A “protest and party” against university student fee increases turned into a riot last night, as a mob trashed Telegraph Avenue businesses, breaking windows, overturning garbage cans, and indulging their incoherent rage against adults. The riot followed an invasion of of the university’s Durant Hall, which was closed for renovation. There protesters broke windows, sprayed graffiti, and otherwise made a mess.

This happens with relative frequency, the shops along Telegraph Avenue being some sort of symbol of “capitalism” to East Bay radicals. Read, for example, this account of a Feb. 2008 “action.”

Flickr photos from last night’s rampage are here.

This morning, staff, non-tenured faculty and graduate student instructors at University of California campuses begin a three-day strike to protest the imposition of tuition hikes at the public university. Their website is UCstrike.com and you can follow events on twitter using the #ucstrike hashtag.

According to the strikers’ website, tuition increases this decade have meant that the cost of an undergraduate education has tripled since 2000. They lay the blame not only at the national economic crisis but the university’s commitment to over $1 billion in new debt for construction of new facilities, saying the system favors “construction over instruction.”

The strike is timed to coincide with a meeting of UC regents in Los Angeles. The governing borad is expected to approve new fee hikes.

On the Open Salon site, Clio Tarazi, writing as “Stellaa,” wrote this morning about witnessing an incident on the town square in Healdsburg, a wine country town about 70 miles north of San Francisco on US 101, where every Thursday at 6 pm some residents of the town gather for an hour-long peace vigil. Last night, she writes, a group of out-of-towners, possibly people on a wine country tour, began yelling insults at the demonstrators — some ten townspeople — then crossed the street and began screaming in their faces.

The vigil holders stood up to them … pulled away a woman who was the most aggressive, and they walked away shaking their heads and fists. Their faces were contorted from anger.

The bullies had this look on their face of having done something virtuous — a gleeful, high-five, we-kicked-their-butts look. I had my phone, but did not think of taking pictures of the brutish expressions on their faces. I cussed at them as they walked by and glared at them. There were not enough people on the square to shame them.

There was something grotesque about them calling the man holding the “Hiroshima, Never Again” sign all kinds of vulgar names in the name of patriotism and America.

The writer goes on to wonder whether this confrontation was an outgrowth of the protests against health care reform orchestrated by business interests and lobbying groups.

It will be interesting to see what happens during next week’s peace demonstration in Healdsburg.

With the campus empty of students and most of the Bay Area media covering same-sex marriages, UC-Berkeley today launched an assault on the tree sitters that have been occupying an oak grove.

The protestors, who have been conducting a sit-in in the trees for 18 months to prevent destruction of the grove for a new university building, fought back with their own excrement as “arborists” attempted to cut ropes and other gear the protestors use to haul supplies to their perches.

An article on Bay Area Indymedia, a website devoted to protest reports and organizing by the left, reported that five “contract climbers” were attempting to dislodge protestors’ gear.

The action comes the day before a decision is expected to be announced in a lawsuit brought by the protestors and the city of Berkeley to stop construction of the proposed atheletic training facility. The protestors first scaled the trees on Dec. 1, 2006.