The Language of the Oppressed

In 1964, the Freedom of Speech Movement erupted across the UC Berkeley campus as the flagship of the university’s liberalism. In its shadows, the Third World Liberation Front achieved an even greater feat with organizers from San Francisco State University, accomplishing the creation of the Ethnic Studies Department. To this day, this students of color act of resistance is kept under wraps by the university, which rather stand behind the liberty of white thought as it silences its students of color.

This September, hate speech was allowed to grow rampant on the Berkeley campus under the pretense of freedom of speech. It was an old argument made new by the orchestration of a story between CNN and the Berkeley College Republicans (BCR), who had grown tired of being called out on their privileges. Who felt that just because queer folks, undocumented folks, people of color had some sort of space on this campus that they had not had their entire lives, that they needed one too.

But in the world constructed for the privileged, a world fabricated to benefit people who look like the majority of the BCR, every single cobblestone that stretches from sea to shining sea is their safe space. Every moment they step into the streets holding the hand of their lover without fear of being beat for it, they’re in a safe space; every moment the cops pull them over and they do not fear for their lives, they’re in a safe space; every moment they look at their college diploma, and someone responsible for the deportation of their family isn’t signing it, they are in a safe space; every moment they cross state lines without fear that they can become more deportable, they’re in a safe space.

At the end of the day, when the world is constructed for you, spaces that challenge your unearned privileges feel like a threat.

The messaging the Berkeley College Republicans attempted to send the world was misleading primarily because the truth did not stand on their side. The 1st Amendment defends your right to worship and speak freely without the state silencing you. Students of color fighting back against BCR’s support of Trump is not that; in fact, we are the communities that the state has harmed and oppressed the most. Our resistance does not take away their freedom of speech, it only allows us to utilize ours, and that feels threatening to them.

On September 12, two Republicans began their day by constructing a childish wall in efforts to create some sort of social experiment. When I first heard of it, I decided to best place my efforts on an event I was helping organize for that night. By chance, I bumped into one of the strongest undocumented Pilipina I know, and together we walked towards Sather Gate, where the “activists” were setting up their wall.

It was laughable at first. A crowd of twenty students from all walks of life were playing into their social experiment and challenging their support of the egomaniac.

They did exactly what the social experiment wanted them to do: step on their bricks, break their wall, things anyone who understands the hatred that their demonstration depicted would have done. After seeing the chaos playing into what they wanted, and after seeing another powerful undocumented womxn within the crowd, we drew each other close and began to exclaim the two words I’ve had to shout on this campus every semester I’ve been here: “undocumented, unafraid!

The two “activists” who’d set up the wall were riding the wave the Berkeley College Republicans had fabricated the week before as they painted themselves the victims of political correctness. Though the Berkeley College Republicans immediately tried washing their hands of the wall incident, I recognized some of their membership defending the two “activists,” perhaps not knowing that their organization was not behind it. I saw their president stand quietly by, even though he could have challenged their hatred and stood with us in an act of solidarity against the foolishness the “activists” perpetrated.

But they cannot wash that filth from their hands. At the end of the day, they created the environment in which people from the outside feel like they can come host social experiments for media sensation. The BCR had done just that the week before.

Additionally, the BCR supports something even more violent than a toy wall: they support Donald Trump and the violence he is encouraging across the nation in order to silence people’s free expression.

Thing is, what Trump wants, and these Berkeley College Republicans endorse, is for some of us to be deported to countries where we cannot practice our own freedom of speech. Places that have robbed their citizenry of free expression oftentimes with the full support of the United States. But they do not care to know that because this university, and education as a whole, has constructed a world that amplifies the voice of the oppressor, often using the language of the oppressed.

What we did in response was create space for us at a university that is not constructed for us. We created space through chanting, in order to make first year and third-year transfer students who had just started school at Cal know that we are much more resilient and vibrant than the pale demonstration we stood besides. We practiced our freedom of speech in a country, and world, which often times tries to silence us by erasing our stories from the books, or sends police squadrons when we try to hold the state accountable to us. CNN was not there to help us amplify our voices, to make our freedom of speech more visible to the world.

Quite frankly, we did not do it for the sensationalism anyway. We are used to getting by with little. We are immigrants, products of the world you othered by calling Third.

We are the Third World rising. We are undocumented. And we are unafraid.