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Indybay Feature
What we learned on March 4
James Illingworth talks about how he and other activists at the University of California Santa Cruz organized for the March 4 Day of Action to defend our schools.
photo by Alex Darocy: Hundreds of students gathered at the base of the UC Santa Cruz campus for a March 4 rally
What we learned on March 4
WELL OVER 1,000 students participated actively in a successful student strike at University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) on March 4. This was the only campus that shut down completely for the Day of Action to defend public education, and it was the first time that a student strike closed UCSC for the entire day.
How was the strike organized? A small group of people started planning for March 4 immediately following protests in November as the UC Regents pushed through a 32 percent fee hike for next year.
We had all participated in the militant and inspiring actions on November 18-22 at UCSC, when hundreds of students occupied and held two campus buildings for several days. But we emerged from those actions with a sense that the protesters remained somewhat isolated from the wider body of students, faculty and campus workers, and that we had a lot of work to do if we were going to bring more people into the movement for March 4.
We understood that if we were to remain true to the statewide call for a strikes and protests on March 4, we would have to agitate among students and workers on campus on a much larger scale than before. We had progressed past the stage where small, militant actions could inspire people--we needed to go out and organize people.
Part of our preparation was political, theoretical and educational. We organized a series of study groups called "How to Win a Strike," in which we read about and discussed mass struggles like the Minneapolis Teamster Rebellion of 1934 and the Oaxaca teachers' strike of 2006. Socialists from different political traditions, anarchists and unaffiliated radicals came together in these study groups to assess and learn from past struggles.
We were also fortunate to stand on the shoulders of a strong organizing tradition at UCSC. In particular, we took the April 2005 strike by campus workers in AFSCME as a major source of inspiration.
Prior to that labor action, the Student and Worker Coalition for Justice spent weeks talking to students about the strike and building support through a strike pledge campaign. These activists successfully mobilized hundreds of students to join the picket lines--we decided to adopt a similar model.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
THE MARCH 4 Strike Committee emerged initially from the UCSC General Assembly in December and started meeting regularly in early January.
The first couple meetings attracted only a dozen or so people, but the group maintained its commitment to building through an open and democratic approach. Every meeting of the Strike Committee was advertised publicly. We discussed and adopted a method of voting and decision-making that allowed for maximum possible input and participation from everyone involved. By late February, between 50 and 70 people regularly attended committee meetings.
The Strike Committee built relationships with campus unions. From the beginning, members and staff from American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Local 2199, which represents lecturers and librarians on campus, and United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 2865, which represents graduate student teaching assistants, actively participated in the Committee.
In turn, representatives of the Strike Committee attended meetings of University Labor United, the coalition of campus unions. We distributed thousands of copies of an open letter to campus workers explaining our goals for March 4. Without the solidarity of the AFT, UAW, AFSCME, Coalition of University Employees, University Professional and Technical Employees, and the Faculty Association, our strike would not have been possible.
The Strike Committee also reached out to student organizations. We approached the student government early on and persuaded it to pass a resolution in support of March 4. The student government eventually donated money to support the action.
Members of the Strike Committee also mobilized in solidarity with African American students during the "Real Pain, Real Action" protests against racist incidents at UC San Diego--and attended a teach-in on the Dream Act put together by immigrant rights activists on campus. A working group of the Strike Committee organized a well-attended "Solidarity Forum" to discuss issues of race and racism on campus.
In order to build these relationships, it was vital for the Strike Committee to have a clear political message for March 4. Many students still believed that blame for the cuts lay squarely on the California state government, and that we should focus our efforts only in Sacramento--or they believed that militant action never worked.
The Strike Committee adopted seven demands that focused on both Sacramento and the university administration--and used them as the basis for successfully convincing thousands of people that the strike was worthwhile.
But the strike pledge campaign was by far the most important aspect of outreach for March 4. For six weeks leading up to the strike, members of the Strike Committee went out all day, every day, and asked students to sign on to a pledge in support of the action. This gave us the opportunity to convince people that a strike would be possible, necessary and effective.
By the eve of March 4, we had collected around 2,000 signatures on the strike pledge and had talked to thousands more students about the plan for the day. We started to get a sense that this was going to be one of the biggest protests in UCSC's recent history.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
THE STUDENT strike itself was a well-coordinated operation.
We had received word that the administration would attempt to smuggle workers onto campus as early as 5 a.m. Before dawn on March 4, hundreds of strikers were already blocking the entrances to campus. As the administration tried to sneak the workers past, across fields and along dirt roads, we used cell phones to coordinate squads of flying pickets, and successfully prevented their entrance.
It didn't hurt that the workers themselves were incredibly sympathetic to our cause, and not overly enthusiastic about trying to cross the picket lines!
Throughout the day, nothing moved on campus without our permission. We had devised a system of passes so that Health Center staff could get to work, and parents of young children could get to and from Family Student and Faculty Housing. As a result, many families showed up on the picket lines later in the day.
Picket captains were vital to our success on March 4. The Strike Committee had chosen people for these positions in advance--they had the authority from the committee to coordinate the lines and keep the campus closed. They played a crucial role in the early-morning game of cat and mouse with the administration. We also had means in place to handle media contacts and legal observation.
In keeping with its traditional modus operandi, the UCSC campus administration tried to vilify student protesters by any means necessary.
Early on the morning of March 4, Executive Vice Chancellor Dave Kliger sent out a message to the campus, accusing picketers of violence and claiming that we were armed with "clubs and knives." He was referring to a couple of incidents in which irate drivers attempted to force their cars through the ranks of peaceful picketers. We were lucky that the worst outcome of these incidents were a couple of minor injuries and a broken car windshield.
In fact, because we had done such broad outreach before March 4, very few people tried to cross the picket lines, and thus the mood was overwhelmingly celebratory rather than confrontational. Local media coverage reflected this, even if some national outlets merely echoed the UCSC administration's line, rather than investigating the real story.
Coming out of March 4, we still have a long way to go. The protests since September 24 of last year have completely shifted public consciousness regarding cuts to education, forcing even Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to acknowledge the importance of student power.
Following March 4, we now have something that looks like a real mass movement, with tens of thousands of committed participants across California and the nation. But we haven't yet come to close to stopping the cuts, let alone democratizing and remaking the education system.
We need to continue to build our organizational strength at the local level. To paraphrase the organizers of last year's National Equality March in Washington, D.C., at UCSC, we weren't just organizing to March Fourth; we were March-Fourthing to organize.
The March 4 Strike Committee trained a new layer of student militants, and the group will continue to function as an important organizing center on campus. The movement needs grassroots committees of this sort to develop on every campus, in every school and in every union. We also need more regional and national coordination of the struggle, and should get ready for the statewide conference to assess March 4 and discuss next steps.
What we learned on March 4
WELL OVER 1,000 students participated actively in a successful student strike at University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) on March 4. This was the only campus that shut down completely for the Day of Action to defend public education, and it was the first time that a student strike closed UCSC for the entire day.
How was the strike organized? A small group of people started planning for March 4 immediately following protests in November as the UC Regents pushed through a 32 percent fee hike for next year.
We had all participated in the militant and inspiring actions on November 18-22 at UCSC, when hundreds of students occupied and held two campus buildings for several days. But we emerged from those actions with a sense that the protesters remained somewhat isolated from the wider body of students, faculty and campus workers, and that we had a lot of work to do if we were going to bring more people into the movement for March 4.
We understood that if we were to remain true to the statewide call for a strikes and protests on March 4, we would have to agitate among students and workers on campus on a much larger scale than before. We had progressed past the stage where small, militant actions could inspire people--we needed to go out and organize people.
Part of our preparation was political, theoretical and educational. We organized a series of study groups called "How to Win a Strike," in which we read about and discussed mass struggles like the Minneapolis Teamster Rebellion of 1934 and the Oaxaca teachers' strike of 2006. Socialists from different political traditions, anarchists and unaffiliated radicals came together in these study groups to assess and learn from past struggles.
We were also fortunate to stand on the shoulders of a strong organizing tradition at UCSC. In particular, we took the April 2005 strike by campus workers in AFSCME as a major source of inspiration.
Prior to that labor action, the Student and Worker Coalition for Justice spent weeks talking to students about the strike and building support through a strike pledge campaign. These activists successfully mobilized hundreds of students to join the picket lines--we decided to adopt a similar model.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
THE MARCH 4 Strike Committee emerged initially from the UCSC General Assembly in December and started meeting regularly in early January.
The first couple meetings attracted only a dozen or so people, but the group maintained its commitment to building through an open and democratic approach. Every meeting of the Strike Committee was advertised publicly. We discussed and adopted a method of voting and decision-making that allowed for maximum possible input and participation from everyone involved. By late February, between 50 and 70 people regularly attended committee meetings.
The Strike Committee built relationships with campus unions. From the beginning, members and staff from American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Local 2199, which represents lecturers and librarians on campus, and United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 2865, which represents graduate student teaching assistants, actively participated in the Committee.
In turn, representatives of the Strike Committee attended meetings of University Labor United, the coalition of campus unions. We distributed thousands of copies of an open letter to campus workers explaining our goals for March 4. Without the solidarity of the AFT, UAW, AFSCME, Coalition of University Employees, University Professional and Technical Employees, and the Faculty Association, our strike would not have been possible.
The Strike Committee also reached out to student organizations. We approached the student government early on and persuaded it to pass a resolution in support of March 4. The student government eventually donated money to support the action.
Members of the Strike Committee also mobilized in solidarity with African American students during the "Real Pain, Real Action" protests against racist incidents at UC San Diego--and attended a teach-in on the Dream Act put together by immigrant rights activists on campus. A working group of the Strike Committee organized a well-attended "Solidarity Forum" to discuss issues of race and racism on campus.
In order to build these relationships, it was vital for the Strike Committee to have a clear political message for March 4. Many students still believed that blame for the cuts lay squarely on the California state government, and that we should focus our efforts only in Sacramento--or they believed that militant action never worked.
The Strike Committee adopted seven demands that focused on both Sacramento and the university administration--and used them as the basis for successfully convincing thousands of people that the strike was worthwhile.
But the strike pledge campaign was by far the most important aspect of outreach for March 4. For six weeks leading up to the strike, members of the Strike Committee went out all day, every day, and asked students to sign on to a pledge in support of the action. This gave us the opportunity to convince people that a strike would be possible, necessary and effective.
By the eve of March 4, we had collected around 2,000 signatures on the strike pledge and had talked to thousands more students about the plan for the day. We started to get a sense that this was going to be one of the biggest protests in UCSC's recent history.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
THE STUDENT strike itself was a well-coordinated operation.
We had received word that the administration would attempt to smuggle workers onto campus as early as 5 a.m. Before dawn on March 4, hundreds of strikers were already blocking the entrances to campus. As the administration tried to sneak the workers past, across fields and along dirt roads, we used cell phones to coordinate squads of flying pickets, and successfully prevented their entrance.
It didn't hurt that the workers themselves were incredibly sympathetic to our cause, and not overly enthusiastic about trying to cross the picket lines!
Throughout the day, nothing moved on campus without our permission. We had devised a system of passes so that Health Center staff could get to work, and parents of young children could get to and from Family Student and Faculty Housing. As a result, many families showed up on the picket lines later in the day.
Picket captains were vital to our success on March 4. The Strike Committee had chosen people for these positions in advance--they had the authority from the committee to coordinate the lines and keep the campus closed. They played a crucial role in the early-morning game of cat and mouse with the administration. We also had means in place to handle media contacts and legal observation.
In keeping with its traditional modus operandi, the UCSC campus administration tried to vilify student protesters by any means necessary.
Early on the morning of March 4, Executive Vice Chancellor Dave Kliger sent out a message to the campus, accusing picketers of violence and claiming that we were armed with "clubs and knives." He was referring to a couple of incidents in which irate drivers attempted to force their cars through the ranks of peaceful picketers. We were lucky that the worst outcome of these incidents were a couple of minor injuries and a broken car windshield.
In fact, because we had done such broad outreach before March 4, very few people tried to cross the picket lines, and thus the mood was overwhelmingly celebratory rather than confrontational. Local media coverage reflected this, even if some national outlets merely echoed the UCSC administration's line, rather than investigating the real story.
Coming out of March 4, we still have a long way to go. The protests since September 24 of last year have completely shifted public consciousness regarding cuts to education, forcing even Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to acknowledge the importance of student power.
Following March 4, we now have something that looks like a real mass movement, with tens of thousands of committed participants across California and the nation. But we haven't yet come to close to stopping the cuts, let alone democratizing and remaking the education system.
We need to continue to build our organizational strength at the local level. To paraphrase the organizers of last year's National Equality March in Washington, D.C., at UCSC, we weren't just organizing to March Fourth; we were March-Fourthing to organize.
The March 4 Strike Committee trained a new layer of student militants, and the group will continue to function as an important organizing center on campus. The movement needs grassroots committees of this sort to develop on every campus, in every school and in every union. We also need more regional and national coordination of the struggle, and should get ready for the statewide conference to assess March 4 and discuss next steps.
For more information:
http://socialistworker.org/2010/03/18/what...
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It was undeniably a very fine set of picket lines but I don't see the accomplishments. Nobody who controls the money in Sacramento even noticed, and the rest of us who were just trying to get into the library and go to class got to pay for a wasted day. Maybe you learned something but it wasn't a great day for the rest of us.
the people in sacramento don't give a fuck about us anyway and can't fix our problems. we only have each other and our ability to organize collectively to transform this society based on property, exploitation and privelege.
maybe you should have been on the picket line instead of trying to go to class. then you could have learned something.
Anyone else here remember how the ISO and a Trot Group/Liberal/Union Bureaucrat Front sabotaged the 10/24 conference by shelving the call for definite strikes and a push toward organizing with a general strike in mind? I also remember hearing from many people that if there were successes, the ISO would claim credit.
Screw you ISO, and your attempts to steer the militancy of the rank and file and the community into your bureaucratic counter-revolutionary centralist fronting. On balance your presence was a huge detriment that held back militancy, and that worked to obscure the historical context of student actions. From your sabotaging 10/24 to your denouncing the SF State occupations, you worked as a break on us spreading the struggle into the broader community.
Maybe you should stick to promoting "anti-war" tours for Stalinists like George Galloway and running fake "Green" candidates like Todd Chretien for your reformist platform.
Congrats to the fine organizing efforts of UC Santa Cruz students who were obviously able to limit the meddling of the ISO.
Screw you ISO, and your attempts to steer the militancy of the rank and file and the community into your bureaucratic counter-revolutionary centralist fronting. On balance your presence was a huge detriment that held back militancy, and that worked to obscure the historical context of student actions. From your sabotaging 10/24 to your denouncing the SF State occupations, you worked as a break on us spreading the struggle into the broader community.
Maybe you should stick to promoting "anti-war" tours for Stalinists like George Galloway and running fake "Green" candidates like Todd Chretien for your reformist platform.
Congrats to the fine organizing efforts of UC Santa Cruz students who were obviously able to limit the meddling of the ISO.
They must be brought class consciousness from the outside by the working class. Once they get it they will supersede themselves and there will be no ISO.
This guy seems to mean well, and he writes decently. Give him some time, he'll probably see the ISO doesn't embody the things he is talking about in his post any more than Lenin and the Bolsheviks stood for the council communists' ideas they ripped off for their rhetoric in 1917. As long as he has access to history, he has a chance to develop a materialist conception of Bolshevism as anti-working class.
He's thinkin its rad, but its actually just the same old same old; only difference is that it's from the left rather than the right.
(And as for the "victory" of being the only UC to be fully shut down? Puhleeze. That has everything to do with the bottle-necked physical layout of the campus, and nothing to do with your planning or protest. Give anyone a campus with only 2 entrances and even a moron could shut it down.)
(And as for the "victory" of being the only UC to be fully shut down? Puhleeze. That has everything to do with the bottle-necked physical layout of the campus, and nothing to do with your planning or protest. Give anyone a campus with only 2 entrances and even a moron could shut it down.)
UCSC would not have been a successful strike without lots of hard work and organizing and that can't be reduced to some 4th grade notion of the "geography" of the campus. The major problem with the above piece is not the details on organizing etc. It is that the writer is either being duplicitous or is unaware of how the ISO actually operates.
If the latter is true, it's forgivable, but he should search the net for the well accounted for history of ISO hijackings of conferences, front group and fraction group duplicity, and their consistently bad politics that run the spectrum from Stalinist apologist to ineffectual liberal reformism.
The ISO attracts young people who genuinely care about social justice, but if you stay in the group for more than 2 years, you've most likely turned in your original hopes and aspirations for society in exchange for a stiflingly soul destroying false pragmatism along the lines of democratic [sic] centralism.
If the latter is true, it's forgivable, but he should search the net for the well accounted for history of ISO hijackings of conferences, front group and fraction group duplicity, and their consistently bad politics that run the spectrum from Stalinist apologist to ineffectual liberal reformism.
The ISO attracts young people who genuinely care about social justice, but if you stay in the group for more than 2 years, you've most likely turned in your original hopes and aspirations for society in exchange for a stiflingly soul destroying false pragmatism along the lines of democratic [sic] centralism.
In the author's defense, the central message behind this posting is that strikes take a lot of organizing and work. The actions of March 4th didn't just happen overnight, it took dedicated people with a good political framework talking to people one on one for months on end.
That being said, I don't agree w/ everything the ISO does but that doesn't mean they don't play an important role in the struggle against capital. This is a poor time to get all absolute and divisive about various factions within radical communities especially when we're a fraction of the population - the state and capital still have their boots on our necks, so let's remember who are allies are.
That being said, I don't agree w/ everything the ISO does but that doesn't mean they don't play an important role in the struggle against capital. This is a poor time to get all absolute and divisive about various factions within radical communities especially when we're a fraction of the population - the state and capital still have their boots on our necks, so let's remember who are allies are.
ISO and their ilk are not allies, all they do is promote their own organization. Constantly re-iterating their conservative program even while everyone else in the room is clearly down for something more radical is NOT contributing to the movement, it is sabotaging it. Anyone who doesn't realize this obviously has had limited experience with the ISO.
The heavily centralized and oppressive organizing methods of the ISO are in of themselves counter revolutionary. The ISO comes to every organizing effort with the goal of taking it over and steering it toward focusing on recruiting for their group, and secondly, on carrying out activism that lags well behind the militancy of what people organizing around the situation at hand are calling for. If they can, they will actively dismantle and discredit any groups that they see as "competition." They have a proven record, documented even on the internet by various writers, groups, indybay threads, etc. of hijacking conferences and intentionally sabotaging democratic processes even as they are the loudest calling for openness and diversity.
They were one of the groups that removed the call for a definite strike from the 10/24 conference. To do so, they had to bypass what the various campuses and groups had come to the table with in order to arrive at a less militant result so as not to alienate their allies in various union leadership and mainstream political party positions. They have had a largely negative impact on March 4th, diminishing coherence, sabotaging democratic processes, and lessening militancy as part of their front with union bureaucrats (not rank and file) and liberal groups.
They really do believe in and see themselves as the Leninist vanguard party, and their actions can be directly compared to the Bolsheviks dismantling the soviets and enforcing Party based dictatorship over the proletariat. We're the proletariat. 80% of undergrad students have to work as they get their degrees. Anyone who has had to work with the ISO over a given period has seen their straight up duplicity and disrespect for others, whom they will not hesitate to smear if a significant disagreement arises. When you hear the terms "ultra-Left" or "red baiter" come out, it's usually because someone is trying to get around an attempt by the ISO to control their organizing, and must be discredited as too right or too left. The ISO has many such tricks, but if you listen to their members, and look at what they do, you'll notice they are among the weakest in analyzing the present, and that they don't learn from the past.
Of course ISO occasionally "does good things." Gavin Newsome does too. Are you going to start a coalition with him, or with the UC Regents because they have voiced their support for some of the March 4th actions?
Get Schwarzenneger on the blower, he's on your side too.
Don't defend the ISO on some nebulous principle of fairness. First determine what their affect on working class organizing is, and then critique them accordingly. Once you do some research, I'm assuming you're fairly new to this if you don't know how they roll, you'll be able to develop a deeper understanding of their role as a break on militancy. The organizing at UCSC was successful in part because many of the people who engaged in it knew the play book of the various trotskyist/leninist and liberal groups and were able to organize around what students and community members saw as viable and needed instead of some "the workers aren't ready yet" nonsense the ISO and liberals constantly push. The ISO is so conservative that, at a high school where the principal supported student walkouts, the ISO opposed them. But this is just one example of their limiting, to a ridiculous degree, what is possible.
The effective organizing is coming from the people involved in the struggle, not from institutions like the ISO who are more focused on positioning themselves, controlling their members, and maintaining their organization, than on organizing actions and theory that are appropriate to the situation at hand as it develops.
They were one of the groups that removed the call for a definite strike from the 10/24 conference. To do so, they had to bypass what the various campuses and groups had come to the table with in order to arrive at a less militant result so as not to alienate their allies in various union leadership and mainstream political party positions. They have had a largely negative impact on March 4th, diminishing coherence, sabotaging democratic processes, and lessening militancy as part of their front with union bureaucrats (not rank and file) and liberal groups.
They really do believe in and see themselves as the Leninist vanguard party, and their actions can be directly compared to the Bolsheviks dismantling the soviets and enforcing Party based dictatorship over the proletariat. We're the proletariat. 80% of undergrad students have to work as they get their degrees. Anyone who has had to work with the ISO over a given period has seen their straight up duplicity and disrespect for others, whom they will not hesitate to smear if a significant disagreement arises. When you hear the terms "ultra-Left" or "red baiter" come out, it's usually because someone is trying to get around an attempt by the ISO to control their organizing, and must be discredited as too right or too left. The ISO has many such tricks, but if you listen to their members, and look at what they do, you'll notice they are among the weakest in analyzing the present, and that they don't learn from the past.
Of course ISO occasionally "does good things." Gavin Newsome does too. Are you going to start a coalition with him, or with the UC Regents because they have voiced their support for some of the March 4th actions?
Get Schwarzenneger on the blower, he's on your side too.
Don't defend the ISO on some nebulous principle of fairness. First determine what their affect on working class organizing is, and then critique them accordingly. Once you do some research, I'm assuming you're fairly new to this if you don't know how they roll, you'll be able to develop a deeper understanding of their role as a break on militancy. The organizing at UCSC was successful in part because many of the people who engaged in it knew the play book of the various trotskyist/leninist and liberal groups and were able to organize around what students and community members saw as viable and needed instead of some "the workers aren't ready yet" nonsense the ISO and liberals constantly push. The ISO is so conservative that, at a high school where the principal supported student walkouts, the ISO opposed them. But this is just one example of their limiting, to a ridiculous degree, what is possible.
The effective organizing is coming from the people involved in the struggle, not from institutions like the ISO who are more focused on positioning themselves, controlling their members, and maintaining their organization, than on organizing actions and theory that are appropriate to the situation at hand as it develops.
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