Category: history 2019-2020

COLA: Dear President Napolitano, We Shut It Down

Dear President Napolitano, Chancellor Larive, EVC Kletzer, Dean Williams, and UC Regents:


In response to the mass firing and barring of roughly 80 UCSC graduate workers from spring quarter appointments, on Thursday, March 5th, striking grads and their allies seized both entrances to campus and held them for 10+ hours. We know you know this, because we know it had a huge impact on the daily operations of the university. 


Classes were cancelled, building projects were halted, the flow of goods onto campus was cut off, food was not prepared, bathrooms were not cleaned, trashcans were not emptied. We did not want to resort to this. We never wanted to resort to this. But when you fire international, POC, undocumented, pregnant, broke, indebted, hungry, rent-burdened, angry, and principled people, you should expect an uprising. 


And it is an uprising you are getting. Grads at Santa Barbara have gone on full strike. Grads at Davis and San Diego are on grading strike. Dozens of departments at Berkeley and Los Angeles are strike-ready, and more are following their lead. Four other campuses are organizing and starting to catch up. 


We know you never expected this. You thought you could keep this from spreading. You thought firing us would scare others away. You were wrong. What you’ve never seemed to understand is that we are committed not just because we want better material conditions but because we are true believers in education and equal access to it. It is this that makes us unstoppable.


If you haven’t yet understood this, I direct you to this video in which a number of us are interviewed. You should see the faces of those you fired, and listen to what they have to say. These are people whose risk and sacrifice are rescuing this university from its neoliberal demise. You owe them your respect, because they are doing the job that you repeatedly fail to do. 


Yours very truly,

Stephen David Engel

Strike Updates Day 19: We are winning.

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!

Strike Updates Day 18: Whose University?

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:

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CAMPUS SHUT DOWN – Why Classes Are Cancelled

Why Classes Are Cancelled

Nearly 100 of our colleagues have been fired. 18 of our friends and supporters have been arrested, many brutalized by police. The same precarious workers that were driven to demand a COLA have been rendered even more precarious—facing further food and housing insecurity, potential loss of legal status, healthcare, and childcare subsidies. The student conduct process has been mobilized to suppress dissent and monitor political activity in relation to employment decisions. Administration has tried to drive wedges between everyone—undergrads and grads, workers and student workers, faculty and advisees, divisions and departments.

The administration’s response has been to minimize the significance of the crisis from the beginning, to bemoan the interruptions caused by the strike, and to deflect blame for these consequences onto the strikers. Their repeated calls for returning back to business as usual at all costs (modified slightly with new advisory councils, studies, “short and long term solutions”) is also their justification for refusing to acknowledge the strike directly. UCOP states unequivocally that the wildcat strike undermines the basis on which they manage the university’s labor. And they are set on stamping it out and reducing it to an aberration. The firing 10% of the TA workforce cannot pass for normal; neither should it be normalized. It is an outrageous and cruel overreach by a profit-hungry administration.

This is why business cannot carry on as usual, and why students, faculty, and workers across University of California campuses statewide are taking action today. The strike began because there was a crisis that demanded to be acknowledged, that had been swept under the rug for too long. Every administrative response since, from indifference to tear gas to termination letters, has only further illustrated the depth and breadth of the crisis perpetuated every day by this university system. Classes are cancelled today because things must change if anything is to carry on at all.

In solidarity with students, workers, faculty, and staff,

Striking Graduate Students

Strike Updates Day 17

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.

Poster that reads: "UC Wide Blackout / In support of fired UCSC workers / Thursday March 5 all day / No class / No work / Wear black

Strike Updates Day 15

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!

A note on the firings

Dear all,


It is worth noting, firstly, that more than 54 graduate student workers were fired or barred from spring appointments on Friday, including at least ten international students. The number is certainly higher than 70 and may be around or above 80.


I wanted to state the obvious point that these firings are not yet final. They can be reversed at any moment. That is, they are now a site of struggle for our community. 


Many have written and will continue to write about the stakes of this moment: for the jobs, livelihoods, and careers of those fired; for the future of public graduate research and education; for the quality of public undergraduate education; for the future of labour movements and living-wage and affordability struggles; for the future of robust humanities, arts, and social science divisions; etc.


But I wanted to share my simple conviction that no community deserving of the name would permit 70-80 of its members to be fired for a peaceful struggle for the ability to pay rent. In the words of our STEM colleagues, this is a deplorable action.


The support outside of UCSC since the firings has been swift and enormous. Since the news broke, the strike fund has received nearly $100,000. People across the UC system are organizing weeks of action and graduate student workers move closer to striking every day, both for our reinstatement and for their own COLA. Before the firings, thousands of faculty across the country committed to effectively boycott UCSC in the event of mass firings.

 
But once again, and even after grueling months of struggle with administrative threats and police violence, the response that matters most is the one within the UCSC community. It is a moment that demands nothing less than the most meaningful forms of solidarity: more grading strikes, mutual aid, class cancellation, protest, picketing, collective job refusals, boycotts, work stoppages, etc. 


This starts on Monday at a press conference on the picket at 9:30am and does not stop until we are reinstated, safe, and making genuine progress towards the implementation of a COLA. 


I’ll see you on the picket.


Your fired international colleague and friend,

Jack. 

COLA Pledges: ACTION NEEDED!

Dear all,

TL;DR: ACTION ITEM: ORGANIZE A MEETING WITH YOUR DEPARTMENT CONCERNING DEPARTMENT PLEDGES.

Linked here are all 22 pledges signed by departments in solidarity with fired graduate student workers, and a letter from STEM graduates at UCSC.

You have probably heard by now that on Friday the administration announced the firing of 54 graduates, before sending out 44 notices of intent to dismiss grads from spring appointments. In addition to this, an undisclosed number of graduates received notice that their spring appointments will be blocked, bringing the number of fired grads well beyond 54, and possibly as high as 80.

At least 16 pledges are now active and no fewer than 411 graduate student workers are committed to declining appointments next quarter, in one form or another, until fired grads are reinstated. This total includes at least 176 “hard pledges” to refuse any spring quarter appointment in the event of mass firing.

This moment demands the most meaningful form of solidarity. Fired graduate students have conviction in the knowledge that we are not alone on this campus. 

This is also a critical juncture for the future of public higher education. It is a decisive moment in the broader fight for a system of public education that adequately funds graduate research and education—one that supports diverse and international scholarship, and that is run by and for researchers and educators.

We call upon departments to meet immediately to review their pledges and start to organize their fulfillment, and possibly expanding them in light of yesterday’s firings.

On Monday we will send out a form to assess the needs and positions of those who refuse TA/GSIships.

A list of pledges:

All pledges:

Anthropology, Astronomy, BME, Chemistry, Computational Media, CSE, Earth & Planetary Sciences, Education, EEB, ENVS, FDM, Fem Studies, HAVC, Histcon, History, Literature, MCD Biology, METX, Music, Politics, Psychology, Sociology.

Active pledges:

Anthropology, Astronomy, Chemistry, Computational Media, CSE, Earth & Planetary Sciences, FDM, Fem Studies, HAVC, Histcon, History, Literature, Music, Politics, Psychology, Sociology.

Possibly active (depending on the termination of a member of their department):

BME, ENVS.

“Hard” Pledges:*

Anthropology, Computational Media, Feminist Studies, History of Consciousness, Literature, Psychology, Sociology

*Computational Media and Psychology’s pledges stated that they would refuse TAships, GSIships and readerships only in their departments (besides not taking up fired labor). Literature had stated they would also refuse GSRships; at the request of the collective, literature’s pledging grads retracted this and informed grads and the department of this today. The other hard pledges commit to declining all spring appointments other than GSRs.

STRIKE UPDATE: nearly 80 grad workers fired today, picket continues on Monday!

From gsa_pres

Today, UCSC administration announced the termination of 54 graduate student workers, and sent out official dismissal letters to at least 44 of us. 

Late this afternoon, a series of graduate student workers received an email from the Office of the EVC containing only the following single sentence:

This email serves to inform you that you will no longer be considered for or receive any Academic Student Employee (ASE) appointment including such positions as teaching assistant, graduate student instructor, tutor, or reader, for the spring quarter of the 2019-20 academic year.

We are still confirming the number of fired graduate student workers, and believe it may be as high as 80.

In solidarity with their comrades and colleagues on Kletzer’s chopping block, graduate students from 22 academic departments, comprising over 550 individual workers, have already pledged at a minimum to refuse Spring appointments vacated by terminated grads. Many of these graduate workers have pledged to refuse all Spring appointments if a single wildcat striker is terminated. Taking these pledges at their word, at least 394 graduate student workers are now committed to declining spring appointments in one form or another. 

In response to this grave administrative escalation, we call for the cancellation of classes on Monday and for everyone to join us on the picket for a press conference at 9am.

On Monday, we wear red for the future of higher ed. The strike continues. See you on the picket.