Why Occupations? A Q&A with a Berkeley Student of German Activism

In the following interview, UC Berkeley professor Catherine Cole asks  Shane Boyle, a doctoral candidate in UC Berkeley's Graduate Program  of Performance Studies, to provide comparative analysis of the recent European and Californian student occupations. During Fall 2009, Boyle has been in Germany studying protest culture as part of his dissertation research.

COLE: I'm really struck by how widespread occupations as a tactic are in Europe among the International Student Movement. What do you think is the reason behind the prominence of this particular tactic, occupation?


BOYLE: Why occupations? I can really only speak to my experience with occupations here in Berlin, but I see the choice coming down to at least least three things.

First, occupations are a clear expression of dissent. By taking (and holding) a university building, students are able to symbolically declare their position to the administration, the public, and other students. This might sound obvious, but aesthetically, the holding of a building, especially a known, highly visible, and well-known building on campus and hanging massive banners and signs from its windows can powerfully change the experience of being on campus not only for the occupiers, but also for everyone else. This is hard to explain, but easy to understand once you have experienced it. Think back to Fresh who I wrote about a few years ago in your class. Not only were the banners he hung from the tree in front of Wheeler highly visible to thousands of people a day, but it also changed/disrupted the experience of walking through campus for everyone else. What people got from this experience and the opinions it helped to shape are a whole other matter, of course. But he was able to defamiliarize the campus space. So first, there is a symbolic and even aesthetic dimension.


Second, the actual occupation, the literal being inside of the space and taking part in the actions, events, etc carries with it powerful experiential effects. As I write in the piece I sent to you earlier, the occupied space at the Free University is more than just an expression of dissent; it is a place where students are learning, discussing, debating, and practicing democracy. It is a space at the university that they see as their own. At the same time, anyone is welcome to take part in the occupation-- students, faculty, employees, the public. Of course, there are cafeterias, libraries, common spaces, etc. students can gather in, but there are clear differences between what can take place in those highly administered space and the near limitless possibilities of the occupied space. This makes the space highly empowering as well as productive for building and sustaining the movement. Everyday there are teach-ins, meeting, concerts, films, cabaret, etc. to take part in. It is a space where their social and political lives are combined with their education. Many students regularly sleep, eat, and study in the space. This is why I disagree with faculty who complain that an occupation blocks or hinders education. It is not that simple. First off, in Berlin, after some (quite significant) reshuffling, classes originally scheduled in the occupied hall were moved to another building. Also, and more importantly, I do not think that what can be learned and experienced in the occupied space is any less worthwhile or relevant to those students at this moment in their lives than what was likely scheduled to be taught in that space. Quite the contrary.

Third, the actual taking of the space was very important for students here in Berlin. Not only was it a symbolic action but the actual process that led to it helped galvanize a movement. On November 11 between 600 and 700 students met in a General Assembly to discuss the issues they were facing and possible actions. Following a near consensus vote, students decided to take the hall. Not only was this step empowering, but it was also a highly collective and democratic action that would likely not have been accomplished with only one or two students. 

From my conversations with students here in Berlin and elsewhere in Germany, these seem to be three of the key reasons for the prominence of occupations. Of course, the fact that most students are not facing suspension or police attacks (although at some universities this is the case) also helps the “popularity” of this tactic.

To my knowledge, the tactical choice of occupations is not at all new in Europe, especially in Germany. Moreover, protests and movements of the scale taking place right now in Germany and other European nations are much more common than in the US. As a friend of mine who is very involved with the main occupation here at the Free University of Berlin remarked half-jokingly in a meeting last week, major strikes like this take place every five or six years in Germany. Like I said, he was exaggerating, but in Germany, nationwide or at least large-scale student strikes are more common than in the US (for a variety of reasons), and I would say they are even more accepted by the public as well as administrators and faculty. At a discussion forum between UC and German students held last week at the Kennedy Institute at the Free University, another student from the UC who has been taking part in the Bildungsstreik (education strikes) here in Berlin commented that the public and even government sympathy for student concerns in Germany seems incredibly higher than in the US. I am not sure how one would verify this opinion, but her remark does confirm something that I too had been thinking. This is not to make a value judgment on either the US or German movements and publics. In fact, I think the quickness with which one can gain widespread sympathy for ones cause goes a long way in showing the low degree of radicalness in ones demands.

The tactic of occupation, like you suggest, is more common in Europe than in the US. There have been occupations in the US over the past decade, but not on the scale as in Europe. Regarding the situation right now, a spreadsheet I just received tonight from a group I’ve been working with at the Free University reports there are currently 68 occupations of universities and high schools taking place right now in Germany alone. Elsewhere, the list has confirmations of 139 ongoing occupations worldwide, and this does not even include the very recent developments in Riga, Latvia and the massive protests throughout Greece.  

COLE: How do activists think about this tactic in relation to other tactics, such as protests, lobbying, etc? 


BOYLE: I hope my answer above can partly answer this question. Each tactic performs a different function and carries with it differing experiences and effects. Demonstrations are important but they take time to mobilize and of course nearly impossible to sustain for any long period for a variety of obvious reasons (number of participants involved, infrastructure, etc). So the difference between a demo and an occupation should be clear. Lobbying is of course important for students in Germany because there actually exist formal channels for them to lodge their complaints (unlike at the UC right now), but lobbying bodies that do not grant full or even representative representation to a constituency depend on effective and spectacular actions to make a group’s will known. That is why tactics such as demos are important. Blockades of the Education Ministry conference in Bonn this week are being scheduled but they also serve a different function than protests. Of course they will help build the movement, but they are also spectacular and are short-lived. Occupations on the other hand can last a long or short time. They are only limited by police or activist intervention. This goes a long way for building movements and also building the imagination.


COLE: Does the site of the occupation matter--for instance whether a site impacts other students (classrooms) vs. a site that interrupts the administration (i.e. administrative buildings such as those occupied at UCSC and Davis).


BOYLE: Of course, but administration buildings would be much harder and I think more dangerous to hold, even though the symbolic effect could be greater. Also, who and what type of university business would be effected would also be much different if one occupied an administration building. There have been talks about occupying administration buildings here in Germany (some attempts might have already been made), but the risk of doing so is much greater. I guess it depends on the effect that is desired. At the Free University, students were looking to make a symbolic statement but were also very concerned about the sustainability of the occupation. In the occupation spreadsheet I mentioned earlier, their is column dedicated to the status of the occupation (active, geraumt/cleared out. threatened, reoccupied, dwindling, etc). So the sustainability of a space, at least for students in Germany is very important, which I think makes taking an administration space less attractive, despite its potential symbolic value.


COLE: How have both the administrators and faculty at German universities been responding to the occupations? Can you point to a campus where you think there has been particularly strong faculty leadership/responsiveness?


BOYLE: At the Free University, departments have started holding weekly general assemblies (or so I understand) to talk about the issues and the occupation. I know some faculty have taken part in occupations, but not to the scale that students have. For example, in the recent arrests and violence against an occupation in Frankfurt am Main a professor was among those arrested. The administration at the Free University is obviously not happy with what is going on, but they have not threatened disciplinary or police action. Students can and come in the space as they please. At the same time, there is also some talk that the president of the university is taking a position at another school in Germany. I wish I could say more about faculty involvement, but I cannot. The occupations I am most familiar with here in Germany are almost completely student (and by that I mean undergraduate) run. But like I said, students have commented how the occupations are being discussed in these regular departmental assemblies.


COLE: Do you think there can/should be a parallel International Faculty Movement to go along with ISM. If so, what would ISM student leaders see as being important to a faculty agenda? What is our role?


BOYLE: One thing I think is wonderful about the movement at the UC is the coordination and involvement of students, faculty, and employees. One thing I always say to people in Berlin about the UC movement is that it is not a student movement, but something involving more sectors of the university population. With this said, I hope that any International Faculty Movement would work closely with the ISM. The involvement of faculty in the movement here in Europe is far less than at the UC so it would be hard for me to comment on what student here in Europe would thing a faculty movement’s agenda would be. I can offer my own opinion though. So far faculty at the UC have been wonderful at doing research, getting the information out there, holding teach-ins etc. At the same time, the solidarity and openness to the tactics used by employees and students has also been very important. Also using the leverage you have to pressure administrators and express your views in the media has also been significant. I was not there on November 20 so I cannot comment on the involvement of faculty that day, especially their involvement as mediators, but I am not certain that is a role faculty must always see themselves as having to perform.


COLE: To your knowledge, has the ISM gotten media coverage that links up all these locations of student occupations? What do you think it will take to get that kind of coverage, if it hasn't gotten that thus far?


BOYLE: The actions of students during the global week of action was often mentioned in national and local newspapers as being part of an international movement. But most of the coverage about the “internationalness” of the movement here in Europe focused on the Bologna process and included only EU countries. There were articles about the November strikes at the UC in major media outlets here in Germany and they did link it to strikes in Europe, but not with any substantial analysis. In my personal opinion, I think that articulating to the media that the struggle of the UC is part of a larger international movement could do a lot, not only in gaining legitimacy in the public eye for our movement, but also for highlighting that the issues we are facing are not due simply to developments happening in California or the US, but a global defunding and retrenchment of public services, particularly education. Articulating our struggle as a global one could help make clearer to the public what I, at least, find to be the source of the problems we are facing.  How we do this? By making mention of the global struggle in interviews, articles, editorials about the UC movement. Doing the same in our calls for action (like the German movement already does). Even carrying signs that express solidarity with movements in other countries. Also holding solidarity actions in conjunction or in response to events elsewhere as students in Austria did following the Wheeler Hall occupation.


COLE: I've heard you say that you think CA students aren't really aware of the ISM so much. Why do you think that is? How could that change? I did notice on the November 20 occupation of Wheeler that international tweets were regularly appearing. UCB students seemed REALLY inspired by the sense that they were part of a global movement. But were those reading those tweets part of a movement, or more part of a flashmob?


BOYLE: I think students are aware of events happening elsewhere but not about the ISM in particular. With all that has been happening at the UC the past few months, it is hard enough work just to keep up with what is going on at the UC’s ten campuses and become educated about the highly complicated crisis we are facing. This is actually something I really hope to help do in the coming months when I am back in California: raise awareness of the incredible movements mobilizing around the world whose demands and tactics are so similar to those of the UC movement. And hopefully, we can develop practical strategies and steps to take to build and express solidarity with other nations. Some of us in the ISM, here in Germany, and at the UC have started talking about making March 4, the planned date of the march on Sacramento, a global day of action.


COLE: One last question: in a note I sent to faculty, I included a link to a Ukranian site that was focused on the UC strike. I couldn't read the site at all, and a colleague who could noted that a fair amount of the coverage of Yudof was focused on his Jewish identity. This was pretty disturbing. Have you seen any kind of similar bias in German coverage of the UC situation?


Not a word.

Why Occupations? The Tactics of the International Student Movement

By Catherine Cole

Today, December 10, is the fourth day of a new occupation at UC Berkeley's Wheeler Hall. Quite different from the first Wheeler occupation on November 20, this one appears to be modeled on recent European student occupations. Angus Johnston, a scholar of student activism, confirms:

"This new occupation has a lot in common with recent UC library study-ins, but it’s far bolder than those actions. Wheeler II is clearly modeled on the large-scale, long-term campus occupations that have swept Europe in the last year — occupations in which students have sought to establish functioning open university communities in campus spaces. A few recent American occupations have attempted to create similar environments, but I know of none which have reached the level of success that we’re seeing at Wheeler right now."

See the map of European occupations  
More on International Students Movement (ISM)
map of US student occupations and protests

Given that European student occupations are the model for this new Wheeler event, I thought readers might be interested in hearing a perspective from a Berkeley graduate student, Shane Boyle, who is presently in Germany conducting research on protest cultures. I posed to him a number of questions about occupations as a tactic in Germany and Europe, and with his permission, I circulate his answers below.

But first, some context: The current Wheeler event (billed as "Live Week" instead of "Dead Week") is an open door occupation, where people can come and go throughout the week, with no polarization of "inside" vs. "outside," etc. Occupiers of Wheeler are relocating within the building to make room for any scheduled classes/events, so there has been no interruption of the "service delivery" of regularly planned educational activities.  The organizers have had a careful negotiation with the police, who have been attentive and responsive. As of Tuesday night, the occupation became officially sanctioned through Friday, which seems to be an acknowledgment of how well both the students and the police have managed the rules of engagement.  Programming includes several general assemblies, strategy meetings, films, national conference calls, and lectures, which began with a talk by Bob Meister on Monday night. The Live Week/Open University website provides more info.  Or you can just drop by. There is a welcome table in the lobby where greeters have the most up-to-date schedule of events. The occupiers have also established a rotation of custodial duties. A video tour on their website begins with an image of students mopping the lobby of Wheeler:  Like the recent Irvine (non)occupation, it appears occupiers plan to leave Wheeler cleaner than when they found it, which is a big improvement over what happened at UCSC.

The primary goal of the new Wheeler occupation/Open University seems to be not necessarily garnering public sympathy or even massive media attention (which is relevant to Prof Meranze's recent post on Newfield's blog).  Rather the goal seems to be to raise student awareness about their power and rights, and to have them take ownership of their university and build networks of coalition and communication. Their manifesto states: "This university is yours!  We shift competition to cooperation.  We replace stress and anxiety with compassion and joy.  We transform the traditional balance of power of this institution to create an education that includes the interests, concerns, and passions of all of us, and embodies the true ideal of democracy. It’s time to reinvent public education together, So come one, come all to your university!' Twitter feeds show that students in other parts of California (Davis, UCLA, SF State), and indeed around the country and the world (Vienna, Berlin, Macedonia) are watching things unfold at Wheeler. Last weekend I logged on to an international chat among student activists which included participants from Austria, Croatia, Macedonia, Germany, Greece, Sierra Leone, the US, Puerto Rico, and Spain. Students really are comparing notes about tactics, strategies, experiences, etc. They seem to be linking up struggles in all these geographically disparate places in a way that faculty are not. They are also conducting research and organizing conferences on these linked struggles. For instance, this call for papers circulated on the "ucstrike" twitter feed earlier this week.

UCLA professor Michael Meranze (in his blog post referenced above) contends that "the narrative of the Occupations would demand a surrender of the University," which certainly seems to be true of some of the US occupations and their manifestos. But it might be helpful for us to think about occupations in more precise and differentiated terms. Not all occupations are the same. It's pretty clear that the current Wheeler occupation aims to do quite the opposite: occupiers are encouraging members of our community to claim the university. Furthermore, if it is true that, as Meranze contends, "the supine nature of the system-wide Academic Senate reveals that our own institutional agents are part of the internal problems we face," then perhaps faculty could learn from the students what it means to take full occupation (i.e. ownership) of what is ours.

Students may well be doing the math: There are 220K students in the UC, 440K students in CSU's and 2.8 million students in the CA community college system. Most of these students are California voters (and it's worth remembering that many students in the 1960s protests didn't have the vote.) Add it all up, and you get over 3.5 million students in California public higher education. If each CA student persuaded 3 additional non-students in CA (parents, neighbors, co-workers) to pressure the government for greater support for higher education, that's 10.5 million people. There are 36 million voters in CA, and I'm guessing many of them don't vote. So if actions like this succeed in building a shared student consciousness, a perception of students' potential power as a voting block, and the motivation and coordination to act  as a block--all of this could have a significant impact on the status of higher education in our state and, indeed, well beyond our state.  Students have the numbers in a way faculty and the administration don't. They have numbers that, frankly, I would think few interest groups in California possess. Furthermore, they are part of a much larger movement, and they know it.

To become part of the movement, stop by Wheeler, or tune your computer to the "tweets" from sites like:

#ucstrike
#ucbprotest
or the remarkably multilingual and multinational #ouruni

Or just check out some of the links I've provided above. The movement is transpiring in both actual and virtual spaces. You are entitled to occupy any of them.

--Catherine Cole
Professor, University of California Berkeley

On Occupations and the International (Student) Movement

by Shane Boyle, UC Berkeley

I did not witness the Wheeler Hall occupation on Friday,
November 20. Like so many students and faculty at UC Berkeley
who spend semesters abroad studying or researching, I was
thousands of miles away from California doing research for my
dissertation at the Freie University in Berlin, Germany. Due to
the nine hour time difference between California and Germany, I
stayed up much of the night glued to my computer following news
accounts, tweets, Facebook status updates— anything I could find
to keep me apprised of events as they unfolded that day.

The decision to occupy university buildings has recently become
the source of controversy, fascination, and most importantly,
mobilization at the University of California. My experiences
over the past two months with the student movement here in
Germany have brought to light a number of points for me
regarding the significance of occupations as a tactical choice.
As I suggest below, the use of this tactic at the University of
California is further evidence that the struggle at the UC is
part of an international movement.

Since October, I and other students from the UC have spent
considerable time working with students at universities here in
Germany. Like the campuses of the UC, universities and high
schools throughout Germany have been the site of numerous
building occupations this Fall. The concerns expressed by
students here in Berlin are echoed by the voices and actions of
hundreds of thousands of students across the country, and even
more throughout Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and South
America. Despite regional particularities, the demands of
students worldwide resonate remarkably with our own at the UC:
democratize the university system, stop the privatization of
public education, negotiate fairly with employees. More
generally, these movements are connected by a deep consternation
over the way in which government and university officials are
using the global financial crisis to retool public institutions
of higher education according to more instrumentalizing and
market-oriented principles. As we at the UC are well aware, such
changes come at the high price of the quality and accessibility
of higher education for students, and just labor practices for
campus employees.

In Germany, the /Bildungsstreik /(Education Strike) movement has
mobilized hundreds of thousands of students in nation-wide
actions over the past year. Most recently, on November 17,
85,000 students across Germany took to the streets demanding
greater say over their universities. Their demonstrations were
part of the Global Week of Action organized by the International
Student Movement (here), which featured
coordinated events in countries around the world including
Austria, Bangladesh, France, Hungary, Indonesia, Italy,
Macedonia, Poland, Switzerland, and Sierra Leone, just to name a
few. During that week (which coincided with the November strikes
at the UC), students around the world employed various tactics,
including the occupation of university buildings at over 70
universities and high schools in Germany alone.

At the Freie University of Berlin, for example, 700 students
stormed the campus’ largest lecture hall on November 11.
Following a General Assembly there, the students began an
occupation which nearly four weeks later still continues. While
administrators are certainly not pleased with the students’
tactical choice, there have been no arrests, no attempts at
removing the students, and certainly no physical violence
against them. At the Freie University, students come and go from
the occupied space as they please. There are no riot-gear-clad
police waiting to arrest them. No administrators looking to
press charges. Far more than a symbolic gesture of dissent, the
occupation has given students a productive space they call their
own. There they sleep, eat, study, and converse with one
another. They hold daily teach-ins and planning meetings, host
concerts and cabaret productions, show films, and gather freely
without the fear of criminalization. The occupied space is a
source of inspiration and practical mobilization for the
movement at the Freie University. Most importantly, it is an
increasingly rare site on a university campus where something
akin to democratic decision-making, organization, and debate is
actually practiced and examined.

How long their occupation will last, even the most involved
cannot say. Similar occupations at nearby universities such as
at the Technische University in Berlin have fizzled out, mostly
due to activist fatigue. Others like one in Frankfurt am Main
last week ended in violence and arrests reminiscent of the
Wheeler Hall occupation. With this said, I believe that we at
the UC can draw at least two important points from the building
occupations taking place here in Germany and elsewhere around
the world.

The first has to do with the benefits, or better yet, the
necessity of occupations as a tactic in our repertoire of
contention at the UC. A university should be a place where
critical thinking, openness, and imagination flourish. This is
exactly what the occupied space at the Freie University offers.
Many faculty, students, and administrators at the UC have
decried the Wheeler Hall occupation for “forcing” the
cancellation of classes and compromising the university’s role
as an institution of higher education. Yet at the Freie
University of Berlin, following a minor bureaucratic nightmare,
classes scheduled in the occupied hall were simply moved to
another building. More importantly, one need only to visit the
occupied hall at the Freie University for a few hours to realize
that the experiences and lessons being learned there by students
are just as if not more worthwhile and relevant to this moment
than what would be taught in the courses originally scheduled in
that space. Occupations are not just about expressing dissent,
but are about learning, building a sustained movement, and
experimenting with new forms of organization and debate. Perhaps
just as key, the (certainly not unproblematic) tolerance of the
administration at the Freie University demonstrates that there
exists other possible responses to student occupations than
repression, criminalization, and condemnation.

Second, the turn to building occupations as a tactic at hundreds
of university and high school campuses around the world is /not
/a coincidence. Taken together with the similar demands and
timing of different international struggles, the increasingly
common tactic of occupation should remind us that the struggle
we students, faculty, and employees at the University of
California are engaged in is not ours alone. Whether we
recognize it or not— /whether we have started acting on this
recognition or not/— we belong to an international movement. The
movements that make up this global struggle are united by a
belief in the important role public education should play in
society, something that the growing entrenchment of neoliberal
priorities and policies in our schools seriously undermines.

Strike calls from students here in Germany regularly emphasize
that the movement against the marketization (similar to what
many of us at the UC have called the privatization) of public
education is not a national one, but rather is global in scope.
Heading into 2010, we at the UC must think hard about practical
strategies and steps we can take to build international
solidarity with movements on other continents. This will only
help ensure that our struggles, along with those of others
throughout the world, find success.


Email: mshaneboyle@gmail.com

http://emancipating-education-for-all.org/

http://www.bildungsstreik.net/


Shane Boyle
Graduate Program of Performance Studies
UC Berkeley
mshaneboyle@gmail.com