Bryant Fong: How Did the Third World Liberation Front Strike at UC Berkeley Start?

A response from Bryant Fong, leader of the Asian American Political Alliance (AAPA), to Janet Hedani Yip about the beginning of the Third World Liberation Strike at UC Berkeley | May 2, 2024

That’s a long discussion!  Will give you a short version…lol!  

The strike began with a week of informational picketing at Sather Gate. As the week ended, negotiations were at a standstill. So we told students that on Monday we would block Sather Gate.  

Monday rolled around, and we blocked the Main part of the Gate and leafletted going through the other side. As we finished and were getting ready to eat lunch, the UC cops made a sweep and arrested everyone, including Richard [Aoki].  I should mention UC started first by sending the Cal Football team to try and break up the line…they especially tried to knock down AAPA’s women.  Vicci [Wong] and several other women took them out with their purses!  They had a brick in it!  After that, things began to break down.  As after the initial bust, we doubled the size of AAPA.  But, we did not want our small numbers to be attacked so we created the moving picket line….or the “snake dance….as the cops called it.”  Which the UC cops hated because most of them were old and slow!  After more arrests, our numbers began to grow so that we could have multiple snakes going all over Campus.  

The City of Berkeley stepped in after the Library got bombed.  The Berkeley cops were younger and faster; they began just beating on students and tried to get all the leaders. As the leaders of the BSA [Black Student Alliance] got beaten on and arrested, our rallies began to draw a lot of students to the strike…there were now over a thousand students……this may be the 3rd or 4th week of the strike….Berkeley then called for mutual aid and first brought in the “Blue Meanies” [Alameda County Sheriff’s Department], then the young highway patrolmen [California Highway Patrol], and finally the SF Tac Squad [San Francisco Police Department]. 

By the middle of the semester, we had hooked up with SF State Strike and moved to shut down Berkeley…. It’s amazing to think this all took place in one semester.   

So if this is inaccurate, it’s because I am beginning to forget some details…

Find more of Bryant’s views with his interview on the +Collected listening room. We are looking to interview Bryant in the future in his respected role as a martial arts sifu.