UC’s War For Your Mind?

Students Defeat Cops in Opening Battle.

UC’s War For Your Mind?: Students Defeat Cops in Opening Battle.

By: Brett Redmayne-Titley.

In the ongoing battle by US University administrators to remove the correct definition of “Genocide” from the minds of their students including the one provided by Websters and Oxfords’, the campus re-education program at the University of California/ San Diego over the past two weeks is proving unsuccessful.

The tents may be gone. The “Constant of Conscience” of their students has not.

In the opening salvo in the “War For Your Mind,” as shown at UC San Diego the students have already learned the practical importance of the First Rule of Democracy. As showcased in an homage to the students, “On the Importance of Tents,” it is a force to be reckoned with. Last week it produced for the UCSD students their first victory.

How sweet was that taste, this time?

Meanwhile, geriatric America does nothing but pray for their orange savior to hopefully get it right this time after November and in turn swallow the excuses for Israeli genocide faster than their next vodka and tonic.

Thankfully, the age of mortality in America is ever plummeting and therefore providing a small degree of hope.

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Our saga, of course, began on Oct 7, 2023, with the long-expected "blowback" by Hamas. But months later, with the game’s score now a tad one-sided at 34, 989 for Israel to 1, 222 for Hamas, the contest to many certainly seemed a bit rigged. So out came the students and their tents, which I prefaced in my most recent article, “On the Importance of Tents.”

And… the First Rule of Democracy.

On the weekend of April 27, 2024, UC/ San Diego campus administrators got wind that Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) was going to set up an “encampment” at a point yet unknown. They had been waiting for this opening salvo of the constant of conscience and its visual appeal-tents- to finally come to their campus. For months, they had previously been summoned to meetings at UC Davis, UC Los Angeles, and UC/ Berkeley to, in part and priority, address the growing student awakening.

And how to stop it.

In the above-referenced article, the administrative structure of the Department of Student Life is provided. Suffice as to say, that many of the administrators at the individual campus level feel like their necks are tied in an ever-tightening noose of the white flag at the center of the thick rope of “Tug of War” between the students and the President’s Office.

Sadly, too many of these middle management administrators have shown by their actions to be no more than upper administration lackeys to the wishes of the UC Board of Regents, their hand-picked President, Michael V. Drake, who presided over the ten Chancellors of each of the universities.

But as predicted in the article, and shown over a rapid-paced fourteen days past, due to the “Constant of Conscience” being applied liberally to “The First Rule of Democracy,” in the “War For Your Mind” and that of the students, the students are winning.

In the face of tired, apathetic old fools... they are far from done!

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“...And So… It Begins.”

On Sunday night SJP, as promised, took over a wooded piece of ground near Geisel Hall. Twenty-some tents slowly grew to about forty-five over the next few days with over 100 students. As is expected with tents, campus awareness of the peaceful call to stop genocide in Gaza was further attended by increasing numbers of curious students daily.

By Monday morning the phone was obviously ringing off the hook at the UCSD chancellor's office from the outraged triumvirate of higher education in Sacramento. This demand to properly and quickly indoctrinate the wayward young minds in the expected ways of Zionism and Genocide quickly cascaded downstream to the Office of Student Life and its campus capos, the Vice-Chancellor and Assoc. Vice Chancellor and their staff.

But Student Life administrators had a problem that was previously highlighted: Unlike private universities that exist primarily on private real estate and so can legally do as they wish, the UC and its ten campuses are public. This means that each campus is bound by the UC Charter as it is by the protocols of behavior set collectively for all. Changes require a mandated procedure and take much too much time to effectively stop student free speech in its tracks.

At this moment in our story, the students at the camp were only guilty of a non-criminal university violation for failing to vacate the park after 10 pm as is routinely applicable campus-wide. This violation is token at best and subject, by protocol, to a pending disciplinary hearing which is adjudicated by a combination of Admin. Staff, Faculty, and students. Further, for many, with Commencement coming quickly on June 15, they would be already “off-campus” well before then.

Meanwhile, uninvited, The Black Panthers had arrived to offer security and were mingling with the encampment just enough to solicit charges of Marxism from the Zionist press desperate to demonize the student’s moral focus. Sent and paid for by whom, was the only question.

Now, the crocodile tears by Student Life began to flow liberally towards the students in a failed effort to slacken the tightening yellow noose around their necks… while all the time surreptitiously fucking over the students while sucking up to the party line coming from the UC Regents.

Thus, a task was set for them: to find a “criminal charge” that could be filed against the protesters at the encampment. But why criminal charges?

The students would soon find out!

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Crocodile Tears… of Gasoline!

The first reaction to the conundrum of a speedy prosecution of students was for, just hours later on Wednesday, Student Life to first begin handing out written warnings to all the students already encamped or just visiting and “thinking” about it.

With UCSD being split into eight quasi-independent colleges, many administrators know their students by name. Thus, some of these staff began to play stoolie and rat-out and snitch on some of those they observed in and around the tents.

The reason for this sudden change of protocol now allowed these same administrators to issue immediate “interim suspensions.” These suspensions solved, for the moment, the problem since the suspensions were immediate and carried an expulsion from campus property to be followed with a note of warning to USCD Police.

Needless to say, the students who were summarily issued suspensions and evictions were furious, as were their friends and the student body in general. All began to communicate, as predicted by the “First Rule of Democracy,” and coalesce their support via social media. (BTW: I am told that Facebook, for the students, is as ancient as a Gutenberg press.)

But as the students’ encampment and support grew administrators had another very important problem also getting worse by the hour and favoring the students...the “Sun God!”

All during the new year and especially during the past tumultuous first 72 hours these same administrators had been preparing, as is tradition on all US university campuses, for the annual student Spring Festival just before graduation. Held since UCSD was first built in 1960, Sun God is the largest campus event of the year, featuring national music acts, entertainment, vending, food, and drink. And students. Lots of students.

More than 20,000 were expected.

Rightfully, campus security for a huge festival like Sun God has been an ever-growing concern before the new campus re-education effort began. Over the years, as the festival grew more members of the public were attracted, however, beyond the expected drunken Sophmorishness by some, no serious incidents have ever occurred.

However, this did not, some five years ago placate UCSD administrators when they for the first time ordered a tranche of San Diego Police SWAT team snipers to be stationed on the overlooking adjacent rooftops. This would have been the case this year.

With Sun God just forty-eight hours away, and with liability and student security screaming for a decision, Student Life punted, announcing that Sun God would, for the first time in school history, be canceled.

The reason they stated was that they could not obtain, as is usual, the additional security (always real cops) sufficient to ensure safety. This was due, they said, to a shortage of available cops who had been sucked away to defend the other nine campuses or attack the growing public protests elsewhere.

They did not mention the snipers.

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As campus administrators were to find out, all those crocodile tears may have temporarily softened the noose around their necks but it would not liquidate the fires in the minds of their students.

With the cancellation of Sun God, the student community was incensed and saw it as retribution against the encampments, and they said so. Campus social media blew up all day and again on Sunday. Accusations were universal and hurled at the Office of Student Life. As these new realities of American education quickly set in, the camp swelled. Day after day, night after night.

Then came Monday morning.

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Students, The First Rule, and... Victory!

5:15 AM Monday, May 6, 2024...

Some twenty-plus cops and supporting vehicles including paddy wagons quietly descended on the encampment while the students were still sleeping. Two days before there were not enough cops. This morning there were plenty!

The Black Panthers had slipped into the night just before.

As the cops did what cops do—be cops- a local TV station went live on the scene in the gray dawn light of the eucalyptus trees as those cops began to remove tents and students' belongings. Already some threw stuff such as coolers, books, and chairs over enthusiastically in the direction of the protesters, hoping for a reaction.

With student's cell phones damn near melting from overload the call went out, “The cops are here!. They are attacking the camp.” Interestingly, most of the students in the preceding days had become well aware of exactly where the camp was. And the tents.

They were out the door, now. Moving fast.

However, administrators, becoming quickly wise in the ways of authoritarian rule, had already closed all the public roads leading into or around the UCSD campus using a police detail and to be sure had formally announced the closing of the campus itself to all staff, students and faculty.

And outrage.

However, UCSD houses some 22,000 on-campus students in their much sought-after luxurious student housing. As those receiving the news rushed to the camp, and staff looked on, the cops razed the camp and next began “kettling” the outraged students who stood in lined up in protest, but were now retreating steadily before the steady encroachment by the cops. This is known as kettling and I have been victim to it and escaped from it several times at the protests I have reported from.

Moving ever forward, each end of the double-line of cops increased its pace while now moving towards the center as the other end did the same until the unwary protesters were thus encircled. This left the students with the Hobson’s choice of “Assault on a Police Officer” or surrender to arrest for their current crimes against Israeli inhumanity.

Some forty-five students were arrested, but at this time all but one accepted arrest gracefully. “Oh, they just wanted to be arrested anyway…” said a staff member dismissively while watching.

In doing so she further highlighted administrative duplicity and utter ignorance.

Before protesting, if you are not willing to be arrested- proudly arrested- in order to support the beliefs you hold as a matter of the constant of conscience then….. just fucking stay home!

Those who do risk their freedom and their education with the sincerity to face arrest are the new leaders, the examples, the visual symbols, and the spark of the moral mind that is willing to sacrifice personally in order for all to see things clearly.

Like tents.

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By this time, those arrested had been hauled over to pre-detention on the floor of the Price Center. This same room has been used yearly to warehouse the plethora of overly intoxicated students prior to their meeting with the virtues of a murderous hangover at Sun God. It should be noted that this protocol does not harass the students, who sleep on provided gym mats and blankets, and merely keeps them safe and warm with a chance to sleep it off while under observation. For those whose minds were not temporarily addled by other external forces, they are discharged without punishment.

Interestingly, Sun God had been canceled some three days before. So, why was the Price Center ready to go on Monday morning?

Naturally, screams of Student Life duplicity were growing by the minute as students charged to the park only to find their friends detained. And missing. Confirming that they were still being processed at the Price Center the students rushed there en mass with new arrivals straggling in from behind. Collectively, they converged on the Main Entrance.

Here a much-needed moment of hilarity injected itself into all this panic.

The students had not fully thought out their rush to the Price Center’s huge front entrance doors, nor its full service as an entertainment venue. While beating on the several tinted glass front doors available, someone suddenly realized that the center might have a back door, such as freight doors. And besides, where were the paddy wagons? And...and...

Shit!

This realization caused the whole contingent to sprint collectively in panic, signs and flags in hand, to the other doors- the service doors- round back.

They arrived winded and barely in time.

The arrested students were already incarcerated on the buses out back, engines running, cops everywhere. So, the students surrounded the buses blocking them from leaving. Seeing the throng in action and now numbering well more than 1000 students, the remaining cops inside the Price Center came streaming out in a rush, but they were no longer enough in number to handle the growing crowd now armed with pallets, bike racks, barricades, signs, outage and...

The First Rule of Democracy.

That rule now turned on those cops, boldly and unflinchingly facing them in a parking lot battle as the students tried to prevent to cops from getting to those busses. The line was drawn: Buses behind the protesters.

Learning much quicker than before and with the arrest techniques of the cops at the encampment well in mind from just minutes before the students began moving ever forward, step-by-step, now surrounding the cops from the edges, moving, encircling, the student’s non-violent screams of outrage the only weapon needed. And the cops began to take that “first step back,” becoming encircled… the evil black mass now merely benign in the face of the First Rule.

In the Irony of the day… These cops, those motherfuckers, they had now been... kettled!

The students allowed for escape, however, as they kettled those cops in a virtual backwards perp-walk forcing them back into the Price Center through doors they had come. Or to seek rapid refuge in the Engineering building next door.

The cops after calling for massive back-up, and with the students divided into three in defense of the bus and offense for the cops did finally escape with their quarry.

But the shit was not over for the day. That evening, in the largest protest in UCSD history, more than 3000 students marched together in a show of force against the administration. And against Genocide!

In a previous article I challenged all students worldwide to understand and to use effectively, the First Rule of Democracy. I gave examples of it working. One, I saw.

What say you now, Students? One week later, do you still remember that one-of-a-kind flavor, that taste that will never go away? I tasted it once. I’ll never forget it.

So, students, chew on it yourselves with a slow grinding satisfaction until the juices run sweet through the teeth and next, down to the marrow.

It is called... victory!

And that was on Monday!

When a Spark Becomes a Fire.

As might have been predicted, Student Life administrators would have been better off leaving the encampment to its slowly growing devices rather than razing it and pouring educational gasoline all over the student's sparks of outrage and courage.

Although they have not effected another confrontation, the first one and its result have seen other influences brought to bear since. There have been two large protests and a smaller one by UCSD faculty in support of the students and against UCSD administrators and, oh yeah, Genocide.

The offices of the Vice Chancellor have been inundated with demands from the dozens of student organizations to explain why. These meeting are being held daily in what administrators would have the students believe is their transparency. However, this is yet again crocodile tears since the Vice-Chancellor does not have the balls nor the moral backbone to apply the least resistance against the mounting downward pressure favoring Genocide. She prefers to curry favor and instead find ways to stop the students.

There have been calls for the resignation of the UCSD Chancellor, and the heads of the Vice-Chancellors and Associate Vice-Chancellors office. The grad students who have been a thorn in recent contract disputes regarding providing aid to the professors are threatening a walk-out. Faculty is making similar rumblings. Administrators are now worried about a call for a campus-wide “wild cat strike.” In what may bode well nationally, the grad students are members of the UAW, that’s right, the United Auto Workers. Could this strike- and the equally outraged conscience of people who build cars- trigger a spark of collective conscience and a national sympathy strike?

Well… it is to dream.

It would seem that the administrators at UC have vastly miscalculated. These students and so much of the awakening world do not rely on the antiquated propaganda delivery systems of CNN, FOX, BBC, SKY, and their ilk. What they do rely on is their own eyes as the GENOCIDE in Gaza continues by the minute on their video screens. Meanwhile, all world politicians cry the same crocodile tears, while keeping the loonies on the path brutally and their Star of David knee pads and spittoon close at hand.

What the moral world of students witnesses daily comes from Telegram, Messenger, X Reddit and a host of other independent new mediums that have managed to bring to their eyes live video, indisputable video, barbaric video that shows to anyone: GENOCIDE.

I released more than a dozen of these channels for all to use as soon as the war and the censorship began. I defy anyone to access these channels for just ten minutes and not reach one primary, moral conclusion: GENOCIDE.

However, at the collection of ten universities of selective education, that education is willfully trying to redefine the most heinous crime against humanity possible by man. But as goes the failed police attempt to kettle the minds of the students in the proper direction, the First Rule, that day, on a Monday in May at the University of California/ San Diego, these students looked that evil in the eyes and once again turned that barbaric mind around on its heels. Sent it back from where it came. Middle fingers raised for all to see.

As goes this victory at UCSD, so goes the civilized world… First Rule now firmly in hand.

Because...there will always be more of US than of THEM.

And never, ever, forget it!

-The End-

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About the Author: Brett Redmayne-Titley has spent the last twelve years traveling to and documenting the "Sorrows of Empire." He has authored over 200 articles all of which have been published and often republished and translated by news agencies worldwide. An archive of his published work can be found at watchingromeburn.uk.  He can be contacted for interviews or comments at live-on-scene ((@)) gmx.com.

The author’s new book, “THERE!” is just out. 18 chapters of the best in old-style on-scene reporting from hot spots around the world. Please support my work by purchasing a copy from Amazon Books.  All donations are greatly appreciated.

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