May 1 General Strike

More info at http://strikemay1st.com

On the coming general higher education strike

On November 10th at 1am, the following proposal was adopted by the Occupy Cal general assembly:

After a mass rally and march of over 3,000 people, and repeated police assaults on the encampment, the Occupy Cal general assembly decided on the night of November 9th -- with over 500 votes, 95% of the assembly -- to organize and call for a strike and day of action on Tuesday, November 15 in all sectors of higher education. We will strike in opposition to the cuts to public education, university privatization, and the indebting of our generation.

We also call for simultaneous solidarity actions in workplaces and k-12 schools. We will organize through daily, 5pm strike planning meetings at our encampments, followed by general assemblies.

The following is meant as an analysis of the context, aims, and possible effects of the general higher education strike and day of action.

What occurred yesterday on campuses around the state, including at UC Berkeley, made real the antagonistic relations that shape the lives of students and academic workers. When university administrators and police repeatedly brutalized assembled workers, students, and debtors at large, such relations -- of exploitation and precarity -- were cast into sharp relief.

We did not back down, nor did we shy from an encounter with the forces that manage our lives and profit from our indebtedness. We held our ground when the police attacked our assemblies and encampments; then, after securing a space for assembly, we decided collectively to counter the Regents and the financial industry -- those responsible for privatizing our educational commons and resegregating our schools -- with one of our most effective tactics: our refusal to work and to attend classes.

We know that our relatively local acts of resistance and refusal will only have transformative force if they are embedded in a larger political disruption, a strike and day of action across all sectors of higher education, tied to sympathy strikes and actions in workplaces and schools. This is why we have called for a general higher education strike -- a strike throughout an entire economic sector and sphere of public life.

We understand that a fully realized general higher education strike is not likely to materialize next Tuesday. And yet, we take inspiration from last week's general strike in Oakland, and believe that a relatively generalized work stoppage and walkout is possible. By pushing for widespread mobilizations next Tuesday, we will build support for the convergences of the 16th and will further expand and strengthen our bonds of solidarity and mutual care.

****

For an account of how the Regents and financial industry profits off our indebtedness, see the recent pamphlet from Reclamations: "Generation of Debt."

Contextualizing Certain Actions that Took Place during the General Strike

Last Wednesday, tens of thousands of demonstrators marched in the streets of Oakland, shut down the center of the city, and paralyzed the Port of Oakland. With so many people, affinity groups, and organizations involved, things are bound to happen that not everybody agrees with. In the aftermath of the day of action, many folks have stepped up on Facebook, Twitter, and even the Occupy Oakland website to criticize and condemn a couple of these actions: the property destruction at banks and a Whole Foods that took place during an anticapitalist march in the afternoon; and the occupation of the former Traveler's Aid Society, which occurred late Wednesday night and was violently repressed by hundreds of riot police with tear gas, flashbang grenades, rubber bullets, and arrests (including a number of journalists and legal observers). What we want to do here is to provide a few important pieces of background as a way of helping to contextualize Wednesday's actions.

To begin with, one of the very first decisions the GA made was to approve a statement on diversity of tactics. As of October 30, it was collected with a series of other decisions (including a statement to the media which we mentioned and started to discuss here), formatted into a single document, and distributed at the GA as the "Occupy Oakland General Assembly Decisions and Practices":

Occupy Oakland encourages diversity of tactics for actions that occur outside the camp. For example, during marches:

• when confronted by police, some people may want to attempt to have calm conversations with them, urging them to be non-violent
• some people may want to sit down in front of lines of police
• some people may want to express their anger by yelling at the police
• some people may want to attempt to remove police barriers
• some people may want to disrupt traffic or banks
• some people may prefer to remain on the sidewalk

We should be tolerant of each other’s approaches and respect different forms of protest, while being aware of our privilege or lack of it, especially when engaging with the police.

The second decision we wanted to share has to do specifically with the building occupation. Many have criticized the occupation for being "secretive," for purposefully "provoking" the police, for circumventing the General Assembly and therefore constituting an "undemocratic" form. Most of these attacks strike us as simplistic and moralistic, although some have laid out much more thoughtful critiques that are worth seriously reflecting on (e.g. zunguzungu). In any case, what is missing in the majority of cases is any reference to the GA's declaration explicitly endorsing and offering material support for autonomous building occupations. It was approved by the GA with a vote of about 95 percent prior to the general strike:

Declaration of Solidarity with Neighborhood Reclamations

Occupy Oakland, in solidarity with the Occupy movement and with the local community, has established the principle of claiming for open use the open space that has been kept from us. We are committed to helping this practice continue and grow. Here in Oakland, thousands of buildings owned by city, banks, and corporations stand idle and abandoned. At the same time social services such as child and healthcare, education, libraries and community spaces are being defunded and eliminated.

Occupy Oakland supports the efforts of people in all Oakland neighborhoods to reclaim abandoned properties for use to meet their own immediate needs. Such spaces are already being occupied and squatted unofficially by the dispossessed, the marginalized, by many of the very people who have joined together here in Oscar Grant Plaza to make this a powerful and diverse movement.

We commit to providing political and material support to neighborhood reclamations, and supporting them in the face of eviction threats or police harassment. In solidarity with the global occupation movement, we encourage the transformation of abandoned spaces into resource centers toward meeting urgent community needs that the current economic system cannot and will not provide.

The occupation of the former Traveler's Aid Society building fits very well into these guidelines. A quick look at the half-sheet that was distributed in the moment, as well as the full statement that was posted later on, is all it takes to understand that the occupation was meant to "transform[] abandoned spaces into resource centers toward meeting urgent community needs."



An interesting question has been raised about the meaning of "neighborhood" or "autonomous" building occupations and likewise what "community" is being referred to in the context of "community needs." Who is this collective "we"? Who falls outside of that category? For an action to be "autonomous" or be associated with a "neighborhood" does that mean it can't be an official part of the GA or of the so-called Occupy movement? That seems absurd, especially given how the movement is framed as one of the "99 percent." Furthermore, even in the overall context of the general strike, much of what took place was organized autonomously. As Jaime Omar Yassin put it, "Even the migration to the port, some two miles away, was a puzzle of pieces of self-directed groups." The march from UC Berkeley to Oscar Grant Plaza, the critical mass out to the port, the anticapitalist march, the flying pickets that shut down various banks, the feminist bloc in the march -- were each and every one of these actions voted on individually by the full general assembly? No. And for good reason. First, there's an issue of effectiveness. From early on the GA has been based on autonomously organized actions. Here's another chunk from the GA's decisions and practices:

3. Encourage autonomous actions.
In order to keep the GA from being bogged down, and in order to allow for diversity of tactics, actions other than major events (like the General Strike) should be announced as actions rather than brought forward as proposals to be voted on.

Second, there's an issue of safety. Zunguzungu writes, "We do things in the open, or I’m not part of that 'we.'" That certainly makes sense for a lot of actions. For example, the general strike would have been impossible to organize in a closed forum. In large part, that's because of the nature of the action itself -- you can't shut down the Port of Oakland with an affinity group of, say, ten people. On the other hand, a small affinity group can do other things that can be very useful and effective. If those things are illegal and require the element of surprise, it becomes very dangerous and counterproductive for people to propose them in a large, open general assembly. There are often undercover cops in the camp and the media often reports on and records the GAs. The idea that every single action has to be planned "in the open" effectively means taking a large set of actions off the table.

Hopefully these statements will help contextualize what went down on the day of the general strike. We aren't trying to present these as absolute answers and agree on the need for some serious discussions of tactics and strategies (though we also think these specific discussions should happen in the context of the GA and not on social media). Overall, it's important to remember that what we organized -- over the course of a single week! -- was amazing, an incredibly powerful show of force, and we shouldn't lose sight of that in the face of internal divisions.

Finally, as a postscript, here are a few more links that we've found helpful for thinking about questions of "violence," property destruction, tactics, and strategies. These interventions are valuable and to some extent model the kind of conversations we need to be having (and are in fact starting to have -- last night's GA was in this respect very useful).

- Statement on the Occupation of the former Traveler's Aid Society at 520 16th Street
- An Open Letter from an Anarchist Participant in Occupy Oakland
- No-one Cares about Property Damage
- For the Fracture of Good Order
- A Night of Violence... against Oakland Protesters
- The General Strike of November 2nd, and How Occupy Oakland Occupied Oakland
- Notes on Oakland 2011
- The Black Bloc, A Hopefully More Interesting Critique
- An Open Letter to the Black Bloc and Others Concerning Wednesday's Tactics in Oakland

Telegraph

Cal bloc takes Telegraph on the way to Oscar Grant Plaza, about 30 minutes ago.

[Update Wednesday 12:55pm]: About to arrive at Oscar Grant Plaza (thanks to Justin Beck for the photo!).

[Update Wednesday 1:34pm]: Blockading UCOP! Police lock doors.

UCOP Shuts Down for General Strike [Update: Has UCOP Been Handed Over to OPD?]

[Update 3, Wednesday 9:54am]: Reports from the ground: people have been spotted on the roof of the UCOP building. As reported below, the building has been shut down due to the general strike. So who are the people on the roof? "They must be police."

[Update 2, Wednesday 7:22am]: I just spoke with Diane Klein, a spokesperson for UCOP, who flatly denied the story. "That is not true," she said. "The building will not be used as a staging site for the Oakland Police."

[Update Tuesday 9:22pm]: We have not been able to independently confirm this as of yet, but we just received this report from a comrade:

I was just told by the receptionist at the UC Office of the President that they are lending the UCOP conference room near 19th and Franklin to the Oakland Police Department to be a Command Center. I even called back to double-check. I suggest we all email and call the UCOP and demand that they do not lend UC space to the OPD after the level of police violence last week against citizens of Oakland (including many UC faculty, staff, and students). Is there a way for us to send this word around to other students, faculty and staff?

From a friend on the inside:

November 1, 2011
3:15pm

Dear Oakland-based UCOP employees:

As a follow up to my message this morning, we have decided to operate Oakland UCOP offices in weekend mode tomorrow, meaning all employees should work from home as best they can.

Essential operations personnel who must be in the office tomorrow will need their employee badges for access.

Please continue to monitor local news and your UC email for updates.

All employees should plan to come to work on Thursday as scheduled.

Sincerely,

Nathan

Couldn't have had anything to do with this...

Occupy Oakland Press Conference: General Strike

UAW 2865 Resolution in Support of Occupy Oakland General Strike

Whereas UAW 2865 witnesses firsthand how the 1% (in the form of UC Regents and top UC executives) conspire to steal ever more from students and workers through repeated tuition hikes, reduced services, layoffs, increased workloads, outsourcing and other austerity measures; and

Whereas we stand for the rights of all people to living wage jobs with affordable health care, quality education, a voice on the job, fair housing and a well-funded public sector, and

WHEREAS: Unemployment is the highest it has been since the Great Depression, and people are staying unemployed longer now than in the Great Depression, 1/3 of California homes are underwater, 1/5 of the foreclosures nation-wide are in California, and San Franciscans alone have lost almost $6 billion in home value costing their city over $74 million, and

WHEREAS: Occupy Wall Street is a people-powered movement that began on September 17, 2011 in Manhattan's Financial District, and has spread to over 100 cities in the United States and actions in over 1,500 cities globally. The movement is inspired by popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, and the Wisconsin protests earlier this year, and aims to expose how the richest 1% of people are writing the rules of an unfair global economy that is foreclosing on our future, and

WHEREAS: the Occupy Wall Street has galvanized public sentiment and a broad-based movement protesting the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that has caused the greatest recession in generations, and

WHEREAS: the National AFL-CIO and Change to Win coalitions have endorsed Occupy Wall Street, a growing number of trade union activists have joined this movement, both as individual workers, and as part of an increasing number of International and Local union contingents connecting their own fights to the larger demands of the movement for economic justice and fairness, and

WHEREAS: Union and Community organizations together have been working in coalition since the crash of the economy to force Banks to pay for public services and to renegotiate predatory loans with home owners, governments, and non-profit agencies, and

WHEREAS:  public safety officers have used excessive force against peaceful protesters at Oscar Grant (Frank Ogawa) Plaza and violated their first amendment rights when more than 500 public safety officers with firearms aimed at the occupiers, tore down their tents in a predawn raid on October 25; and

WHEREAS: public safety officers on the evening of Oct. 25 again used excessive force  injuring and endangering the lives of demonstrators when they marched on the evening of October 25th to protest the violence against the occupiers that morning;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that this union will encourage its members and allies to act in support of Nov. 2 actions and honors as a "Sanctioned Union Strike Line" OccupyOakland and Occupy Wall Street, encourages union members and Local unions to participate in the movement, will actively support any unionized or non-unionized worker who refuses to break up, "raid," or confiscate the belongings of protesters, and calls on unions representing DPW workers to not participate in such activity, and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that this union and its allies stand with our sisters and brothers of Occupy Wall Street, OccupyOakland, and cities and towns across the country who are fed up with an unfair economy that works for 1% of Americans while the vast majority of people struggle to pay the bills, get an education, and raise their families, and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that UAW 2865 recognizes that protest movements, like strike lines and organizing campaigns, do not have curfews, are not 9-5 activities, and in doing so UAW 2865  recognizes and will work to protect the right for OccupyOakland to protest 24 hours a day, on-site and with proper protection including food, medical supplies, water, and tents, and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that UAW 2865 has endorsed and will continue to endorse and turn-out members to OccupyOakland rallies and events, to provide in-kind donations like tents and food, and

BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED that UAW 2865 joins its sister unions in the UC Berkeley Labor Coalition in forwarding this resolution for adoption to other local unions and central labor bodies.

Occupy Oakland General Assembly Calls For A Wed Nov. 2 Oakland General Strike/Mass Day of Action

+

PDF here.

+

More info at Occupy Oakland.

Below is the proposal passed by the Occupy Oakland General Assembly on Wednesday October 26, 2011 in reclaimed Oscar Grant Plaza. 1607 people voted. 1484 voted in favor of the resolution, 77 abstained and 46 voted against it, passing the proposal at 96.9%. The General Assembly operates on a modified consensus process that passes proposals with 90% in favor and with abstaining votes removed from the final count.

PROPOSAL:

We as fellow occupiers of Oscar Grant Plaza propose that on Wednesday November 2, 2011, we liberate Oakland and shut down the 1%.

We propose a city wide general strike and we propose we invite all students to walk out of school. Instead of workers going to work and students going to school, the people will converge on downtown Oakland to shut down the city.

All banks and corporations should close down for the day or we will march on them.

While we are calling for a general strike, we are also calling for much more. People who organize out of their neighborhoods, schools, community organizations, affinity groups, workplaces and families are encouraged to self organize in a way that allows them to participate in shutting down the city in whatever manner they are comfortable with and capable of.

The whole world is watching Oakland. Let’s show them what is possible.

The Strike Coordinating Council will begin meeting everyday at 5pm in Oscar Grant Plaza before the daily General Assembly at 7pm. All strike participants are invited. Stay tuned for much more information and see you next Wednesday.

+