Police Move In and Fists Fly as Protesters Confront Regents

About 1,500 apartheid opponents rallied outside a University of California regents meeting Thursday, and the peaceful mood that prevailed for most of the day was broken when about 400 protesters confronted the regents after the meeting and were forced out of the way by a flying wedge of campus police.

Police and protesters exchanged some punches as the regents’ chauffeur-driven cars left the Lawrence Hall of Science, the remote hilltop building where the heavily guarded meeting was held. UC Berkeley President Ira Michael Heyman blamed the brief confrontation on about 50 non-student “agitators.”

However, the only arrests Thursday stemmed from another demonstration earlier in the day when 30 people in wheelchairs chained themselves across the entrance to the UC administration building. Three people were arrested, cited and released in connection with that incident.

Nearly 1,000 arrests have been made, most of them peacefully, since April 10 in continuing protests here of university investments in companies that do business in racist South Africa.

Further demonstrations are planned today when the regents will discuss--but not decide--whether to sell those investments. A vote on the issue will not come until mid-June at the earliest, regents spokesmen said.

An immediate vote, however, is the principal demand of protesters, who have threatened to blockade the regents inside the building if that demand is not met.

Anti-apartheid demonstrators have been focusing attention on these two days of meetings for weeks, and the university has responded with extraordinary security for the regents. Student demonstrators and campus police alike have been bused in from campuses as far away as Irvine.

But, except for the late-afternoon scuffle, Thursday’s demonstrations were peaceful and relaxed, even festive.

“They gave a little; we gave a little,” a campus police spokeswoman said in a comment that typified most of the day.

The relaxed mood had returned by nightfall, as about 300 protesters prepared to camp out overnight outside the Lawrence Hall of Science. Many danced to reggae music while others used skateboards, flew kites or ate hearty servings of free vegetarian food.

The day’s demonstration began around noon, when 1,500 people gathered in Sproul Plaza before marching for a little more than an hour along a tortuously twisting road to the isolated building where the regents met. They formed a parade three blocks long as they snaked along city streets and then up the hill.

When they passed in front of several fraternities and were mildly heckled, the marchers good-naturedly urged: “Out of the frats and into the streets!”

At the top of the hill, they sunbathed, chatted, listened to music and applauded speakers repeating their now-familiar criticisms of the regents and the South African government.

“Should we stand with the oppressor or with the oppressed?” asked the Rev. J. Alfred Smith of the Allen Temple Baptist Church in Oakland. “We want total divestment now! Let’s move now!” The demonstrators cheered.

The mood may be somewhat less mellow today if the regents end their meeting without voting on divestiture and the protesters have to decide whether to make good their blockade threat.

“In spirit, we are going to want to keep them in the building,” said Frank O’Neill, a demonstrator and Berkeley alumnus, “but in fact we don’t know if that’s possible.

“I understand the regents have several ways to get in and out if things get hot and nasty. We’ve seen helicopters going in and out for the past few days.”

Some support a symbolic blockade of the site, and others advocate physically confining all 28 regents within the octagonal concrete building.

“I think most people will do it as a symbolic thing--I know I will,” said O’Neill, who said he has spent most of the last month as part of the 37-day sit-in on the steps of Sproul Hall. “I’m not thrilled with the prospect of going to (the county jail in) Santa Rita.”

However, another protester, Rita Himes, said flatly: “If they (regents) don’t vote to divest, they won’t be leaving.”

The disagreement illustrates a split that has recently developed among the demonstrators. Some want to maintain their relatively peaceful actions while others seek to escalate the protests with more serious disruptions of the university.

Student Regent Fred Gaines and other university officials have repeatedly said the regents will not vote on divestiture at this meeting.

The regents are awaiting a report from the university treasurer on divestiture, which will not be ready until the June 1 meeting in San Francisco. They also have scheduled a meeting June 10 at UCLA to collect additional public testimony.

Their two-day meeting here is being held behind an extraordinary security screen.

UC Berkeley spokesman Ray Colvig said “close to 100” UC police officers from several campuses were summoned to the university to help manage the crowds.

Also part of the security plan are officers from neighboring communities and from the Bay Area Rapid Transit District. The transit police were stationed along the parade route Thursday.

Also in attendance was a videotape unit from the Alameda County district attorney’s office and about 80 “neutral observers” recruited by the university to try to find the cause of any disturbances that might break out and to testify in court against those responsible.

For their part, both student and faculty demonstrators have spent a lot of time communicating with the various UC campuses to arrange for representation from each.

At one point, students leaders predicted that as many as 900 students from UCLA and UC San Diego alone would attend. Colvig, however, estimated the actual number of out-of-town protesters at only 200, although UCLA student Enrique Gonzalez said the figure is at least 300.

As most of the visiting students were arriving Wednesday night, the university was preparing the hall. Wood barricades were erected in front of the second-floor “patio” entrance, and a large fiberglass replica of a whale was moved from its usual location on one side of the patio to act as one more barricade in front of the doors.

While officials were fencing off an area that could be used to hold arrested demonstrators at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab nearby, they also complied with the protest organizers’ requests to install outdoor drinking fountains and chemical toilets for the convenience of demonstrators.

Times staff writer George Ramos contributed to this story.