Solidarity Picket for Puerto Rican Students

Featuring live call-in via telephone from student strikers at the University of Puerto Rico

The students of the public university system in Puerto Rico are starting their fifth week of striking against cuts to public education. Many of the demands and issues they are fighting for are the same ones we have mobilized around in the fight to defend and expand public education in California.

These students are supported by workers organized by independent unions (C.P.T./Confederation of Puerto Rican Workers), Coordinadora Sindical and the AFL-CIO in the island nation.

They have been affected by the wave of privatization and cutbacks that globalization has brought on the workers and youth of the world. Over $100 million in funding has been cut from the University of Puerto Rico alone. This is part of a privatization drive that U.S. corporations and the colonial government are implementing, having already slashed close to 80,000 jobs in the public sector.

As colonized people of the United States, young Puerto Rican men and women are being attacked by the same government leaders who are waging imperialist wars of aggression against Iraq and Afghanistan.

Come to support these strikers and demand that the governor of Puerto Rico and the UPR administration stop their repression and intimidation of this critical struggle. Also learn more about the historic fight to end the U.S. occupation of Puerto Rico and recognize the right of self-determination and independence for Puerto Rico.

Endorsed by the Student Worker Action Team; Campus Radical Women; Freedom Socialist Party; Richard Mellor, member, Labor’s Militant Voice and retired AFSCME 444; Jack Heyman, member ILWU, Local 10; and others—everyone welcome!