Berkeley Protests-

Or Rather, the Lack of Berkeley Protests

Since I came to Berkeley, I have been to and seen several protests. I was one of the some hundred people who were ready to camp out at Wheeler last year during the  protest against tuition hikes, and I went to the Occupy Berkeley march last Saturday. They were okay—but to be honest, I am a bit disappointed in the level of political activism that is present on campus.

Okay, to be honest, I am more than disappointed. I am very nearly disgusted. Education is becoming increasingly privatized and sold to the highest bidders, and only a few hundred people care enough to take some kind of active stance? And Occupy Wall Street is being hailed as a movement brought on by American youth, but at the march last week, the crowd was dominated by elder people—not students, but professors and the middle and upper class liberals who live in the city.

It wasn’t always this way. During the 1960s—catching the spirit of the national Civil Rights movement, Berkeley students who actively engaged in mass demonstrations and political activism numbered in the tens of thousands. They secured their rights to free speech and academic freedom, defended People’s Park, and had a major role in kick-starting the anti-war movement. But today, protests—even those about central issues that affect the entire student body—never number more than a few hundred, at their rare best.

It is not as if there is nothing to get riled up about. Tuition has increased faster in the past few years than any other time in the past half-century; student groups, financial aid, and public programs sponsored by the university are being cut, while spending on Wall Street executives and athletic programs is increasing. And on the national level, a political economy that has been sucking wealth from the majority of society and into the coffers of the wealthy elite has been at work for thirty years, resulting in an increasingly militarized police-state where non-violent offenders get years in prison, criminal bankers who defraud billions of dollars walk free, and corporations can buy politicians and laws to increase profits and decrease wages. And that’s just what’s happening in our own borders—I won’t even talk about the hundreds of thousands of innocent people dead abroad due to our government.

So what exactly are Berkeley students thinking about?

To be fair, our university is far more prestigious and competitive than it was all those years ago. I am weighed down with not just a mountain of engineering work, but a job and extra-curriculars—and I have to be, if I want to get my thousands of dollars of moneys’ worth here at Cal. And the current issues are a lot more difficult to understand than the issues back in the 50s and 60s. It’s not difficult to empathize with people who are being physically beaten and explicitly oppressed—but today’s oppression is much more subtle, and far more hidden beneath complexities and propaganda. The average person will be shocked and angered by the sight of blacks being bombed and shot for demanding equality and respect—but that same person will stare blankly at the complex equations and stacks of boring papers that government and Wall Street uses to rob the United States’ of its wealth.

So yes, I am disappointed in the lackluster politics of Berkeley (if the BCR bake sale was an event that angered you, you really need to get out more), but I do understand that there are reasons why the community is the way it is. The goal, as it is with all things, is to not harp on about the present failures, but to offer solutions and seek ways to prevent future failures.

Too bad devising solutions is a hell of a lot more difficult than pointing out problems.

(I’m talking to you, physics professors.)

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