Former readers of this blog will remember my disgust at the mass protests against university budget cuts that happened last year. My basic criticism boiled down to the following points:
--that students protested higher tuition by cutting one of the few remaining days offered at the old tuition rate;
--that protests against tuition hikes were used as overarching forums to complain about all the world’s ills, restricted to the University of California or otherwise; and finally,
--that protesters used the rallies as an excuse, at best to satisfy their own needs for indignation and attention, and at worst, to break storefront windows and roll burning dumpsters at cop cars.
Suffice it to say, like the producers who brought you Scary Movie 12, the powers that be are stirring up another unwarranted sequel – in this case, another day of communal rhetorical masturbation aimed to change the system from within. And suffice it to say, the plan is exactly the same as it was last time. In fact, this time they're even more open about it: the Facebook event for the “October 7th Strike & Day of Action for Public Education” calls for a united front composed of “a mosaic of communities that recoil from the unbearable.” Accordingly, the Facebook community has organized other factions whose lives are being ruined by the man. These include teenagers who can no longer abide the fact that getting high is, strictly speaking, illegal, as well as outraged citizens intent on taking a stand on Arizona's “fascist” SB 1070 by demonstrating against the University of California.
I understand the ethical dilemma of the Berkeley radical. For one thing, it’s easy to lose self-confidence under the withering guiding light provided by such patron saints of public condemnation as Mario Savio and that homeless guy with the John Lennon glasses on the corner of Telegraph and Bancroft who yells at you when you don’t give him what he considers enough of your spare change. For another, where students of Savio’s day ostensibly had some legitimate complaints – widely prevalent national racism (only 7 years removed from Little Rock, for chrissake) and an administration actually denying students the right to say whatever they wanted on Sproul Plaza – the modern-day indignant Golden Bear has little more to complain about than a nationwide financial crisis and the persistent encroachment of such vanguards of capitalism as Panda Express. After four years of feeble high school rebellion against one’s parents spent dabbling in coke and figuring out which hole you can let him put it in before people start calling you a ho in public, the lack of an immediate opening to change the world with your original stance on troubling issues must be hugely sobering. In that light, it's hardly a surprise that such a large collection of angsty youth would happily gather their multifarious grievances into one slimy package and spew it forth at the first convenient opportunity. And of course, it must be said that the purported central focus of the get-together - education, something many of the people to be involved no doubt care deeply about - is obviously something worth holding on to (my hard-earned diploma affirms my sincerity on that count).On the other hand, the setup of the modern world dictates that the road to practical educational reform doesn't run through soapbox pedagogy or mass demonstrations: it's a battle that can only be fought - much less won - armed with a ballot and valiant enough to trudge through a dark, bureaucratic swamp. More importantly, the sort of juvenile, potentially dangerous bullshit this bastardization of free speech will inevitably engender simply shouldn’t be allowed. So this ultimately powerless call for overdue change goes not to the perennially hopeless student body or the polio-stricken administration, but to Berkeley and UC police: if and when the impending rally is about to get out of hand, please see to it that all soon-to-be-rioters are arrested before they set poor, powerless Chancellor Bob’s house on fire, rip the copper wiring out of the walls in Durant Hall, or break more of the windows of innocent Southside business proprietors. Because the longer you wait to restore order, the more blatantly you’re going to be proving the need for vigilante justice to counteract vigilante idiocy. And I live too far away to be your goddamn Superman.
