Herbert Bradford Cleaveland, one of the founders of the Free Speech Movement

and a longtime resident of Berkeley's Redwood Gardens, passed away on October 21 at the Oakland Health and Wellness Center. Brad had been in fading health for the past few weeks.

Brad's family and friends will be holding a memorial service in the near future. In the meantime, in his memory, the Free Speech Movement Archives (FSM-A.org) has posted a link to the transcript of an interview Cleaveland recorded in 1998. The interview is introduced with the following background note:

Herbert [Brad] Cleaveland had just graduated from Berkeley and had written a thirteen-page “Letter to Undergraduates” in the SLATE Supplement to the General UC Catalog that called for “open, fierce and thoroughgoing rebellion.”

In this interview, Cleavland begins by describing how the FSM leadership crystalized over the 31 hours the police car was surrounded [by UC students in Sproul Plaza] beginning on October 1, 1964 and goes on to discuss his involvement with the FSM Steering Committee, his observations about various leaders with attention to the role of Jews and women, his efforts to continue the momentum of FSM and his later work for educational reform. 

After graduating from UC Berkeley, Brad authored a remarkable essay that appeared in the Autumn 1964 edition of the SLATE Supplement. In his "Letter to Undergraduates," Cleaveland laid out the rationale for questioning the university's claim to being a hallowed center of academic learning. Cleaveland called out the university for being a tool of big business whose purpose was to create students fully trained to be exploited by the entitled masters of corporate America. The essay called for nothing less than a student rebellion. 

Looking back, Cleaveland's "Letter to Undergraduates" appears to stand out as a prophetic Magna Carta—a rising ball of fiery prose that presaged the dawn of student activism. It was only a matter of months before the "undergraduates" at UC Berkeley rose up by surrounding a police squad car sent onto the campus to arrest a former student who was "guilty" of trying to raise funds and awareness regarding civil rights abuses in the American South. 

Among the first remembrances to start pouring in after the public notification of Brad's death came in a phone call from John Sutake who recalled that it was Brad who moved (while he seconded) a motion to adopt the name “Free Speech Movement” at a late-night meeting in Art Goldberg’s living room on College Avenue. As Sutake remembers it, many of the activists had fallen asleep so Brad asked John to second his motion. "They woke up the others, the motion passed, and then everyone went back to sleep." 

Richard Fallenbaum recalls: "Brad was an active member of SLATE. His main political focus was on educational reform. He edited and published an issue of the Cal Reporter devoted to that question." 

New York University History Prof. Robert Cohen (and co-author of The Free Speech Movement: Reflections on the Sixties) writes: 

"Brad’s manifesto came up in one of the early meetings between the FSM 

and the administration and Chancellor Strong used it to charge that the student rebellion had been planned in advance, a kind of 50s-style red-baiting made possible by Brad’s call for campus rebellion (in that SLATE publication came before the free speech conflict erupted). Mario [Savio] publicly refuted Strong on this and denied that there was any connection between the rise of the FSM and Brad’s manifesto. I do assign it for its angry and insightful critique of undergraduate education." 

Referring to Brad's infamous, radical (pre-FSM) 13-page call for a revolution on the UC Berkeley campus, author and cultural critic Greil Marcus wrote: 

"I had never read anything so incendiary, so monolithic in its rage, as Brad Cleaveland's manifesto when someone passed me a copy in the fall of 1964. That the Free Speech Movement broke out so soon after seemed preordained. His words never left me that whole season." 

 

Brad Cleaveland (l) and Art Goldberg speaking from atop a police car surrounded by students on October 1, 1964 (Photo: Tom Kuykendall—FSM Archives) 

A LETTER TO UNDERGRADUATES  

From Brad Cleaveland  

Dear Undergraduates, On May 13, 1963, SLATE published the "Cal Reporter," a newspaper which charged this University with a total failure to educate undergraduates. The paper said that the University pushed the myth that you, as undergraduates, are "training for leadership," when in reality you are training for obedience; that you leave the University with a basic suspicion for intellectuals, and fear of the kinds of thought necessary for you to meet the 20th century world-in-revolution. The theme of a quote from Bertrand Russell ran through the paper: 

"We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles of intelligence and freedom of thought."  

This is not a minor charge. The charges were clearly focused upon your situation as an undergraduate, and not the graduate schools. The response to the newspaper was astonishing. The Daily Cal made the coy comment that SLA TE had again emerged like a "grouchy bear," but that it offered no "constructive solutions." This casual and inappropriate response represented the views of a great many of you, and your professors, and administrators. But those charges were not minor, they were seriously radical, and for the Daily Cal to suggest that we all sit around picking our noses while asking for "constructive solutions" is astonishing!! If the rising waters of a flood threaten to immerse you in death and suffocation, it would be more than ridiculous to reflect on "constructive solutions." Or: 

THERE IS NO BLUEPRINT FOR AN EDUCATIONAL REVOLUTION!!!  

It was like this: on the one hand there was substantial agreement that the University stamps out consciousness like a super-Madison-Avenue machine; on the other, people saying, "So what?" or "Bring me a detailed and exhaustive plan." But there is no plan for kicking twenty thousand people IN THEIR ASSES! No plan will stop excessive greed, timidity, and selling out. At best the University is a pathway to the club of "tough- minded-liberal-realists" in America, who sit in comfortable armchairs talking radical while clutching hysterically at respectability in' a world explosive with revolution. At worst the University destroys your desires to see reality, and to suffer reality with optimism, at the time when you most need to learn that painful art. In between those two poles is mostly garbage: Bus Ad; PhD candidates "on the make"; departmental enclaves of "clever and brilliant" students who will become hack critics; and thousands of trainees for high-class trades which will become obsolete in ten years. 

Dear undergraduate, let me make this crystal clear for you. There is a contrast which exists on this campus between the common (and sometimes beautiful) illusions which we have all had, and what actually happens! . . . . a gap which seems to be reaching catastrophic proportions. I will offer two sets of utterly obvious facts to show you that a violent contrast does exist; and that the University is a grotesque perversion of the conditions necessary for your freedom to learn reality and to suffer it with optimism. The first set of facts is your Charter Day Ceremony, the second, is the essentials of your undergraduate routine--a grotesque perversion of your freedom to learn. 

YOUR UNDERGRADUATE ROUTINE  

The Cal Reporter's charges were that the routine life of the University is destructive of anything we know of educational tradition: especially at the level where we might reasonably expect to see painstaking efforts to give mass education its highest expression—at your level as undergraduate. In the place of such efforts, your routine is comprised of a systematic psychological and spiritual brutality inflicted by a faculty of "well-meaning and nice" men who have decided that your situation is hopeless when it comes to actually participating in serious learning. 

As an undergraduate, you receive a four-year long series of sharp staccatos: eight semesters, forty courses, one hundred twenty or more units, fifteen hundred to two thousand impersonal lectures, and over three hundred oversized "discussion" meetings. Approaching what is normally associated with learning; reading, writing, and exams, your situation becomes absurd. Over a period of four years you receive close to fifty bibliographies, ranging in length from one to eight pages, you are examined on more than one hundred occasions, and you are expected to write forty to seventy-five papers. 

As you well know, reading means "getting into" hundreds of books, many of which are secondary sources, in a superficial manner. You must cheat to keep up. If you don't cheat you are forced to perform without time to think in depth, and consequently you must hand in papers and exams which are almost as shameful as the ones you've cheated on. You repeat to yourselves over and over as an undergraduate that "It doesn't make any difference . . . it's the grade that counts," . . . a threadbare and worn phrase (if you are lucky enough to make it to the third or fourth year); used as commonly as your word "regurgitation" in place of "exam." 

You know the measure of truth in those bits of slang: it is nauseous . . . you almost do "puke up your work" to professors. I personally have known students who have gotten physically sick by merely reflecting upon their routine. In the sciences and technical fields your courses are bluntly and destructively rigorous . . . you become impatient with "that social sciences and humanities crap." How did you get to be such puppets? You perform. But when do you think? Dutifully and obediently you follow, as a herd of grade-worshipping sheep. If you are strong at all, you do this with some sense of shame, or if you are weak, you do it with a studied cynicism . . . as jaded youth with parched imaginations that go no further than oak-paneled rooms at the end of the line . . . BUT WHETHER YOU ARE STRONG OR WEAK YOU PERFORM LIKE TRAINED SEALS, AND LIKE SHEEP YOU FOLLOW . . . WITH THE THOROUGHBRED PHI BETA KAPPA SHEEP LEADING YOU up the golden stairway to the omnipotent A, to the Happy Consciousness, to success, and a very parochial mind. This is the core of your dutiful daily lives, and your homage to respectability. 

Reluctantly, or otherwise, you permit it to be applied by administrators who use computers on you as much because they are afraid of personal contact with you as for the reason that they wish to keep the assembly line moving efficiently. You permit professors to extract your performance by the coercion of grades. Why do you permit this apostasy of learning . . . a process which prevents you from extending your thought beyond a shallow dilettantism? 

IF THE- FACTS OF YOUR UNDERGRADUATE EXISTENCE WERE SOLELY DETERMINED BY THE "COURSE/GRADE/UNIT SYSTEM," YOUR "INCIPIENT REVOLT," TO WHICH PRESIDENT KERR HIMSELF IRRESPONSIBLY ALLUDED IN THE GODKIN LECTURES, WOULD PROBABLY HAVE ALREADY OCCURED." * 

The reason why you permit, dear undergraduate, your minds to be abused, is because you are given a magnificent bread and circus. What a pain reliever! . . . these "extra-curricular" activities. Coming to you from your ASUC student' 'government," other special bureaucracies such as the Committee on Arts and Lectures, and added to by more intellectual offerings from departmental and special grants lecture series, comes a semesterly tidal wave of exciting and highly intense stimuli which dazzles you away from the fact that you are obstructed from learning, or even questioning whether you should be learning while you are here. This bread and circus assures you that the world is really not in the midst of anything so serious as revolution, much less within your own Sacred borders!! 

From the powerfully entertaining to the scholastically intellectual you get films, debates, art exhibits, athletics, drama, "spirit" groups, recreation, seductions of hundreds of social groups; this pyrotechnical explosion of Kultur is something terribly' 'other directed"; happily away from your puppet-like performance in the course/grade/ unit procedural core. Your attention is diverted away from your treadmill to the candied goodness of the bread and circus. 

Hopefully, when you get your bachelor's degree, you will step up to higher plateaus where many kinds of "success" await you. You are blinded to the fact that you are really getting something of terrible importance while you are here: 

TRAINING IN THE CAPACITY FOR UNQUESTIONING OBEDIENCE TO A COMPLEX FLOOD OF TRIVIAL BUREAUCRATIC RULES. IN THE NAME OF HUMAN LEARNING YOU ACQUIRE THE CAPACITY TO BE DOCILE IN THE FACE OF RULES. WHILE YOU ARE TRAINING, THE RULES WHICH TELL YOU HOW TO GO ABOUT YOUR TRAINING ARE DISPLACING YOUR FREEDOM TO THlNK . . . SKILL AND OBEDIENCE ARE WHAT YOU ACQUIRE. 

Aren't you the least bit aware that such a capacity is not only necessary for life in America's giant public and private corporations, but that it is also a first-class ticket to a traditional form of statehood under the designation of tyranny? No matter how well trimmed you keep your grassy lawns in suburbia after you get your bachelor's degree, your moral and spiritual servitude will [missing text] 

There is an incipient revolt of undergraduate students against the faculty; the revolt that used to be against the faculty in loco parentis is now against the faculty in absentia," from page 103 of The Uses of the University, Harvard, 1963 (Godkin Lectures given in 1963 at Harvard.) Kerr's comments throughout the book on higher education are made from the vantage point of a sort of disinterested observer, as though the President was not talking about his own "Multiversity," or as though he was really nothing more than a bureaucrat-employee of the Regents. Or, as Kerr himself puts it, " . . . . he is mostly a mediator," on page 36. hot be reduced. If you have attended a Charter Day ceremony, and can recall the feelings you had, you might feel the temptation to say that it is this indictment which is grotesque, and not the University . . . but—are the University . . . it is your life I have described in its essentials. 

Has it ever occur red to you, dear undergraduate, that human learning is a painful and exhilarating process which comes from asking the kinds of questions which YOU would like to ask: "WHY AM I IN THE UNIVERSITY? WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE? WHAT IS EXTREMISM, AFTERALL, AND HOW DOES POLITICAL EXTREMISM AFFECT ME? 

In your present situation, if you insisted on . . . now listen . . . if you insisted on the freedom to spend large amounts of time in a single- minded devotion to pursuing such questions, you would soon begin to feel rather out of it . . . you would be a kook. Any question of a fundamental, or a general character; or any question, which hits you personally in a deep way, can only be considered naive and stupid. Can you conceive of taking any such question and studying, talking, and reading about it for an entire semester—free of any other requirement—or for an entire year, or even more time? Without interference, but only earnest guidance from' 'teachers?" Or is it that you must always attend to that "other" paper, the "midterm next week," or the "reading in another course?" Or is it that you do this half the time and say to hell with it the rest of the time: go to an art film, or to strawberry Canyon, or to an exciting lecture for a one-night-stand on the topic of Western Civilization? 

Dear undergraduate, you know what really happens to you. You almost don't have to be told. It is as though the BENEFACTORS OF THE FRUITS OF LEARNING said to you, "Here, take this beautiful piece of fruit . . ." and you do, and you try to take a bite, when "STOP!!," you are being offered another piece of fruit, another, and then another. At the same time, before you really begin to taste and speculate about the taste of any one piece of fruit, your FRUIT BENEFACTORS, and FRUIT BENEFACTORS' ASSISTANTS, are demanding that you describe in detail the intricate beauty of each piece; they become impatient if you do not describe the fruit "properly," and they penalize you for thoughtful slowness by calling it stupidity, and by lowering your respectability rating. 

Most of you learn to hate the fruits of learning. But there are a few of you—the "clever and brilliant"—(preferably transfers from the Ivy League), who learn in a terrific quickness, to take quick little bites from the large and beautiful fruits and then furiously hurl them as far away as possible. You clever ones learn to devour the small fruits of skill and training; those fruits are your "security insurance" in life, or perhaps you think they will lead you later to an XKE and sexy-intelligent-wife-in-silk-dress. You perform your tricks well: smiling up at your benefactors and saying "delicious . . . . excellent!" 

CHARTER DAY  

It is the Charter Day ceremony in which your illusions achieve their most refined expression. In this ceremony there are loud pronouncements of University intentions. The University is portrayed as a great champion and advocate of the noble aim of education for all. The ceremony leaves the impression that the University of California not only provides training; that it not only provides. for economic ascent, but that it goes much further by providing something more fundamental and ennobling under the designation of education. 

The University claims to "produce" enlightened citizens with a heightened awareness of the moral, philosophical, and spiritual values of civilized life. All of the accoutrements of glory are present in this statewide celebration: solemn music, processions, colorful robes, and impressive ritual. 

Attended by thousands of students, a well-polished public with many celebrities, and with major national and international press coverage, the ceremony is elevating and beautiful. The speeches are confident gestures of power and rather traditional majesty. 

The overall purpose of the ceremony is a peculiar mixture of exaltation of statesmen, educators, and education. The podium is always shared by President Kerr with figures such as Stevenson, U Thant, and Kennedy. The University is placed proudly in the widest context—the world—unbashfully professing itself as a benefactor of free thought, intelligence, and the search for wisdom. The University is seen as playing a major role in the creation of world centers of learning, as well as continuing the rich tradition of education in the Western world. If you have attended this ceremony, you might easily have been overcome with the feeling that only detractors and scoffers of the worst sort would dare criticize such a "Citadel of Learning." 

But SLATE did criticize; the indictment implied that the Charter Day ceremony is an unmerciful sham; an example of unparalleled demagoguery. And many of you who have been elevated by Charter Day agreed with the Cal Reporter's charges . . . as did the Daily Cal, by implication, when it blandly fretted that no constructive solutions had been offered. Why the confusion; and why did the Daily Cal have such a posture? In order to answer this I will turn to the other of the "two sets of utterly obvious facts" I said I would use to prove that a violent contrast exists on this campus. 

DEAR UNDERGRADUATES!!  

I am no longer interested in cajoling you, arguing with you, or describing, to you something you already know. What I am about to say to you at this point concerns you more directly. I will entreat you to furiously throw your comforting feelings of duty and responsibility for this institution to the winds and act on your situation. This institution, affectionately called "Cal" by many of you, or, as the Daily Cal might put it, "the Big U," does not deserve a response of loyalty and allegiance from you. There is only one proper response to Berkeley from undergraduates: that you organize and split this campus wide open! 

FROM THIS POINT ON, D0 NOT MISUNDERSTAND ME. MY INTENTION IS TO CONVINCE YOU THAT YOU DO NOTHING LESS THAN BEGIN AN OPEN, FIERCE, AND THOROUGHGOING REBELLION ON THIS CAMPUS.  

I would like to briefly explain to you now why such a course of action is necessary, and how, if such a revolt were conducted with unrelenting toughness and courage, it could spread to other campuses across the country and cause a fundamental change in your own futures. I have used the phrase "world-in-revolution" several times to this point. 

I would like to say to you now that most of you are incompetent to deal with that phrase. It is a phrase, which betrays a distinct view of reality . . . a view of reality out of which might grow an effective "opposition" in the present American scene where the only opposition seems to be crystallizing along reactionary llnes. "World-in-revolution" is a phrase . . . a view of reality [that] contains a large measure of truth, one which is certainly debatable. BUT IT IS NOT DEBATED BY YOU. 

The catastrophic gap between the incubator world of your Multiversity and the world of reality is represented by your ignorance of what "world-in-revolution" means. The University teaches you to bury your heads in the sand, trembling in ignorance of the American black revolution for Civil Rights, the impending revolution in Automation, and likewise in ignorance of political revolutions, which, like thunder-clapping salvos; explode the world over. 

The Multiversity is the slickest appeal ever made for you to fortify your organization-man mentalities, for you to lead privatized lives in which it is a virtue for you to go greedily "on the make." 

In urging you to rebellion, I have action in mind, not further understanding. What more is there to understand when you can so easily discover that a Peace-Corpsman who left Cal is now living in Nigeria in a separate small house with the conveniences of suburban America, plus two houseboys, and that a young girl Civil Rights worker from the Bay Area who goes to Mississippi lives in abject poverty with a family of eleven black American citizens, in a shack with no running water, with lice, with rats, and in constant fear for her life? 

In this Multiversity, you will not learn so much as a cursory meaning of what a world-in-revolution means to you. You will not learn the utterly profound fact of what a revolution is: 

THAT A REVOLUTION COMES ABOUT WHEN ENORMOUS NUMBERS OF FELLOW HUMAN BEINGS ARE OPPRESSED TO POINTS FAR BEYOND WHAT WE BLANDLY LABEL AN "INTOLERABLE SET OF CONDITIONS." 

Nor will you learn that to be a counter-revolutionary is to go about the business of slaughtering enormous numbers of human beings whose inflamed spirits and starved stomachs force them to cry out for the freedoms which you spit upon in your apathy. 

AND YOU WILL LEARN MOST OF ALL NOT TO ENTERTAIN SO MUCH AS THE POSSIBILITY THAT AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN KOREA AND SOUTH VIET NAM ARE PRECISELY COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY . . . THAT THE AMERICAN NATION IS INVOLVED IN DESTROYING POPULAR NATIONAL REVOLUTIONS, AND APPEARS TO BE GETTING ITSELF LOCKED MORE AND MORE IN THAT SUICIDAL AND INHUMANE POLICY. 

You will learn not to entertain such thoughts, even though such statements have been made on the floor of the US Senate (by Wayne Morse, US Senator from Oregon), where nobody seems to have taken these fantastic charges seriously. And you will learn not to react when you hear other Americans say: " After all, God's on our side, we're savin' those illiterate savages from the Commies, even if we gotta mutilate 'em to do it, Goddamit!!" 

You will not learn that, at home, here in the good ol' USA, in the Civil Rights Revolution which is now going on, the phrase "white backlash" is the simplest way to say "the bigotry of the majority;" that "white backlash" is a counter-revolutionary phrase, used by "scholars," so-called liberals, advocated by conservatives, or used by anyone else who adopts the hideous posture of "studying," or analyzing the "problem" of the black man in America. 

Nor will you learn that the real meaning of "white backlash" is "Don't bug me, nigger . . . You're buggin' me with that civil disobedience . . . now stop that or we'll show you who has the tear gas, cattle prods, and shotguns!!" 

Is it really necessary for 30,000 black and white Americans to march up Telegraph Avenue to Bancroft Way, many of them fellow students, chanting for the rights of black Americans, before you see the contrast between your world of Oskie Dolls, fraternity boys on drunken weekend blasts (where alcohol is transformed from joy into arrogance), and cute Daily Cal stories on Ludwig? [Note: Ludwig was a beloved canine who amused students by frequenting the public fountain in Sproul Plaza—GS] How long will it take you to see the meaning of a casual remark I heard recently: "The fraternity system is to education as the South is to the United States"? 

Is this too simplistic a view of your lot as undergraduates? You might say in protest that only a few students are in the ASUC "government" of political castrates, who think they are training for leadership; that the Daily Cal is merely a handful of sell-outs "going on the make" in that jaded commercial enterprise called the press, which is owned in large part by the Regents of this University. You might say that many students scorn the old "Saturday virtues" of beer cans and Bermudas, along with the peculiar fraternity brand of the little-Marlboro-Man complex. 

"It's all on the way out," you might say, "we're growin' up . . . our answers are 'blowin' on the wind.''' Really? Will you say that? Then I say to you, what about the dormitory undergraduates? 

Last year, the Regents arrogantly denied some dorm students permission to set up a small campus radio station. No pretenses . . . the Regents simply said that dorm "boys" were incapable of responsibility in the matter and incompetent to use the airways. Kerr's whimpering protest to the Regents took the disgusting form of publicly saying that the boys were merely "engineering types," who only wished to express their tinkering mentality. 

Two SLATE students came to the side of the engineers in a Daily Cal letter. Do you recall how those virile young American engineering students responded to the whole affair? THEY AGREED WITH THE REGENTS AND KERR!! 

Proceed. You might say that there are many students who do not live in organized living groups; that the independents are more mature. I will concede this point, but only if you agree that you are judging by mere appearances. For it is true that in the realm of what may only be called social "style," the independent who has broken ties with organized living has taken a slight step forward. After all, some of them even look European! The Jean-Paul Belmondo coolness, the stylized life of the terribly cosmopolitan Terrace, and all the rest. Of course, the majority of independents have little or no politics, and where it really counts—that puppet-like performance for grades, that scramble after grades and respectability—they do the same as the rest of you. 

Regarding the radicals, those who are now going to jail in the Civil Rights Revolution: they are beginning to learn what the world-in-revolution means. I would make only one irreverent comment to them. They shouldn't bitch because the whole campus doesn't go to jail with them: because they are the real leaders on the campus, and yet while—the campus they too become sheep. They take the flunkings of professors who penalize them for attending a San Francisco court, rather than a Berkeley class; the same professors who donate money to the Civil Rights fight as long as it stays three thousand miles away in the South. 

The only large group of students I personally respect, other than the Freedom Fighters, are the drop-outs. Ignominious lot! What a fate . . . that one would be forced to give up that little registration card with respectability written all over it! This "Hidden Community" of unseemly hangers-on in Berkeley now numbers in the thousands. Those most bugged by this "element" are the ASUC types. They screech, "You can't even tell them from students sometimes (although some are very dirty) . . . and they're using our student union!" If they have flunked out (or dropped out) of the University how can they deserve respect? 

Well . . . if I thought it was a virtue to perform like sheep I wouldn't be urging revolt. The fact is that these students are the real ones. Many have had the guts to cut their social umbilical cords, become genuinely free, and to begin coughing up their own mistakes. They don't take the fatal step which the Cowell Psychiatric Clinic calls "regressive": which means to go back to Mama, or, God forbid, to a Junior College. They face life in its own terms, and many do something rather shocking around Berkeley: they learn to read a book. And I might add that many of them are also Freedom Fighters. (Incidentally, do you know the latest figures? According to Cowell, close to fifty percent of those of you who are graced with the mantle of "Freshman at Cal," are eliminated by the end of the third year). 

Are you aware that the most salient characteristic of' the "Multiversity" is massive production of specialized excellence? SPECIALIZED EXCELLENCE. It will be some time before machines will displace the super-trades; thus massive training centers are necessary. But why do we insist upon calling them educational centers rather than training centers? 

THE MULTIVERSITY IS NOT AN EDUCATIONAL CENTER, BUT A HIGHLY EFFICIENT INDUSTRY: IT PRODUCES BOMBS, OTHER WAR MACHINES, A FEW TOKEN "PEACEFUL" MACHINES, AND ENORMOUS NUMBERS OF SAFE, HIGHLY SKILLED, AND RESPECTABLE AUTOMATONS TO MEET THE IMMEDIATE NEEDS OF BUSINESS AND GOVERNMENT. 

We all know that this is necessary to some extent for the maintenance of "American know-how;" otherwise the system would collapse and anarchy would reign, etc. But the forbidden fruit is to ask the devastating question WHY? WHY ONLY KNOW-HOW? Or is it that we wish to produce the largest population ever known to man of highly skilled idiots? We may safely say that graduate schools should perform the function of training for specialized excellence . . . but even then not exclusively. And if you will recall, we are discussing the matter of undergraduate freedom to learn. What has occurred when undergraduate education is erradicated; whether it be for the excuse of "too many students," or "exploding knowledge," or in the name of political expedience during the "Cold War?" 

WHEN THIS OCCURS IN PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES, THE RESULT IS ABANDONMENT OF THE AMERICAN DEMOCRATIC EXPERIMENT IN WHICH THE RADICAL PROPOSITION OF EDUCATION-FOR-ALL IS THE CENTRAL AXIOM. 

Dear undergraduate, your "learning" has come to an impasse. Below the level of formal responsibility (the Regents, President, and Chancellors), the Academic Senate (the faculty) itself is guilty of a massive and disastrous default. It is said that the Regents have given to the faculty the power and responsibility to deal with your learning. To put it mildly, the Academic Senate has turned that power and responsibility into a sham, an unused fiction. 

If this be true, then who is responsible for seeing to it that the faculty do something? We can cancel out President Kerr: he has already admitted publicly that he is incompetent to attend to the matter of undergraduate learning. That takes us back up the bureaucratic ladder again . . . do you know what the phrase "The Regents of the University of California" means? Following is the meaning of that phrase: 

 

• Edward CARTER: Chairman of the Board of Regents, Director, Broadway Hale Retail Stores, Northrup Aircraft, Pacific Tel & Tel, and First Western Bank;
• Dorothy CHANDLER: Director, L.A. Times, and wife of Norman CHANDLER of the Southern California News Publishing empire;
• William COBLENTZ: Corporation Lawyer, San Francisco;
• Frederick DUTTON: US Assistant Secretary of State;
• Mrs. William Randolph HEARST: ("Housewife"), of the Hearst national newspaper empire;
• Mrs. Edward HELLER: ("Housewife"), widow and heir to Edward HELLER, Director, Permanente Cement, Wells Fargo Bank, Schwabacher & Fry partner, and Pacific Intermountain Express;
• William E. FORBES: Southern California Music Company;
• Lawrence KENNEDY: Attorney, Redding, California, (just prior to Mr. Kennedy's appointment as a Regent, it was strongly urged that it might be appropriate to appoint an educator to the Board of Regents);
• Donald H, MC LAUGHLIN: ("Mining Geologist"), Director, Homestake Mining Company, one of the largest gold-mining operations in the world, recent interests in Uranium mining, Director, Western Airlines, American Trust, and a Peruvian copper mining operation;
• Samuel MOSHER: Director, Signal Gas & Oil, and Long Beach Oil Development Company, which was accused publicly a few months ago, by Lt. Governor Glenn Anderson, of trying to wrest public control of a recently discovered state-owned oilfield off Long Beach with a projected worth of over $3 billion . . . enough to shake up the world market and give California Petroleum men a virtual monopoly;
• Edwin PAULEY: Director, Pauley Oil, Western Airlines;
• William Matson ROTH: US Special Deputy for Trade Relations, Director, National Life Insurance, Matson Shipping, Honolulu Oil, Pacific Intermountain Express;
• Norton SIMON: Director, Hunt Foods, Mc Calls, Wesson Oil & Snowdrift, and also "Land Developer";
• Phillip BOYD: former mayor of Palm Springs, Director, Deep Canyon Properties, Security National Bank;
• John CANADAY: Vice President, Lockheed Aircraft, Director, Corporate Public Relations, Lockheed Aircraft; and Regent number sixteen on our list is the one-and-only representative of organized labor (the most reactionary element in labor at that);
• Cornelius HAGGERTY: President, Construction and Building Trades Council, AFL-CIO.

In these men you find substantial ownership and control of the vital raw materials and service industries in the West: Communications, the Press, Television, Air and Surface Transportation, Fuel, and Finance; virtually enough power to make or break five governors and ten university presidents. The Board members are appointed for terms of sixteen years by the Governor. There are also ex-officio members, ONE OF WHOM IS AN EDUCATOR: Clark Kerr. 

 

I would like to ask you to think for a moment about the "public" character of these men. In the first place, who even knows them? . . . except a few of us who are aware that they are "famous" or "very wealthy men." What do they do? AND WHY? FOR WHOSE INTEREST? 

Dear undergraduate, there is perhaps no other set of questions, in the political realm, of greater importance for you. Let us return for a moment to the matter of who is responsible for your freedom to learn. As I said a moment ago, the Regents have delegated power and responsibility to the Academic Senates of the eight campuses. 

Let us just call the Academic Senate the "Faculty," which is the automatic membership of the Senate. At any rate, there is something terribly wrong here. If we assume that the faculty is incompetent to effect the necessary changes, then it would seem of the greatest urgency that the Regents themselves do something to correct the situation. 

If the Regents do not act, then we must conclude that they are (1) satisfied; or (2) incompetent; or (3) both. Two things are certain: (1) as corporate men of power, the Regents are getting precisely what they most desire—enormous numbers of highly skilled graduates to fill the corporate structure and to keep it running smoothly; (2) IT IS DEBATABLE, from their own point of view, whether the Regents would find it practical to "educate" these skilled people as well as to train them. 

Why? To put the answer very crudely: the Regents, who run private corporations, just as the politicians who run public corporations, desire highly skilled, but politically and economically dumb "personnel." The politicians have, of course, even made laws to that effect . . . in the form of such legislation as the Hatch Act, which forbids partisan politics in government bureaucracies. Consequently, if the faculty refuses to face the problem of educating undergraduates, but instead is encouraged, and agrees, to make only piecemeal reform which only slightly lessens pressures in some areas while making them more severe in other areas, the Regents might be said to be very happy with such a course of action . . . in fact that is what they are doing. 

The course/ grade/ unit system will probably be "adjusted," and the bread-and-circus will become more intense and dazzling: note the priority in the University building program . . . . first you build the Student Union Complex, then an auditorium which will be the "largest this side of the Mississippi," and "sometime in the future" will come an undergraduate library. But why do private and public corporate men act this way? 

FROM TIME IMMEMORIAL, MEN OF POWER HAVE CONSIDERED IT WISE TO KEEP THEIR CONSTITUENTS AT A LEVEL OF IGNORANCE WHEREBY THE PROCESS OF RULING THEM IS MOST EASILY ACCOMPLISHED. 

Or are we to entertain the possibility that the Regents have upset the applecart of history? Have they become revolutionaries? It is true that they recently removed the ban on Communist speakers on campus. Of course, they resisted for fifteen years . . . since the McCarthy era. And during the McCarthy era they were able to force the Academic Senate into adopting a loyalty oath. 

If you can forgive the faculty of a university for that you can forgive them for anything. Many professors did not forgive the Senate, however, and resigned. The spine of this faculty, close to forty professors, left in disgust; left scars behind which will never heal. Moreover, what the hell difference does it make whether you hear a communist every year or so. Most of you would laugh at him . . . like laughing at a movement which involves the entire world! 

If anyone of you wisely decided to study a communist speakers' proposals, to think about them, to read about them seriously, you not only would find it impossible from the standpoint—time, but you would also be considered a heretic by your fellow "students." It is probably accurate to say that the removal of the speaker ban on Communists was a great contribution on the symbolic level . . . like a Charter Day ceremony. Politically, it was very wise. 

Speaking of politics, what relation exists between the University and the US Government? Aside from providing trained personnel for public corporations (agencies, bureaus, etc.) as in private ones, is there as direct a relation between the University and Government as between the University and the Regents? Yes, it seems that the University, or shall we call a spade a spade—the Regents—it seems that the Regents are snuggled up pretty tightly to the seats of power in Washington (though it is difficult to tell who-hugs-who the hardest in Washington): 

Item—from the Cal Reporter, May 13, 1963: 

"According to the Financial Report of 1961-62, the US Government spent about 227 millions on Special Projects. These included 150 millions for Lawrence Radiation Laboratory (U.C.), 76 millions for Los Alamos Radiation Lab (UC). The income for the entire University (eight campuses) excluding these special projects was 250 millions."  

Let us summarize for a moment. Your learning opportunities are limited to "getting ahead," or acquiring a skill to do so. You are obstructed from the realities of the twentieth century world-in-revolution. You are left with the conclusion that the Regents are conducting a major love affair with the US Government, both of whom are not particularly anxious to see you "get smart'; for fear that you might become radical student politicos. 

In conducting this love affair with the Government, the Regents have left the matter of "educating" the infant-undergraduate to the adolescent faculty, knowing that they cannot do the job properly. The major implication in all of this is that if you wish to remain infants then you can . . . but if you wish to deny your infantile character then you must realize that you can't talk to your adolescent baby-sitters, the faculty, about your corrupt daddies, the Regents. 

The reason is simple: the babysitters are afraid of their daddies. No . . . if you really want to do something then you must stand up straight, like the young men and women you really are, and begin to SPEAK what you feel, to speak loudly, strongly, and to say your highest ideals, your deepest dreams, to pull out all of the stops, to let go and to tell the world . . . SPEAK TO THE WORLD AND TELL THEM THAT YOU WANT TO LlVE!!! 

Have I sufficiently taken care of your objections? If not, chances are that what remains is fear, and that is your problem. If I have taken care of your objections, then you might be asking HOW DO YOU START A REBELLION ON THE CAMPUS? That's a tough one and you might have to get tough in order to be heard. You also know that you will need legitimate demands behind your slogans of FREEDOM NOW! THE FREEDOM TO KNOW AND TO LEARN!! 

DEMANDS?  

1. IMMEDIATE COMMITMENT OF THE UNIVERSITY TO THE TOTAL ELlMINATION OF THE COURSE/GRADE/UNIT SYSTEM OF UNDERGRADUATE LEARNING: IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES. 

2. IMMEDIATE DISBANDING OF ALL UNIVERSITY DORM AND LlVING GROUP RULES WHICH PRESCRIBE HOURS AND WHICH PROVIDE FOR A SYSTEM OF STUDENT IMPOSED DISCIPLlNE, THEREBY DIVIDING STUDENTS AGAINST THEMSELVES. 

3. IMMEDIATE NEGOTIATIONS ON THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A PERMANENT STUDENT VOICE WHICH IS EFFECTIVE (THAT IS, INDEPENDENT) IN RUNNING UNIVERSITY AFFAIRS. 

4. IMMEDIATE EFFORTS TO BEGIN RECRUITMENT OF AN UNDERGRADUATE TEACHING FACULTY TO HANDLE UNDERGRADUATE LEARNING IN SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES. 

5. IMMEDIATE NEGOTIATIONS REGARDING TWO METHODS OF UNDERGRADUATE LEARNING WHICH PROVIDE FOR THE BASIC FREEDOM REQUIRED IN LEARNING: 

a. A TERMINAL EXAMINATION SYSTEM WHICH WILLBE VOLUNTARY AND AN OPTION WITH "b." 

b. IMMEDIATE CREATION OF UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAMS OF A WIDE VARIETY IN WHICH THE STUDENT WILL BE GIVEN CAREFUL, BUT MINIMAL GUIDANCE, WITHOUT COURSES, GRADES, AND UNITS. 

6. IMMEDIATE ESTABLISHMENT OF A UNIVERSITY COMMITTEE TO DEAL WITH THESE DEMANDS ON THE BERKELEY CAMPUS. 

Go to the top. Make your demands to the Regents. If they refuse to give you an audience: start a program of agitation, petitioning, rallies, etc., in which the final resort will be CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE. In the long run, there is the possibility that you will find it necessary to perform civil disobedience at a couple of major University public ceremonies. Depending on the resistance, you might consider adding the following two demands: 

7. RESIGNATION OF CLARK KERR. RESIGNATION OF TOP ADMINISTRATORS WHO MIGHT EMPLOY SLICK DIVERTING TACTICS. 

8. RECONSTITUTION OF THE BOARD OF REGENTS, EITHER THROUGH FIRING OR EXPANSION, PERHAPS BOTH. 

If you find such additional demands necessary, you are likely to find it necessary to take your demands to Sacramento, where you will get to know such people such as Hale Champion, state Director of Finance, who seems to have a slight distaste for knowledge and sees education in terms of the dollar sign. 

Or you might get to know Don Moskovitz, an Assistant Press Secretary to [Gov. Edmund G. "Pat"] Brown and educational advisor . . . You will find few allies there, with the exception of Thomas Braden. Max Rafferty, of course, is out of the question . . . would have you all in knickers made of old American flags if he could. 

If it is necessary to go this far beyond formal "channels"—and if you have the guts to get there, you will begin to learn how tough it is to effect radical change. If the Daily Cal decides to support you at various times along the way (very unlikely), they will be duly chastised by the so-called "Publications Board" and then the students' editors might have the guts to walk-out (doubly unlikely). If such a walk-out occurs again, as it did a couple of years ago, it might be wise to consider an effective picket to try to keep out the same types of fraternity scabs who took over last time in an action which was traitorous to the undergraduates. 

And if you get this far, you will also have witnessed nation-wide publicity which will have exposed Berkeley for the undergraduate sham that it is. Not to say that the public in general will feel that way, what with the press "red-baiting" you, but that students all over the country will read between the lines. By this time you may also be able to call for a mass student strike . . . something which seems unthinkable at present. If a miracle occurs, or two, you might even get to say that you were the seeds of an educational revolution unlike anything which has ever occurred. Remember one thing: 

"The task of genius, and man is nothing if not genius, is to keep the miracle alive, to live always in the miracle, to make the miracle more and more miraculous, to swear allegiance to nothing, but live only miraculously, think miraculously, to die miraculously." — Henry Miller 

Celebrated lawyer, activist, leftist, and labor-and-civil-rights sparkplug Patrick Hallinan died on October 8. In fond remembrance, here are some excerpts from his official biography, followed by a testimonial from Bay Area author David Talbot.

"Patrick Sarsfield Hallinan graduated from Hastings College of the Law (J.D. 1962) and the University of California, Berkeley (B.A. 1959, M.A. 1971).

Patrick Hallinan was active in high profile legal and political issues involving the conflict between the exercise of governmental power and individual liberty throughout his life, as were his late father, trial lawyer Vincent Hallinan, his political activist mother, Vivian, his Irish rebel grandfather Black Mick, his cousin Eamon DeValera, president of Ireland, his mother’s cousin Giuseppi Garibaldi, liberator of Italy, and his brother Terence Hallinan, the recent reform-minded District Attorney of San Francisco. . . ."

"Patrick began his social activism at age six by selling stamps in support of refugees of the Spanish Civil War. He delivered his father’s acceptance speech for the Progressive Party Presidential nomination in 1952 while his father was in jail on a contempt of court charge arising from his defense of labor leader Harry Bridges. During his father’s incarceration, Patrick traveled the country with Paul Robeson and W.E.B. Dubois in support of his father’s candidacy and the progressive movement. He was a leader in the Free Speech Moment at Berkeley, directed the West Coast Mobilization against the War in Viet Nam and, along with his entire family, was arrested in the San Francisco Auto Row sit-ins. 

"Patrick S. Hallinan is a trial attorney specializing in the litigation of complex criminal cases in state and federal court. He has practiced law in San Francisco for 38 years and, throughout his career, has been active in high-profile legal and political issues involving the conflict between the exercise of governmental power and individual liberty. He has been named the leading criminal defense lawyer in the Bay Area Surveys by the San Francisco Examiner and Attorney of the Year by California Attorneys for Criminal Justice as well as by the Drug Policy Commission of Washington, D.C. 

"He has also been a frequent speaker at various bar and legal functions. Mr. Hallinan has represented author Ken Kesey, San Francisco District Attorney Joe Freitas, California Court of Appeal Justice William Newsom, Congressman John Burton, Black Panther author Eldridge Cleaver, the Soledad Seven, San Francisco Sheriff Richard Hongisto, Federal District Court Judge Robert Aguilar, and former California Schools Superintendant William Honig. 

Mr. Hallinan was also featured in the PBS series Frontline: Snitch, a documentary about the harmful effects of the government's use of paid informants in the federal criminal justice system." 

Remembering Patrick Hallinan 

By David Talbot on Facebook  

(October 12, 2019) — I was sad to hear of the passing of Patrick Hallinan, on October 8—the eldest son of Vincent and Vivian Hallinan, whose brawling brood created our rebellious San Francisco's values, nearly all by themselves. 

Patriarch Vincent, "the lion of the courtroom," fought power all his life—City Hall, corporate titans, the Catholic Church, the federal government. 

His legendary fights for labor justice and civil rights got him thrown into federal prison during the Cold War. But with his equally tough, shrewd (and beautiful) wife Vivian, they created a family dynasty of six (!) boys—anointing them all with boxers' nicknames and teaching them how to fight because they knew the "Red Hallinans" were going to be embattled from birth. [For the record, the Hallinan kids went by the nicknames "Butch," "Kayo," "Toughy," "Dynamite," "Ringo," and "Dangerous"—GS] 

Vincent imbued his sons early with an important lesson: Don't just question authority, sneer at it whenever appropriate. 

"I'll always give you the best advice I can, but make up your own minds," he counseled his boys. "No matter how firmly I believe something, it might be 100% false; everything I know may be wrong." 

Patrick (Butch) Hallinan followed his old man into the family law firm, and was thrown immediately into the fray. He's pictured below as a young man (with dark hair, no glasses), defending protesters who were arrested during raucous civil rights demonstrations in the early 1960s at San Francisco's Auto Row, the Sheraton Palace Hotel and other city businesses that practiced racial discrimination. These protests introduced a new wave of youthful militancy, leading to San Francisco becoming a center of the 1960s-'70s revolution. 

I had the pleasure of interviewing Patrick for my book "Season of the Witch." Like the fellow "wild Irish rogues" in his family, he was a splendid storyteller and made his clan's tale—and the entire era—come vividly to life. The Hallinan story kicks off my book, with young Vince and Viv's early capers reading like Nick and Nora's from Dashiell Hammett's "Thin Man" series. 

With Patrick now joining his mother and father in the great beyond, I'll quote from the late Mayor Joe Alioto's eulogy for Vincent, because it rings true for Butch too. "If his duels and tilts were with God, at least he was picking on someone his own size." 

The Hallinans were the "social conscience of San Francisco," Alioto continued, "... in many respects the heart of San Francisco." 

Amen... and since they were not a pious family, right on, too. 

 

 

Donald Trump has a long history using the bully pulpit to silence his critics. At the Golden Globes award he insulted movie super star Meryl Streep as one of “one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood after she rebuked him. He mocked “a Hillary flunky who lost big.” He then mocked a disabled New York Times reporter. More recently, he insulted General Mattis as an overrated general.  

But Mattis fired back, reminding Trump that he “earned his his spurs at the battlefield, while Trump “earned his spurs from a letter from the doctor – a jab at his former boss who escaped the Vietnam draft from “a friendly doctor’s” letter. He further ridiculed the president’s adoration of Colonel Sanders,” the founder of the Kentucky Fried Chicken fast food restaurant chain.  

General Mattis resigned with dignity and grace after he cited irreconcilable policy differences with the president’s erratic foreign policy blunders. The former defense secretary’s comments Thursday night come as Trump faces bipartisan criticism over his decision to withdraw US troops from Syria.  

Last Wednesday, the House overwhelmingly passed a resolution opposing Trump’s troop withdrawal. Earlier in the day, retired four-star Admiral William McRaven, the architect of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, said Trump was working to “destroy” the country from “within” and “without.”  

We are all waiting with bated breath for the next barrage of nasty tweets.

Trump's withholding of military assistance to Ukraine until they manufacture false investigations against his political opponents is illegal, unconstitutional, and weakened Ukraine's resistance to invading Russian forces. But, his impulsive withdrawal of our troops from Kurdish Syria is a far worse calamity. 

The Traitor-in-Chief has now given a big chunk of the Middle East to Russia, for no good reason. Our warriors were rushed out as if defeated in battle. Russian soldiers now stroll inside our military bases. Our stalwart allies against ISIS abandoned, Kurds now face "ethnic cleansing." Our solemn commitments betrayed, our reputation has been desecrated, permanently. Russia now controls Kurdish oil fields. 

Days later, Putin visited his new best friend in ... not Turkey ... not Syria ... but ... Saudi Arabia! He told MbS that Russia is replacing USA. Soon, Putin may control the world's oil supply. 

Trump's gift to Putin is treason, pure and putrid. 

Sincerely,

About 4 years ago, a movement started in Berkeley, originally targeting the HUB but soon it evolved into THE POOR TOUR. 

In only a couple of months, this band of warriors were targeted and raided by BPD over 17 times, most often at the ungodly hour of 4AM. 

For the most part, they were able to protect their gear to bravely move to the next spot they would occupy. 

Many housed people with trucks were willing to show up and get their gear...It was a clean & sober encampment. It was truly a family in every way. Dysfunctional for sure, and clearly, at times Deranged, and ALWAYS steadfast in their commitment. 

Then the arrests started, and some were permanently injured.
And still it continued! 

There were TV and radio coverage, as well as the press. There was incredible artwork created adorning the encampments. Hell, they even made City Hall BLEED one night.
 

See slideshow of The Poor Tour
https://youtu.be/ihYq_fas3IM 

Today, there is a new movement, WHERE DO WE GO BERKELEY? 

The very same problems have yet to be resolved. The very same police actions happen. Pretty much the only difference is now there are a lot more tents on the streets of Berkeley and they wait until 8AM to begin the harassment. 

The SeaBreeze Encampment at W.Frontage Road and University will most likely be "Swept" by CHP & CAL TRANS and MANY plan to refuse to continue being subjected to what is frighteningly similar to "death marches." 

NOTHING is achieved by these actions, often, if not always, they do not even take the garbage that has been neatly bagged... 

There are NO portable toilets, NO dumpsters, NO storage, and NO shelter for them. Two people were KILLED by an Amtrak train as a direct result of the exhaustion and sun stroke resulting from one of these "Sweeps" 

SWEEPS KILL! 

BE A WITNESS to this action. Help protect them from further harm. DEMAND AN ANSWER TO THE QUESTION HEARD ALL AROUND THE BAY AREA... 

WHERE DO WE GO?? 

DO NOT BELIEVE without seeing for yourselves!
 

 

Follow them on Twitter @WhereDoWeGoBerk 

 

Follow them on FaceBook https://www.facebook.com/WhereDoWeGoBerkeley/ 

After weeks of prevarication, bobbing, weaving and stonewalling White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney finally nailed it, admitting there was a quid pro quo in dealings with Ukraine. 

Diving into the black hole he just dug Mulvaney stated unequivocally, “We do that all the time with foreign policy, adding: "I have news for everybody: Get over it. There’s going to be political influence in foreign policy.” Compounding Trump’s cruel policies, Mulvaney admitted that aid was withheld to the Northern Triangle countries in Central America to stem the tide of immigrants.  

“This is the ordinary course of foreign policy,” he added with great pride. 

“Get over it Mulvaney” – you just sank the presidency. If you are looking for another job after you leave the White House in disgrace, I suggest you contact a Rudy Giuliani who has many shady contacts in faraway places.

As the House of Representatives' Impeachment Inquiry rolls along, it continuously runs into non-cooperation from the Trump Administration. Dems could chose to ignore this but if they did they would deprive the investigation of potentially vital information. On the other hand, fighting this non-cooperation means going through the legal system -- and likely appearing before the Supreme court -- and that takes time. The longer the inquiry takes, the more likely that the public will lose interest and the more likely that support for impeachment will diminish. The House Democratic leadership is engaged in a balancing act between keeping the public informed and wrenching vital information out of the Trump Administration. 

It's unlikely that Trump will ever voluntarily cooperate with the House investigation. Trump has had a checkered business career and, in the process, engaged in more than four thousand lawsuits. (In 2016, USA Today (https://www.usatoday.com/pages/interactives/trump-lawsuits/) counted 4095 lawsuits.) Since entering the White House Trump has been as litigious, and over the past 34 months, he has precipitated dozens of additional legal actions. Some of these -- such as those involving sexual misconduct -- do not bear directly on the impeachment proceedings. Many of the others -- such as those involving alleged violations of the Constitution -- are related. 

In all the legal cases, the Trump pattern is the same: Trump unapologetically pushes limits and, when challenged, defies his adversary to prove their case in court. (Typical is the legal case regarding Trump University that took four years to reach a $25 million settlement in 2017 -- Trump's response was, "The ONLY bad thing about winning the Presidency is that I did not have the time to go through a long but winning trial on Trump U. Too bad!") Trump never acknowledges that he did anything wrong. 

The House Impeachment Inquiry alleges three basic offenses, detailed in Speaker Pelosi's October 20th memorandum (https://www.speaker.gov/sites/speaker.house.gov/files/Trump%20Shakedown%20and%20Coverup.pdf ) "The Shakedown. The Pressure Campaign. The Coverup." 

1.The Shakedown: The key transaction took place on July 25th during a telephone conversation between Trump and Ukrainian President ("Unclassified Memorandum of Telephone Conversation" between Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky (https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/25/trump-ukraine-phone-call-transcript-text-pdf-1510770 ).) In return for the promise of U.S. assistance, Trump requested, "I would like you do us a favor," and asked Zelensky to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden. 

Many constitutional lawyers have stated that Trump's action is a violation of U.S. Government Code title 18 Section 201(b) ( https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/201), which states that any public official who “corruptly demands, seeks, receives, accepts, or agrees to receive or accept anything of value personally or for any other person or entity, in return for… being influenced in the performance of any official act” is breaking the law. 

From the Whistleblower complaint ("Unclassified Whistleblower memo to Senator Richard Burr and Congressman Adam Schiff." (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/26/us/politics/whistle-blower-complaint.htm )) we know that “Senior White House officials had intervened to ‘lock down’ all records of the phone call, especially the official word-for-word transcript of the call... the transcript was loaded into a separate electronic system... used to store and handle classified information of an especially sensitive nature.” 

Therefore, it is reasonable for the impeachment inquiry to insist upon the "official word-for-word transcript of the call." It is also reasonable for the Impeachment Inquiry to subpoena Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who was present during this call -- and anyone else in the room. 

2. The Pressure Campaign: During the past several weeks, we've learned that the Trump Administration used a variety of means to pressure Ukraine to deliver dirt on Joe and Hunter Biden. The key person in the effort is Rudy Giuliani -- Trump asked Zelensky to work with Giuliani. Also involved in this pressure campaign were Vice President Pence, Attorney General Barr, acting White House Chief-of-Staff Mulvaney, and Energy Secretary Rick Perry. 

It is reasonable for the impeachment inquiry to command the testimony of all these individuals -- and to demand that they deliver related materials such as texts, emails, transcripts and notes. 

3. The Cover Up: During the past several weeks, we've learned that the Trump Administration used the power of the White House "to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election." They then took extreme steps to hide these actions, such as hiding the official transcript on a highly classified electronic system, or forbidding witnesses to appear before Congress. This is an abuse of presidential power. 

It is reasonable for the impeachment inquiry to command the testimony of the applicable Trump Administration officials -- and related materials. If they fail to do this, that would constitute an additional offense. 

Summary: We're in the middle of the first of three phases of the impeachment process: investigation. During this phase there will be multiple hearings, some public, some not. 

At the conclusion of this phase, Democrats will initiate the second phase and construct the articles of impeachment. (These will be voted on by the house and, if passed by a majority, the process will move into the third phase: an impeachment trial in the Senate.) 

It's clear there is enough evidence to construct three article of impeachment: bribery, conspiracy, and obstruction of justice. It would be helpful if some the related lawsuits were settled by the Supreme Court before the trial in the Senate. (For example, the Supreme Court could rule that Secretary Pompeo must testify and must turnover his related notes and texts.) However, this is not necessary for construction of the articles of impeachment. 

However, there is enough evidence to start the impeachment trial and Trump's non-cooperation can be litigated during the trial -- after all, Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts will preside over the Senate trial. In this sense, the Supreme Court will be involved in the final phase of the three-phase process. 

Bob Burnett is a Berkeley writer and activist. He can be reached at bburnett@sonic.net