Cooling It : One Night of Violence Changes the Strategy of UC Protesters of the 1980s

Jeremy Warren, at 19, is a freshman at UC Berkeley. Although he has yet to declare a major, he has declared a commitment to the radical left. Two weeks ago, UC police carted him off to jail during an anti-apartheid protest.

“My mom was very proud,” said Warren, who last year attended Beverly Hills High School. “She went through the ‘60s.”

Even though the combatants like Warren were just learning to talk when the Free Speech Movement galvanized the nation’s campuses in the late 1960s and early 1970s, such comparisons were inescapable as two weeks of anti-apartheid protests heated, and then cooled, on the Berkeley campus.

A clash between rock-throwing protesters and night stick-swinging police on the night of April 2 over an outlawed shantytown--a symbol of the oppressive living conditions of blacks in South Africa--resulted in 29 injuries and more than 90 arrests. Chancellor Ira Michael Heyman described it as the most violent demonstration on the campus since the Vietnam War era.

But the days that followed perhaps served as a reminder that these are the 1980s after all. Although the demonstrations grew in numbers after the violent battle, with crowds swelling to 1,500, observers as varied as Warren and Heyman say many protesters recoiled from the violence. Meanwhile, the protest leaders opted for less confrontational tactics, as more radical elements found themselves overruled by mainstream liberals.

At the same time, many students seemed more concerned with the coming of this week’s spring break and finals, only two weeks away. Protest leaders acknowledge that the issue--activists are calling for the UC Board of Regents to divest $2.4 billion worth of investments in companies that do business with South Africa--lacks the immediacy that Vietnam had for American students. Some wondered whether the one night of violence was a “fluke” or a portent of coming radical fervor.

In contrast to the night of violence, the biggest story of the past week was nonviolence, highlighted by a human blockade on Tuesday that shut down California Hall, which houses the administration’s offices. The building was closed for 6 1/2 hours before campus police, wearing helmets and prodding with their night sticks, cleared a path through a jeering crowd. Twelve protesters refused to comply with orders to move and peacefully surrendered, pushing the total number of arrests for the two weeks above 160.

Inside his reclaimed office the following day, Heyman showed off one of the new souvenir T-shirts sold here, bearing the script: “I Survived the Berkeley Shantytown Riot.” In an interview, the chancellor credited protesters “who are not violence-prone” for taking control of “the direction of the protest from the people who were originally most active.” The emerging leaders, he said, “had cooled most of the hot-headed people.”

Control of the protest strategy shifted among, and within, the three campus groups spearheading the demonstration. As a general rule, members of the leftist Campaign Against Apartheid, of which Jeremy Warren is a member, advocated aggressive tactics such as erecting the shanties, which violated the U.S. Supreme Court’s “time, place and manner” rules for demonstrations. Members of the United People of Color and U.C. Divestment Committee generally favored less provocative means, such as the blockade.

The protests posed “a terrible dilemma,” Heyman said. Ordering police action, he said, “is the hardest decision I have to make.” Law enforcement officers from local jurisdictions were called in to back up the UC police.

Although protesters criticized Heyman and UC Police Chief Derry Bowles for overreacting, Heyman said that in retrospect he wished that local agencies had been called in the night of April 2, rather than the following morning. “We just set them (UC officers) up to be surrounded,” he said.

The chancellor blamed protesters for provoking the violence, and protest leaders blamed police. One UC officer has been reassigned to limited duty and recommended for counseling because of his actions in the demonstration, Heyman said.

And while many of the protesters themselves reassessed their strategies, Heyman and his staff nurtured the non-confrontational atmosphere, holding meetings with influential Student Body President Pedro Noguera, Berkeley Mayor Gus Newport, Rep. Ronald Dellums (D-Berkeley) and others. Noguera, a member of United People of Color, served as an ad hoc liaison between protesters and the administration, urging nonviolence throughout.

List of Demands

When the protesters blocked the four entrances to California Hall Tuesday, a large contingent of police waited across campus as Heyman met with protest leaders. Their list of demands ranged from divestment, to affirmative action policies for students, to the removal from campus of retail computer outlets for IBM and Hewlett-Packard, two firms with substantial ties to South Africa.

Heyman agreed to suspend the IBM and Hewlett-Packard sales for the remainder of spring semester. The chancellor told protesters that he lacked authority to act on most of their demands, and disagreed with some.

Protest leaders then rallied the crowd at a noon meeting, describing Heyman as “really nervous and sweating.” Faced with the choice of sending in the police or waiting until the next morning, Heyman ordered police to move in. “We felt we could do it with peace,” he said.

Heyman deliberately was not among the 20 or so employees who allowed the jeering protesters to enter the building.

Later in the week, as the demonstrations tapered off, Jeremy Warren was among the 40 or so people crammed into a burger joint as the Campaign Against Apartheid screened a homemade documentary of the shantytown demonstrations, complete with a replay of one UC police officer running wildly through a crowd swinging his night stick.

A leader of the group, a self-described “radical,” admitted he was disappointed by the change of tactics.

“It’s a classic case,” he said. “The liberals got scared of the violence.”