UCI Protests Escalate: 17 Activists Arrested Wednesday Morning

Protesters stage sit-in outside Chancellor Drake's Office. Photo © Daniel C. Tsang 2010

Irvine -- In a sign that civil disobedience at University of California, Irvine has reached a new level of direct action, 17 activists, many associated with the Worker-Student Alliance at the Irvine campus, were arrested shortly before noon today (Wednesday, 24, 2010) after several hours of sustained chanting in a hallway outside UCI Chancellor Michael Drake's 5th floor offices in Aldrich Hall, after being warned by UCI Police that they were participating in an illegal assembly.

The protesters, including AFSCME local 3299 union lead organizer Juan Castillo (previous Subversity interview) and WSA leader Dennis Lopez (earlier Subversity interview), were one by one asked if they wanted to leave or would be arrested and then lifted up from the hallway floor (where they had been seated together) and handcuffed before being escorted by UCI police down the stairs. The arrests were observed by local media and UCI faculty members.

Before the arrests, protesters, in disciplined chants, that continued for several hours, called on UCI and Chancellor Drake to "in-source" service workers currently working for ABM. Drake had appeared moved at a recent forum with students when the spouse of a laid-off service worker asked him to settle the labor dispute.

In literature distributed at the event and at a rally outside Aldrich Hall, the protesters described their sit-in as not an "occupation, nor is it unlawful assembly or trespassing." Instead, "we have expropriated Aldrich Hall" the protesters declare. They continue: "As part of the University of California, this building belongs to the students and workers." They attribute their action to the "increasing privatization of our system": "This action is the result of frustration with conventional avenues of participation. The crisis is too extreme for gradualism and the ideals of public education are slipping away; direct confrontation is needed."

Protesters chant outside Chancellor's Drake Office as UCI Police begin arrests. Photo © Daniel C. Tsang 2010

The action comes five days after a few dozen other students took over Langson Library the past Friday evening and held teach-ins in the lobby with faculty until they were evicted after 11 pm by UCI Police who occupied the loan desk. (The library had extended opening hours past the normal 5 p.m. to accommodate the protesters.)

The protesters also made 12 demands on the UCI Administration, and three on the UC Regents, including an end to military and private security contracts. The demands appear online at the blog, Democratize Education: Taking Control of Our Education. We list them here as well:

To UCI Admnistration:

1) We demand that UCI administration implement a comprehensive financial aid system by fall 2010 that apportions grant aid (excluding loans from the equation) and on-campus housing based on family wealth rather than income. Financial aid must be designed to counteract the economic effects of structural and systemic racism in our society.

2) We demand the immediate direct hiring of all outsourced ABM workers and fair pay for all campus workers. Students and workers do not support discriminatory hiring practices that victimize immigrant, Latina/o working families.

3) We demand that Chancellor Drake publicly commit to seeking out private donations that will specifically fund financial aid to AB540 students or begin providing financial aid for AB540 students directly from his office’s discretionary funding. We want administration to publicly recognize that AB540 students do not share the same economic freedoms and securities as other populations.

4) We demand that UCI administration immediately disarm all police officers of Tasers. This action is supported by the December 2009 ruling of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The Taser has replaced the lash of the whip as a device in the service of state sanctioned anti-blackness, evidenced so blatantly at UCLA this past November, and UCI’s administration should lead in the banning of this device.

5) We demand that UCI immediately equip the campus with gender neutral bathrooms. Students and workers who do not fit the illusion of gender normativity suffer routine violence and intimidation. UC should not privilege heteronormativity over the interests of its LGBT community.

6) We demand the recall of the three groundskeepers that were laidoff in October 2009 and the reinstatement of the 5% time reduction of the entire campus of AFSCME 3299 service unit.

7) We demand that no disciplinary action (academic or legal) be taken against the 11 students arrested at Ambassador Oren’s event. UCI and the surrounding community’s repeated attacks against, and hyper-surveillance of, Muslim and Arab students aids in branding legitimate political criticisms against the apartheid state of Israel as ‘uncivil’ and fosters a segregated cultural, social, and intellectual climate for the university. Deploying rhetoric that equates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism serves to annihilate rather than engage in dialogue.

8) We demand 100% funding from administration for a recruitment and retention center for underrepresented students. Recruiting and retaining students of color and low-income students should be a campus priority, but UCI has neglected to support these important efforts.

9) We demand that until state-funding has been restored to the UC system in full, that all budget cuts imposed in the fall be redistributed by imposing an equal percentage cut to each of UCI’s schools.

10) We demand that UCI administration immediately reinvest in the ethnic, queer, and women’s studies departments/programs. UCI should foster an environment that is supportive of students who are considered outside of the “mythical norms” of our society. As evidenced so blatantly at UCSD this past week, Black subjects are in an antagonistic position against the institution, this sentiment is reinforced by administration and creates a safe space for anti-blackness. UCI administration should lead in creating a campus that engages in academic, political, and social reeducation which challenges structural and individual racism, sexism, heterosexism, and homophobia.

11) We demand that Chancellor Drake publicly disclose all of UCI’s military and private security contracts. Furthermore, we demand that Chancellor Drake shut down the Center for Unconventional Security Affairs and discontinue all military and Homeland Security contracts that aid in both the mass murder of people around the world by U.S. imperialism (particularly in Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza, and Pakistan) or the violent police repression of students and workers within the U.S. In solidarity with workers and students around the world, we demand an end to genocidal imperialist wars for profit and empire: U.S. imperialism out of Iraq and Afghanistan!

12) We demand that UCI not feed the prison-industrial complex. We demand that UCI end its contract with Motorola by fall 2010. Furthermore, we demand the removal of all Dell, IBM, and Texas Instrument products by fall 2010 as well.

Demands to the UC Regents:

1. We demand amnesty for all previous and current participants in protest on UC campuses. The Regents must restore all penalized students to good academic standing, recall all fired workers, and issue a public statement demanding that any and all criminal charges be dropped.

2. We demand the UC Regents and the Office of the President terminate ALL military and private security contracts currently in place at UC campuses and research facilities. In solidarity with workers and students around the world, we demand an end to genocidal imperialist wars for profit and empire: U.S. imperialism out of Iraq and Afghanistan!

3. We demand that the Regents revisit the November 2009 decision to increase student fees by 32% and address student and faculty objections to this decision. We demand that this public discussion of the 32% fee increase include three agenda items:

(a) A period for public comment;

(b) A vote, in full view of the public, reconsidering the 32% fee increase;

(c) A vote, in full view of the public, to ban all outsourcing of workers.

UPDATED 1:40PM: University Communications (Cathy Lawhon) has just sent out a statement; of course no one was at risk, it was a totally peaceful and disciplined sit-in as a faculty member noted. And the whole sit-in was over by noon. Anyway, here's what the PR folks sent out at 1:30 pm:

A group of students and labor organizers occupied the fifth floor of
Aldrich Hall at 10 a.m. Wednesday, Feb. 24, disrupting business and
presenting a wide-ranging list of demands.

Offices on the fifth floor were locked down and protestors were
informed that they should leave or they would be arrested. By noon,
police arrested 17 protestors inside Aldrich Hall who refused to leave
and cited them with unlawful assembly and refusal to disperse.
Students arrested will also be cited with violations of university
conduct policy.

Demonstrators outside the building blocked several exits impeding the
ability of those inside to leave. Police surrounded the perimeter of
the building and exits were cleared.

By afternoon, staff inside Aldrich Hall were evacuated to ensure their
safety.

UPDATED 3:43 PM: Here is the OC Register coverage.

UCI Student Affairs Vice Chancellor Manuel Gomez on the First Amendment

Manuel Gomez in his plush office. Photo © Daniel C. Tsang, 2010. UPDATED: To listen to audio, click here: .

Irvine -- In a broad look back at his student activism days (when he hung the Black Flag of anarchism in his apartment), UCI Vice Chancellor Manuel Gomez, in the wake of growing controversy over the student disruption of the talk earlier this month of the Israeli Ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren, and the arrests of 12 students, discusses the First Amendment on campus, and states that UCI's Muslim Student Union will not be kicked off campus. He also states that images on student protest blogs of UCI Police taking down leaflets announcing protest events is "disturbing," but he is waiting for students to file formal complaints with his office.

Gomez says he grew up in a poverty-stricken "barrio" in Santa Ana and was active in various struggles in his student days, including fighting police abuse. He says he understands the passion and quest among young people for opposing oppression: "I understand it in my bone." His verdict on his protesting past: It was wrong to distrust people over 30. We also discuss cooptation.

In "Imagining the Future: Cultivating Civility in a Field of Discontent," Gomez focuses on the situation at UCI as tensions were addressed in the wake of the Zionist Organization of America's initial complaint to the U.S. Office of Civil Rights over the alleged mistreatment of Jewish students. ZOA has since also claimed UCI students solicited donations for Hamas during a talk at UCI of British Member of Parliament George Galloway.

In the article, written for Change Magazine, as well as on Subversity, Gomez argues that hate speech has been upheld by the courts as allowed under the First Amendment. The ZOA more recently has called for a boycott of UCI in terms of donations and enrollment.

UCI has also sent disciplinary letters to the 8 UCI students arrested, including MSU President Mohamed Abdelgany, a first step in campus administrative proceedings.

In response, the various Muslim activist groups, including the Muslim Public Affairs Council, have called on UCI allow "free speech" for protesters.

Gomez's interview is being aired this morning on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, California, at 9 am (simulcast via kuci.org). He is interviewed by Subversity host Daniel C. Tsang.

UCI Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinksy on the First Amendment

Erwin Chemerinsky, left, with students after his talk. Photograph © Daniel C. Tsang 2010. UPDATED with audio link: To listen to audio, click here: .

Erwin Chemerinsky, the founding dean of the new UCI School of Law, February 11, 2010 talked at UC Irvine about the First Amendment in the wake of the shouting down of the recent lecture at UCI by the Israeli Ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren and the arrests of the students involved.

Chemerinksy's talk, previously scheduled, happened several days after the Oren lecture, in a larger lecture hall to accommodate the crowd of mostly students who packed the room.

As a public service, KUCI's Subversity program airs Chemerinsky's entire talk and the subsequent Q and A session. The show airs today (15 February 2010), airing 9-10 a.m. on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, California, and simulcast via kuci.org.

Meanwhile, student activists have rallied to urge support for the 11 students (3 from UC Riverside, 8 from UCI) arrested by UCI Police, asking why they had to be arrested. One statement circulating among activists suggests making these points to UCI Chancellor Michael Drake and to the UCI Dean of Students, who would be imposing any administrative sanctions on the UCI students, including potential expulsion:

· It was unjust to arrest students for simply having the courage to
stand up and speak out against a man responsible for propagating the
deaths of thousands of innocent people.
· Civil disobedience has historically played an instrumental role in
the civil rights movement in America the eventually ensured equality
and human rights for all minorities.
· Michael Oren is a representative of a state that is condemned by
more UN Human Rights Council resolutions than all other countries in
the world, and he should not be honored at UC Irvine.

The statement said "we will not support an educational
institution that threatens to punish its’ students with suspension and
expulsion for standing up for their principles."


Supporters of the arrested students have started a Facebook page, "Drop All Charges Against the Eleven", which as of this morning has 4,657 members.

Meanwhile the controversy has again enraged the Jewish community, with Rabbi Dovid Eliezrie, who heads the Rabbinical Council of Orange Council, even suggesting that Chancellor Drake consider expelling the students. [An earlier version incorrectly attributed a call for ending donations to UCI to Rabbi Elierzrie; but another group has formally called for that.] At the same time, the Muslim Public Affairs Council weighed in, calling for an investigation into the arrests.

Trannie Andy Quach Afraid to Meet Real Trans?

Westminster Councilman Andy Quách grins after DUI last year in mugshot.

"Trannie" Andy Quách may yet get to meet a real transgendered Vietnamese American -- or more -- this Saturday, the eve of Lunar New Year or Tet. The up and down (DUI) politician carefully mentored by state legislator Van Tran (hence a "Trannie") is all agitated about the prospect of lesbian, gay, bisexual -- and transgendered -- members of his Vietnamese American community marching in the annual Tet festival he's helping organize this year! But as a city official (the march is organized by Westminster where he sits on its city council), he can't very well say no to a group that duly paid the city's $100 fee to be able to march.

So earlier this week he sends out a press release, in Vietnamese, to say, sorry folks, while he is personally against these folks marching, he can't do anything about it (he cannot discriminate!) and please celebrate the advent of the Year of the Tiger with him.

But not everyone is pleased he is taking the legalistic way out and not expressing his homophobia more strongly. Stirred by news that sexual minorities plan to march, religious opposition to the gay participation has manifested itself, with Pastor Trần Thanh Vân of Hội Ðồng Liên Tôn (Interfaith Council) calling for a religious boycott of the Tet parade, according to Nguoi Viet. Its editor, Hao-Nhien Vu, echoes the Vietnamese reportage in his sardonic English-language Bolsavik blog.

Following KUCI's Subversity radio program this past Monday on the upcoming march, the Orange County Register has also jumped on the story, but states incorrectly that it is the first time gay Vietnamese would have marched in Orange County. In fact, they marched along Campus Drive in Irvine a few years back, when OC Pride Festival was held at UC Irvine.

Andy Quách's move to stand on legalities is laudable but may not win him kudos from the more conservative religious right elements of his community. The first Vietnamese American elected to public office (also to city council in Westminster), Tony Lam suffered a huge backlash from anti-communist elements in Little Saigon when he, on the advice of the city attorney, did not attend rallies protesting the display of Uncle Ho's photo and the flag of Vietnam during the HiTek protests a decade or more earlier, even though OC District Attorney Anthony Rackauckas himself showed up in a clearly partisan (Republican) move to rally the anti-commie crowd, as I wrote about in the OC Weekly in 1999. Andy Quách's religiously fundamentalist supporters may be just as unforgiving.

Sexual Minorities to March in Tet Parade in Little Saigon

Gina Masequesmay. Photo from CSUN web-site. UPDATED with audio link: To listen to audio, click here: .

In a historic first, Vietnamese American lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered [LGBT] plan to march as part of Little Saigon's Tet parade this coming Saturday, Lunar New Year Eve. While they have marched in Orange County before (at the OC Pride march in Irvine) and in San Jose and San Francisco, this is the first time they plan a march in the heartland of the overseas Vietnamese community in the U.S.

On KUCI's Subversity show Monday 8 February 2010, at 9 a.m., we talk with CSU Northridge scholar Gina Masequesmay
about queer life within the Vietnamese American communities. The CSU sociologist did her Ph.D dissertation at UCLA in 2001 on one of the groups marching, Ô-Môi, which came out with a zine in 2005. She is the lead co-editor of a new collection of essays, Embodying Asian/American Sexualities (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2009).

Four groups plan to join together in this march, according to march organizers, embracing "marriage equality" in the context of the Prop. 8 controversy.

Song That Radio is a grass-root organization which has the dual task of operating a radio program to focus on enhancing community awareness of LGBT issues, with the aim to create social change in attitude towards LGBT people and to organize social and political events that advocate, support and empower the Vietnamese-American LGBT community by increasing LGBT visibility and inclusiveness. Its goal is to improve the quality of life of Vietnamese LGBT people by reducing and eliminating the disparities within the Vietnamese-American community in dealing with LGBT issues.

Ô-Môi is a support group for lesbians, bisexual women, and transgender of Vietnamese descent. Its goal is to provide a support and resource space for queer, female Vietnamese to come out and network.

Gay Vietnamese Alliance provides a safe and supportive environment for gay, bisexual, and transgendered men of Vietnamese descent from all over the world to network, voice issues, promote wellness and foster leadership.

The Vietnamese Lesbian and Bisexual women Network and Friends is a support network of women, young and old alike, who provide support to Vietnamese women who are questioning their identities or simply proud to be lesbians or bisexual women.

The Subversity show airs on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, and is simulcast via http://kuci.org. Podcasts are available later.

The march is slated to begin after 9:30 a.m. Saturday 13 February 2010 at Bolsa and Magnolia in Westminster, California.

Dang Nhat Minh Brings to Life Liberation Struggle Doctor's Diary

The diarist, Dang Thuy Tram (left).

UPDATED with audio links: To listen to the entire Subversity show on Dang Nhat Minh, including the USC panel discussion, click here: .

To listen to just the USC panel discussion: click here: .

Vietnam's top filmmaker, People's Artist Đặng Nhật Minh, has made a moving anti-war film based on captured diaries of a National Liberation Front doctor, whose intimate and revealing thoughts about war and the Party are put on paper in between treating soldiers during the "American War." The diarist is a young surgeon, Đặng Thùy Trâm, known as "Thuy." Tragically, at age 27, she was killed by an American bullet through her forehead, in 1970. The film, Don't Burn (Đừng Đốt) is Vietnam's entry to this year's Academy Awards.



In her diary, only two volumes of which survived the war, Thuy rails against the American invaders (whom she calls "devils") while wondering why the Party took so long to admit her. Was she too bourgeois? In a telling entry, she admits "Bourgeois sentiments are always suspect. It's strange that I still prefer to be like that than to be clear and simple like a farmer." The Party later did admit her and she is now considered a martyr in Vietnam. The diary has been published in the U.S. as Last Night I Dreamed of Peace.



"Don't Burn" not only brings to life events described in the diary, but also brings the story up to date, showing how an American soldier, and his military family, came around to read the diary of an enemy doctor, in the process struck by the futility of warfare. The film describes how the diaries ended up at Texas Tech, whose library contain the largest non-governmental collection on the war, and shows how Thuy's family came to read their daughter's writings almost four decades later.

Thuy's father was also a noted surgeon and his mother a pharmacology lecturer specializing in medicinal plants. Thuy gave up her dream to be a ophthalmologist and instead, like many of her compatriots, went south to serve the state.

The parallels with the film director's own family upbringing are stark. Dang Nhat Minh's father, Dang Van Ngu, was also a noted doctor, leading efforts to fight malaria with penicillin. Indeed, he also was killed by the Americans, in 1967, a year before the entries in Thuy's recovered diary begin.

Dang Nhat Minh himself has stated: "I have no regrets at all about being a film director as it is destiny. But if I could choose again, I would rather be a doctor and follow in my father's steps." Both father and son have won the Ho Chi Minh Award.

This is the first film to portray the views of America's "enemy" so starkly.
It seeks to reconcile the two nations who fought so bitter and deadly a war.

Dang Nhat Minh & Kieu Chinh at USC 23 January 2010. Photo © Daniel C. Tsang 2010

And perhaps as a sign of possible reconciliation between Vietnamese in the homeland and here, director Minh was embraced warmly by Little Saigon's most famous film personality, Kieu Chinh (left), after a recent showing at the University of Southern California(USC).

Indeed, in California the past few weeks, the film has been shown to audiences young and old in northern and southern California.

Dang Nhat Minh answers a question during panel discussion at USC. Photo © Daniel C. Tsang 2010.

On KUCI Subversity's 1 February 2010, from 9-10 a.m. we discuss this film and diary and present the panel discussion after the film showing at USC, with Director Dang Nhat Minh. Also on the panel are Oh, Saigon director Doan Hoang (whose film was also shown that day), interpreter Gianni Le Nguyen and USC Prof David James, who kicked off the session. Thanks to Prof. Viet Nguyen, who co-organized the "Dreaming of Peace: Vietnamese Filmmakers Move from War to Reconciliation" event, for permission to record that session and air it. Prof. Nguyen prefaced the showing of Don't Burn with a moving tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. by quoting from the civil rights leader's writings against the Vietnam War.

The Subversity program airs on KUCI, 88.9 fm in Orange County, California, and is simulcast via kuci.org. Podcasts will be made available later and posted here. See trailer of Don't Burn.

UCI Chancellor Drake Grilled by Students

Chancellor Drake listens as the spouse of an outsourced worker asks in Spanish to be treated with dignity, captivating the audience. Photo © Daniel C. Tsang 2010

UPDATED with audio link: To listen to the show, click here: .

Irvine -- UCI Chancellor Michael Drake, for the first time since a critical UCI Faculty Senate blasted him for (initially) firing founding Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky in 2007, faced Wednesday 13 January 2010 another hostile audience at a public forum organized by student protesters who gave what OC Register's Gary Robbins called a "verbal drubbing" -- with all but one student criticizing his leadership of the campus. It was a P.R. disaster for Drake.

Unlike previous "town hall" meetings where Drake managed to be in control, students criticized him for deferring to aides and not answering the questions "man to man". Asked pointedly if he would still continue to stay at UCI should his pay be further cut, he never answered the question, nor did he made a commitment to remaining at UCI.

While Drake and UCI police chief Paul Henisey declined to comment on the police abuse at UCLA protests (saying they were not there to see what happened) -- after the public forum, Subversity managed to ask the police chief if he would drop charges against sociology graduate student John Bruning, who had been arrested at a protest late last fall. Chief Henisey said it was up to the Orange County District Attorney.

At the forum, students laughed when Drake declared that UCI's commitment to free speech was nationally known. The chief then denied his cops were ripping down protesters' posters on campus. Both Drake and Henisey said they knew nothing about that. See photos of a UCI police officer ripping down posters on the Occupy UCI! blog.

Subversity has also learned that in another sign of intimidation by campus police, protesters who have been chalking on campus recently -- writing statements such as "UCI is Racist" on walls and the ground -- have been confronted by campus police who take down their name and threaten to charge them with "defacing" university property should the chalk not be able to be removed. This week's rains are likely, however, to wipe away the chalk.

The only time Drake seemed moved and did not act like a CEO of a corporation was after the wife of an outsourced worker who has worked at UCI for 20 years pleaded with him to provide benefits to the workers. Drake responded that he was committed to "quality experience" for everyone at UCI and said he had been working to help the disadvantaged and dispossessed in his career.

A day after the forum, dozens of outsourced workers demonstrated on campus and a smaller group of workers and student supporters gave Ramona Agrela, an associate to Drake, posters of workers who had been laid off.

Subversity, a KUCI public affairs program, airs today (18 January 2010) at 9-10 a.m. audio from the public forum as a public service. The program airs on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, California, and is simulcast via kuci.org.

Students & Workers to Confront Chancellor at Public Forum

UCI protest rally organizer Dennis Lopez, 4 January 2010. Photo credit: Daniel C. Tsang © 2010.

A public forum with students and workers confronting UC Irvine Chancellor Michael Drake on the privatization of the UCs is slated for Wednesday 12 January 2010 at 5-6 p.m. at HIB (Humanities Instructional Bldg) 100 on the UC Irvine campus.

High on the student agenda, beyond calling for a reduction in fees and end to privatizing a UC education, is expected to be calls for Drake to control the UCI police, to ban the use of Tasers on campus and to drop charges against Sociology graduate student John Bruning. Some students even want UCI to be made a cop-free zone.

If UCI police meant to silence Bruning, a student protest leader, by arresting him late last year on dubious grounds, it has done the opposite. Bruning in an article in today's New University calls for a ban on Tasers on campus, citing a recent court decision criticizing its use.

Though he is not happy under the spotlight as a student leader whose arrest and his being dragged off by UCI police was captured on video and posted on YouTube, Bruning is likely to use his trial -- if it comes to that -- as a platform to further critique UCI's administration and police tactics. Does UCI really want to provide him such a platform? After all, UC Berkeley dropped all charges against those originally arrested outside the Berkeley Chancellor's home, after windows were broken. At UCI, Bruning is not even charged with breaking windows, just slamming his arm against a glass-paned door to the administration building. I suspect the Orange County District Attorney's office will find there are no grounds to proceed to trial.

Meanwhile unnamed individuals have been posting on campus WANTED posters of Drake and Vice Chancellor Manuel Gomez, charging them with neglecting student needs among other undocumented allegations. The reward: Their salaries, the amounts of which are emblazoned at the bottom of the posters, which stayed up only hours before being removed by also unnamed individuals.

These and other WANTED posters remain online, on the so-called Communist Party Planning Committee site, targeting, in addition to Drake and Gomez, Sharon Salinger (Dean of Undergraduate Education), Assoc. Dean Caesar Sereses, Police chief Paul Henisey, officer Charles Chon, new Dean of Students Assistant Vice Chancellor Rameen Talesh, and Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Michael Gottfredson. The CP Planning Committee is likely a parody of the name and the WANTED posters a provocative escalation of tactics.

The fact that these wanted posters with salary numbers haven't been widely posted on campus perhaps suggests a hesitancy among the protesters, who are by no means a unified whole. We link them here to inform the public.

As for the targets, just to mention two more: Salinger is the UCI administrator who wiped out a key student services resource, SAAS, the Student Academic Advancement Services, and subsequently asserted on KUCI's Subversity show that the services, which were partially refunded by the U.S. Department of Education, would continue under another name, although the former SAAS director and staff were let go.

Talesh in a letter in today's New University, while declaring UCI's commitment to protect free speech rights, argues there is a "time and place" for student protests, but not when they disrupt classes.

The text of the student/worker endorsed statement, distributed via email originally yesterday, follows:

Dear Campus Community:

In the past 3 months, we've seen changes and decisions made at the UC system that many of us wouldn't have dreamed of. Undergraduate fees have risen 32%, faculty, staff, and campus workers have been laid off and furloughed, classes have been cut, and the library hours have been reduced. To add insult to injury, essential services on campus have also been terminated, such as Student Academic Advancement Services (which ran Summer Bridge), Counseling Center staff has been cut, and financial aid has been decreasing. We all have questions about our futures in the UC system: How will the cuts affect us? How will we continue to afford UCI? What job prospects will we have after we graduate?

In response to the growing discontent and anger over the budget cuts on campuses across the state, a broad coalition of students has organized a Public Forum at UCI to discuss the important changes affecting our university. Chancellor Drake has been invited to attend and participate, which he has agreed to do, along with other key administrators at UCI. We urge all of the UCI community -- students, workers, faculty, staff -- to attend and raise questions about the decisions being made on our behalf for the future of the University of California and public education more generally.

Sponsored by:
Black Student Union
American Indian Student Association
Asian Pacific Student Association
MEChA
Alyansa ng mga Kababayan
Radical Student Union
Worker Student Alliance
Muslim Student Union
Women and Criminal Justice Network
Incite Magazine
Defend UCI
University Council-AFT, Local 2226
AFSCME, Local 3299
UPTE
Alud, The Graduate Student Journal of the Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese

Privileging (Gay or Straight) Marriage is "Misplaced"

For the first show of our new Winter 2010 season, Subversity re-airs our November 24, 2008 edition, when we talked with law professor Nancy D. Polikoff, author of a new book, Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage: Valuing All Families Under the Law (Beacon Press, 2008), on the limits of fighting for gay marriage. The show airs on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, California, and is simulcast via kuci.org.

She argues that by privileging marriage under the law over other relationships, many people suffer, including those in domestic partnerships. She breaks with fellow queer activists who have moved into the streets to defend gay marriage after California voters approved Prop. 8 that banned gay marriage in California. She challenges those activists to see beyond gay "equality" arguments that restrict marriage benefits only to those willing to get married.

Today, a federal court hearing on Prop. 8 is slated to be made available via YouTube.

Nancy D. Polikoff is Professor of Law at American University Washington College of Law, where she teaches in the areas of family law, civil procedure, and sexuality and the law. Previously, she supervised family law programs at the Women's Legal Defense Fund (now National Partnership for Women and Families), and before that she practiced law as part of a feminist law collective. For 30 years, she has been writing about and litigating cases involving lesbian and gay families. Her articles have appeared in numerous law reviews, and her history of the development of the law affecting lesbian and gay parenting appears as a chapter in John D'Emilio, William B. Turner, and Urvashi Vaid, eds., Creating Change: Sexuality, Public Policy, and Civil Rights (St, Martin's Press, 2000). She helped develop the legal theories in support of second-parent adoption and visitation rights for legally unrecognized parents, and she was successful counsel in In re M.M.D., the 1995 case that established joint adoption for lesbian and gay couples in the District of Columbia, and Boswell v. Boswell, the 1998 Maryland case overturning restrictions on a gay noncustodial father's visitation rights.

For more on the book, go to web site.

Her blog is at: here.

See also John D'Emilio's "The Marriage Fight is Setting Us Back".

Yet Another Murder: Black and Gay Theater Director

Ben Bradley. Photo: Courtesy Fountain Theatre

Six days after Black and gay Indiana University English professor Don Belton was murdered by Michael Griffin, 25 at the time, an ex-Marine in Bloomington, Indiana, another Black and gay figure (this time in the stage arena) was also brutally murdered, in another apparent relationship gone sour.

Bennett Bradley, a well-loved and respected theater director who presented plays at the Fountain Theatre in East Hollywood, was brutally killed by his apparent lover on January 2, 2010. With the theater now celebrating its 20th year, Bradley had been scheduled to direct a new production of The Ballad of Emmett Till next month. Ironically, the play tells the actual story of a Black teenager whose murder helped spark a civil rights movement.

Press reports, citing the police, are saying that Jose Fructuoso, 25, stabbed the 59-year-old director to death. Fructuoso has been arrested and according to press reports has "confessed" to the brutal murder. News reports are calling Bradley and Fructuoso "lovers" or involved in an "intimate" relationship.

This tragedy -- the second in a week where a beloved Black man in his fifties was allegedly killed by a 25-year-old apparent "lover" -- raises the issue, why, in the four decades since gay liberation's Stonewall Rebellion (1969), we have yet to resolve the perplexing question of what makes a young man kill someone who loves him.

When Lindon Barrett, 46, the UC Riverside (and former UC Irvine) English Professor, also Black and gay, was murdered in 2008, and a young man, Marlon Martinez, then-20, was accused of his murder, I had wondered if the ensuing trial would provide any answers about how the young with older relationship had gone sour resulting in such brutality and finality.

That hope was squelched recently when on Christmas Day 2009, Martinez was found dead in his six-man cell in Los Angeles Men's Central Jail. Any inmate's jail death is suspicious and deplorable. Authorities are still investigating the cause of his death but one thing is certain, we are nowhere closer in understanding Lindon Barrett's brutal murder.

A memorial service for Bennett Bradley is being planned. For more information, see the Fountain Theatre's Ben Bradley memorial page, which also links to news reports on his murder.