Prospective Students of Color Visit UCSC and Demand a Fair Contract for Workers

These are not meant to be trick questions. Even though I'm not in a union due to my job classification, I support the right of staff to join unions. But I'm not sure I buy into the rhetoric around current protests. So here are the questions:

If UC is anti-worker/ anti-union, pro poverty wages, how come UCSC declined to renew it's contract for food service with Sodexho, and made all those food service workers UC employees with full benefits?

How does protesting, especially disruptive protesting at the campus help with negotiations that are held elsewhere? Seriously, I don't get this? Isn't it counterproductive and make the group look bad?

How Mayor Mike Rotkin gets his news.

Yo, Mayor Rotkin, what’s your beef with the homeless?

Some Say MIKE ROTKIN FUCKING HATES THE HOMELESS
...but does he secretly want to live in the park?

An interview with the Mayor of Santa Cruz
by Cody, Project Collective

Yo, Mayor Rotkin, what’s your beef with the homeless?

Okay, when I was first elected to City Council in ’79, we had a police department that was systematically rounding up and harassing the homeless, and it was very clear that there was tacit support from the community as a whole. The police department thought that the people wanted them to be involved in driving them out of town.

We had some really gross examples of literal assault on homeless people. People were handcuffed to the back of a car and beaten. An 180 pound police officer went after this 120 pound guy, took off his belt and said, “Let’s you and me settle this mano a mano.? That’s an actual quote that came out of the court trial. It was absurd what was happening. So we actually charged four or five police officers with assault, took them to trial, and the jury let them off.

Some of (the jury) said things like, “Well, you can’t blame the officers. It was probably their superiors’ fault.? Others actually said, “What’s wrong with beating homeless people?? Our town has come a long way since then.

Was this what was called “Operation Code Blue??

Yea. And it took political work to get people to think this wasn’t a good thing. It took knocking on doors, y’know, hard grassroots work, not just talking to my friends about how I’d like the world to be a different place. This town used to be repressive as hell, on drug stuff, it was against social services, it was pro-growth. It’s taken years to move the town towards what we’re doing.

So why do we have to be so repressive, and, y’know, have a camping ban? Well, I’ve knocked on virtually every door in Santa Cruz five times over, running for office and in all these political battles you get in, and I can tell you that people in town do not want people sleeping in cars in front of their house. They don’t want people sleeping on their lawns. They don’t want people in the parks near where their kids go to school, and they throw people out of office if the City Council tries to (allow) this.

Right now, our Camping Ban is enforced on a complaint basis. We don’t go around looking for homeless people, but if somebody calls up and complains, the cops will come. If they don’t move on, they’ll get a ticket. If they don’t have a way to identify themselves, they’ll go to jail. If the City did any less than that, we’d be thrown out of office.

There’s not a solution to the homeless problem. It’s a national problem, and I don’t think the city of Santa Cruz can be asked to be the solution to this national problem. There are around 7 million homeless people in America. We’re a town of 56,000. We are not going to be the place where people get to sleep outdoors.

Except, on a local level, it seems like by criminalizing homelessness we’re driving people further into both homelessness and criminality, rather than helping them “back on their feet.? If homelessness, or “the homeless problem,? is not a fixable problem, why are we fighting another unwinnable war?

People pay taxes. They work alienated jobs, jobs they don’t like very much. That’s the nature of capitalism. They go to work, and it’s a sacrifice for them. They end up paying taxes and get a park near their house. They go out with their kids to the park and there’s a bunch of people sleeping in the park. You can say to him, “Hey, these people have as much right to the park as you,? which they legally do, but at some point, he’s going to raise the question, “Why am I going to work and paying taxes while these people think they should get a free ride and sleep in the park I paid for??

Well, if he feels so strongly about it he should go live in the park.

Well, that’s something you need to talk to the public about. Don’t imagine that City Council can just vote on this and people will do what we want. You need to persuade the community of Santa Cruz that this is a good idea. I don’t think they want it. We’re stuck. It’s the logic of being inside the State.

How far has our police come since ‘79?

Since then, we’ve got a whole bunch of new officers, a new police chief, a new deputy. It’s been diversified. We’ve got a community studies graduate as a police officer. Everything’s changed dramatically, and I think now we have a relatively professional police department. I think they do a relatively good job.

So what’s your take on the whole Tent U fiasco?

Okay, well first I should point out, our police were there, they were supervising. But it was UC police from Berkeley that were doing the...pain compliance or whatever. As far as that goes, I think the police could have done more on the outset to make the arrests more peaceful. The way things went, they didn’t have much choice in what they did, and that’s unfortunate. I think that was a mistake on the part of the protesters.

I’ve been arrested by the University police several times, as part of, you know, civil disobedience actions, and the idea is you get arrested, you go to court and you argue the policy your protesting. But by resisting arrest, which is a serious charge, and, you know, making every single person need to be knocked out and dragged off, you’re making the police the issue, not the University.

Even though it was University Police?

Well, yea. That’s the real blunder here. The administration would have been better off letting (Tent U) happen than, you know, trying to silence it. If they just ignored it, everyone else probably would have too. I just wish the demonstrators had put more emphasis on their agenda. I know it was supposed to be very “anarchist? as far as the agenda was concerned, but there’s no protocol in anarchism that says you can’t plan stuff. Still, I’m glad that students speak up rather than let business go on as usual.

So when can we fight the cops?

If you think that we’re at the point where we can have a revolution, that the people are stronger than the police and we can resist them, then resist ‘em. Sure. It’s time that the people control stuff.