This story aired in the June 6, 2024 episode of Crosscurrents, click the play button above to listen.
Over the last two months, universities around the country have been dealing with protests against the war in Gaza, and the Bay Area is no exception.
One of the central demands is university divestment from Israel or having the endowment stop investing in any company that does business in, or with the country. In just the past few weeks, presidents at universities across California have said they would begin looking into divestment. Almost exactly four decades ago, UC Berkeley was at the heart of a different divestment movement, against Apartheid in South Africa.
The first time I visited the encampment at UC Berkeley, there was so much going on I had trouble taking it all in. There were banners and signs everywhere, rows and rows of tents, and a constant buzz of activity as protesters moved throughout the camp.
But then, I began to see a recurring theme I hadn’t necessarily expected — the comparison to South Africa. “Remember South Africa” was written on posters. Students were handing out pamphlets explaining the country’s history.
I even met somebody who had a book of old newspaper cartoons. He showed me one — a kind of illustrated map to prove his point.
“The image here was published in 1988 in the Sacramento Bee newspaper. And it shows the map of, I guess, present day Israel or Palestine. But instead of the country it just says South Africa. So I guess it's illustrating the common thread of apartheid.”
And then somebody began giving a speech that directly linked the two movements on this campus plaza.
“My name is Andrea Prichett, and I am an outside agitator. Now, once upon a time, in the spring of 1985, in support of the people of South Africa who were being super exploited by the white minority, we encamped on the steps here in support of the demand for full divestment.”
Andrea is now an 8th grade history teacher at Willard Middle School, just down the road. She graduated from UC Berkeley in 1985, and she began to explain how the protests had begun back then. She remembers that an encampment formed at Columbia.
“And about a week later we decided, well, what the hell, you know, we're gonna bring our sleeping bags and we're gonna start. And it's so eerie because right now Columbia, yet again, was about a week ahead of us in this Palestine chapter. The historical symmetry is incredible.”
The Camp Grows
In just a matter of days, camps were popping up at schools across the country. Andrea and a small group of other students started to camp out on Sproul Plaza, and the encampment grew fast. Until one night, about a week later, the police came and 158 people were arrested.
Andrea remembers, “As I was going to jail that night … I was sad because I had fallen in love with the sit-in. I had fallen in love with the profusion of energy and creativity and commitment and vision. And I was so sad.
From jail, Andrea learned the protest wasn’t over at all. “Far from being over, there was this big rebound. Mario Savio was addressing people.”
Mario Savio was the grandfather of the Berkeley free speech movement, and was speaking in front of thousands. He said, “If they can crush the Berkeley students, they can crush the others, too, but they won't crush the Berkeley students.”
Andrea remembers, “Alice Walker had spoken. Kurt Vonnegut. All of a sudden, it was cool to be arrested.”
On the eighth day, protesters picketed the entrances to campus, urging students to join a boycott of classes. As more of the university community got behind the movement, the administration granted one of the demands, an open forum.
With pressure mounting, the governing body of the UC system, the Board of Regents actually agreed to sit down for a public forum.
It was held in the basketball stadium, and it was packed to capacity. The meeting was filmed, and you can see a number of regents sitting in the front row as students speak one by one.
“Whatever the true figure, American investment is undoubtedly crucial in running South Africa. And this is a state that is increasingly militarized, and American companies are helping,” said Gaye Seidman, a student activist.
“I do not want to retire on the profits which have been earned from South African slavery, and I am not alone. We want divestment, we want full divestment, and we want it at the next regents meeting,” said Steve Willet, a union leader.
The regents did meet that Summer, in June 1985. And while they agreed to make a committee to study the issue, the measure for complete divestment failed. The protests sputtered out, and the encampment cleared out for the summer.
What’s Happening Today
Fast forward to today, and we are at a similar point in time in the campus protests against the War in Gaza. It’s summer break. The pro-Palestine encampment has disbanded. And the UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ released a letter saying the university would look into the process of divestment. The letter talked about investigating companies in sectors like weapons manufacturing, mass incarceration, and surveillance, but did not come out in support of divestment from Israel.
But in the end, Berkeley’s Chancellor doesn’t actually have the power to divest. That has to be done by the regents, at the system-wide level. And they’ve been very clear they have no plans to do so. The most recent regents meeting was also interrupted by protest.
On top of all of this, divestment might not even be legal. In 2016, California was one of many states that tried to pass anti-divestment legislation. These laws have faced a lot of scrutiny, but still … It seems unlikely the UC system is divesting anytime soon.
The Shantytown Protest
But if the eighties have been any guide thus far, it's at least worth mentioning what happened next back then.
Andrea remembers, “That spring of ‘85, there was a divestment vote. We didn't win, and so we went into a tailspin over the summer. ‘What are we gonna do? What are we gonna do?’ By the spring of 86, we came back with something called the shantytowns.”
The shantytown protest was a two-pronged attack. On one side of campus, Richie Havens was playing at a rally. On the other side of campus — students were building an encampment so permanent no one could take it down without a fight.
Andrea remembers, “we [had] a carpenter on each one. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Boom, boom. We slapped together these really sturdy shanties.”
But the university wasn’t going to let another encampment grow. They called in the police, and things quickly grew violent. Andrea described how night-after-night, police would remove the shanties, and each day, the protester would build a new one.
“Police struck out at people, and people were striking back at police. People got their heads broken open. There were a lot of injuries.”
After a few days, the students backed down from the shantytown protest. “The threat was that the National Guard would be called in and that people were gonna get really hurt. And that may have happened, but interestingly, the divestment issue itself had become so mainstream by that point,” Andrea said.
By the summer of 1986, in fact, many colleges had already divested, and even the Republican Governor of California threw his support behind the movement.
“We were on the edge of a governor's race, and George Deukmejian was running against Tom Bradley. Deukmejian was no fool. He took the temperature and saw which way the wind was blowing, said, ‘Okay, let's divest.’”
In the end, the UC Board of Regents voted to divest $3.1 billion dollars of the system's endowment with ties to South Africa.
Sproul Plaza Over The Years
If you go to Sproul Plaza today, you won’t see much of anything — the tables, tents, the banners, it’s all gone. Honestly, it can be easy to forget that, generation after generation, this has been the site of so many different protests. Andrea has been a part of two.
Before she began camping in solidarity with the Free Palestine camp, she told a crowd, “As an alumni of UC Berkeley, it's incredible to me to see the resilience and the perseverance and the dedication of the students on these steps today. Yeah, you can give it up. So from Berkeley to Soweto, to Palestine, the people will be free. Power to the people, power to Palestine, power to the struggle and power to the students. Right on.”
And if her experience proves anything, it’s that no political movement happens overnight.
The archival footage used in the piece came from two documentaries, “Soweto to Berkeley” directed by Richard Bock and “Cal on Video 84 — 85” directed by Jim Hurwitz. Thank you both for letting us play those clips.