By Dan Calabrese ——Bio and Archives--October 27, 2017
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Last Sunday, on October 15th at UC Santa Cruz, UCPD arrested three students engaged in an act of civil disobedience on campus, showing as the university has time and again, the readiness at which armed force will be called upon to protect the “free speech” of hateful groups at the expense of those who speak out against them. The students arrested were disrupting a College Republicans meeting and demanding that they halt their harmful activity. If it wasn’t already clear, it is at this point where we urge everybody to realize that this is not a dialogue. There can be no “dialogue” when the institutional power is given to one side at the expense of the other. There is a reason that right- wing politics like theirs are represented in the mainstream media, while we have to make do with cardboard signs and magic markers. The students were arrested on charges of “disturbing the peace”, but it should be known that there is nothing peaceful about the College Republicans. We do not oppose them because of what they say, but because of what they do. The College Republicans spread an agenda of intolerance and terror, and embolden racist violence and bigotry. Their support for Donald Trump and “conservative” policies are directly connected to enforcing social inequalities in the United States, and creating wars and violence abroad. They claim that they are the ones being marginalized by “liberals” and “the left” who are trying to take away their platform, but in fact, they represent the dominant ideas and policies in the United States-- the fact that Donald Trump is president is evidence of this. This is the same power imbalance that we have seen acted out time and time again in confrontations between conservatives, right- wing bigots, white nationalists, and anti- racist and anti- fascist protesters. Let us remember how in Charlottesville, the police took the side of the white nationalists and the Ku Klux Klan. Let us remember how many times universities have allowed prominent white nationalist speakers, such as Milo Yiannopoulos, to come speak on campuses, and what this means in terms of the funding going into advancing their views. In August, UC Berkeley spent over $800,000 on security measures to protect the free speech of the “alt- right”. We acknowledge that the College Republicans do not all agree with the same views as these bigots on the far right, but we must acknowledge that they embolden one another under the same banner of “free speech”.
We see the same imbalance of power reflected here at UCSC. The school has continuously taken the side of racist groups like the College Republicans by defending their harmful speech as “free speech” and “free assembly”. The university encourages students to report “hate” to campus authorities, but has never responded to any reports made against the College Republicans. This demonstrates that the university’s commitment to “taking a stand against hate” is false. The university claims to be “neutral”, while allowing College Republicans to spread their hateful agenda through the framework of “community guidelines” and free speech policies. These guidelines are taken advantage of by people in the group, and even more extreme, far-right figures, to say and do things that should be completely unacceptable. The University privileges the “free speech” of the College Republicans at the expense of the most vulnerable students on campus. It claims to uphold the community principle of “diversity and inclusion”, but constantly ignores it by choosing to protect the hateful “free speech” of groups like the College Republicans, whose political platform condones violence toward marginalized students. The two community principles of “diversity and inclusion”and “free speech” starkly contradict one another, and we have seen the the university consistently prioritizes the protection of “diversity and inclusion” last. We see further hypocrisy in the fact that the university’s commitment to “free speech” and “free assembly” is never applied neutrally. “Free speech” has not been protected for student activists and organizers at UCSC, considering the school’s (recent) history of targeting and sanctioning student movements and activism. Let Chancellor Blumenthal’s racist commentary on Students for Justice in Palestine’s successful passage of divestment from Israel and his threats This is why we chose to disrupt the College Republicans that day. We are serious about “taking a stand against hate”, and recognize that the university will not help us. We are truly committed to a diverse, inclusive and just environment, and are not satisfied by the university’s insufficient measures to enforce such an environment in our community.
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