Build Our Power, Spread the Strike: A UCSC Strike Leaflet

Outreach flyer written by the Black Rose Anarchist Federation that discusses the growing wildcat strike across the University of California system.

As the UC Santa Cruz #COLAstrike is escalating with threats of mass firings by administration, other campuses are organizing themselves with UC Davis and UC Santa Barbara announcing strike action. Graduate student worker members of Black Rose/Rosa Negra on various campuses across the University of California system created this statement advocating the need to build our collective power and spread the strike.

Download Flyer HERE

The strike is now spreading. With each passing day it seems to gather steam — a sickout here, a teach-in there, marches on administration buildings, solidarity pickets and sit ins, all culminating in decisive and enthusiastic “YES!” votes being cast in strike polls.

Where we once felt the inertia of an unresponsive union bureaucracy, we’re now riding on a wave of self determined momentum. Though resignation had before appeared to be the only option in the face of an inadequate contract, militancy and workers’ self-organization have jolted both our peers and ourselves into shaking off this useless self pity. A new path has emerged, blazed first by workers at Santa Cruz, but now widening and branching off onto campuses statewide.

We have conjured a mass movement, which presents us now with this choice: allow it to be smothered by fear and self-doubt already trickling in through the expected channels, or, to animate it by reproducing our activity in every corner of the state. For it to live, we must spread the strike.

No one can say for sure what lies ahead. The coming struggle requires us what has oftentimes thought to be unachievable: we must contest the power of one of the world’s largest employers, we must fight on the terrain of a housing crisis decades in the making, and we must make clear that the rank and file, not bosses or bureaucracy, determines the agenda of our union. This will be a long struggle, but the COLA movement proves our power everyday.

As strike actions kick off at UC Davis (@ucd4cola) and UC Santa Barbara (@ucsb4cola), graduate worker members of Black Rose on various campuses across the UC got together to write a statement – advocating to build our collective power and #spreadthestrike!#COLAStrike pic.twitter.com/5owRmLae0h

— Black Rose – Bay Area (@bayareabrrn) February 27, 2020

Already, fellow workers within and outside the academy cite us as an example of a worker militancy once thought to have been lost in this country. In the words of one midwestern UAW auto plant worker watching our wildcat from afar: “This system is complete and utter bullshit […] These graduate workers know the game and are actually doing something to change it.”

Beyond  simply  a  COLA,  what  would  it look like to rid ourselves of the ‘system’s  bullshit’? A worker-student run university would be a good start. The American University  in  general,  and  the  UC  in  particular,  is  a  microcosm of the ills which  infect our society: austerity measures fuelled by capitalist greed and brutality which seek to break the will of those who dare imagine and build a better future; a militarized  police  force intent on protecting property interests and maintaining a  racist, colonial social order; and ecologically disastrous policies based in the myth of  never-ending  expansion,  extraction,  and  profit.  If  we  continue  building  our  power, the seeming impossibility of radical, bottom-up transformation starts to melt  away  —  much  the  same  way  that  our  pessimism  about  a  system-wide  wildcat strike is melting away now. Another university is possible. Another world is possible.

We believe, as the chant goes, that we will win. Not only will we win our COLA, but we will also win a combative spirit to carry into the next struggle.

Let’s Go.