Victory for the UC Berkeley Anthropology Library Occupation!
Student and Community Occupation of the UC Berkeley Public Anthropology Library Wins Agreement to Keep the Library Open
Stop the privatization of UC Berkeley – Defend Access to Knowledge, free speech, critical thought social equality and racial justice
Double Underrepresented Minority Enrollment
Build the new student, civil rights and immigrant rights movement to stop the growth of Donald Trump’s racist, sexist, pro-fascist movement
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Lessons of our victory
The successful occupation to save the UC Berkeley Anthropology Library points the way for our independent youth-led movement to defend public education and social equality. For close to 3 months a collective effort of students and community members took over the Anthropology library to stop Chancellor Carol Christ and the UC Berkeley Administration from closing it. On Thursday July 13th Anthropology Department Chair Sabrina Agarwal signed a written agreement that was subsequently approved by the occupation. This is the most important victory for our movement following last year’s statewide UC graduate student worker’s strike, and is also a model to fight to win our upcoming struggles. Our movement’s strength and independence won keeping the library open and forced retirement of those most responsible for the attack – Chancellor Christ and Head Librarian Jeffrey MacKie Mason.
Moving forward, to be in the best position to build on our victories, our movement must apply the lessons we learned to future struggles and to strengthening our independent leadership, especially our new youth leaders: 1)The connection of our fight for public education with the ongoing fights against racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, and fascism outside our college campuses makes us stronger. 2) We must be determined to take direct action and fight our struggles to completion. 3) But most importantly, we must be our own heroes and fight independently. These three lessons proved to be fundamental in our victory.
The agreement between the library occupation and the Anthropology Department maintains an Anthropology Library open and accessible to the public. Community members will be able to come to the library and make use of the material on a non-circulating basis. Community members will also be able to receive one of 50 library cards to access books and material, including those moved from the Anthropology Library to the main campus library. By winning this agreement we have helped to give freedom of speech, access to knowledge, critical thought, social equality and racial justice, real meaning.
Our victory puts us in a strong position to bring California’s diverse multiracial communities onto our campus and strengthens our fight to change the direction of the University of California and our state, to commit to real integration and being a public-serving institution once again. Every struggle on our campus, including BAMN’s fight to double underrepresented minority enrollment is stronger now.The current national attacks on affirmative action have put a spotlight once again on the UC’s, in particular UC-Berkeley, as a center of the resegregation of higher education. Latina/o/x, black, and Native American students make up 61% of high school students in California public schools, but only 23% of UCB’s freshman admitted class of 2022. This victorious struggle shows we have the power to change this.
Unrestrained profit-making at the expense of human lives and need has been a guiding principle across the country during the pandemic, and the UC Berkeley Administration has been an eager participant guiding the largest ever privatization effort in our campus history. Our struggle has represented a broad sentiment of the campus community that is against the privatization of UC Berkeley and is looking for ways to make the campus more open and accessible to our states’ diverse multiracial, and multinational communities. All the participants of the occupation, who spent any amount of time in the library or who participated in its mobilizations, have given voice to the hatred of the pro-privatization policies and anti-student attitude of Chancellor Carol Christ.
The forced retirement of those directly responsible for the attack on the Anthropology Department, Head Librarian Jeffrey MacKie Mason, and Chancellor Christ is a credit to the strength of the occupation and the outpouring of support for it. They would not have happened without the occupation. These victories as much as the defense of the Anthropology Library are a great gain for our struggle in defense of public education.
Building a Broad Struggle To Defend Public Education Beyond the UC Campus
BAMN intervened from the beginning, expanding the library struggle beyond the campus. BAMN had been invited to join the occupation in part as a result of our leadership in the defense of the library 11 years prior. The first day of the occupation proved to be decisive, when there was a question over community participation in the occupation, BAMN members argued that the occupation needed community participation to win. What followed was the first vote of what came to be called the occupation “Assembly”, the decision-making body of the occupation. The Assembly voted unanimously to include community members in the occupation. For BAMN the principle of the importance of community involvement in campus struggles is based, in part, on the history of successful campus struggles, and the relationship of Berkeley students to the dynamic black, Latina/o/x, and working-class communities of Oakland. This relationship has always increased the militance and resolve of the struggles in both places, and will be necessary to win future struggles.
Our BAMN leadership brought not only the experience of having defeated the previous attempt to close the library, but it also provided a political perspective of the strength of a national movement fighting to defeat Donald Trump’s vision for America. Our recent victories in struggles defending abortion clinics and drag story hour events, as well as organizing communities to defend immigrants from ICE deportations, all utilized the same method: organize community defense guards that drew broad sections of the community to join in and see these fights as their own. A Trump-Majority Supreme Court is attacking the remaining Affirmative Action programs, pushing for the resegregation of higher education and increasing hostile campus climate for underrepresented minority students. Our history of the defense of Affirmative Action and fighting racism, gave a different dimension and importance to the defense of the Anthropology department and Library as part of the defense of underrepresented minority student’s rights to access quality public education.
The decision to build an open and democratic occupation, became a guiding principle that meant the occupation was open to everyone who supported the defense of the library, whether they were Anthropology students or not. The occupation became an engine for the mobilization of our movement. Particularly from the beginning of the occupation through the end of finals, a constant flow of students and supporters came through the library. Graduate students, undergrads, faculty, and community members participated. Graduate students held tutoring sessions, office hours and discussion sessions. Teach-ins, press conferences, marches, pickets and protests which BAMN helped to build, strengthened the independent power of the occupation. Supportive articles in the New York Times and the Financial Times continued to make clear the broad support for the Anthropology Library. This period of growth of the strength of the occupation became important because it was BAMN’s belief at that moment there were only two ways that the occupation could end; a police break-up of the occupation or the occupation giving up. The more strength the occupation gained the more determined everyone was to continue and not end the occupation before a victory was won. It turned out the administration never believed they could send in the police to break up the occupation.
Many of the people who would become leaders and participants of the occupation developed as leaders or participants during the historic UC Strike and carried those lessons with them into the occupation. The application of these lessons to the occupation were an important part of what made it possible to win. Lessons such as the importance of mass democratic action, democratic decision making, and standing on principle were necessary features of the success of our occupation.
There have been many campus struggles that have failed because of decisions to exclude community members from participation or eject organizations that some self-appointed “leaders” politically disagreed with. Not so with this struggle.
Independent Youth Led Struggle Fighting to Win
The next decisive moment came when, a month into the occupation, BAMN discovered that an agreement had been reached between the Anthropology faculty and the administration, to close the library. This agreement, which amounted to shutting down the library in exchange for Anthropology Department control of the empty space, had been reached at about the time when the occupation began. The faculty had conducted closed door negotiations behind the back of our occupation! Faculty asked for a meeting on the last week of the semester to ask for the occupation to end. Students and community members rightfully rejected the faculty agreement. Students took a step forward to take responsibility and full leadership of the occupation and negotiations, taking the struggle further than what faculty could have ever accomplished. For years politicians, school boards, k-12 and college administrators have cut or accepted cuts to public education, and the narrowing of opportunities for young people in our state. Our occupation has made it clear we don’t have to accept these attacks.
BAMN called on the occupation to begin independent negotiations with the administration and draft its own demands. The assembly voted unanimously to carry this out. BAMN participated in drafting the demands and another assembly was immediately called and ratified those demands to be sent to the administration. These demands were a full reflection of what the occupiers believed we had been fighting for. There was considerable debate as to whether or not such an attempt was practical, or if our demands should make early concessions as a way to gain the attention of a reluctant administration. It was BAMN’s view that we should lead with our full demands to get the best agreement, and that we could keep the library open on that basis. The occupation wanted to fight and the Assembly agreed.
Our decision to open the occupation to the community and our vote to negotiate independently of the faculty gave our occupation its independent power, and forced the administration to recognize our right to negotiate directly with the UCB administration. The power of the occupation was particularly apparent in the summer when the negotiations with the Dean of Social Sciences Raka Ray drew over 20 students to each of two sessions. Despite a drop in the number of occupiers the administration was compelled to negotiate with us nevertheless. Our power was far greater than our numbers.
Right-wing faculty continued throughout the occupation to try and divide students from the community. Before the second negotiation meeting with Dean of Social Sciences Raka Ray, the Anthropology faculty circulated an anonymous letter to the department calling for an end to the occupation. Graduate students, many of whom were in other countries doing their field work, decided to take action against the continued anti-community talk of the faculty and circulated a statement signed by over half of the graduate students in defense of the occupation as the lead negotiating body for the students and against any police action by the university to clear the occupation. The statement was read to Raka Ray at the beginning of the 2nd negotiation meeting. This moment in the struggle made clear the popularity and strength of the occupation was much broader than who was in the occupation on any given day. It was a recognition by the graduate students of this tremendous power and their role in it. This head-on conflict with the faculty and administration was a sign that the balance of power was shifting.
Asserting the Power and Will of the Masses Through Mass Direct Actions is the Only Road to Victory
As the only stand alone public anthropology library of any major university in the US, our struggle received wide national and international support, but what won this fight was our direct actions. From the moment we voted unanimously to begin occupying the library, a power struggle against the University administration began. Soon after, every rally and or march on campus raised the profile of our fight and gained us wider support. Our direct actions protesting Chancellor Christ fundraising events, made it impossible for the Chancellor and her administration to ignore the power and seriousness of our fight. We understood that even with small numbers, as long as we stayed in the library, we could win if we held our ground. because we had massive support.
Smaller numbers in the actual occupation did not change the administration’s recognition of our power. The mobilizations of the occupation changed from targeting administration events to targeting the negotiations themselves. What became necessary was the resilience and determination of people who understood that they had power and were determined to use it. In the last month there were multiple nights when BAMN members and some undergraduates kept the occupation going as the occupation participants who were willing to stay overnight to prevent an end to the occupation.
The Fight for Public Education and Our Next Challenges
Chancellor Christ’s claim that it was necessary to close the Anthropology Library to save the university $400,000 was simply made up, given the multi billion dollar fundraising effort it is close to completing. The attack on the UC Berkeley Anthropology Library has been an ideological attack on the mission of the department that sees its studies on the diversity of human society throughout history as a pursuit with practical significance for today. The defense of the Anthropology Library is a victory in defense of a department that believes in social justice, and racial equality in our emerging majority minority nation.
In its zeal to privatize our campus, chancellor Christ’s Administration made clear their unseriousness in defense of the principles of free speech, freedom of criticism, social equality, and racial justice when they decided to try and close the anthropology library. They cannot be relied on to reverse the ongoing racist segregation on our campus. UC Berkeley’s Anthropology Department, at 43% underrepresented minority students, is much more representative of the state of California than the campus as a whole. By keeping the Anthropology Library open we have done far more to make the campus welcoming to underrepresented minority students than the pious words in support of diversity, coming from the Christ’s Administration. The departments’ research on the development and evolution of human society along with a commitment to rejecting racist and sexist lies about human existence have made our victory even more important and strengthens the department as a whole and better positions our campus to take on any of the Trump movement’s attacks on our campus.
The US Supreme Court ruling banning affirmative action is the biggest legal victory for Trump’s racist, sexist, and pro-fascist movement since the Dobbs decision overturning abortion rights. It will embolden and further the racist and anti-immigrant attacks by Trump supporters and by white racist mass murderers. We can win all the fights in front of us. The Anthropology Library Occupation and the historic UC student strike of last year are part of a new student movement in our state that represents the best hope for the future of public education in our country. Our movement continues to gain strength, and is in the center of a political struggle that has the power to shape the course of higher education and the struggle for social equality in our society. Winning this struggle means more challenges and increased opportunities. JOIN BAMN and fight to win!
2023.07.29
