At UC Davis and other institutions, student-led protests against austerity have been met with thuggish riot cops and the criminalization of speech, writes Professor Joshua Clover at thenation.com. 

Clover is an indicted member of the “Davis Dozen”—a group of eleven activist students and one professor (Clover) who were served with arrest notices one month after the US Bank on the Davis campus closed its doors for good, following weeks of protests against the banks’ role in increasing student costs and student debt. Twelve people are now threatened with eleven years each in jail and one million dollars in fines for a purported conspiracy to shut the bank down.

Join your name to this petition calling for the UC Davis administration to solicit immediate withdrawal of all criminal charges against the Davis Dozen. Call, fax and write the Yolo County DA and ask him to drop all charges. Contact Chancellor Linda Katehi imploring her to cease criminalization of protest on the Davis campus. After you’ve weighed in, share this post with friends, family and your Twitter and Facebook communities. 

This International Open Letter Protesting Charges Against the Davis Dozen, signed by literary heavyweights around the world, highlights the travesty of the charges and calls for the twelve to be fully acquitted.

In this public Town Hall meeting last November Clover and Chancellor Katehi engaged in a telling back-and-forth on the question of police violence against students.

A weekly guide to meaningful action, this blog connects readers with resources to channel the outrage so many feel after reading about abuses of power and privilege. Far from a comprehensive digest of all worthy groups working on behalf of the social good, Take Action seeks to shine a bright light on one concrete step that Nation readers can take each week. To broaden the conversation, we’ll publish a weekly follow-up post detailing the response and featuring additional campaigns and initiatives that we hope readers will check out. Toward that end, please use the comments field to give us ideas. With your help, we can make real change.