The pickets began before dawn at UCSC, and I was out and about from 5 am on.At UCSC we successfully shut down campus, mobilizing hundreds of students by the time of a 9 am rally to block admin attempts to break the strike. occupyca.wordpress.com has a good blow-by-blow and some images and vids. The noon rally was a smashing success, with representatives from across the spectrum of student groups, and labor present. We closed the picket at 5, at which time students held a general assembly in an intersection at the base of campus. Around 6:30 about 300 students broke off from the assembly and marched to downtown Santa Cruz. At the clock tower, a historic center of town activism where the K-12 M4 rally attracted up to a thousand people that afternoon, the group of students tried to throw an impromptu dance party -- but were thwarted by the fact that their usual mobile sound equipment was being used in SF where another massive rally, march and dance event was going down.
The strike was a smashing success, and the only altercations occurred early in the morning when a few overzealous scabs tried to break the picket with their cars. One fool got his window smashed after hitting an activist with sufficient speed to throw her over the hood of the vehicle. Another was turned away when the picket swarmed his vehicle. These were, however, quite minor incidents that the Univ administration blew out of proportion, going so far as to send an email claiming students were seen 'wielding clubs and knives.'
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