Your humble author, who rejects the illusion of objectivity as ridiculous in this situation, joined the occupation party at Campbell Hall soon after it was renamed Carter-Huggins Hall in honor of the two Black Panthers slain there in the 1960s. I was able to take fifteen pictures of the beginning of the occupation before it became clear that my phone battery could not sustain such activity for long. Two pictures were merged into one with photo editing (the others have been unedited to preserve both their awful shaky look and the authenticity of the original shot) and an additional photo was dropped for redundancy. None of them includes any people or any individually identifying information, except where one glass surface appropriately reflects all of your humble photographer except for my face. How did they know?

These pictures offer an insight into the written expressions of students on the administration's whiteboards after we declared CHH ours. By no means should this picture set be considered comprehensive, even within its own limited scale. However, these may be the only pictures taken from inside the building at the time of the occupation, so they hold a special place in history.

I was inside from soon after the beginning to shortly before the end, but unfortunately, I was unable to exchange contact information with the other occupiers before I fled during the controversial final hour of the event. I encourage all of you, especially the original barricade party of 35ish young adventurists, to get in touch with me securely at neverbeenuaw@hushmail.com , a very safe email address. Our struggle can only grow if we build networks into our foundations. I love you all and I miss you dearly. This was the culminating moment in my life thus far and I would be heartbroken to lose touch with any of you.

One of the first actions of the occupation movement at UCLA was to update the whiteboards outside of administrators' office doors so as to reflect the change in possession. Many simply read "OCCUPIED", while others elaborated: "ZING! You've been furlough'd!"

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Professionalism is the new jail
Careers are our courts
The boss is our judge
The kangaroo will see you now

The only pic in this series that doesn't focus on whiteboards or posted bills, this simple shot immortalizes the post-productive spirit in the house and symbolizes two major sources of drama which popped up at various times during the occupation.

The proletarian cleaning force, whose bottom rung proves time and time again to be not only comrades but essential to our struggle, was mopping when we first invaded. This led to an unfortunate situation in the early occupation where a once-proud custodial worker was spotted by her boss while she was trying to leave the building and go home to her family. The jefe, standing at the well-barricaded "front" door of Campbell Hall (more like a back door in Carter-Huggins), threatened that she would fire the worker if she (the worker) left through the side door--then the only available exit. The boss wanted to confront her face-to-face. The poor cleaner was terrified--with occupiers pleading for her to walk out the only exit and her boss holding the sick hammer of capital over her head. When the worker stood frozen in fear, the boss saw an opportunity to wrest control from our hands and claimed that we were "holding hostages"--despite our insistence at trying to get her out safely. The recurring theme of people or things being left on the inside would cause drama all night and day as bosses exploited their workers' need to retrieve personal belonging to try to derail us. The significance of the mop was revisited later in the occupation, when students smashed the learner/worker dichotomy by taking over the building's custodial operations as a beautification project to boost morale inside. Wageless student janitors were seen proudly sweeping, mopping and taking out trash in Black Bloc gear.

Look closely and you will see that one elevator button is lit up. It stayed that way all night and all day. Prurient locals had thoughtfully shut down the elevator early in the occupation by barricading the machine's doors open on a lower floor and then barricading the entrance to the elevator on that level. They understood the key strategic position of the elevator in that particular building, and their caution was vindicated later when the snitch who called herself "Diedre" made a move for the first-floor elevator after realizing she'd been sniffed out. This was only after she had successfully locked us out of our office under the ruse of protecting us from sensitive legal documents. After we kicked our intruder out, students successfully reopened the communications office in the venerable tradition of the jerry rig, proving that our impenetrable barricades were matched only by our top-notch problem-solving skills.

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Ironic juxtapositions between previously posted flyers and the new reality of Carter-Huggins Hall were another recurring theme. Not pictured: several printouts of "_____ will not be in his/her office today" were marked with "UNDERSTATEMENT".

Continuing in the same vein.

Scan my handwriting
Take my fingerprints
(They're on the black marker)
Expel me
Jail me
I will not shut up

In what was too ironic to be unintentional, most of "Erase Nothing Improve Everything" had been erased by the end of the occupation. The existing smears of the bourgeois marker masturbation were left untouched, however.

They are not teaching journalism at the Daily Bruin, but they are training the next generation of state and corporate propagandists:

See the link:

http://www.dailybruin.com/articles/2009/11/20/uc-students-take-over-campbell-hall-defiance/