UC Berkeley and the politics of punishment Posted on 2012 April 29 You’ve got to hand it to Robert “Grinnin’ Bobby” Birgeneau.
The UC Berkeley chancellor who once boasted of his days as a civil rights activist in the Deep South has proven himself time and again a foe of his latter-day counterparts. His UC Police Department has trained with Israeli border police and the Bahrain military, two outfits who really know how to beat down civil disobedience, and they’re up to date on all the skills of creative “nudging.” But Bobby B has done them one better, using the judicial process to inflict another form of punishment, even while eventually dropping charges against those his Israeli- and Bahraini-trained troops have brutally busted. When campus cops swooped down on Occupy Cal 9 November, they arrested a dozen students and one faculty member on a laundry list of charges. Having an arrest record in the midst of a depression is in itself a serious handicap to job-seekers, and those arrests remain on the record, regardless of the outcome of the judicial process. So call that the first punishment. full: http://richardbrenneman.wordpress.com/2012/04/29/uc-berkeley-and-the-politics-of-punishment/ _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
