Why did the Mrak Hall #FireKatehi occupation end?

We sat with Kyla Burke, the representative of the Fire Katehi Movement.

A while ago, during a discussion with the protesters, I asked them what would happen if they failed their objective, if Katehi refused to resign. They told me they will keep on fighting.

A week later, the sit-in was abandoned. The protester claimed it was successful.

Kyla, you told me that you are a fifth year, which means that this is your last quarter here. Is this one of the reasons why you are so eager to change Davis?

Not really. If anything, being so close to finishing has made it harder to be involved. I don’t want to be kicked out right before leaving.

I’m not doing this to get attention for myself as an individual, I just care about the future of higher education. I think what we are doing is important.

So the sit in stopped one day before Picnic day, which led to a lot of discussion on social media.  On YikYak, a student said “Katehi protesters left to get wasted on picnic day”. Did you guys end the protest for Picnic day?

We talked about leaving a week before hand.

Since I’m a 5th year, Picnic day no longer excites me, so I guess I’m fine with that. The sit-in may be over but the protest is still happening. Even during the Picnic day march, there were 11 of us march with signs and we earned a lot of support for doing that – people were cheering for us.

How hard was it, living for 5 weeks in Mrak Hall?

We have a lot of things – we are students, we still have to study, we also have to work. It was stressful for us and many complained about the quality living in the Mrak hall.

The protest/sit-in lasted 36 days, with a lot of attention from not just the students but also the general public. However, you guys abandoned the sit in due to “huge physical, emotional, and academic toll” on the protesters. Not only that, Katehi refused to step down from her position and you guys now have opposition not just from the administration, but also the students.

Speaking on an objective term, the movement didn’t achieve the original target, the resignation of the Chancellor. How do you respond to that?

I wouldn’t call it abandoning the protest, it is merely a change of tactic. It was tiring us out, but it wasn’t a failure. Our movement got a lot of attention and we were on the Facebook Trending for 4 days. We were also on the front page of Reddit, major newspapers were covering UC Davis.

However, we need to find other ways, that is why we stopped the sit in.

There were some conflict with the staffs and the protesters, they were even a petition, which I’m sure you are aware of, that claimed “Several protesters took to shouting that an employee was a “coconut” (brown on the outside, white on the inside) for being a Latina who works for UC Davis. Several students and staff were stalked for a period of time after leaving a meeting with the Chancellor.

Many students and staff who are supposed to work in Mrak no longer feel safe. Staff and student workers have also been filmed without their permission.” What is your response?

The petition you were talking got a hundred signature, our petition got 2000. There are more people supporting us than people against us. I have not heard any of us calling the staffs “coconut” and we even have our code of conduct posted on the wall of Mrak hall condemning racist and bigoted comments. Most of the information the students received about us were through the “email of the provost”.

Those provost emails were not correct. The emails of the provost were biased, inaccurate, they were created in order to mess with our heads. I believe we were quite peaceful with the staffs. We cleaned up before we moved out. We even get a stream cleaner to clean our carpets.

Amandeep Kaur, a staff of the chancellor claimed: “I know what oppression feels like and today 2 of these protestors oppressed me and questioned my identity as a woman of color. They engaged with me when I entered the office through the elevator. They stalked the Chancellor, Vice Chancellor, me and a student when we were walking to the Mrak Hall prior to that. And then one of them laughed in my face when I said to them stop bullying me after they engaged with me and questioned my ethics because I work in the Office of the Chancellor.”

Let’s talk about Matt Palm, I did some research on him and he seems to be very progressive on his ideology, he used to support the movement at the beginning but then left the protest and even wrote an article calling its ending. Can you think of any reason why did he have left?

I don’t know, he didn’t talk to me. He blocked me without any discussion or issue. He could’ve talked to us about his idea.

What is it to be a protester of the movement, do you have to agree with all of the same idea, do you have like membership or registration?

We tried to be as democratic as possible. We are a leaderless movement, everyone is in charge.

But you know that most, if not all civil activism needs a charismatic leader, right? In India there’s Ghandi, during the civil right movement there were Martin Luther King Junior. Not just that, one of the main reasons the Occupy Wallstreet movement failed because there were no leader.

In history there were many example of leaderless movement that were successful. So we believe we don’t have any problem with that.

As a democracy, we all have equal power