Strike Updates Day 8

From Joe Klein
February 20, 2020

Dear Colleagues, 

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

For the eighth day, hundreds of graduate students, undergraduates, staff, lecturers, faculty, and others rallied at both entrances to campus. Energy was incredibly high throughout the morning, and for the 8th consecutive working day metro bus drivers refused to cross the picket line in solidarity with striking graduate students. UCSC has spent approximately $2.4 million on the police presence at the picket line. However as of today administration has offered nothing substantive–and so tomorrow the strike continues! 

Meanwhile, the strike is spreading. Friday February 21 will be a state-wide day of action across the UC system for COLA and against administrative repression. Strikers at UC Santa Barbara have occupied an admin building in solidarity with UCSC and over 400 graduates have pledged to begin a full teaching strike on Monday if UCSC graduates are fired. Strikers at UC Irvine also occupied an admin building today and are also organizing plans for their own strike. UC San Diego strikers shut down a major library today and are staging a strike for Friday. UCLA strikers today staged a sick-out strike and along with UC Berkeley are committing to withhold winter quarter grades if UCSC fires its striking grads. Berkeley is also delivering its own COLA demands to administration tomorrow and planning for escalating to a strike. UC Riverside and UC Merced are staging rallies and organizing for their own COLA campaign, and UC Davis is also organizing a teaching strike in solidarity with UCSC and to demand their own COLA. Across California, graduate workers struggle together. 

Here at UCSC organizers are planning a double-header DOOMSDAY Rally and Party whileCOLA4ALL Organizers are hosting a #FIREUSJANET party at the picket line (these events are free and open to the public). Strikers will rally all day at the base of campus, and at 11am a DOOMSDAY Rally will be held at the Quarry Plaza at followed by a march to join strikers at the base of campus for a 12pm rally and party. All campus community members are encouraged to attend. Janet Napolitano has been invited to be the guest of honor at the #FIREUSJANET party at the base of campus. The text of the invitation for the latter (attached) reads as follows: 

Dear Janet, 

We cordially invite you to our celebration on Friday February 21st 2020 at the picket line.

As our guess of honor, we invite you to 
FIRE US IN PERSON! 

There will be good food and great music. 

#BringTupperware #FireUsJanet 

Yours very truly,
@cola4all @payusmoreucsc @thepeoples.co

In the face of administrative attacks on students and our departments, many voices are now calling for building toward a general strike for all UCSC workers if our graduate workers are fired. To this end, there is discussion of faculty beginning to organize in consideration of a full teaching strike if UC admin should choose to fire its graduate students. Together as graduates, undergraduates, faculty, staff, and lecturers across the state, we are re-imagining what solidarity and mutual aid can look like at the University of California. 

Some of today’s action items: 

• PLEASE COME OUT FOR A DOOMSDAY / #FIREUSJANET PARTY! Join strikers on the picket line, beginning tomorrow at 7:30am, with a rally at 12pm. If you are so inclined, costumes are encouraged. Please bring friends! You can also bring supplies: sunscreen, hand sanitizer, healthy food, coffee, costumes for your friends, and large containers of drinking water are always in demand. 
• Donate to the strike fund to support striking grads and to provide material relief in the event of mass firings: gofundme.com/f/support-fund-for-striking-workers-at-ucsc  
• Cancel your classes and sections, and do not ask your students to cross the picket line. 
• 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 threats of retaliation for students demanding the ability to live where they work. 
• If you were a faculty member or student who witnessed or recorded video or photographs of police violence please write a description of what you saw and send footage to: mas1218@gmail.com. 

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 in the street and in the senate–we are so grateful. 

See you tomorrow!