Call to Action from UCSC Strikers

[ JOIN, or DIE. Artwork by Evie Chang ]

Today, UCSC's administration officially sent letters of termination to 54 graduate student workers. "This has been a difficult time for our campus and we have more problems to solve," EVC Kletzer states, while looking "forward to continuing to fulfill our tremendous mission," presumably after every wildcat strikers is dismissed. What Kletzer forgot to add is that strikers also have a "tremendous mission" to be fulfilled: that of winning a COLA.

The UC administration indeed has "more problems to solve". The COLA campaign is now a major fight that encompasses large bodies of graduate student-workers at every UC campus. The stakes of the strike are clear, and implicate the future academic conditions for us all. This is not a time to back down, but rise up. Firing one of us is unacceptable, and must be opposed with the full force of our organizational capacities; firing 54 of us, however, is strikebreaking of a much higher order of magnitude, undermining the very idea of independent rank and file activity, on and off campus.

It is imperative that we fight back against the repressive measures of Williams, Kletzer, Napolitano, and the UC regents. In our view, the only way to reinstate our comrades at UCSC, combat the preemptive disciplinary measures of an increasingly intransigent UC administration, and win a COLA, is concerted strike action on a mass scale. We are hereby calling for the strike to spread, into new quarters, with as far a reach as possible, to every UC campus. We are calling for a day of action on Monday, March 2, with rallies and marches on every campus!

See you on the picket.

Solidarity forever,
UCSC wildcats