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

[Courtney Lund]

Good work ladies! You can put my name down!
On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 9:37 PM, Rachelle Cruz <rachelle.a.cruz at gmail.com>wrote:

> 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
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> CWgrad-announcements mailing list
> CWgrad-announcements at lists.ucr.edu
> http://lists.ucr.edu/mailman/listinfo/cwgrad-announcements
>
>
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