[CW-Grad] CWPA students react to UC Regents Protest

[Rachelle Cruz]

Dear CWPA students, alumni, faculty and staff,

Andrea Gutierrez and I have drafted a letter to Chancellor White in
response to last Thursday's UC Regents Meeting and protest on campus.

We would love your feedback, support, signature, and/or anything else to
strengthen our voice and concerns regarding police presence and brutality
at UCR, students' rights to assemble, and the Occupy Movement on campus.

The letter is both attached to this email and pasted below.

Thank you!

Best,
Rachelle Cruz
Andrea Gutierrez

***

January 22, 2012

Dear Chancellor White,

As graduate students and teaching assistants in the MFA Program for
Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts, we are deeply
disappointed and ashamed by the actions taken by the University this past
Thursday.

Many of us participated in the campus-wide action of students across the UC
system, faculty and staff outside of the HUB, while the UC Regents
continued their meeting in privacy.  This day-long action was indeed an
expression of outrage over rising tuition and depreciating quality of
education.  It was also a celebration of community and solidarity.

We witnessed our students chanting or engaging in discussion about the grim
future of UC Riverside and their disappearing classes; for many of them,
this was their first political protest.  One of our students, a mother of
two, brought her three-year-old daughter.  This student lamented forgetting
to dress her daughter in her Highlander shirt.  She wanted her daughter to
bear witness to the fight for her future education.

We witnessed UCR students and community members dressed in black bearing
colorful, lifesize banners depicting the book covers of liberatory texts.
  These books envision equality and freedom and question privilege and
cultural hegemony, such as Franz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, bell
hooks’ Feminism is for Everyone, Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy for the
Oppressed, among
others.  The book bloc remained at the front of the line, facing the
staggering number of riot police at the HUB exit and protecting protesters
from police violence.  We couldn’t help but recognize the clear metaphor in
all of this.

Despite what your Friday Letter states, there were more than just a “few”
individuals at this action.  We witnessed hundreds of students, faculty,
and staff who merely wanted to engage in an open discussion with the UC
Regents.  As police helicopters circled above us, we witnessed our students
(your students) pushed, shoved and humiliated by riot police because of
this desire to converse and be heard by the Regents.  We witnessed members
of our community shot by riot police with pellet guns; one young man was
knocked to the ground by the shock and force of the pellets.  We witnessed
sheer violence by your “co-workers,” the police who treated your students
like the Asian Citrus Psyllids plaguing the orange groves at UCR and
throughout Southern California.

The “few individuals” who peacefully disrupted the UC Regents Meeting
represents more than a handful of marginal opinions.  These “few
individuals” exercised an essential act of civil disobedience and represent
many of us in the UC Riverside and UC community who are fed up with
business as usual.

We urge you to provide opportunities for students to engage in dialogue
about last Thursday’s events and the implications behind police presence as
the University’s response to student assembly and protest.  We urge you to
take responsibility for putting your students’ safety on the line.  We urge
you to ensure their safety and right to express their discontent with the
UC system by supporting future student actions.

Sincerely,

Students of the MFA Program for Creative Writing and Writing for the
Performing Arts

Rachelle Cruz
Andrea Gutierrez

*****
Rachelle Cruz,
Host of "The Blood-Jet Writing Hour" Radio Show
www.thebloodjet.wordpress.com
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