At our General Assembly on February 21, COLA wildcat strikers at UCSC voted overwhelmingly to continue to withhold Fall grades beyond Janet Napolitano’s midnight deadline.
At least 85 UCSC graduate student workers, and very likely more, have refused to submit to Napolitano and EVC Kletzer’s threat to revoke Spring appointments and block future ones. Nearly 20% of these workers are international graduate students, who now face the risk of de facto deportation.
We are now past Napolitano’s firing deadline. Until we hear otherwise, we hereby consider ourselves terminated from our employment.
But the momentum of the struggle is growing. We feel the collective strength of our fellow workers who have committed to act decisively in solidarity. And while the decision of strikers on the firing line underlines our resolve, it does not express the full scale of the movement for COLA.
It does not include the 351 UCSC graduate workers who committed at the start of this quarter to withhold Winter grades, and the additional numbers who will undoubtedly be moved to withhold grades after recent events.
It does not include the dozen departments across UCSC refusing to accept Spring appointments if UCSC terminates their colleagues—nor the rumblings of faculty organizing autonomously and across disciplines, nor the commitment of thousands of professors across the country to effectively boycott UCSC when our spring employment is void.
Nor does it include the mass commitments of several other UC campuses to commence grading and teaching strikes in solidarity with UCSC wildcats.
And it does not begin to capture the force of our Doomsday Rally, where over 1000 undergrads, grads, faculty, lecturers, and workers shut down both entrances to campus, leading to the cancellation of all classes on Friday. Nor the mass rallies, pickets, and building occupations across the UC on Friday and throughout last week.
We already knew, and UC now surely knows, that we are stronger than they are—that we will not submit to police violence or threats to our employment. The time to strike with us is now, because we’re striking to win.