On Nov. 9, police repeatedly used their batons to jab and poke and slug U.C.-Berkeley students who were peacefully engaging in an Occupy Cal protest on campus.
It was “incredibly brutal and violent,” Russell Bates from CopWatch told Dennis Bernstein of KPFA. “The students were experiencing police brutality for the first times in their lives.”
(Here is some video from the Daily Californian.)
“It was excessively violent, almost ridiculously violent, theatrically violent,” one graduate student told Bernstein. “We had adopted a peaceful, nonviolent stance, and everyone was complying. And then the police tore up the tents we had set up. They seemed to be trying to incite violence from the students.”
There were at least “seven arrests, as well as injuries to protesters’ arms, heads and stomachs,” the school paper, the Daily Californian, reported.
The Occupy Cal protesters have linked up with the Occupy Wall Street movement but are also protesting against austerity in California and the huge increases in tuition at Berkeley and other state universities and colleges.
The students have called for a strike on Tuesday, November 15.
If you liked this story by Matthew Rothschild, the editor of The Progressive magazine, check out his story "Why I Got Arrested in Madison."
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