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Activism remains strong through the years at UCLA campus

By Nicholas Greitzer

Feb. 4, 2010 10:56 p.m.

On Feb. 1, 1960, four black students attending North Carolina A&T University refused to leave the counter at Woolworth’s when they were denied service.

The sit-in spurred protests and further sit-ins across the South, leading the way for the decade’s civil rights movement.

Fifty years after the heroic defiance of the Greensboro Four caused a revolution, the student protest continues to thrive.

The UCLA campus is no exception, most recently evidenced by Wednesday’s United Afghan Club’s teach-in to educate students about the history of the war in Afghanistan as well as the massive action that took place last November as a result of the fee hikes.

“The importance of protests goes far beyond just raising awareness and making a symbolic moral statement,” said fourth-year graduate student Alejandra Cruz. “We have our own collective power and we can make things happen independently of those who seek to exploit and oppress us.”

Cruz, a major player in the November protests, helped to organize the rally outside of Covel Commons as well as the sit-in that took place in Campbell Hall.

And while the Campbell Hall sit-in originated because of fee hikes, it evolved into a fight against racism, as the protest honored the Black Panthers who had been shot to death in the hall in 1969 over a dispute regarding the newly selected director of the black studies program.

“To be a student and not a revolutionary is a contradiction,” said USAC President Cinthia Flores.

For the past few years, the UCLA student body has wholeheartedly adopted that role of a revolutionary campus, as 2003 saw massive walkouts against the war and 2006 saw speak-outs against immigration reform bill HR 4437, Flores said.

November of 2006 also saw students dealing with more local issues, as the “death of diversity” march to Murphy Hall arose from the record-low admissions of black students.

“As UCLA students, our opinions and actions are given more weight and we can use that privilege and responsibility to change everything,” Cruz said. “We fought hard to get here ““ we want something meaningful to come from our accomplishment. I think that desire really helps to explain the impact and significance of the student movement at UCLA.”

Other notable student activism that has occurred at UCLA range from the 1970 protests over the conviction of the Chicago Seven to a three-day sit-in in 1985 over the apartheid in South Africa.

The year 2009 also saw a Facebook campaign against having James Franco as Commencement Speaker.

In 1993, a UCLA protest that utilized multiple forms of activism was held as a result of Chancellor Charles E. Young’s announcement that the interdisciplinary Chicano studies program would not be elevated to a departmental level.

Following the announcement, protestors staged a sit-in at the UCLA Faculty Center, causing an estimated $30,000 in damage and leading to the arrests of more than 80 students, faculty and community members.

The outcome of the sit-in further led nine protesters to stage a two-week hunger strike, as a village of tents arose around Young’s office in Murphy Hall.

Protests at UCLA have not been limited to students, as evidenced by last April’s Pro-Test for Science rally that was led by associate professor of psychology David Jentsch.

“Like many protests, ours was triggered by a feeling that our voices and positions were not being heard by the broader community,” Jentsch said. “Biomedical researchers at UCLA who use animals in their research were the targets of animal rights activists who used a range of methods to inhibit our academic freedom and socially sanctioned research.”

After his car was blown up by opposition activists, Jentsch, feeling silenced by the anti-testing movement, planned a massive rally of more than 700 Pro-Testers on the same day that an animal rights demonstration was taking place on campus.

Jentsch’s effort became the first mass pro-research demonstration in the United States.

“I personally think that public advocacy for your positions, including in the form of protests, is an age-old American tradition we should never lose,” Jentsch said. “It should always have a place in civil society.”

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