Author: md

From Joe Klein
March 9, 2020

Dear Colleagues, 

I wanted to write again with some updates from the ongoing strike. 

For the 20th day graduate students, undergraduates, faculty, staff, lecturers, and others rallied in support of a COLA. Today marks the 1 month anniversary of the full teaching strike that began in February. This week the picket line is coming to campus, moving each day to a new location as we continue to organize, build community, and build power. For the first day of week 10, in solidarity with the UCSC Undocu Collective, strikers took over the Academic Resource Center (ARC). Energy was high all day as strikers continued to organize and plan for the ongoing strike. As of today administration continues to ignore our demands–and so the strike continues! Tomorrow the picket will move to a sit-in at the Earth and Marine Sciences Building, beginning at 9am. 

One month ago, in response to months of UCSC administration ignoring Undocumented students’ demands for greater support, including for a dedicated space to serve the undocumented community, members of the Undocu Collective occupied and took over an office in the ARC to demand that the space become a new headquarters for Undocumented Student Services. Rather than respond to the demands and concerns of the collective, UCSC administration retaliated against these students by issuing code of conduct violation summons for some of those who participated in the protest, and banned these students from the ARC–which should be a community space open to all students. These students who are working tirelessly to support themselves and their community are threatened with suspension or expulsion by a university that brags about its diversity while doing nothing to support its struggling student body. We know this pattern well: students exercise their right to make a claim on the university for the resources they need, and are met with retaliation. Their fight is our fight. 

In stunning news from our statewide union UAW 2865, leadership today announced that graduate students across the UC system have voted overwhelmingly (97% of respondents) to ratify union demands to reopen contract negotiations and to fight for COLA across the state. Today leadership began circulating a pledge to gauge support for moving to an Unfair Labor Practice (ULP Strike); this would mean that all graduate students across the state would be legally protected to go on a full strike. You can fill out the pledge here, and encourage your colleagues to do so as soon as possible. If enough students sign the pledge this week, a vote to authorize the strike could come as soon as next week. 

It should go without saying that this move by our statewide union would not have been possible were it not for the courage of UCSC strikers and grade with holders to risk their own livelihoods to fight for all of us graduate students, and for the months of organizing work by our comrades and colleagues, both graduate and undergraduate, who helped this movement build power to fight for a better university that actually works for its students and workers. UCSC organizers today issued a statement on the relationship between this movement and the ULP strike, noting that only the wildcats on each campus will decide when to end the strike once the demand for a COLA has been met. To avoid this strike, university administration is once again asked to come to the negotiating table, including by California Assemblymember Mark Stone and 11 other representatives from across the state in an open letter.

Meanwhile, across the state the wildcat strike is spreading faster than ever. UC Berkeley today announced that it will join UCSC and UC Santa Barbara on full teaching strike effective next Monday. UC Davis and UC San Diego continue their own grading strike, while UCLA is expected to announce its own strike soon. Following similar actions at UC Santa Cruz led by COLA4ALL and The People’s Coalition, today organizers at UC Santa Barbara liberated a dining hall on their campus to provide free meals to all students. These actions not only feed hungry students, but help us to imagine what might be possible in a university that works for its most vulnerable. 

Some of today’s action items: 

• Join strikers at Earth and Marine Sciences, beginning tomorrow at 7:30am. Please bring friends! You can also bring supplies: coffee, hand sanitizer, and healthy food are always in demand.
• Teach the strike: Guide available here  
• Donate to the strike fund to support striking grads and to provide material relief to our fired grads: gofundme.com/f/support-fund-for-striking-workers-at-ucsc Please share the strike fund with your networks!
• Faculty are encouraged to discuss moving to a full teaching strike.
• Cancel your classes and sections, and do not ask your students to cross the picket line, especially this coming Monday and Tuesday.
• Lecturers should consider holding their classes at the picket. 
• Push back the dates of large assignments, or as some instructors have done, cancel them. 
• Write to the administration demanding that they come to the table to work with graduate students and to rescind the decision to fire nearly 100 graduate student workers. Guides and samples available here.
• Call Gavin Newsom’s office to complain about the firing of graduate students, the extreme rent burden of graduate students, and to ask that $310 million be allocated for a UC wide COLA. Click here for contact information. For reference see the Faculty Organizing Group letter to Gavin Newsom. 

As always, thank you so so much for your support, and extra special thanks to our undergraduates and to the faculty who have been coming out to support strikers–we are so grateful. 

See you tomorrow!

From Joe Klein
March 6, 2020

Dear Colleagues, 

I wanted to write again with some updates from the ongoing strike. 
For the 19th day hundreds of graduate students, undergraduates, faculty, staff, lecturers rallied at the base of campus, and for the 19th day metro bus drivers refused to cross the picket line in solidarity with striking graduate students. Energy was high all morning, despite aggressive UCSC police intimidation of strikers peacefully picketing (including of yours truly). In one of the most powerful moments of the entire strike to date, late in the morning a group of latinx femme strikers and allies briefly took to the street of the main entrance to perform “El Violador En Tu Camino,” a performance piece born out of feminist struggle in Chile and across the world. Throughout the day strikers continued to rally, march, hold teach-ins, and organize, while celebrating their victories. 

According to administration’s own estimates, as of today, UCSC has now spent at at least $5.7 million on the police presence at the picket line: about 1/4 of the funds needed for an annual COLA for all UCSC graduate students. Meanwhile university administration remains silent–and so the strike continues!

UCSC has sparked an unprecedented mass movement. UCLA and UC Berkeley are poised to join UCSC and UC Santa Barbara and begin a full teaching strike next week, while UC San Diego today voted to join UC Davis in a grading strike to withhold winter grades, while UC Irvine and UC Riverside continue to organize toward a full strike. Meanwhile over 3,000 academics around the world are preparing an academic boycott of the UC system in solidarity with striking graduate students. This strike fights for the future of higher education and this fight is going global. 

Today strikers are celebrating the end of 4 weeks of sustained actions and strike, including the victory of spreading this movement to every campus in the UC system to demand that graduate students be paid enough to live where they work. Come Monday and our 1 month anniversary on full strike, strikers will be advancing even further into campus to continue to remind the administration who runs this campus. To prevent further actions, graduates continue to invite administration to the table to negotiate an end to the strike. Meanwhile, all members of our campus community are invited and encouraged to join the strike in any way they are able: students, workers, lecturers, and faculty united cannot be stopped. Together we are creating the university that we need. 

Some of today’s action items: 

• Join strikers on Monday morning. Please bring friends! You can also bring supplies: sunscreen, coffee, hand sanitizer, healthy food, and large containers of drinking water are always in demand.   
• Donate to the strike fund to support striking grads and to provide material relief to our fired grads: gofundme.com/f/support-fund-for-striking-workers-at-ucsc  Please share the strike fund with your networks!
• Faculty are encouraged to discuss moving to a full teaching strike.
• Cancel your classes and sections, and do not ask your students to cross the picket line, especially this coming Monday and Tuesday.
• Lecturers should consider holding their classes at the picket. 
• Push back the dates of large assignments, or as some instructors have done, cancel them. 
• Write to the administration asking them to come to the table to work with graduate students and to rescind the decision to fire nearly 100 graduate student workers. 
• Call Gavin Newsom’s office to complain about the firing of graduate students, the extreme rent burden of graduate students, and to ask that $310 million be allocated for a UC wide COLA. Click here for contact information. 

As always, thank you so so much for your support, and extra special thanks to our undergraduates and to the faculty who have been coming out to support strikers–we are so grateful. 

See you Monday!

From Joe Klein
March 5, 2020

Dear Colleagues, 

I wanted to write again with some updates from the ongoing strike. 

Today was another historic day in labor history at UCSC and across the UC system. For the 18th day of the strike, hundreds of graduate students, undergraduates, faculty, staff, lecturers, and others successfully closed down UCSC’s main campus for the entire working day. Two hard picket lines were created just beyond Family Student Housing on the west side, and just beyond Faculty Housing on the east side, to ensure that our colleagues and friends would be able to get easily in and out of their homes, while other traffic easily passed out from campus at both entrances. Students hung a banner from the FSH bridge reading “EAT THE REGENTS” while east picketers were joined by a giant goose puppet (#honkforcola) on the barricade. All classes were cancelled; instead, students fed each other, held teach-ins, jumped rope, learned new dances, organized their own transportation, and made new friends, while outside of Family Student Housing, families and children came out to play in the streets. Standing together–building power and building community–strikers reminded administration who runs this campus.

Meanwhile, the entire UC system took to the streets today in solidarity with UCSC. Thousands rallied at UC Santa Barbara while UCLA and UC Berkeley are both organizing toward a full teaching strike (e.g., the Anthropology Department at UC Berkeley voted 70 to 2 to authorize a full teaching strike in support of fired UCSC anthropologists and for their own COLA campaign–UCB Anthropology’s statement here). UC Davis remains on a full grading strike, while major actions were held at UC San Diego, UC Riverside, and UC Irvine, and organizing continues at UCSF and UC Merced. In addition, the Council of UC Faculty Associations representing faculty senates across the UC system issued a statement earlier this week demanding that the university negotiate with striking graduate workers. Faculty, students, staff, and our communities have made ourselves effusively and abundantly clear: administration must negotiate. 

Strikers and allies across the UC system reject an institution that would dispose of them rather than negotiate; when you fire 10% of your graduate workers, nothing can be normal. But beyond this, strikers are fighting against the cruelty that has become normalized on this campus. The COLA movement was sparked because many hundreds of graduate students and many thousands of undergraduates experience daily precarity, hunger, trauma, homelessness, and marginalization, and because this institution has consistently failed to meet its student’s basic needs. Strikers reject an institution where students skip meals and sleep in cars to make ends meet, and reject an administration that would fire them for not wanting to live that way. Together we fight for ourselves, for our friends, for the future of higher education, and for the university that we need. 

Some of today’s action items: 

• Join strikers on the picket line, beginning tomorrow at 7:30am. Please bring friends! You can also bring supplies: sunscreen, coffee, hand sanitizer, healthy food, and large containers of drinking water are always in demand.   
• Teach the strike: Guide attached below!  
• Donate to the strike fund to support striking grads and to provide material relief to our fired grads: gofundme.com/f/support-fund-for-striking-workers-at-ucsc  Please share the strike fund with your networks!
• Faculty are encouraged to discuss moving to a full teaching strike.
• Cancel your classes and sections, and do not ask your students to cross the picket line, especially this coming Monday and Tuesday.
• Lecturers should consider holding their classes at the picket. 
• Push back the dates of large assignments, or as some instructors have done, cancel them. 
• Write to the administration demanding that they come to the table to work with graduate students and to rescind the decision to fire nearly 100 graduate student workers. Guides and samples available here.
• Call Gavin Newsom’s office to complain about the firing of graduate students, the extreme rent burden of graduate students, and to ask that $310 million be allocated for a UC wide COLA. Click here for contact information. For reference see the Faculty Organizing Group letter to Gavin Newsom. 

---

Teach the Strike Guide:

From Joe Klein
March 4, 2020

Dear Colleagues, 

I wanted to write again with some updates from the ongoing strike.

For the 17th day, hundreds of graduate students, faculty, undergraduates, staff, lecturers and others rallied at the base of campus and for the 17th consecutive working day metro bus drivers refused to cross the picket line. Strikers marched and listened to local musical artists as part of “COLA-CHELLA” and were visited by Fred Moten who led a group discussion at the picket line, along with other teach ins and actions. So far UCSC has spent $5.1 million dollars on police rather than meet with striking graduate students; this is nearly 25% of the cost of an annual COLA for all graduate students. Administration continues to be silent after the firing of its graduate students–and so tomorrow the strike continues! 

Tomorrow, Thursday March 5th, will be a special UC system wide day of action in solidarity with our colleagues and friends who were fired by university administration. When the university would rather fire its own students–students fighting for a living wage– than have a simple conversation, business as usual cannot continue. Organizers are calling for a day of no classes and no work across the system. Please ask yourself: Do you want a system of education in which a PhD is accessible to only to the wealthy and privileged? If the answer is no, we need your support and we need it now. 

Join us at the picket; together we are fighting not only for the future of graduate education, but for the university that we want and the university that we need. Please wear black.

From Joe Klein
March 2, 2020

Dear Colleagues, 

I wanted to write again with some updates from the ongoing strike. 
For the 15th day, hundreds of graduate students, undergraduates, faculty, staff, lecturers, and others rallied at the base of campus–today wearing red for ed in honor of the striking educators who have come before us–most recently in LA, West Virginia, and Oklahoma. For the 15th consecutive working day, metro bus drivers refused to cross the picket line in solidarity with striking graduate students. Energy was incredibly high all morning as strikers marched on the picket line and rallied for a press conference where fired graduate students spoke out and told their stories–about being denied their livelihood while living with the threat of deportation, chronic illnesses and disabilities, and with families to support and care for. Directly after the press conference, faculty marched down Coolidge to the main entrance of campus, and together with strikers peacefully closed down the main entrance to campus, which remained closed for the entire working day. Meanwhile, major strike actions happened across the state, wearing red in solidarity with UCSC, including a “Big Ass Rally” at UC Davis, a Red4Ed march and rally at UCSD, and a massive march and rally at UC Santa Barbara, while UC Irvine held a sickout strike and rally, UCR rallied and held a general assembly, and UCLA held a major march and general assembly to move toward further escalation. The strike is spreading to all 10 campuses. 

As of today, UCSC has now spent approximately $4.5 million on the police presence at the picket line. Meanwhile university administration remains silent–and so the strike continues!

In a stunning development, our statewide union UAW 2865 has filed additional unfair labor practice (ULP) charges against the University of California due to the firing of UCSC graduate students, and is convening a bargaining team to discuss a vote to authorize an ULP strike. This would mean that all UAW 2865 workers at all 10 campuses would be legally protected to escalate to a full teaching strike in protest of the university’s egregious escalations. Click here to read the full UAW 2865 statement. The union explained its commitment: 

“Why are we digging in on this? Because we’re facing a crisis in higher ed – about who gets to participate when few can afford it, about gender equity and sexual harassment, about chronic under funding from our political leaders & about fair pay.”

In more exciting news from the picket, in the afternoon strikers gathered to welcome hip hop artist, writer, and activist Mike Africa Jr. to the picket line all the way from Philadelphia. While waiting for Mike to arrive, UCSC students read poetry written by Mumia Abu-Jamal, author, radical activist, inmate, and PhD student in History of Consciousness. Mike Africa Jr. spoke to a huge crowd of students about the power of solidarity and radical struggle, the connections between racial and environmental justice, and the movement to abolish the prison industrial complex. Strikers are grateful to the amazing undergraduate organizers who made this visit possible. 

Today I learned that the UC’s annual operating budget is approximately $9.5 BILLION with a fat B. A group of organizers is working to target state government officials, especially Gov. Gavin Newsom, to ask that $310 million of the state’s $21.5 billion (ANOTHER B) 2020 surplus be allocated for statewide COLA funding for the UC system. Supporters are encouraged to call Gavin Newsom’s office and ask that $310 million be allocated for a UC wide COLA. 

In honor of election day, organizers have planned a “Super BBQs-day” election bbq party at the picket line tomorrow. Anyone who needs to vote on campus is encouraged to cross the picket line! In addition to the regular loop buses, there will be voter taxis available at the base of campus to help people get to the polls efficiently. 

Some of today’s action items: 

• Join strikers on the picket line, beginning Monday at 7:30am. Please bring friends! You can also bring supplies: sunscreen, coffee, hand sanitizer, healthy food, and large containers of drinking water are always in demand.
• Donate to the strike fund to support striking grads and to provide material relief to our fired grads: gofundme.com/f/support-fund-for-striking-workers-at-ucsc  Please share the strike fund with your networks!
• Faculty are encouraged to discuss moving to a full teaching strike.
• Cancel your classes and sections, and do not ask your students to cross the picket line, especially this coming Monday and Tuesday.
• Lecturers should consider holding their classes at the picket. 
• Push back the dates of large assignments, or as some instructors have done, cancel them. 
• Write to the administration asking them to come to the table to work with graduate students and to rescind the decision to fire nearly 100 graduate student workers. 
• Call Gavin Newsom’s office to complain about the firing of graduate students, the extreme rent burden of graduate students, and to ask that $310 million be allocated for a UC wide COLA. Click here for contact information. 

As always, thank you so so much for your support, and extra special thanks to our undergraduates and to the faculty who have been coming out to support strikers–we are so grateful. 

See you tomorrow!

Please come out Monday!

From Joe Klein
February 28, 2020

Dear Colleagues, 

I wanted to write again with some updates from the ongoing strike. 
For the 14th day, graduate students, undergraduates, faculty, staff, lecturers, and others rallied at the base of campus. For the 14th consecutive working day, metro bus drivers refused to cross the picket line in solidarity with striking graduate students. Today’s energy built from yesterday’s Radical History March and Teach In which moved across campus gathering support and teaching about the history of student and labor organizing at UC Santa Cruz. Strikers sang and chanted about the legacy of social movements that they now join, before marching down to the base where they peacefully shut down the main entrance to campus.

Just after noon today, EVC Lori Kletzer wrote to inform graduate students that they were being fired from their spring appointments. In an email which began with laughable posturing about “increasing support” and “caring deeply” about graduate students, Lori Kletzer proceeded to fire close to 100 graduate students, knowingly and willingly depriving them of housing, medical care, the ability to feed their children and families, and condemning international students to deportation. As one grad noted, “Nothing like being fired by someone who really cares.” It is worth reiterating that EVC Kletzer’s claim to have attempted to “find an amenable resolution” is false, or in a more colloquial sense, a lie. Administration has never agreed to discuss “amenable solutions” with graduate students, preferring instead to dictate the terms of a labor dispute, to call in police to arrest and brutalize students, and then to fire them unilaterally, going against the directives and wishes of the Faculty Senate, the Graduate Student Association, and the undergraduate Student Union Assembly.

This is mayday. To meet this egregious escalation, strikers are organizing for a massive week of action for this coming week 9. In an incredible show of solidarity, more than 500 graduate students have so far pledged to refuse appointments and go on strike. We will need all hands on deck to disrupt the violence of this university and to fight for a living wage for graduate workers. Faculty are called upon to get organized as quickly as possible and to move towards a full teaching strike. Together, faculty, graduate students, undergraduates, staff, and lecturers continue to fight for living wages for all of us, and for a university that works for all of us, not just the privileged or elite. And so the strike continues!

If you have ever cared about a graduate student we need you at the picket line on Monday. This is about your friends, your students, and the future of graduate education at the University of California. Please come join us in defiant celebration wearing red for education. 

As of today, UCSC has spent at least $4.2 million on police presence at the picket line. This is nearly 20% of the annual cost of a COLA for all graduates at UCSC at the rate of $1412 per month. It was also revealed today that Chancellor Cynthia Larive is in charge of a discretionary fund of approximately $120 million dollars, from which the police presence at the picket line has been paid. In other words, Larive could have paid for the entire annual cost of a COLA for all grads and still had $100 million left over in her no-strings-attached slush fund. While administration has made its priorities clear, we nevertheless, once again, invite them to negotiate in good faith to bring this strike to an end and to prevent further ongoing labor actions.

Yesterday as strikers chanted “UC UC you can’t hide, this strike’s going UC wide!,” the strike was indeed spreading like wildfire. On Thursday UC Santa Barbara began a full teaching strike to demand their own COLA and in solidarity with UCSC, while UC Davis also began a grading strike. UC Irvine, UC Riverside, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC Merced, and UC San Diego are organizing toward strikes of their own. Meanwhile, yesterday the statewide UC graduate workers union UAW 2865 has filed Unfair Labor Practice charges against the University of California, and today Senator Bernie Sanders again called on Janet Napolitano and UCSC to negotiate with striking graduate students and stop union-busting. 

More information about the week ahead will be forthcoming but we are planning a massive “Red for Ed” rally on Monday, a Get out the Vote / Super BBQs-day on Tuesday with voter taxis, and a “Cola-chela” lineup of musical performances on Wednesday as a taste.  
Some of today’s action items: 

• Join strikers on the picket line, beginning Monday at 7:30am. Please wear red and please bring friends! You can also bring supplies: sunscreen, coffee, hand sanitizer, healthy food, and large containers of drinking water are always in demand.   
• Donate to the strike fund to support striking grads and to provide material relief to our fired grads: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-fund-for-striking-workers-at-ucsc  Please share the strike fund with your networks!
• Faculty are encouraged to move to a full teaching strike. 
• Cancel your classes and sections, and do not ask your students to cross the picket line, especially this coming Monday and Tuesday.
• Lecturers should consider holding their classes at the picket. 
• Push back the dates of large assignments, or as some instructors have done, cancel them. 
• Write to the administration asking them to come to the table to work with graduate students and to rescind the decision to fire nearly 100 graduate student workers. 

As always, thank you so so much for your support, and extra special thanks to our undergraduates and to the faculty who have been coming out to support strikers–we are so grateful. 

See you Monday!
P.S. Please feel free to forward and share this message.

This is disgraceful. All workers deserve the right to bargain and strike for better wages and benefits. To Janet Napolitano and @UCSC: stop this outrageous union busting and negotiate in good faith. https://t.co/oaQGTovOdW

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) February 29, 2020