Notes on Contributors
Poet-bashing police
Former poet laureate Robert Hass and his wife Brenda Hillman were hit with batons during a peaceful demonstration at Berkeley the other day. Hass wrote about it in an op ed column in Sunday’s New York Times—if you haven’t seen it, it’s worth reading. Hass gives a close-up and personal view of the experience. “None of the police officers invited us to disperse or gave any warning,” he writes. Although he got whacked pretty hard, he wasn’t badly injured, just sore for a few days. “‘Whose university?’ the students chanted. Well, it’s theirs and it ought to be everyone else’s in California.” He points out the California university system “is under great stress and the State Legislature is paralyzed by a minority of legislators whose only idea is that they don’t want to pay one more cent in taxes.”
A poet friend of mine who is studying for her doctorate at UC Davis emailed that things are pretty “crazy” there. She says she has never thought of herself as an activist but the recent police attack on her fellow students is making her rethink that definition of herself. She is attending a rally in the quad today and becoming increasingly aware, as author Catherine Davis wrote in her blog, “Now You See It,” that, “We’re at a turning point, a Gettysburg Address moment, where moral authority and moral force need to be eloquently articulated before this historical moment devolves into violence and polarization. Our students are not wrong in the content of their protests.”
Calling the police does not address their issues; as we have seen too often, it can foster violence –with an ever-more imminent potential for tragedy. The issues students are protesting today are not just student issues. They are wide social issues that hit students with particular force and emphasis. “What message are we giving them?” she asks. “Since when did college administrators stop being interested in protecting them?
Over a dozen videos of the Davis incident uploaded to YouTube show police officers dousing the protesters — mostly students, with orange pepper spray, after repeatedly asking them to disperse from the main quad on campus. The protesters were seated with their arms linked on a sidewalk.
Another friend, poet Leslie Harrison, wrote a letter to President Obama asking, “When did we become this nation?’ She continues, “Whether or not you approve of the Occupy movement, you are our leader. Lead. Let our police, our mayors, our governors know that these protestors are citizens of this nation and have the right and the duty to practice civil disobedience. Each and every citizen has an obligation to stand up (or sit down) for what we believe. And those in positions of power have a duty to treat each protestor as what they are—citizens and taxpayers. There are nonviolent ways to disband peaceful protests. I understand that the climate of the nation changed after 9/11. I understand that this sea-change has increased dramatically both the power of law enforcement and their feeling of vulnerability. What has gotten lost is the understanding that students and faculty are not terrorists. A peaceful protest is not a call to arms. What has gotten lost is that the police are forbidden to initiate violence. Police do not need riot gear and clubs and pepper spray.”
I hope that poets, as well as everyone else, can help change a system and climate that makes our government for the people again– not one that is locked in partisan paralysis. We are being beaten down by more than billy clubs.
[...] Former poet laureate Robert Hass and his wife Brenda Hillman were hit with batons during a peaceful demonstration at Berkeley the other day. Hass wrote about it in an op ed column in Sunday’s New York Times—if you haven’t seen it, it’s worth reading. Hass gives a close-up and personal view of the experience. “None of the police officers invited us to disperse or gave any warning,” he writes. Although he got whacked pretty hard, he wasn’t badly injured, just sore for a few days. “‘Whose university?’ the students chanted. Well, it’s theirs and it ought to be everyone else’s in California.” He points out the California university system “is under great stress and the State Legislature is paralyzed by a minority of legislators whose only idea is that they don’t want to pay one more cent in taxes.” More… [...]