ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a series of sit-ins and associated events centered on the reception room of the governor's office at the Capitol of California over the six years 1975-80. An initial and salient aspect of the Capitol episodes is that they were called "sit-ins" or "occupations" by everyone— performers, media, authorities, and others. The imagery and language of "the kind of event this is" was drawn directly from the recent history of protest occupations of the 1960s. The symbolic sit-in is in one sense an evolved form because it clearly takes its inspiration from, and is part modeled on, intervention occupations of the sixties. Media reaction to the objectives of the sit-ins may be characterized as positive in the sense that what seemed an ordinary portion of the Capitol press corps would typically appear, collect material, and present it in words and pictures.
