Soaked, cold and subversive

Friday was a strange day...many of you following the news may have heard/seen/read about the strikes that have gone down all over the UC campuses. Berkeley of course, has garnered substantial attention. Do I agree with the demands of students and worked in the UC system? Of course! Was I out there protesting? No I wasn't. There is work to be done at my Center and as much as my personal experience working at Berkeley has been affected, there are invoices to be paid and a center to be run. A center where the garbage isn't being picked up due to the janitorial staff being laid off...

It was the third day of the strike and the university was carrying a strange, almost eerie vibe. It seemed dead, the emergency alarms were going off all over campus, and I had protest/vigil of my own to attend. As I stepped out, I realized that I couldn't walk through campus. Everything was barricaded, by either protesters or the police, in full riot garb. I had to wind through the inside of buildings to get through the university.

The other protest I was attending was an Anti-trafficking vigil to honor a young woman named Seetha Vamireddy, one of the many victims of Lakireddy Bli Reddy who died in 1999. If you don't know about this infamous case go to ---> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakireddy_Bali_Reddy


photos by Preeti Shekar

Despite the crimes this man and his family have committed, their restaurant is till prominent in downtown Berkeley where business is carried on as usual. Members of ASATA ( Alliance of South Asians Taking Action), Narika, Maitri, SAGE and others came together to protest outside of Prasand. It was about this time when it started to POUR like the weather had been paid off. We wrapped our signs in plastic fed ex bags and kept protesting. I was handing out soggy flyers to passerbys while soaked to the bone (no I did not have an umbrella, Roberto's umbrella is humungo and I refuse to carry that thing). I'm a total weeny, I can't take the cold. My fingers were numb and I was physically miserable. Despite this, I was very impressed by the turnout. Here were these people, volunteering their time for a cause against violence against women and trafficking. We were taping drenched roses on posts in Seetha's memory, and we stood in vigilance and solidarity, pushing our signs up against the windows for the customers to see (and hopefully lose their appetites).

After the talks, the sharing, and exercising our right to do our part to honor the memory of what happened, we decided to pack in and get pho.

Pho does wonders when you're freezing, the spicy broth was healing in its own way.

Then the sun came out...damn you bay weather.