The following is the first-hand experience via email of a freshman at Berkeley during the student clashes with police in early November.
For months there had been chalk all around school announcing that the 9th was going to be a day of protest at noon on Sproul Plaza, with occupation to follow. The Chancellor (yes, berkeley is ruled by a chancellor) sent out an email that we can and should protest, but no camping or spending the night or occupying. Thousands of people showed up at noon. AT LEAST 2500 students, as well as hundreds of faculty members and random union workers and Berkeley nomads. After some speeches and stuff we all marched down Telegraph and sat in the street for a few minutes by Bank of America and then marched back to school. The police stopped traffic for us and were cool. Then there was a lot of democratic assembly with twinkle hands up and down and commitees forming and voting on mission statements and where to camp and stuff.
Then someone set up a tent and the police just charged in and took it down. Then everyone linked arms and they set up another tent behind that. That was at about 3 PM. By 3:30, there were busloads of Oakland riot police a few blocks down the street, and when I left to go take a test at 4, there was a line of 20 dudes in riot gear chilling on the other side of the building. When I got back at 5 PM, they were gone, but so were the tents, and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buovLQ9qyWQ had happened. I then went and got dinner and tried to recruit floormates and came back at 8:30 PM. More tents had been set up and defended, and word on the street was police were going to launch another offensive at 10 PM.
A guy who had toured Iraq gave us all a little lecture on police tactics and how to beat them, which I sort of remember. Then they were like, "the police are coming link arms! link arms!" So I was like what? okay. I was sort of in the front and I was like oh, crap! but then a bunch of people got in front of me so I felt safe. But the police in front of us weren't charging. we just kept chanting "peacefull protest" and "stay calm" and stuff like that, then we heard a huge commotion behind us, because police were charging the other end of the circle. They broke through that part of the perimiter and quickly tore down all the tents and beat and arrested the people in them and then started attacking us from behind. So we turned around and all of a sudden I was on the front lines, and there were police behind us so we couldn't back up but they kept poking anyways.
The girl next to me got hit a bunch of times really hard, but I was just hit once on the hand and then mostly bulldozed down by a wave of people being pushed towards us from the side, and there was a whole pile of people on the ground and we couldn't get up because they kept jamming batons into the near horizontal belly of whoever was on the top of the pile. Fortunately, this gave me time to put my rapidly slipping off vibram toe glove back on my foot.
Eventually we were able to get up and retreat and regroup, and we held a new line on the Sproul Plaza steps. We stood there for hours, but within the first 20 minutes another 2000 students showed up so the police didn't attack again. Then someone started blowing bubbles and they looked like a mix between the circling helicopters and the full moon. Then there was an assmmbly to decide what to do that took a long time because the crowd was so big it required triple mic-checks. By 3 AM there were only about 50 people left spending the night, but the police never attacked again. Also they planned a big strike on Tuesday.
I was starting to get worried Berkeley wasn't very politically active, but apparently there are still lots of people here willing to get batonned for a cause. That's cool. I'll also never forget the look of self doubt in the policemen's eyes during the stand off, nor the look of malicious glee in the face of this one 5 foot tall, 40 year old [at least] hispanic police officer lady as she charged into the crowd baton flailing. She was looking at me. Because I had been telling jokes.