Sproul Plaza
University of California, Berkeley
March 2010

On March 4, 2010, there was a statewide protest to defend public education on a scale never before seen in California. As a follow up to their immensely popular “Instructional Video Series,” the Strategic Counter-Activism Brigade (SCAB) provided official hall passes to those heroes of privatization eager to march gracefully across the measly picket lines gathered at Sather Gate on the UC Berkeley campus. Further, and with great pomp and circumstance, SCAB representatives escorted all willing denizens of long-term debt insecurity down a sparkling and most-glamorous red carpet amidst flying rice, flashing cameras, cheers from the crowd, and kisses from the Governator – who presided over the event larger-than-life.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Video Coverage

Critical Analysis

UCMeP was featured in Larry Bogad’s 2011 essay for Theatre Survey about tactical performance at the UC.

See: L.M. Bogad, “Crisis in Califorlornia: Creative Protest at the University of California,” Theatre Survey 52.1 (May 2011): 125-138

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The UCMeP installation became an ironic play space for the protestors; the mass of people got the joke, and some decided to play along. Folks were given an opportunity to speak into the microphone to sarcastically declare why they were complying with the neoliberal agenda or selling out their socioeconomic class or whatever they wanted to say; they then goose-stepped or marched down the carpet, kowtowed to the Governator, and generally embodied their ideological opponents as creatively as they could.

L.M. Bogad