A Hot Fall at the UCs

A faculty comrade recently reported that the UC Berkeley Chancellors are anticipating a hot fall on campus. Apparently, they are actively working, along with the UCPD, to prevent another November 20th, or something even bigger.

But we'd rather not let them get their way.

This fall, it's critical that we block normal operations of the University, and that we transform our campuses into sites of mass, militant struggle. Barring a hot fall, waves of austerity will continue to scatter and wound us. Another round of tuition hikes will push students further into indebtedness, even though we're already carrying unpayable debt burdens. Workers will face layoffs, and those who remain employed will suffer speedups and pension raids. Health services will be cut. And child care will be privatized, compelling indebted and overworked caretakers, mostly women, to maintain impossible, isolating, and crushing schedules.

Collective resistance to such austerity is possible; we just have to get together, have each others' backs, and sustain each other through our shared struggle.

At the UCs, a germinal framework for such resistance -- a schedule of resistance to counter austerity's impossible schedules -- is emerging. We're getting started in earnest in two weeks, with a public forum on austerity the evening of September 20th, followed on the 22nd with a day of action. Details for the actions are being worked out, but we see this day as an initial chance to find each other and to constitute the collective bonds and shared grounds from which subsequent rounds of struggle will take shape.

The month of October is relatively open at the moment. But in early November, various groups of workers and students are planning for a mass walkout. We're hoping that this moment allows us to throw the operations and governance of the University into crisis; to shut the place down, for the sake of all of us.

Nov Action 2