do not scat-ter their rage throughout the stolid cor-ridors o their universities, that i they donot prove their powers o negation, i theydo not a rm their powers o construc-tion, they will have ailed their generation,

ailed the collective, ailed hi story.But why wouldnt they throw down,

and scatter, and prove, and negate, and a -rm? A ter all,what the uck else is there to do?

I. Like A Winter With A Thousand Decembers

An occupation is a vortex, not a protest.COMMUNIQU FROM OCCUPIED KERR HALL, UCSC

In Cali ornia, the kids writeOccupy Everything on the walls.Demand Nothing, they write.

We are the CrisisA Report on the Cali ornia Occupation Movement


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2 AFTER THE FALL We are the Crisis

A particular political sequence is alwaysat once discrete and continuous, at oncea singularity and a relay. And the serieso militant occupations that would sweepthe state in November both emerged

rom and exploded the limits o a politi-cal conjuncture whose parameters wereestablished in September.

On September 24, the rst day o the all quarter at most UC campuses, a

aculty-organized walkout over the han-dling o the budget crisis during the sum-mer erupted into the largest coordinatedprotest in the history o the Universityo Cali ornia. At UC Berkeley, over vethousand people fooded Sproul Plaza. On

the same day, two occupation attempts atUC Santa Cruz and UC Berkeley wouldresult in markedly di erent outcomes. AtUCSC, a group o over twenty studentssuccess ully locked down and occupiedthe Graduate Student Commons or a ullweek, throwing massive Electro Com-munist dance parties in the open spaceo Covell Commons below the balcony,issuing online communiqus that wouldcirculate internationally, and putting theincipient Cali ornia student movementon the map o radical circles around theworld. The slogans on their banners reso-nated because the collective we in whosename they spoke recognized itsel therein,

saw itsel captured, concretized, enacted,redistributed in their terse ormulae, their unabashed desire or totality, their articu-lation o an urgency at once symptomaticand prescriptive: We Want Everything;We Are The Crisis.

At UC Berkeley, a more ambitious oc-cupation attempt would ail on the samenight that UCSC succeeded. Having ar-rived with equipment to lock down thedoors, a group called or the BerkeleyGeneral Assemblya mass gathering o

some 300 people on the evening a ter thewalkoutto occupy Wheeler Hall. De-spite drawing wide spontaneous support

rom the assembly when they read theoccupation statement rom Santa Cruz,any e ort to bring their proposed actionto a vote was interminably stalled, and asubsequent decision to orce the issue bylocking down the majority o doors in thebuilding resulted in a tense and protractedconfict between those who viewed theoccupation attempt as a vanguardist a -

ront to procedural consensus and thosewho viewed it as an e ort to seize an im-portant opportunity or collective directaction. The stando continued until police

walked into the building and cut throughthe locks some ninety minutes later.

The split within the Wheeler audito-

rium that night, and the split within thebroader UC movement as to how theoccupation at Santa Cruz was regarded,would largely shape both the discourseand the practical possibilities o the mo-bilization over the next month and ahal . While a second, brie occupation atUCSC on October 14 would establish thetactic as a constant threat on UC campus-es, partisans o slow and steady movementbuilding decried such actions as irrespon-sible adventurism. This was an antago-

nism that would persist throughout thealla amiliar split between Trotsky-

ist and ultra-le tist orientations withinthe movement, the ormer holding astto the supposedly democratic rameworko General Assemblies while the secondinsisted that actions themselves were themeans through which the movement wasboth organized and pushed orward.

While a massive organizing con er-ence on October 24 would call or a state-wide Day o Action on March 4, a smallgroup o UC Berkeley grad students not content to wait until the spring se-mester to actlaunched a website andsignature page calling or an inde nite

student, sta , aculty strike beginning onNov. 18, when the UC Regents wouldmeet in UCLA to vote on a proposed

32% student ee increase. Its notable thatalthough this call or mass action wasmost actively pushed orward by manyo the same people who had attemptedthe occupation o Wheeler on Sept. 24,it was also supported by representativeso the same groups that had most vocallyopposed it. But even i the antagonismswithin the movement that had emergedthrough October and early November would not be entirely displaced by theevents that un olded during the week o

the strike, at least the tedium o ideologi-cal play ghting would be.

On Nov. 18 and 19, thousands o pro-testers rom across the state clashed withriot cops outside the Regents meetingsat UCLA, chasing the Regents back totheir cars as they were escorted rom thebuilding. The protests were met with arepressive police response, including taser attacks and eighteen arrests over two days.On the evening o Nov. 18, an occupationattempt at Berkeley would be oiled or the second time, when a team o about

orty attempted to lock down the Ar-chitects and Engineers buildinghomeo Capital Projects, Real Estate Services,and the O ce o Sustainability. Forced to

abandon their attempt when administra-tors locked themselves in their o ces, thegroup nonetheless succeeded in drawingstrong support rom a crowd that gatheredoutside the building, and the a tershockso that spontaneous solidarity would makethemselves elt two days later. Later thatnight at UCLA, a group o orty studentsoccupied Campbell Hall, success ullylocking down the doors with impressivebarricades and holding the building or over twenty- our hours be ore abandon-ing the occupation on the morning o the20th. On the a ternoon o the 19th, UCSanta Cruz students, already holding downKresge Townhall, escalated their occupa-

tion by storming the main administrationbuilding. They held Kerr Hall or threedays, locking it down a ter their demandswere rejected on the night o the 21st, andvacating the building without charges a -ter it was raided by police the ollowingmorning. At UC Davis, about ty stu-dents marched into Mrak Hall on the a -ternoon o the 19th, their numbers risingto 150 through the a ternoon, with doz-ens o supporters outside the doors. Eighthours and sixty riot cops later, ty-twoarrests ensued when those inside re usedpolice orders to disperse. A ter spendingthe night at Yolo County Jail, they droveback to campus and occupied another

building the next day, taking Dutton Hallor eight hours with a group o over one

hundred, orcing the administration to callin riot police again be ore walking away.

In a word: between Nov. 18-Nov. 22a movement became an occupationmovement. But even in the midst o thisexplosive sequence, with its clear a r-mation o tactical solidarity across cam-puses, no one could have anticipated therupture that occurred at Wheeler Hall onNovember 20th.

II. September, October,November

Students gather outside occupiedWheeler Hall on November 20,the last day o the three daystrike at UC Berkeley.

In a word: betweenNovember 18-22a movement becamean occupation movement.


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3AFTER THE FALLWe are the Crisis

At 6:38 am on Friday morning, a postwent up on Facebook: UC Berkeley isOccupied. Wheeler Hall has been takenby students a ter Thursdays vote by theUC Regents to increase ees by over 32%.A ter two days o marches, protests and ral-lies, students have locked down the doorsagainst campus police while supportershave surrounded the building.

At 6:38 am, the last item o this re-port was an e ort at sel - ul lling proph-ecy. In act, only a ew dozen supportersclustered around one side o the hugeneo-classical building at the center o theBerkeley campus, watching the windows.But twelve hours later, when police nallybroke through the occupiers barricades,citing orty people or misdemeanor tres-passing and then releasing them withoutcu s, they were greeted by a cheering,lamplit crowd o some two thousand peo-ple who had packed around police barri-ers all day.

In between, everything swirled in andaround the still edi ce o Wheeler. Anoccupation is a vortex, not a protest.Short-ly a ter it had been locked down in themorning, police broke into the basementfoor, beating and arresting three studentson trumped-up elony charges. Occupiersthen retreated to the second foor, barri-cading hallway doors with chairs, tables,truck tie-downs, U-locks, and ropes, andtirelessly de ending the doors against thecops throughout the day. Outside, studentspulled re alarms, cancelling classes andvacating most o the buildings on campus.Support fowed to the occupation, drawnin part by the massive and disproportionalpolice presence that gathered through-out the morning and swelled to hundredso riot cops by the a ternoon. Inside thebuilding, police snarled threats at thoseon the other side get ready or your beat-

down and pounded against the doors ina rustrated e ort to break through theinterior blockade. Outsideholding their ground against police attacks as the copsset up metal barriers around the build-ingthousands o students e ectively laidsiege to the building. Or rather, they laid siege to the besiegers.

There were various powers o resis-tance. Across the pedestrian cor ridor onthe west side o the building, studentsand workers ormed a hard blockade,sometimes a dozen rows deep, preventingany passage throughout much o the a -ternoon. On the hour, many students at-tempted to organize rushes against policelines around the perimeter, timed by thetolling o the bell-tower and organizedby runners between corners o the build-ing. At around 4:00pm, a column o six-teen riot police lined up at the southeastcorner o Wheeler, marching toward thebackso the students and workers amassedat the barriers. A gathering crowd, drawnby cell phone communications and twit-ter eeds, anned out to surround the ad-vancing column, blockading a path alongthe east side o the building and lockingarms around the cops until they chargeda weak point in the chain, beating onestudent on the ground with batons andshooting another in the stomach witha rubber bullet. When later in the a -ternoon it became clear that the policewould eventually break down the barri-cades on the second foor, sel -organiz-ing groups took up tactical positions atall possible points o exiteven thosereportedly accessible by undergroundtunnelsblockading the loading bayso an adjacent building with dumpstersand orming a human barricade acrossthe doors o Doe Library to the northo Wheeler.

To turn the campus into a militarizedwarzone was the choice o the administra-tion and the police; but it was also an im-plicit taunt, a challenge rom which stu-dents and workers re used to back down,making it obvious that they would notallow the occupiers to be spirited awayto jail in handcu s without a potentiallyexplosive con rontation. As Berkeley gradstudent George Ciccarielo-Mahlers par-ticularly canny account o the day put it:Let this be clear: i the students were ar-rested and carried out, there was going tobe a ght . A riot? Perhaps (this much de-pended on the police). A ght? Mos de .

This commitment o the crowd out-side the occupation entailed a slight dis-placement that was audible in the chantso the crowd: rom Whose University?!Our University! to Who owns Wheeler?!We own Wheeler! Wheeler is the prop-er name o this displacement, because thebuilding that it designates becamein anunexpected instant stretched out througha morning, an a ternoon, an eveningthesite o a displacement o the opposition be-tween a mass movement and the suppos-edly vanguardist tactic hitherto perceivedas the etish o a ew ultra-le t adventurists.A displacement, not a usion. These polespersisted in pockets among the crowd, buttheir confict was simply not what mat-

tered on that day. Whether or not all inter-ested parties might choose to describe theevent in these terms, what happened wasthat a we numbering two thousand, sur-rounding the perimeter o Wheeler Hall,declared collective ownership not just o the University (an abstraction), but o aparticular building, a concrete instantia-tion o university property. And when thishappened the priority o actionalist poli-tics that had de ned the movement or the previous two months was shattered bythe immediacy o an objective situation. Amovement to Save Public Education hadbecome indiscernible, within an unquanti-

able dure , rom a militant desire to com-munize private property.

Several o the occupiers would later re er to the medieval character o thetactical maneuvers that day: having re-treated to an inner chamber, a ter their outer de enses collapsed, they ceded mosto the building to the police. But thepolice were themselves enclosed by thebarricades they had established to keepthe crowd outside at bay. The space wasconstituted by a double barricade by thebarricades o the occupiers and the bar-ricades o the police. This was the con-voluted topology o the occupation: thespace inside was opened up by beinglocked down (a re usal to let anyone in);

III. Vortex:Wheeler

A movement toSave Public Education had becomeindiscernible, within an unquanti able

dure, rom a militant desire tocommunize private property.


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the space outside was closed o by a stateo siege (a re usal to let anyone out). Therewas an intimacy at a distance betweenthese two spacesthe a ective bond o ashared strugglethat communicated itsel through the walls and through the win-dows, that crackled through the air aroundcampus, that carried through a rainstormin the early a ternoon, that enabled theoccupation to persist. That it was possible tohold the space inside, despite the immedi-ate e orts o the cops to take it back: itwas the concrete realization o this power that activated the energy and resistance o the crowd outside. That the material sup-

port o the crowd outside was unyielding,that it re used to be paci ed or exhausted:it was this collective determination thatempowered those inside to hold the doorsthroughout the a ternoon. It becameincreasingly evident that the police

unctioning in this case as the repressiveapparatus o the administrationwere e -

ectively trapped between two zones over which they had no real control: the areaoutside their own barricades and the areainside the second foor doors de ended bythe occupiers.

This essentially powerless position the reactive and isolated position o the

police, and by extension the administra-tionwas never more evident than at theend o the night, a ter the occupiers hadbeen cited and released, a ter they had ad-dressed their supporters through a mega-phone, a ter the crowd began to disperseo their own accord. The barr iers cordon-ing o the plaza outside Wheeler werewithdrawn and the majority o the policebegan to le away, until two weak rowsremained, guarding the building at the topo the steps, under the lights cast across theneo-classical aade. A languid crowd be-gan to assemble at the bottom o the steps,

just standing there, aimlessly, calming star-

ing across the unimpeded space betweenthem and the cops. A parent walked upwith two children, perhaps our and six

years old, casually pointing up toward thestationary soldiers o property. Everyonemight have whispered the same thing atthe same time: look how small they look,how sad and out o place and ridiculous.

The illusory power o the policethroughout the day was in act the power o the contradiction o which their pres-ence was merely an index. It was the pow-er o the people inside, the power o thepeople outsidethe power o people, thatisto suspend the rule o property.

Property is one o the knots that ties to-gether multiple levels o the UC crisis,and that binds it with the larger crisis o the state and the global economy. Citinga twenty percent cut in state unding or the University, UC President Mark Yudo declared a state o extreme scal emer-gency in July 2009a measure intendedto legitimate and expedite a slash-and-burn approach o the administration todealing with the budget short all. It hasbeen the mantra o the UC administrationover the past ew years that the state is anunreliable partner, that the crisis o theCali ornia economy coupled with the re-

usal o the state government to prioritizesupport or public education necessitatesa program o increasingly draconian cutsand auster ity measures. And indeed, manywithin the university have accepted someversion o this argument, urging studentsto direct blame or the cr isis toward Sacra-mento and to acknowledge the economicrealities o the moment: Proposition 13has handicapped the capacity o the stateto draw revenue rom property taxes since1978, and money or public services hasdried up accordingly; the crisis o theuniversity budget is part and parcel o alarger economic crisis e ecting every sec-tor in the state and taking its toll acrossthe country. Why should the University o Cali ornia claim any exceptional status?

It has become increasingly clear thatsuch narratives dont add up; both their

credibility and plausible justi cations or their acceptance slip away rapidly as onelooks into the structure o the UC bud-get. A recent report on administrativegrowth by the UCLA Faculty Associa-tion estimated that UC would have $800million more each year i senior manage-

ment had grown at the same rate as therest o the university since 1997, insteado our times aster. In other words, whileUCOP continues to point to economicnecessities and legislative priorities as theroot causes o the crisis, it is a plain actthat the excessive and inexplicable g rowtho the administrative class itsel accounts

or the same amount o moneythis year aloneas the budget short all.

Even more resonant, particularly or the occupation movement, has been therole o capital projects in the UC crisis.On August 6, the SF Chronicle reportedthat despite a supposed scal emergency

that had orced layo s, urloughs, and in-creased class sizes, UC had agreed to lendthe state $200 million, money that wouldbe paid back over three years at 3.2 per-cent interest and allocated to stalled capi-tal projects. Money or construction proj-ects, it seemed, was readily available where

money or the educational mission o theuniversity was not. In mid-October, BobMeister, a UCSC Pro essor and Presidento the Council o UC Faculty Associa-tions, published an expos making clear the link between proposed ee increasesand capital projects: since 2004, all student

ees have been pledged by UC as collateralor bonds used to und construction proj-

ects. UC retains an excellent bond rating,superior to the state o Cali ornias, in partbecause that rating is guaranteed by ris-ing student ees. Thus, reductions to state

unding actually help the UC to improveits bond rating, because while state edu-

cation unds cannot be used as bond col-lateral, private student ees canand cutsto state unding provide a pretext or in-creased ees. On the list o priorities driv-ing the substitution o private or public

unding, construction, as Meister put it,comes ahead o instruction.

In light o such revelations, to holdthat Sacramento is the primary sourceo the UCs woes amounts to either na-ivet or will ul obscurantism. Not onlyare current reductions in state und-ing a drop in the bucket o UCs totalendowmentand nothing compared tothe growing revenue o the universityspro t-generating wingsit is also thecase that UC administration has pow-er ul motives to both collaborate withthe continuing divestment o state und-ing and to divert its own resources romspending on instruction. For many, thisstate o a airs is both obvious and unsur-prising, and perhaps no one has articu-lated its stakes more plainly than Berke-ley graduate student Annie McClanahanin an address to the UC Regents prior to their November 19 decision to passthe proposed ee increases. Im here to-day to tell you, said McClanahan, thatwhen students and their parents have toborrow at 8 or 10 or 14% interest so thatthe UC can maintain its credit rating andits ability to borrow at a .2% lower rateo interest, we the students are not onlycollateral, we are collateral damage.

Police raid the Business Buildingoccupation at SF State at 4am onDecember 10. The building hadbeen occupied early the previousmorning and renamed OscarGrant Memorial hall. Police brokea downstairs window to gainaccess to the building.

IV. CollateralDamage

The illusory power o the police wasin act the power o the people inside,the power o the people outsidethe power o the people, that isto suspend the rule o property


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5AFTER THE FALLWe are the Crisis

The collateralization o student ees thusputs into question the very uture o the university and the class-relations it iscalled upon to maintain. As elsewhere inour post-industrial economy, the massivepersonal debt required to keep the uni-versity and its building projects churn-ing along indicate the unsustainability o current class relations over the long-term.Something has to break. I the weaknesso the American economy was, in the

years leading up to the nancial collapseo 2008, exacerbated by the securitiza-tion o household debt via all kinds o exotic instruments, the situation is littledi erent with students. UCs bondhold-ers bear nearly the same relationship tostudent borrowing as an investment bankbears to the homeowner underwater on

her subprime mortgage. In both cases,the ction o a sound investment, o apresent sacri ce which will pay o in the

uture, occludes what is essentially a ormo plunder, occludes a present and utureimmiseration which will, eventually, un-dermine the oundations o our consum-er-driven society.

Given the UCs propensity to avor construction over instruction, or morebluntly, buildings over people, it is hardlysurprising that student activists would tar-get those buildings as sites o resistance.The ailed Berkeley occupation o theNov.18 the rst day o the strike tar-geted the Capital Projects and Real-Estate

services o ces, departments responsibleor the construction and administration

o all campus buildings. The statementswhich the occupiers released via a blogentitled Anti-Capital Projectsclari y theterms o the struggle, suggesting that whatis broadly at stake are two di erent visionso the use o space, and by extension, twodi erent regimes o property. Or rather,property and its negation.

These texts all in line with the broadlyanarchist or anti-state communist perspec-

tive o the earlier occupations, in whichthe horizon o occupation, its project soto speak, leads ar beyond the university.To the extent that occupation o ers, hy-pothetically, the opportunity to remove abuilding rom the regime o propertyinother words, to abolish its status as capi-tal and to cancel ones subordination toowners and ownershipit orms a tacticlittle di erent than seizure o the means o production, one with a venerable histor yand a wide extension beyond the univer-sity. In particular, one thinks o workplaceoccupations and expropriations and hous-

ing occupations. With unemploymentreaching staggering proportions and with

millions o bank-owned and oreclosedhomes standing empty, occupation seemslike a tactic that is itsel a strategy a or mo militancy that is not a means to an endbut an end in and o itsel .

But any such threat to property rela-tions immediately invites confict withthe police. One also risks confict with thelarger mass o the student-worker move-ment and activist aculty, who are loathto extend the struggle beyond re orm o the university. The radical stream within

the student movement, on the other hand,sees the ght or increased access to theuniversity as utile without situating that

ght within a much broader critique o politi cal economy. Even i achieved, pres-ent re orms o the UC will merely slow itseventual privatization, and the cr isis o theuniversity remains connected to a muchlarger crisis o employment and, in turn, acrisis o capitalism that permits o no vi-able solution. In other words, the jobs or which the university ostensibly prepares itsstudents no longer exist, even as they areasked to pony up more and more money

or a devalued diploma. The pamphletwhich has become a key re erence or the

occupation movement Communiqu roman Absent Future signals these positionswith its title. The prospective uture o thecollege graduate is erased by the crisis o the economy, even as any alternative u-ture made possible through insurrectionis rendered invisible by capitalist cynicism.The uture is doubly absent.

The radical or anti-re ormist positionwithin the movement has o ten insistedupon a re usal o demandsas the rationale

or occupationupon a re usal to nego-

tiate ones departure rom the occupiedbuilding on the basis o concessions won.I any winnings are likely to be mooted,in the long-term, by overwhelming eco-nomic orces, then occupation is less po-tent as leverage or negotiation than as apractical attempt to remove onesel , towhatever degree possible, rom existingregimes o relation: to others and to theuse o space. The occupiers, in this sense,re use to take what they can get. Theywould rather get what they can take.(This is how some ellow travelers in New

York, participants in a series o inspiringoccupations last year, have put it). An oc-cupation is not a token illegalism to bebargained away in exchange or whatever modest demands the authorrities are will-ing to grant, since this only legitimates the

existing authorities in exchange or what-ever modest demands those authorities arewilling to grant. Demands are always either too small or too large; too rational or too incoherent. Occupations themselves,however, occur as material interventionsinto the space and time o capitalism.They are attempts to live communism;spread anarchy, as the Tiqqun pamphletCall (an infuential text or the occupa-tion movement) puts it. This slogan waswritten on all o the chalkboards duringthe Nov. 20th occupation o Wheeler.

The communiqu and some o theother texts associated with the autumnoccupations link up with what is o -

ten re erred to as the communizationcurrent a species o ultrale tism andinsurrectionary anarchism that re usesall talk o a transition to communism,insisting, instead, upon the immediate

ormation o communes, o zones o activity removed rom exchange, money,compulsory labor, and the impersonaldomination o the commodity orm.Communism, in this sense, is neither anendpoint nor a goal but a process. Nota noun but a verb. There is nothing to-

V.Communization

Supporters o the SF Stateoccupation link arms tode end the building.

Given the UCs propensity toavor construction over instruction,

or more bluntly, buildings overpeople, it is hardly surprising that

student activists would target thosebuildings as sites o resistance.


10/44


ward which one transitions, only thetransition itsel , only a long process o metabolizing existing goods and capitalsand removing them rom the regimes o property and value. Judged in relation tosuch a project, the occupations o the allare modest achievements experimentswith a practice that might nd a uller implementation in the uture. There is anexemplary character to the actions theyare attempts to generalize a tactic thatis also a strategy, a means that is also anend. But can the tactics elaborated withinthe university escape its con nes and be-come generalized in the kinds o places

apartment buildings, actories wherethey would become part o an extensiveprocess o communization? In a sense,the byline o the movement occupy ev-erything, demand nothing is prospective;

it imagines itsel as occurring in an in-surrectionary moment which has not yetmaterialized. This is its strength; its abilityto make an actual, material interventionin the present that ast- orwards us toan insurrectionary uture. Beyond sucha confagration, there is really no escap-ing ones reinscription within a series o re orms and demands, regardless o thestance one takes. Only by passing into

a moment o open insurrection can de-mands be truly and nally escaped.

The prospective dimension o the ear-lier positions is con rmed by the act thatboth the Nov. 20th Berkeley occupationand the Santa Cruz Kerr Hall occupation,the successor occupations, did have a list o demands demands which had a certaintactical logic in developing solidarity, andexpanding the action, but that also su ered

rom the problems o scale, coherence andachievability that plague the demandas orm. Nonetheless, what happened inboth those instances was a massive radical-ization o the student body, a massive esca-lation, one that was hardly at all counteredby its superscription inside this or that call

or re orm. At Kerr Hall, the act that theoccupiers asked the administration or thisor that concession was superseded, in ma-terial practice, by the act that they had,

or the moment, displaced their partnersin negotiation: while they negotiated, theywere at the same time in the Chancellorso ce, eating his ood, and watching vid-eos on his television. They did in act get what they could take , and when the momentcame, they didnt hesitate to convert thesacrosanct propertythe copy machinesand re rigeratorsinto barricades.

Some writers have concluded that thesweep o the alls events presents a dia-

lectic between the adventurist action o small groups, and the back- ooted, reac-tive discourse o those who want to builda mass democratic movement, the nalsynthesis o which can be ound in themass actions undertaken by hundreds inNovember. This seems alse to us since, inretrospect, the smaller actions resolve intothe many acets and eruptions o a sin-gular mass movement dispersed in timeand place. The smaller actions were whatit took to build up to something larger.Again: it is not a question o choosing be-tween these two sides, nor o synthesizingthem, but rather o displacing the priorityo this opposition. The real dialectic is be-

tween negation and exper imentation: actso resistance and re usal which also enablean exploration o new social relations,new uses o space and time.

These two poles cant be separated out,since the one passes into the other withsurprising swi tness. Without con ronta-tion, experimentation r isks collapsing backinto the existing social relations that ormtheir backdrop they risk becoming mereli estyle or culture, recuperated as one moreaestheticized museum exhibit o liberal tol-erance toward student radicals. But to the

extent that any experiment really attemptsto take control o space and time and social

relations, it will necessarily entail an antag-onistic relation to power. This was evidentwhen, during the week be ore exams re-served or studying (Dec. 7-11), Berkeleystudents marched back into Wheeler andheld an open, unlocked occupation o theunused parts o the building, negotiatingan in ormal agreement with the police andadministrators, plastering the walls withslogans, turning classrooms into organizingspaces, study spaces, sleeping spaces, dis-tributing ood and literature in the lobby,and holding meetings, dance parties andmovie-screenings in the lecture hall. Thisattempt to put the building under student-led control turned out to be too much or

the administration, and early in the morn-ing o Dec. 11, the last day o the occu-pation, 66 people were arrested withoutwarning as they slept. That same evening,in response, a group marched on the Chan-cellors house carrying torches, destroyingplanters, windows, and lamps. What wasoriginally conceived as a largely non-con-

rontational action quickly became highlycon rontational. There is nothing new without a negation o the old.By the same measure,even i the people occupying Wheeler onNov. 20th had little time to reinvent their

relations, inasmuch as they spent most o their time ghting the cops or control o

the doors, what emerged was a structureo solidarity, o spontaneous, sel -organizedresistance that obliterated any distinctionbetween those inside and those outside,and that passed, by way o political deter-mination, through the police lines meantto en orce this barrier. There is no negationo the old which does not provoke the emergence o something new.

Project Disagree; Academy o Re usal;Research & Destroy; Anti-Capital Projects:the rhetoric o negation con orms to thetopology o the blockade, the barricade.We Want Everything; Like Lost Children:and this negation opens onto a space o uncertain dri ta drivewhereby a de-

sire or totality g ives way onto the naviga-tion o the not-all. We are the Cr isis. Thisis the only sense in which one might a -

rm a movement.Nous Sommes le Pouvoir , the slogan o

May 68, oregrounds the capacityo thewe, the positive power o solidarity. We

Are The Crisis would seem to cede some o this power, indexing the being o the weto catastrophe, and thereby to a degree o powerlessness: to conditions that are outo control, precisely beyond the measureour capacities. We Are The Cri sisinscribes

the we as both symptom and prescrip-tion, without attempting to evade their

entanglement. And this entanglement our conditionposes a problem or power per se. Nous Sommes le Pouvoir speaks romand or collective capacities; We Are the Crisis writes the collective that resists, thatexperiments, into the crisis o capital: intoobjective conditions. But i we recall that,etymologically, crisis means discrimina-tion, decision, then the slogan is stripped o any teleological deter mination o the weas simply an expression o the economy.To decide uponthe we, upon the collective,as both symptom and prescription, withinand against the objective conditions o capital: this is the vector o decision alongwhich the current occupation movement

attempts to push those objective condi-tions toward a breaking point.

VI. We arethe Crisis

Outside supporters de endOscar Grant Memorial Halllate into the night.

Occupations occur as materialinterventions into the space andtime o capitalism.


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12/44

8 Communiqu rom an Absent FutureAFTER THE FALL

This bankruptcy is not only nancial. Itis the index o a more undamental insol-vency, one both political and economic,

which has been a long time in the making.No one knows what the university is or anymore. We eel this intuitively. Gone isthe old project o creating a cultured andeducated citizenry; gone, too, the specialadvantage the degree-holder once held onthe job market. These are now antasies,spectral residues that cling to the poorlymaintained halls.

Incongruous architecture, the ghostso vanished ideals, the vista o a dead u-ture: these are the remains o the univer-sity. Among these remains, most o us arelittle more than a collection o queruloushabits and duties. We go through the mo-tions o our tests and assignments with a

kind o thoughtless and immutable obedi-ence propped up by subvocalized resent-ments. Nothing is interesting, nothing canmake itsel el t. The world-historical withits pageant o catastrophe is no more realthan the windows in which it appears.

For those whose adolescence was poi-soned by the nationalist hysteria ollowingSeptember 11th, public speech is nothingbut a series o lies and public space a placewhere things might explode (though theynever do). A ficted by the vague desire or

something to happen without ever imagin-ing we could make it happen ourselves we were rescued by the bland homogene-

ity o the internet, nding re uge amongriends we never see, whose entire existence

is a ser ies o exclamations and silly pictures,whose only discourse is the gossip o com-modities. Sa ety, then, and com ort havebeen our watchwords. We slide throughthe fesh world without being touched or moved. We shepherd our emptiness romplace to place.

But we can be grate ul or our des-titution: demysti cation is now a condi-tion, not a project. University li e nallyappearsas just what it has always been:a machine or producing compliant pro-ducers and consumers. Even leisure is a

orm o job training. The idiot crew o

the rat houses drink themselves into astupor with all the dedication o law-

yers working late at the o ce. Kids whosmoked weed and cut class in high-schoolnow pop Adderall and get to work. Wepower the diploma actory on the tread-mills in the gym. We run tirelessly in el-liptical circles.

It makes little sense, then, to thinko the university as an ivory tower inArcadia, as either idyllic or idle. Workhard, play hard has been the over-eager

motto o a generation in training orwhat?drawing hearts in cappuccino

oam or plugging names and numbers

into databases. The gleaming techno- u-ture o American capitalism was long agopacked up and sold to China or a ewmore years o borrowed junk. A univer-sity diploma is now worth no more thana share in General Motors.

We work and we borrow in order to work and to borrow. And the jobswe work toward are the jobs we alreadyhave. Close to three quarters o studentswork while in school, many ull-time; or most, the level o employment we obtainwhile students is the same that awaits a -ter graduation. Meanwhile, what we ac-quire isnt education; its debt. We workto make money we have already spent,

and our uture labor has already beensold on the worst market around. Aver-age student loan debt rose 20 percentin the rst ve years o the twenty- rstcentury80-100 percent or students o color. Student loan volumea gure in-versely proportional to state unding or educationrose by nearly 800 percent

rom 1977 to 2003. What our borrowedtuition buys is the privilege o makingmonthly payments or the rest o our lives. What we learn is the choreography

o credit: you cant walk to class with-out being o ered another piece o plasticcharging 20 percent interest. Yesterdays

nance majors buy their summer homeswith the bleak utures o todays humani-ties majors.

This is the prospect or which we havebeen preparing since grade-school. Thoseo us who came here to have our privilegenotarized surrendered our youth to a bar-rage o tutors, a battery o psychologicaltests, obligatory public service opsthecynical compilation o hal -truths towarda well-rounded application pro le. Nowonder we set about destroying ourselvesthe second we escape the cattle prod o parental admonition. On the other hand,those o us who came here to transcendthe economic and social disadvantages o

our amilies know that or every one o uswho makes it, ten more take our place that the logic here is zero-sum. And any-way, socioeconomic status remains thebest predictor o student achievement.Those o us the demographics call im-migrants, minorities, and people o color have been told to believe in thearistocracy o merit. But we know we arehated not despite our achievements, butprecisely because o them. And we knowthat the circuits through which we might

I. Like the society to which it has played the aith ul servant,the university is bankrupt.

The truth o li e a ter the university ismean and petty competition or resourceswith our riends and strangers: the hustle

or a lower-management position that willlast (with luck) or a couple years ri tedwith anxiety, ear, and increasing exploi-tationuntil the rm crumbles and wemutter about plan B. But this is an exact description o university li e today; that meanand petty li e has already arrived.

Just to survive, we are compelled toadopt various attitudes toward this s-sure between bankrupt promises and

the actuality on o er. Some take a naveromantic stance toward education or itsown sake, telling themselves they expectnothing urther. Some proceed with ironcynicism and scorn, racing through theludicrous charade toward the last wad o cash in the airless vault o the uture. Andsome remain committed to the antique

aith that their ascendingly hard labor will surely be rewarded some day i they

just act as one who believes, just showup, take on more degrees and more debt,work harder.

Time, the actual material o our be-ing, disappears: the hours o our daily li e.The uture is seized rom us in advance,given over to the servicing o debt andto beggaring our neighbors. Maybe wewill earn the rent on our boredom, morelikely not. There will be no 77 virgins,not even a plasma monitor on which towatch the death throes o the UnitedStates as a global power. Capitalism has -

nally become a true religion,wherein the richeso heaven are everywhere promised and no-where delivered.The only di erence is thatevery manner o crassness and crueltyis actively encouraged in the unendingmeantime. We live as a dead civilization,the last residents o Pompeii.

Romantic navete, iron cynicism,scorn, commitment. The university andthe li e it reproduces have depended on

these things. They have counted on our human capacities to endure, and to propup that worlds catastrophic ailure or

just a ew more years. But why not hastenits collapse?The university has rotted itsel

rom the inside: the human capital o sta , teachers, and students would nowno more de end it than they would de-

end a city o the dead.Romantic navete, iron cynicism, scorn,

commitment:these need not be aban-doned. The university orced us to learnthem as tools; they will return as weap-ons. The university that makes us muteand dull instruments o its own repro-duction must be destroyed so that wecan produce our own lives. Romanticnavete about possibilities; iron cynicismabout methods; scorn or the universityshumiliating lies about its situation andits good intentions; commitment to ab-solute trans ormation not o the uni-versity, but o our own lives. This is thebeginning o imaginations return. Wemust begin to move again, release our-selves rom rozen history, rom the igne-ous rieze o this buried li e.

We must live our own time, our ownpossibilities. These are the only true jus-ti cations or the universitys existence,though it has never ul lled them. On itsside: bureaucracy, inertia, incompetence.On our side: everything else.

The university has rotted itsel rom the inside:the human capital o sta , teachers, and students

would now no more de end it than they wouldde end a city o the dead.


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9Communiqu rom an Absent Future AFTER THE FALL

ree ourselves rom the violence o our origins only reproduce the misery o thepast in the present or others, elsewhere.

I the university teaches us primarilyhow to be in debt, how to waste our labor power, how to all prey to petty anxieties,it thereby teaches us how to be consumers.Education is a commodity like everythingelse that we want without caring or. It isa thing, and it makes its purchasers intothings. Ones uture position in the system,ones relation to others, is purchased rstwith money and then with the demon-stration o obedience. First we pay, thenwe work hard. And there is the split:one is both the commander and the com-manded, consumer and consumed. It isthe system itsel which one obeys, the coldbuildings that en orce subservience. Thosewho teach are treated with all the respecto an automated messaging system. Onlythe logic o customer satis action obtainshere: was the course easy? Was the teacher hot? Could any stupid asshole get an A?Whats the point o acquiring knowledgewhen it can be called up with a ew key-stokes? Who needs memory when wehave the internet? A training in thought?

You cant be serious. A moral preparation?There are anti-depressants or that.

Meanwhile the graduate students, sup-posedly the most politically enlightenedamong us, are also the most obedient. Thevocation or which they labor is nothing

other than a antasy o alling o the grid,or out o the labor market. Every grad

student is a would be Robinson Crusoe,dreaming o an island economy subtracted

rom the exigencies o the market. But thisantasy is itsel sustained through an unre-

mitting submission to the market. Thereis no longer the least elt contradiction inteaching a totalizing critique o capital-ism by day and polishing ones job talk bynight. That our pleasure is our labor onlymakes our symptoms more manageable.Aesthetics and politics collapse courtesyo the substitution o ideology or history:booze and beaux arts and another seminar on the question o being, the steady blur o type ace, each pixel paid or by some-body somewhere, some not-me, not-here,

where all that appears is good and allgoods appear attainable by credit.

Graduate school is simply the adedremnant o a eudal system adapted tothe logic o capitalism rom the com-manding heights o the star pro essors tothe serried ranks o teaching assistantsand adjuncts paid mostly in bad aith. A

kind o monasticism predominates here,with all the Gothic rituals o a Benedic-

tine abbey, and all the strange theologi-cal claims or the nobility o this work,its essential altruism. The underlings areonly too happy to play apprentice to themasters, unable to do the math indicatingthat nine-tenths o us will teach 4 cours-es every semester to pad the paycheckso the one-tenth who sustain the ctionthat we can all be the one. O course Iwill be the star, I will get the tenure-track

job in a large city and move into a newlygentri ed neighborhood.

We end up interpreting Marxs 11ththesis on Feuerbach: The philosophershave only interpreted the world in vari-ous ways; the point is to change it. At

best, we learn the phoenix-like skill o coming to the very limits o critique andperishing there, only to begin again atthe seemingly ineradicable root. We ad-mire the rst part o this per ormance:it lights our way. But we want the toolsto break through that point o suicidalthought, its hinge in practice.

The same people who practice cri-tique are also the most susceptible to

cynicism. But i cynicism is simply theinverted orm o enthusiasm, then be-neath every rustrated le tist academic isa latent radical. The shoulder shrug, thedulled ace, the squirm o embarrass-ment when discussing the act that theUS murdered a million Iraqis between2003 and 2006, that every last dimesqueezed rom Americas poorest citizensis ed to the banking industry, that theseas will rise, billions will die and theresnothing we can do about itthis discom-

ted posture comes rom eeling onesel pulled between the is and the ought o current le t thought. One eels that thereis no alternative, and yet, on the other

hand, that another world is possible.We will not be so petulant. The syn-

thesis o these positions is right in ronto us: another world is not possible; it isnecessary. The ought and the is are one.The collapse o the global economy ishere and now.

II. The university has no history o its own; its history is the history o capital.

Its essential unction is the reproductiono the relationship between capital andlabor. Though not a proper corporationthat can be bought and sold, that pays rev-enue to it s investors, the public universitynonetheless carries out this unction as e -

ciently as possible by approximating ever more closely the corporate orm o itsbed ellows. What we are witnessing now i sthe endgame o this process, whereby the

aade o the educational institution givesway altogether to corporate streamlining.

Even in the golden age o capitalismthat ollowed a ter World War II and lasteduntil the late 1960s, the liberal univer-sity was already subordinated to capital.At the apex o public unding or higher education, in the 1950s, the universitywas already being redesigned to produce

technocrats with the skill-sets necessaryto de eat communism and sustain UShegemony. Its role during the Cold War was to legitimate liberal democracy andto reproduce an imaginary society o reeand equal citizens precisely because no one was ree and no one was equal.

But i this ideological unction o thepublic university was at least well- undeda ter the Second World War, that situationchanged irreversibly in the 1960s, andno amount o social-democratic heel-

clicking will bring back the dead worldo the post-war boom. Between 1965 and1980 pro t rates began to all, rst in theUS, then in the rest o the industrializingworld. Capitalism, it turned out, could notsustain the good li e it made possible. For capital, abundance appears as overproduc-tion, reedom rom work as unemploy-ment. Beginning in the 1970s, capital-ism entered into a terminal downturn inwhich permanent work was casualizedand working-class wages stagnated, whilethose at the top were temporarily reward-ed or their obscure nancial necromancy,which has itsel proved unsustainable.

For public education, the long down-turn meant the decline o tax revenuesdue to both declining rates o economicgrowth and the prioritization o tax-breaks

or beleaguered corporations. The raidingo the public purse struck Cali ornia andthe rest o the nation in the 1970s. It hascontinued to strike with each downward

declension o the business cycle. Thoughit is not directly beholden to the mar-ket, the university and its corollaries aresubject to the same cost-cutting logic asother industries: declining tax revenueshave made inevitable the casualization o work. Retiring pro essors make way not

or tenure-track jobs but or precariouslyemployed teaching assistants, adjuncts, andlecturers who do the same work or muchless pay. Tuition increases compensate or cuts while the jobs students pay to betrained or evaporate.

In the midst o the current cr isis, whichwill be long and protracted, many on thele t want to return to the golden age o public education. They navely imaginethat the crisis o the present is an oppor-tunity to demand the return o the past.

But social programs that depended uponhigh pro t rates and vigorous economicgrowth are gone. We cannot be temptedto make utile grabs at the irretrievable

while ignoring the obvious act that therecan be no autonomous public universityin a capitalist society. The university issubject to the real crisis o capitalism, andcapital does not require liberal educationprograms. The unction o the universityhas always been to reproduce the workingclass by training uture workers accordingto the changing needs o capital. The crisiso the university today is the crisis o thereproduction o the working class, the cri-sis o a period in which capital no longer needs us as workers.

We cannot ree the university rom theexigencies o the market by calling or thereturn o the public education system. Welive out the terminus o the very marketlogic upon which that system was ound-ed. The only autonomy we can hope to attain

exists beyond capitalism.What this means or our struggle is

that we cant go backward. The old stu-dent struggles are the relics o a vanished

Another world is not possible; it is necessary.The ought and the is are one. The collapse o theglobal economy is here and now.

The crisis o the university today is the crisis othe reproduction o the working class, the crisis o aperiod in which capital no longer needs us as workers.


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10 Communiqu rom an Absent FutureAFTER THE FALL

III. We seek to push the university struggle to its limits.

world. In the 1960s, as the post-war boomwas just beginning to unravel, radicalswithin the con nes o the university un-derstood that another world was possible.Fed up with technocratic management,wanting to break the chains o a con orm-ist society, and rejecting alienated work asunnecessary in an age o abundance, stu-dents tried to align themselves with radi-cal sections o the working class. But their mode o radicalization, too tenuously con-nected to the economic logic o capital-

ism, prevented that alignment rom takinghold. Because their resistance to the Viet-nam war ocalized critique upon capital-ism as a colonial war-machine, but insu -

ciently upon its exploitation o domesticlabor, students were easily split o rom aworking class acing di erent problems. Inthe twilight era o the post-war boom, theuniversity was not subsumed by capitalto the degree that it is now, and studentswere not as intensively proletarianized bydebt and a devastated labor market.

That is why our struggle is undamen-tally di erent. The poverty o student li ehas become terminal: there is no promisedexit. I the economic crisis o the 1970semerged to break the back o the politi-cal crisis o the 1960s, the act that todaythe economic crisis precedes the comingpolitical uprising means we may nallysupersede the cooptation and neutraliza-tion o those past struggles. There will beno return to normal.

Though we denounce the privatization o the university and its authoritarian systemo governance, we do not seek structuralre orms. We demand not a ree universitybut a ree society. A ree university in themidst o a capitalist society is like a read-ing room in a prison; it serves only as adistraction rom the misery o daily li e.Instead we seek to channel the anger o the dispossessed students and workers intoa declaration o war.

We must beg in by preventing the uni-versity rom unctioning. We must inter-rupt the normal fow o bodies and thingsand bring work and class to a halt. We willblockade, occupy, and take whats ours.Rather than viewing such disruptionsas obstacles to dialogue and mutual un-derstanding, we see them as what we have to say, as how we are to be understood . Thisis the only meaning ul position to takewhen crises lay bare the opposing inter-ests at the oundation o society. Calls or unity are undamentally empty. There isno common ground between those who

uphold the status quo and those who seekto destroy it.

The university struggle is one amongmany, one sector where a new cycle o re usal and insurrection has begunin

workplaces, neighborhoods, and slums.

All o our utures are linked, and so our movement will have to join with theseothers, breeching the walls o the uni-versity compounds and spilling into thestreets. In recent weeks Bay Area publicschool teachers, BART employees, andunemployed have threatened demonstra-tions and str ikes. Each o these movementsresponds to a di erent acet o capitalismsreinvigorated attack on the working classin a moment o crisis. Viewed separately,each appears small, near-sighted, without

hope o success. Taken together, however,they suggest the possibility o widespreadre usal and resistance. Our task is to makeplain the common conditions that, like ahidden water table, eed each struggle.

We have seen this kind o upsurge inthe recent past, a rebellion that starts inthe classrooms and radiates outward toencompass the whole o society. Just two

years ago the anti-CPE movement inFrance, combating a new law that enabledemployers to re young workers withoutcause, brought huge numbers into thestreets. High school and university stu-dents, teachers, parents, rank and le unionmembers, and unemployed youth romthe banlieues ound themselves together on the same side o the barricades. (Thissolidarity was o ten ragile, however. Theriots o immigrant youth in the suburbsand university students in the city centersnever merged, and at times tensions faredbetween the two groups.) French studentssaw through the illusion o the universityas a place o re uge and enlightenment

and acknowledged that they were merelybeing trained to work. They took to thestreets as workers, protesting their precari-ous utures. Their position tore down thepartitions between the schools and the

workplaces and immediately elicited the

support o many wage workers and un-employed people in a mass gesture o pro-letarian re usal.

As the movement developed it mani-ested a growing tension between revolu-

tion and re orm. Its orm was more radi-cal than its content. While the rhetorico the student leaders ocused merely ona return to the status quo, the actions o the youth the riots, the cars overturnedand set on re, the blockades o roads andrailways, and the waves o occupations

that shut down high schools and universi-ties announced the extent o the newgenerations disillusionment and rage. De-spite all o this, however, the movementquickly disintegrated when the CPE lawwas eventually dropped. While the mostradical segment o the movement soughtto expand the rebellion into a generalrevolt against capitalism, they could notsecure signi cant support and the dem-onstrations, occupations, and blockadesdwindled and soon died. Ultimately themovement was unable to transcend thelimitations o re ormism.

The Greek uprising o December 2008 broke through many o these limita-tions and marked the beginning o a newcycle o class struggle. Initiated by studentsin response to the murder o an Athens

youth by police, the uprising consisted o weeks o rioting, looting, and occupationso universities, union o ces, and televi-sion stations. Entire nancial and shoppingdistricts burned, and what the movementlacked in numbers it made up in its geo-

graphical breadth, spreading rom city tocity to encompass the whole o Greece. Asin France it was an uprising o youth, or whom the economic crisis represented atotal negation o the uture. Students, pre-

carious workers, and immigrants were the

protagonists, and they were able to achievea level o unity that ar surpassed the ragilesolidarities o the anti-CPE movement.

Just as signi cantly, they made almostno demands. While o course some dem-onstrators sought to re orm the policesystem or to critique speci c governmentpolicies, in general they asked or nothingat all rom the government, the university,the workplaces, or the police. Not becausethey considered this a better strategy, butbecause they wanted nothing that any o

these institutions could o er. Here con-tent aligned with orm; whereas the op-timistic slogans that appeared everywherein French demonstrations jarred with theimages o burning cars and broken glass, inGreece the rioting was the obvious meansto begin to enact the destruction o an en-tire political and economic system.

Ultimately the dynamics that createdthe uprising also established its limit. Itwas made possible by the existence o asizeable radical in rastructure in urban ar-eas, in particular the Exarchia neighbor-hood in Athens. The squats, bars, ca es, andsocial centers, requented by students andimmigrant youth, created the milieu outo which the uprising emerged. However,this milieu was alien to most middle-agedwage workers, who did not see the strug-gle as their own. Though many expressedsolidarity with the rioting youth, they per-ceived it as a movement o entrants thatis, o that portion o the proletariat thatsought entrance to the labor market butwas not ormally employed in ull-time

jobs. The uprising, strong in the schoolsand the immigrant suburbs, did not spreadto the workplaces.

Our task in the current struggle will beto make clear the contradiction between

orm and content and to create the con-ditions or the transcendence o re orm-ist demands and the implementation o atruly communist content. As the unionsand student and aculty groups push their various issues, we must increase the ten-sion until it is clear that we want some-thing else entirely. We must constantlyexpose the incoherence o demands or democratization and transparency. Whatgood is it to have the right to see how in-

tolerable things are, or to elect those whowill screw us over? We must leave behindthe culture o student activism, with itsmoralistic mantras o non-violence and its

xation on single-issue causes. The onlysuccess with which we can be contentis the abolition o the capitalist mode o production and the certain immiserationand death which it promises or the 21stcentury. All o our actions must push ustowards communization; that is, the reor-ganization o society according to a logic

A ree university in the midst o a capitalist society islike a reading room in a prison; it serves only as a

distraction rom the misery o daily li e.


15/44

o ree giving and receiving, and the im-mediate abolition o the wage, the value-

orm, compulsory labor, and exchange.Occupation will be a critical tactic in

our struggle, but we must resist the ten-dency to use it in a re ormist way. Thedi erent strategic uses o occupation be-came clear this past January when studentsoccupied a building at the New Schoolin New York. A group o riends, mostlygraduate students, decided to take over theStudent Center and claim it as a liberatedspace or students and the public. Soonothers joined in, but many o them pre-

erred to use the action as leverage to winre orms, in particular to oust the schoolspresident. These di erences came to a headas the occupation un olded. While the stu-dent re ormers were ocused on leavingthe building with a tangible concession

rom the administration, others shunneddemands entirely. They saw the point o occupation as the creation o a momen-tary opening in capitali st time and space, arearrangement that sketched the contourso a new society. We side with this anti-re ormist position. While we know these

ree zones will be partial and transitory,the tensions they expose between the realand the possible can push the struggle in amore radical direction.

We intend to employ this tactic un-til it becomes generalized. In 2001 the

rst Argentine piqueteros suggested theorm the peoples struggle there should

take: road blockades which brought to ahalt the circulation o goods rom placeto place. Within months this tactic spreadacross the country without any ormal co-ordination between groups. In the sameway repetition can establish occupationas an instinctive and immediate methodo revolt taken up both inside and outsidethe university. We have seen a new waveo takeovers in the U.S. over the last year,both at universities and workplaces: NewSchool and NYU, as well as the workersat Republic Windows Factory in Chicago,

who ought the closure o their actory bytaking it over. Now it is our tur n.To accomplish our goals we can-

not rely on those groups which positionthemselves as our representatives. We arewilling to work with unions and studentassociations when we nd it use ul, but we

do not recognize their authority. We mustact on our own behal directly, withoutmediation. We must break with any groupsthat seek to limit the struggle by tellingus to go back to work or class, to negoti-ate, to reconcile. This was also the case inFrance. The or iginal calls or protest weremade by the national high school and uni-versity student associations and by some o the trade unions. Eventually, as the repre-sentative groups urged calm, others orgedahead. And in Greece the unions revealedtheir counter-revolutionary character bycanceling strikes and calling or restraint.

As an alternative to being herded by

representatives, we call on students andworkers to organize themselves acrosstrade lines. We urge undergraduates,teaching assistants, lecturers, aculty, ser-vice workers, and sta to begin meetingtogether to discuss their situation. Themore we begin talking to one another and

nding our common interests, the moredi cult it becomes or the administrationto pit us against each other in a hopelesscompetition or dwindling resources. Therecent struggles at NYU and the NewSchool su ered rom the absence o thesedeep bonds, and i there is a lesson to belearned rom them it is that we must builddense networks o solidarity based uponthe recognition o a shared enemy. Thesenetworks not only make us resistant torecuperation and neutralization, but alsoallow us to establish new kinds o collec-tive bonds. These bonds are the real basiso our struggle.

Well see you at the barricades

We must act on our own behal directly, withoutmediation. We must break with any groups thatseek to limit the struggle by telling us to go backto work or class, to negotiate, to reconcile.


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12 AFTER THE FALL

SEPTEMBER 24 UC SANTA CRUZoccupation o the Graduate Student Commons

Across the state, people are losing their jobs and getting evicted, while social ser-vices are slashed. Cali ornias leaders romstate o cials to university presidents have

demonstrated how they will deal with thiscrisis: everything and everyone is subordi-nated to the budget. They insulate them-selves rom the consequences o their own

scal mismanagement, while those whocan least a ord it are le t shouldering theburden. Every solution on o er only ac-celerates the decay o the State o Cali-

ornia. It remains or the people to seizewhat is theirs.

The current attack on public educa-tion under the guise o a scal emer-

gency is merely the culmination o along-term t rend. Cali ornias regressive taxstructure has undermined the 1960 Mas-ter Plan or ree education. In this climate,the quality o K-12 education and theper ormance o its students have declinedby every metric. Due to cuts to classes inCommunity Colleges, over 50,000 Cali-

ornia youth have been tur ned away romthe doors o higher education. Cali orniaState University will reduce its enrollmentby 40,000 students system wide or 2010-2011. We stand in solidar ity with studentsacross the state because the same thingsare happening to us. At the University o Cali ornia, the administration will raise

student ees to an unprecedented $10,300,a 32 percent increase in one year. Gradu-ate students and lecturers return romsummer vacation to nd that their jobshave been cut; aculty and sta are orcedto take urloughs. Entire departments arebeing gutted. Classes or undergraduatesand graduates are harder to get into whilestudents pay more. The university is beingrun like a corporation.

Lets be rank: the promise o a nan-cially secure li e at the end o a universityeducation is ast becoming an illusion.The jobs we are working toward will beno better than the jobs we already haveto pay our way through school. Close to

three-quarters o students work, manyull-time. Even with these jobs, student

loan volume rose 800 percent rom 1977to 2003. There is a direct connection be-tween these deteriorating conditions andthose impacting workers and amiliesthroughout Cali ornia. Two million peo-

ple are now unemployed across the state.1.5 million more are underemployed outo a work orce o twenty million. As or-merly secure, middle-class workers lose

their homes to oreclosure, Depression-era shantytowns are cropping up acrossthe state. The crisis is severe and wide-spread, yet the proposed solutions thegovernor and state assembly organizinga bake sale to close the budget gap arecompletely absurd.

We must ace the act that the timeor pointless negotiations is over. Appeals

to the UC administration and Sacramentoare utile; instead, we appeal to each other,to the people with whom we are strug-gling, and not to those whom we struggleagainst. A single day o action at the uni-versity is not enough because we cannota ord to return to business as usual. We

seek to orm a uni ed movement withthe people o Cali ornia. Time and again,

actional demands are turned against usby our leaders and used to divide socialworkers against teachers, nurses againststudents, librarians against park rangers, ina competition or resources they tell us areincreasingly scarce. This crisis is general,and the revolt must be generalized. Esca-lation is absolutely necessary. We have noother option.

Occupation is a tactic or escalat-ing struggles, a tactic recently used at theChicago Windows and Doors actory andat the New School in New York City. Itcan happen throughout Cali or nia too. As

undergraduates, graduate students, aculty,and sta , we call on everyone at the UC tosupport this occupation by continuing thewalkouts and strikes into tomorrow, thenext day, and or the inde nite uture. Wecall on the people o Cali ornia to occupyand escalate.

We are occupying this buildingat the University of California, Santa Cruz,

because the current situation has become untenable.

Occupy California

Electro Communist dance partyand banners outside the rst

Santa Cruz occupationo the all.


17/44

13AFTER THE FALL

OCTOBER 18ollowing theoccupation o UCSC Humanities II

That is the message sent by the police at-tack upon two students outside the sec-ond UCSC occupation on October 15.Carrying a picnic table toward a buildingwith the best intentions to wedge a stickinto the maw o capital they were pepper-sprayed without warning. One o them,cu ed, arrested, and thrown in a cruiser,now aces suspension.

What could be less surprising? There is no di erence between the treatment o these students by the cops and the treat-ment o all students by the administration.Our lives are permanently under attack,and the beatings will continue until weconvert the cr isis that we are into the gen-

eralized revolt we must become.Why have students begun to bar ricade

the doors o buildings that we claim as our own? To carve out material spaces o re-sistance and emancipation. That to do sorequires us to make explicit the state o siege under which we live, to exteriorizethe locks and chains by which it compelsassent, teaches us that these emancipatedspaces can only exist outside the law, inside the barricades.The students inside the build-ing evaded arrest; the students outside thebuilding were attacked and detained. The spaces in which we are ree are those that we take and hold by orce.That is the hard les-son we all have to learn.

Since some o us are learning it morequickly than others, let there be no endo generosity toward comrades who arepunished or their courage rather than or their complacency. Our support or thosewilling to act will be material, immediate,and unyielding. Networks o mutual aidwill be essential.

Though we have no interest in the-atrical protests intended to court policecrackdowns, we know that as the move-ment becomes more militant the brutal-ity o the police and the punitive charac-ter o the administration will not cease tomake itsel evident. In the con rontationbetween property and people, the po-

lice are agents o property, poorly paidto protect the rights o things. As longas they re use to act in solidarity withother exploited workers, they can onlyprotect the sanctity o walls, dumpsters,and picnic tables while attacking anyonewho might challenge the logic o their own exploitation. We must sustain our militancy in the ace o their attacks andsupport those who are targeted.

This arrest is the rst aimed at studentresistance on UC campuses this year. Weknow there will be more. How could it beotherwise, so long as the absolute antago-nism between oppression and resistancecontinues to clari y itsel ?

the beatingswill continue

Riot police guard theUC regents meetingin LA on Novmber 17.

For the soldiers o property: nothing but contempt.Demand nothing. Occupy everything.

Research & Destroy

Should you make a move rom protest to resistance, you will be brutalized, arrested, destroyed.


18/44

14 AFTER THE FALL

NOVEMBER 18 UC BERKELEYrst day o regents meeting in Los Angles and state wide strike

Yes, very much a cemetery. Only here thereare no dirges, no prayers, only the repeatedtesting o our threshold or anxiety, humili-ation, and debt. The classroom just like theworkplace just like the university just likethe state just like the economy manages

our social death, translating what we onceknew rom high school, rom work, romour amily li e into academic parlance, intoacceptable orms o social confict.

Who knew that behind so much civicli e (electoral campaigns, student bodyrepresentatives, bureaucratic administra-tors, public relations o cials, Peace andConfict Studies, ad nauseam) was so muchsocial death? What postures we maintainto claim representation, what limits we as-sume, what desires we dismiss?

And in this moment o crisis they askus to twist ourselves in a way that theycan hear. Petitions to Sacramento, phonecalls to Congressmeneven the chancel-

lor patronizingly congratulates our Sep-tember 24th student strike, shaping themeaning and the orce o the movementas a movement against the policies o Sac-ramento. He expands his institutionalauthority to encompass the movement.When students begin to hold librariesover night, beginning to take our rstbaby step as an autonomous movement hereins us in by serendipitously announcinglibrary money. He manages movement,he kills movement by unneling it into theelectoral process. He manages our social

death. He looks orward to these battleson his ter rain, to eulogize a proposition, towin this or thathe and his look orwardto exhausting us.

He and his look orward to a repro-duction o the logic o representative gov-

ernance, the release valve o the universityplunges us into an abyss where ideas arewisps o etherthat is, meaning is ripped

rom action. Lets talk about the ghtendlessly, but always only in their managed

orm: to perpetually deliberate, the end-less feshing-out-o when we push theboundaries o this orm they are quick torecon gure themselves to contain us: thechancellors congratulations, the reopen-ing o the libraries, the managed generalassemblythere is no ght against the ad-ministration here, only its own extension.

Each day passes in this way, the admin-istration on the look out to shape studentdiscourseit happens without pause, we

dont notice nor do we care to. It becomesbanal, thoughtless. So much so that wesee we are accumulating days: one semes-ter, two, how close to being this or that,how ar? This accumulation is our sharedhistory. This accumulationevery oncein a while interrupted, violated by a riot,a wild protest, un orgettable ucking, theoverwhelming joy o love, li e shatteringheartbreakis a muted, but desirous li e.A dead but restless and desirous li e.

The university steals and homogenizesour time yes, our bank accounts also, but

it also steals and homogenizes meaning.As much as capital is invested in buildinga killing apparatus abroad, an incarcera-tion apparatus in Cali ornia, it is equallyinvested here in an apparatus or manag-ing social death. Social death is, o course,

simply the power source, the generator,o civic li e with its talk o re orm, respon-sibili ty, unity. A li e, then, which serves

merely as the public relations mechanismor death: its garrulous slogans o reedom

and democracy designed to obscure theshit and decay in which our eet are plant-ed. Yes, the university is a graveyard, butit is also a actory: a actory o meaningwhich produces civic li e and at the sametime produces social death. A actorywhich produces the illusion that meaning

and reality can be separated; which every-where reproduces the empty reactionarybehavior o students based on the valueso li e (identity), liberty (electoral politics),and happiness (private property). Every-where the same whimsical ideas o the

uture. Everywhere democracy. Everywherediscourse to shape our desires and distressin a way acceptable to the electoral state,

discourse designed to make our very mo-ments here together into a set o legibleand ruitless demands.

Totally managed death. A machineor administering death, or the proli -

eration o technologies o death. As else-where, things rule. Dead objects rule. Inthis sense, it matters little what ace oneputs on the universitywhether Yudo or

Th e NecrosocialCivic Life, Social Death, and theUC

Politics is death that lives a human li e. Achille Mbembe

Capital is dead labor which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor.Karl Marx

Being president o the University o Cali ornia is like being manager oa cemetery: there are many people under you, but no one is listening.

UC President Mark Yudof

As much as capital is invested in buildinga killing apparatus abroad, anincarceration apparatus in Cali ornia,it is equally invested here in an apparatus

or managing social death.


19/44

15AFTER THE FALL 15

some other lackey. These are merely thepersoni cations o the rule o the dead,the pools o investments, the buildings,the fows o materials into and out o thephysical space o the universityeach onethe product o some exploitationwhich

seek to absorb more o our work, moretuition, more energy. The university is amachine which wants to grow, to accumu-late, to expand, to absorb more and moreo the living into its peculiar and perversemachinery: high-tech research centers,new stadiums and o ce complexes. Andat this critical juncture the only way it cancontinue to grow is by more intense ex-ploitation, higher tuition, austerity mea-sures or the departments that ail to passthe test o relevancy.

But the irrelevant departments alsohave their place. With their pure motiveso knowledge or its own sake, they per-petuate the blind inertia o meaning os-

tensibly detached rom its social context.As the university cultivates its cozy rela-tionship with capital, war and power, thesediscourses and research programs playtheir own role, co-opting and containingradical potential. And so we attend lecturea ter lecture about how discourse pro-duces subjects, ignoring the most obvious

act that we ourselves are produced by thisdiscourse about discourse which leaves usbelieving that it is only words which mat-ter, words about words which matter. Theuniversity gladly permits the precaution-ary lectures on biopower; on the produc-tion o race and gender ; on the rei cationand the etishization o commodities. A

taste o the poison serves well to inoculateus against any con rontational radicalism.And all the while power weaves the invis-ible nets which contain and neutralize allthought and action, that bind revolutioninside books, lecture halls.

There is no need to speak truth topower when power already speaks thetruth. The university is a graveyard ases. The graveyard o liberal good inten-tions, o meritocracy, opportunity, equal-ity, democracy. Here the tradition o alldead generations weighs like a nightmareon the brain o the living. We gra t our fesh, our labor, our debt to the skeletonso this or that social clich. In seminars

and lectures and essays, we pay tribute tothe universitys ghosts, the ghosts o allthose it has excludedthe immiserated,the incarcerated, the just-plain- ucked.They are summoned or

Documents

After the Fall Communiques