UCSC Students Shut Military Research Meeting

UCSanta Barbara Students Against War Disrupts Collaborative Biotechnology Military Research Conference

 

Students and supporters of peace and demilitarization marched
directly into the Corwin Center Pavilion where the ICB conference
attendees were having lunch between their Army-sponsored research
sessions.

Speakers for the march made it clear that students support
scientific research but when research is done for military paymasters
it makes campus scientists into war accomplices at a time when the U.S.
is occupying foreign lands in internationally condemned wars of
aggression.

For example, A UCSB researcher worked on technology for a new type
of bomb which was dropped on an Afghan wedding, killing 40 Afghanis
gathered to celebrate the love between two people and their families.
U.S. officials denied responsibility for the bombing until camera
footage made it impossible to deny. To the researcher’s horror, his
teammates working on the bomb expressed no remorse for the innocents
killed by their invention. Instead, they celebrated the news because
the bomb worked as they intended it to.

Protesters reminded ICB attendees that scientists have moral
responsibility for the consequences of their actions and when they work
for the military, the consequence is that people die, many of them
innocent civilians. One speaker gave numbers on just how much money is
being funneled into military research:

“UCSB rakes in 50 million dollars a year for following the Army’s
orders. We came here to get an education and make valuable
contributions to the world, not to help conquer it. This is not a
military base, it is a university. It’s time to demand an end to UCSB’s
participation in the war machine.”

There was a heavy police presence but protesters were not
intimidated and conducted their non-violent direct action against UCSB
war profiteering with courage and determination. Police arrested three
protesters. Eyewitnesses said there was no justification for the
arrests and hundreds of people chanted “Let them go! Let them go!” and
laid their bodies on the pavement around police cars as a human shield
demanding that the peaceful protesters be released. The arrested
protesters urged everyone to return to the ICB conference to finish
what they came to do and protesters returned to the Corwin Pavilion
peacefully to continue disrupting the ICB.

Students Against War Santa Barbara declared victory as the ICB
conference was disrupted, military scientists were informed about the
consequences of their actions and a message was sent to UCSB officials
that students will not rest until UC complicity in war ends.

UPDATE: The ICB conference was shut down and did not continue its
second day sessions. This constitutes a major victory for UCSB students
in the campaign to demilitarize UCSB and the whole UC system.

__________

350 War Resistors Blockade and Disrupt UCSB Army/Industrial Conference – 3 Arrests
From SBIndymedia

ISLA VISTA, Tuesday, February 12, 2008

About 350 anti-war activists met to rally at Pardall Tunnel, where
they were addressed by speakers at an open microphone, including a man
from Iraq and a former Marine-turned-organizer. Emotions ran high and
alternated between intense anger against the war, sadness over the loss
of life, and hope, joy, and optimism for the future. At times, feelings
were tense, and the police helicopter circling overhead made an ominous
presence. The demonstrators shortly proceeded to converge on UCSB’s
Corwin Pavilion with the goal of shutting down the 2008 ICB (Institute
for Collaborative Biotechnologies) Army-Industry Collaboration
Conference.

Police attempted to barricade the event against the approaching
students, but the crowd forced itself through police lines and
dismantled blockades. Police appeared helpless to stop the flow of
demonstrators, who proceeded to occupy the courtyard in front of the
pavilion, where collaborators, some in business suits and others, more
honestly, in military fatigues, had been in the midst of a lunch break.

While the crowd went wild in their occupied space, the entire area
was redecorated using chalk and marker. A space previously reserved for
war makers was soon covered in anti-war, anti-government, pro-peace,
and pro-freedom slogans, as well as peace signs, hearts, circle-A’s,
and the now-infamous Anarchy Heart, a common symbol amongst today’s
growing anarchist movement. Also present were anti-police messages and
web addresses for sites like crimethinc.com and indymedia.org.

While most were encouraging the act of reclaiming space, some
present felt hesitant about the property destruction, especially
police, as it represented a physical blow to the military conference
they were protecting, rather than simply a symbolic one.

At the same time, several black-bloc anarchists grabbed open trays
of food from the conference and distributed them amongst demonstrators,
police, and collaborators alike. “Cookies for the Revolution!! As Free
and Beautiful as all of you!” were the words of one masked young man as
he carried around a liberated tray of sweets.

At this point protestors locked down, keeping some military
collaborators outside, and some locked in. Police attempted to pull
some students away from the doors forcefully, but were met with heavy
resistance.

Solidarity amongst the students and other demonstrators seemed to be
the best it’s been in Santa Barbara since the late 1960’s. When two
young men were grabbed by the police without apparent cause, the crowd
leaped upon them and attempted to secure their freedom. As police
brought out batons and pushed back against the crowd, the young men
were dragged away. At this point, a large portion of the crowd charged
and cut off the police, surrounding their cars, sitting down and
linking arms, refusing to allow the police cruisers to leave until the
eventual release of the young men had been negotiated, despite the
threatening presence of armed and dangerous riot cops. The only charges
ever filed against these young men, as justification for their arrest,
were one charge each of ‘resisting arrest’. So much for freedom of
speech; welcome to America.

As the battle raged on, occupations and blockades of the war
collaborators inside their conference continued. At some points,
demonstrators who had snuck into the meeting managed to burst through
the doors, and students and police both rushed to get in first. It was
always the police, who would quickly drive the peace protestors back
with batons and raised cans of pepper spray.

At one point, one of the meeting doors was wedged open and kept that
way with the help of a couple plastic bottles jammed in the crack. A
megaphone was placed up against the open crack and every tactic
imaginable was used to raucously disrupt the proceedings inside.
Several resistors fought police away from the opportunity the crack
presented until the crowd rushed in to push police back.

One policeman, a certain Officer Stern, grabbed and twisted a young
woman’s arm in apparent frustration at his impotence in removing the
bottles jammed in the doorway.

Disruption, speeches, songs, and acts of defiance continued as the sun was beginning to set.

Suddenly, there was an opportunity; the doors were unlocked, and,
while riot police managed to secure two doors, a third was forced open
and the protest rushed inside.

The meeting was just about finished, but as the march moved into the
building, the same young woman whose arm had been twisted previously
was grabbed around the throat from behind by two and then more police
as she was removing posters from the walls of the conference. The crowd
rushed to her defense, but was beaten back by riot cops with batons and
pepper spray, and she was beaten, slammed into a glass door, and forced
face down on the cement before being dragged away.

The conference had been successfully disrupted, but there would be
another act of resistance. The crowd beat the police to their cruisers
and another standoff took place as they locked down once again to
prevent the removal of the young woman. It seemed as if the police were
more agitated then before, having failed to prevent the disruption of
the Army’s conference. In response to accusations of brutality from the
crowd, police made nervous excuses, claiming to have been attempting to
secure the ‘free speech’ of the war makers, or to have been ‘only
following orders’.

Organizers addressed the crowd, reminding them that the police did
not have a legal leg to stand on, and that these senseless acts of
brutality in defense of war had no legitimacy, and therefore, the
entire law enforcement apparatus present had no more legitimacy in the
eyes of the war resistors. The sitting crowd, arms linked in
solidarity, managed to remain locked despite attempts at forceful
dispersal by the police present, and they faced down the riot police
yet again, until it was clear that the young woman would be cited and
released, at which point demonstrators allowed the police cruiser to
beat a hasty retreat. The young woman’s current condition is unknown to
this reporter.

UPDATE: Word has been received from an anonymous source amongst the
catering team working at the conference that the Military has been
successfully forced from UCSB, and the second day of the 2-day
conference is to be carried on downtown at an undisclosed location. To
those who chanted ‘UCSB, Military Free!!’ this means a dramatic
success; the removal of representatives from the most powerful military
institution the world has ever seen from their University. Despite this
victory, protestors will meet at Corwin Pavilion today, Wednesday,
February 13th, at 12 noon, to celebrate and discuss the next steps in
uprooting the roots of imperialism from the soil of the Santa Barbara
community.