Despite UC Irvine's professed commitment to the First Amendment [watch UCI video above on Free Speech], troubling recent signs indicate that the heavy hand of the law is coming down on student protesters on campus, reinforcing UCI's new reputation as a new site of student resistance (and repression).

A criminal pretrial for 19 UCI students who staged a labor protest last year is imminent (March 7, 2011) while a grand jury has apparently been empaneled to investigate the activities of UCI's Muslim Student Union.

For this evening's edition of Subversity, we talk with Carol A. Sobel, a SantaMonica- based civil rights attorney for six MSU students and former students who were called in January 2011 to testify before the Orange County grand jury investigating, apparently, conspiracy to commit a misdemeanor!