The Siege

SMC has a BIG PROBLEM

JUNE 6 UPDATE: Today, The Siege had a wonderful meeting with Dean Judith Penchansky (SMC Disciplinarian) and student Nehasi Lee in response to a false police report that described me as a “disruptive student” at the May 18 event detailed below.

The dean and I had a frank and honest exchange of ideas regarding my encounters with SMC’s police and her office’s duty to follow-up on any complaint lodged by any SMC staff against a student. She came across as reasonable, a good listener and ultimately acknowledged there was nothing for her office to take action over. Hopefully, as a responsible member of the SMC administration, she will relay to others in a position to care and take action, the concerns expressed about pervasive police misconduct at the college.

NEWS: Truly there are many officers of the law, everywhere, who operate day after day as heroes and defenders of the people, protecting our civil and constitutional rights and liberties. They deserve our continual thanks and appreciation for standing between us and the lawless chaos which would ensue without them. This author, on many occasions, has had reason to express appreciation for an officer’s help, especially those from the Los Angeles Police Department.

But there are others who, putting on a badge, believe themselves to be set apart to bully and abuse (click to witness SMC cops in action), at their pleasure, the very citizens they’ve sworn to protect. Usually this bullying happens to those who remain the most unempowered, either by economic class or by education. Students fit in here perfectly. It’s this small percentage of badge-wearers, committing crimes under the color of authority, who deserve our profound contempt and need to be held accountable under the law.

Don’t you just hate it when good people fail to get the recognition they deserve? The Siege certainly does. Santa Monica College has some folks (click here) involved with the Office of Student Life, student government and school newspaper – the Corsair – who just haven’t gotten the attention that should have come their way. In a democracy, such information is very important.

And with the Corsair mostly disinterested in many student affairs for much of this year (click here), despite the presence of “Corsair club” (How many times did your club actually meet this year, exactly?) representative and the paper’s news editor, Lauren Ciancimino, at Inter-Club Council meetings, you’d have thought there might be better coverage. But no, there wasn’t. In fact, the paper could hardly have taken less interest in many of the critical issues raised at student government meetings because, generally, no reporter showed up to find out what those issues were. And even if they were in attendance, not a peep was the usual result.

So The Siege has gladly produced a couple of videos to fill this vacuum and to honor just three people (Student Activities Advisor Benny Blaydes, outgoing ICC Chair and incoming A.S. President Victoria Pregler – both featured in video 1 - and Jeremy Meyer, Corsair editor in chief – in video 2 - that you might have learned more about, if anybody cared to tell you. (Meyer is the good-looking fellow on the right.)

A Poem by Matt Gillam

Behind dark sunglasses
and behind my eyes
I watch

the bodies move
across concrete
and above the sands
that feed the waves

The bodies move
and I, sitting,
watch them pass
through dark eyes
and opened eyes

I am still
and they see me
in a glance

They move
(and I watch)
the bodies
behind my eyes

Matt Gillam, 20, is finishing his second year at Santa Monica College. Accepted at UC Berkeley for fall admission, he intends to major in philosophy.

NEWS: On Thursday last at 11:15 am, there was a “spoken word” event at the Santa Monica College Clocktower, sponsored by the SMC Associated Students, ICC and the campus club A.L.A.S.(Association of Latino American Students). Billed as “Celebrating Spoken Word Through Unity and Diversity” and featuring paid performers “Tiwatunali,” plus unpaid performances by SMC students, the event was a mix of poetry and words of “revolution.” But the real drama featured the repressive and intimidating misconduct of SMC officers Malone, Hearn, and Champagne.

(click to watch)

The video above is just a two and a half minute snippet of footage taken by this author of the three officers. Watch, in particular, how Officer Malone reacts to SMC student Gaily Ezer, 19, as she shares a particular passage (Article 19) from the pocket edition of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Adopted and proclaimed by General Assembly resolution 217 A (III) on December 10, 1948) she had with her.

During the first half of the video, the audio of the exchange between the officers and Ezer is overwhelmed by the public address system amplifying the words of Tiwatunali. But during the second half, you can hear Malone bully and threaten Ezer with arrest, coupled with his unwillingness to respond to her pleas for clarification of his words.

Formal complaints are being filed with the Santa Monica College police department, the Los Angeles District Attorney, and the California Attorney General based on words and actions taken by the aforementioned officers this day.

Furthermore, well-known civil rights and police misconduct expert, attorney Steve Yagman, is being sought for representation.

A Poem by Matt Gillam

and so I knelt on sand
and let fall upon my skin
the sea

in waves and sheets
of salty silk
it rained from the hooves
of the black bison
migrating mindless
over
the beach

and so
I knelt in the face
of the western storm
and let beat the heat
from my cheeks,
the rain

and yet I settled still,
I knelt on sand
with no words to say

I made still my skull
so that I could see out
to the edge
of the earth where

the winds kicked up the ocean
–the winds like raging sirens

cast their spells
to summon the salt
to rise the sea into the sky

and so I
knelt in silence
in stillness
in
the sphere
I knelt

I let the water roll
down from me
I let the sea return
to the sea

and I saw
in the stillness
of the skull

I saw the sea fall
back
to the sea

Matt Gillam, 20, is finishing his second year at Santa Monica College. Accepted at UC Berkeley for fall admission, he intends to major in philosophy.

A Poem by Matt Gillam

I am Venus today
in the still of an icy morning,
when the sky was painted
a placid
baby blue

and the earth had yet to rise
and meet the sun face
to face

She was bright
and close
and utterly dead

Yet this morning
she was
alive
with the fires of the sun

caught across our own
anonymous sphere
to burn a small light
inside my skull,
in the empty space

of a synapse

she burned

Matt Gillam, 20, is finishing his second year at Santa Monica College. Accepted at UC Berkeley for fall admission, he intends to major in philosophy.

There. Are you happy? That’s the new name for this site.

A certain minority of well-meaning, but seemingly non-confrontational types have volunteered some reservations about the name of this news magazine – The Siege. The rationale is that the current title is too in-your-face, too incendiary, too inclined to raise the hackles of those who believe that calm, diplomatic discourse is always the best way. If the name isn’t nice, then some people won’t play.

The Siege, by the way, didn’t ask for the advice. People with greater insight just offered it, to help.

Amidst the lamentable absence of student leadership at Santa Monica College, especially as it has been with the 2005-06 Associated Student Board of Directors and the Inter-Club Council, there remains a consistent exception, a sole voice - unelected - but nonetheless speaking out regularly and powerfully in the public comment portion of student government meetings and at every other opportunity for constructive service to SMC. (Click to see a sample of Mr. Lee in action.)

Note to the Associated Student Board of Directors:

Sure, you’d rather the term was history and you were chillin with your posse on some tropical beach. We get it. But uh, today’s only May 4th and vacation’s a few weeks away. Think maybe you could stay connected and keep updated the mere handful of official campus bulletin boards we have?
Knowing what’s up at this place is tough enough.

UPDATE: The Siege forgot to mention that up until just recently, if you called the Office of Student Life and no one was there to answer, the pre-recorded message you heard let you know about the upcoming Christmas holiday and winter class schedule.

How to Ignore the Brown Act When No One is Watching

The perp-walks we witness by politicians who’ve breached our nation’s laws and the public trust are the politicos’ comeuppance for habits usually beginning way back when. But where and how could such misbegotten behaviors have started you might wonder?

Well, step right up to a possible breeding ground right here at SMC where under the challenged guidance of Assistant Dean of Student Life Deyna Hearn and Student Activities Advisor Benny Blaydes (both of whose next link up the chain of command is Dr. Robert “Bobbie” Adams, vice-president of student affairs), the so-called “leadership” of Associated Student President Sadia Afolabi and Vice-President Jeff Jensen, plus that of other directors, has ill-served the SMC student body by undermining their rights through consistent violations of the Ralph A. Brown Act.