Notes on the Tolman Occupation
from indybay:
As with the inaugural event of the California occupation movement two years ago – when students barricaded themselves inside the Graduate Student Commons at UC Santa Cruz – the occupation of Tolman Hall was both an act of material expropriation (or attempted expropriation) and an act of communication, meant to signal, to warn, to threaten and raise the alarm. . . It was both a declaration of resumed hostilities against the university and a form of communication with comrades here and elsewhere, both inside and outside the university. It was a warning directed at the small clique of arrogant, befuddled bureaucrats who run the university, as well as their armed thugs. But also a message sent to our comrades. For our comrades, the occupation was meant to communicate first and foremost a kind of excitement: Let’s do this! Let’s occupy everything! But behind the initial thrill it should communicate, also, a few critical lessons:
1)The first lesson is as clear as a geometric proof: Violence works. As with the threat of a two thousand person riot which freed the Wheeler occupiers on Nov. 20, defensive violence works particularly well. Faced with a group
