http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIccco4PRRk&feature=fvst
It is an alarming trend, as America increasingly becomes paranoid, and civil society comes unglued.
The amazing thing about these trends is that the injection of more sophisticated tech weaponry and introduction of tools like mace, pepper spray, tear gas, bigger truncheons, rubber bullets, pepper spray guns, bullet-proof vests, bullet-proof helmets completely loses sight of what we are fighting against.
This environment of "us against them" now has seeped into the campuses, where security guards who used to be formed and organised for the purpose of protecting students and faculty from nefarious acts and predators are now being used as paramilitary forces to subdue free speech and righteous protests.
Campuses are supposed to be "intellectual free zones" where robust debates, clashes of ideas, in an atmosphere of non-violence, are allowed the widest ambit to flower and allowed a platform to vent and express themselves.
That's what the "free speech movement" of Mario Savio in the sixties at UC Berkeley was all about.
I may not agree with some of those ventings and the goals of that civil disobedience, but I will be damned if I cave and won't defend your right to freely express yourself in the "free zone" of an academic environment, so long as you don't infringe upon other's rights to also express a counterpoint of view.
I have been to UC Davis many times, as my niece attends engineering school there, in her sophomore year.
That quad is hugh. It is open space. And there is a lot of green in the middle of a large swath of open space in a hugh campus.
For Linda Katehi to suggest that pitching a few tents in the middle of the campus Quad is an issue of public safety is hooey.
Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred ideas contend.
That's what campus life and academic freedom is all about.
For the campus police chief of UCD to even suggest that her fully armed security force of 35 campus security guards, fully-armed with truncheons, a hugh arsenals of anti-riot tech equipment, in the midst of a few hundred sitting, passive protesters, are threatened or surrounded with no escape is ridiculous.
UCD Police Chief Annette Spicuzza is either an idiot or a congenital liar.
The militarization of our campuses in California is completely unacceptable.
We need to vigilantly voice our collective indignation as parents of children attending public colleges that this is not acceptable.
And we need to hold the ruling and governing officials of this once great state,California, including the state governor, Jerry Brown, and the State legislative officials, plus the UC Board of Regents, that the dismantling of California's public institutions of higher learning, with relentless rounds of budget cuts, leading to privatization, and the crushing of our kids, our future generation, can no longer be breached and that there is a line which will have be drawn.
No more. No mas. No mas.
I am righteously indignant.
And I am outraged that some of the academics, both active and retired, are not as outraged as I am with this current sordid mess and completely unacceptable state of affairs.
My daughter from UCSC is headed home tonight. And I plan to have a long Thanksgiving conversation with her and feel her out about her angst, anxiety, and trepidation as a UC student.
My friend, a UC professor, had made a point about the lack of empathy and connectedness between the campus police and the kids that they are supposed to protect.
This is one manifestation of what I have been raving and ranting and bitching all this time.
What has this society and its crumbling moral compass wrought when we don't take care of our young kids -- our future generation.
Even animals take care of their young. For Pete's sake !
Wherefore our California adults and parents !
Our old geezers here in this group ought to do some real soul-searching.
Our time on this earth is limited. This fight is one fight that we must fight for our kids and our grandkids.
I am ready to join the barricades. Are you?
Check out further the link to James Fallows blogs:
