Life of Wry

I presume the flag in Davis’ Central Park flying at half staff is a quiet act of civil disobedience on somebody’s part.  I’m rather certain the City of Davis did not send a park maintenance worker downtown this early Sunday morning to lower the flag.  Unless somebody big died and I didn’t hear about it (in spite of being glued to my news feeds for endless hours in the last day and a half), I think this is probably the work of one of the Occupy Davis protesters camping on the park’s north end in recognition of the horrific events on campus in the last 36 hours a short three blocks to the west.  Just my guess.

In any event, all was quiet this cold and wet morning.  Imagining the various camps are in their corners figuring out what to do tomorrow.  There is a big rally planned at noon on the quad.  Chancellor Katehi has indicated she intends to address the students’ general assembly (not sure when).  In light of calls for her resignation and a general sense that she’s mishandled pretty much everything associated with the Occupy UC Davis protests, we should be seeing a more considered response.

The Atlantic’s James Fallows wrote a good article this morning summing up the degree to which the students prevailed in making their points and doing it with class, dignity and restraint, and how the university panicked and relied on an unnecessary military-esque police response in making theirs.  About the students’ non-violent posture as cops in riot gear showered them in pepper spray, Fallows said: this is a moral drama that the protestors clearly won. I also loved this comment of his:

“The disciplined, contemptuous dead silence of the protestors through whom UC Davis chancellor Linda Katehi walks en route to her car is another astonishingly powerful demonstration of moral imagery. Again, as a moral confrontation, this is a rout.”

Which just means tomorrow will be interesting.