Call for Open University Strike and Solidarity Actions on November 15th

Adopted by the Occupy Cal General Assembly

After a mass rally and march of over 3,000 people, and repeated police assaults on the Occupy Cal encampment, the general assembly at UC Berkeley 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. We ask that all classes be cancelled or held at Sproul Plaza.

The Open University strike is both a response to the University’s violent raid on the encampment, and an action against the defunding and privatization of public education in California.

We will strike to reassert our collective right to freely assemble, both at the University and elsewhere, so that we are able to build public spaces where we can discuss and counter the various crises affecting our communities. We stand in solidarity with the Occupy movement, and especially with Occupy Oakland, which has been, and may again soon be, repressed by the city of Oakland and the Oakland Police Department.

We will also strike to reaffirm our determination to fight for a truly public and free University, and for the refunding of all levels of public education and public services. Since the crisis of 2008, the UC Regents have accelerated their push to privatize the University, subjecting students to unsustainable levels of debt, excluding increasing numbers of students, and further resegregating public education in California. The policy of privatization also subjects workers to layoffs, work speedups, and drastic benefits reductions. All these regressive transformations are forms of structural violence, which the police enforced against the assembled students, faculty, and workers on November 9th.

We call upon all sectors of public higher education in California to take actions on Tuesday, November 15th, up to and including strike actions, and to join the mass convergences on November 16th at the UC Regents meeting and the CSU Trustees meeting. We also call upon workplaces and K-12 schools to join us, either by taking actions at their sites or by converging on UC Berkeley and helping us to open up and transform the University from which most Californians have been systematically excluded.

We do not think that property destruction is a useful tactic and we ask those who join the Open University to respect this sentiment. At the same time, we do not think that it is a good strategy to use physical force against those who might engage in such acts.

Please join us on November 15th as we stop business as usual at our University in order to open up and transform our campus, and as we reestablish the Occupy Cal encampment.

Schedule for November 15 Open University:

8am-5pm: All day open university activities (teach-outs, workshops, public readings, installations, etc.) at Sproul Plaza and surrounding areas.
Noon: Mass convergence at Sproul Hall and formal inauguration of day-long open university.
Noon – 2pm: Teach-outs in Sproul Plaza.
2pm: Rally against police violence and other, related forms of violence, including dispossession, privatization, and debt.
2:30pm: March to Berkeley High and Berkeley City College.
5pm: General Assembly at Sproul Plaza.

Occupy Cal’s Demands:

Local Demands
- Respect Free Speech, Including the Right to Set Up Tents.
- Immediate Resignation of Robert Birgeneau, George Breslauer, Harry LeGrande, and Mitch Celaya. Democratic Election of their Replacements by Students, Faculty, and Staff.
- Charge the Police Responsible for Brutalizing Protesters. No Use of Force Against Protests on Campus.
- Amnesty for All Protesters.
- Make UC Berkeley a Sanctuary Campus for Undocumented People. Pass the UC-wide Dream Act.
- Equal Benefits and Retirement Security for UC Union Workers.

Statewide Demands
- Reverse the Fee Hikes, Cuts, and Layoffs To At Least Their 2009 Levels.
- Refund Public Education and Public Services: Tax the Banks and Billionaires. Repeal Prop 13.
- Full Implementation of Affirmative Action. Overturn Prop 209.

Nationwide Demands
- Stop the Privatization of Public Education.
- Bail Out Schools and Public Services. Redirect Military Funding to Education.
- Immediate Forgiveness of All Student Debt.
- Repeal Race to the Top.
- Stop the Attacks on Teachers Unions.

Endorsing Groups:
Occupy Cal, UC Berkeley Faculty Association, UCSF Faculty Association, UC Davis Faculty Association, UC San Diego Faculty Association, UC Council of Faculty Associations, AFSCME 3299, Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, California Nurses Association, Communities for a New California, UAW Local 2865 (UC), UAW 4123 (CSU), UC-AFT.

Solidarity Strike Rally at UC Davis, 11/15

From the Bicycle Barricade:

When they raised tuition, they told us they had no choice. When they cut our programs and majors and increased our class sizes, they said they had no choice.

When we protested, they told us to go to Sacramento.

When we refused to be misdirected, they beat and arrested us.

When they told us we couldn’t change anything, some of us believed them. After all, the fees kept going up. But some of us kept fighting. We occupied buildings and highways, we confronted the cops they sent to hurt and intimidate us, and we kept talking to our friends.

And some of our friends listened. The nationwide Occupy Wall Street movement draws inspiration from the California student movement begun in Fall 2009. The slogan “Occupy Everything,” once derided as absurd or vanguardist, is now on everyone’s lips. And when the Occupy movement came back home to the University of California last week, the administration responded with violence, sending sheriff’s deputies onto the Berkeley campus to beat students engaged in non-violent protest. A student was hospitalized, and several others came out with bruised and broken ribs.

Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau justifies his actions by claiming that the students, when they linked arms to counter the threat of violent dispersal were themselves “not non-violent.” In other words, the forming of a human chain is now declared to be an action which forces police to break students’ ribs with batons. This is the familiar logic of the authoritarian mind employed by abusive parents to justify the harm they inflict on their own children—”You made me do it. I had no choice.”

But we are not children, and we will not stand for this. We know by now that the only thing that has restored state funding, even temporarily, to the University of California has been the threat of student protest. We know that the only reason the regents have tabled their planned mid-year tuition increase is the threat of student protest. And we know that what the mis-managers of this institution fear most is when we stand together and put our bodies on the line to say “Stop!”

Last Wednesday, after being brutalized by the police, 3000 students and faculty at Berkeley rallied and called for a system-wide strike. This Tuesday we will walk out of our classes and strike in solidarity with our friends and colleagues across UC campuses. We demand an end to police violence and an end to the systematic looting (privatization) of our public universities.

For two years we’ve been chanting “Our University!” It’s time for us to prove it. Faculty, students, and workers: Join us at noon this Tuesday, Nov 15th, on the Quad, to renew the fight to take it back.

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."

Occupy Cal strike call

After a mass rally and march of over 3,000 people, and repeated police assaults on the encampment, the Occupy Cal general assembly decided -- 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.

Declaration of Support for Strikes from Occupy Oakland

The following statement was approved by the Occupy Oakland General Assembly:

1. From this point forward, we offer our support for all strikes taking place in the Bay Area and specifically within Oakland.

2. We commit to offer practical and creative support to those who walk out from union or non-union work places, with or without union leadership.

3. This statement also applies to student strikes.

By issuing this statement, we wish to send a message to everyone in this city, that if you are fighting back, then we got your back. Talk to your co-workers and fellow students. Every grievance against this system is worthy of a collective response.

We encourage everyone, ourselves included, to no longer let our discontent boil beneath the surface. We believe the time to act is now.

Civil Disobedience and Direct Action

As we emerge from the longest period of mass political demobilization in American history, it would be good to remember some basic, non-electoral forms of dissent which previous generations took for granted and which are currently being employed around the world in places like Chile, Greece, Spain, and Puerto Rico.

After a year of breathless coverage of the Arab Spring, we have seen how most US commentators find it easier to idealize social movements in other countries rather than in their own backyard. As crippling austerity measures take hold in the US, we believe it will be important to open a conversation about forms of political resistance which do not rely upon lobbying, the ballot box, or one more petition on Change.org.

We have collected together some links to online resources which offer basic definitions of civil disobedience, direct action, and beyond. The precise meaning of these terms is the subject of much debate, but please take a moment.



What is civil disobedience?

Why would people engage in civil disobedience in the first place instead of simply voting?



How have mainstream liberal and conservative critics distinguished civil disobedience from other forms of non-electoral political resistance?



What is direct action?

Update on the Hunger Strike: Day 14

Today marks two full weeks since the hunger strike at UC Berkeley officially began. Yesterday, the Daily Cal published an article on the protest action, but for some reason claimed that the strikers were only in their tenth day without food. What, weekends don't count? The least they can do is get the numbers right! [Update: Our bad -- we got confused because the article was published on Monday with the headline that said the strike was in its tenth day, but in fact it was referring to the rally last Friday. Sorry about that.]

As we've reported here, the strikers' demands revolve around the UC administration's decision to consolidate three departments -- Ethnic Studies, Gender and Women's Studies, and African American Studies -- under the umbrella of their austerity program "Operational Excellence." In this case, "consolidation" means cuts, including staff layoffs and what looks like it could turn into something like speed-up for faculty. While the administration has struck all the right rhetorical tones (equality, inclusion, diversity, etc), they refuse to do anything material to respond to the demands. And this when the university is selling billions of dollars worth of construction bonds to engage in massive and secretive building projects that, in at least some cases, have gone millions of dollars over budget.

The above video was filmed on May 6, the actual tenth day of the hunger strike. In addition to giving an update on the (almost) current state of the strike, some of the speakers provide some really helpful context about the history of ethnic studies. This is useful for those folks who don't know much about the Third World Liberation Front and the story of student strikes and protests (and, of course, police repression) at SF State and Berkeley that led to the establishment of Ethnic Studies as a department. Here's a pretty detailed timeline of the protests of 1968-69 at SF State.

More than 800 Reasons

From occupyca,

This is a clip from an upcoming documentary about the student struggle so far at the University of Puerto Rico. It covers the recent establishment of the $800 fee increases, the police brutality against demonstrators, Governor Fortuño’s plan for privatizing the public sector, and the subsequent ban on large gatherings at the university.

Unlimited Wild General Strike

General Strike, or Unlimited Wild General Strike?

(burnt bookmobile, one and two)

Solidarity with the Goldsmiths Occupation!

... and all the other ongoing occupations in the UK right now: University College London, Glasgow, Manchester...

(video via the goldsmiths occupation blog)

[Update Wednesday 1:39 pm]: From Really Open University comes this update on the the University and College Union (UCU) strike so far, with which all these occupations are in solidarity:

Yesterday saw UCU striking in universities up and down the country. In total 60 institutions, including the entire Russell group, were on strike to defend pensions.

Students at Goldsmiths and UCL went into occupation in solidarity with the strike on Monday. They were joined on Tuesday by UEA, Kent, Edinburgh and UEL. In Glasgow, the Hetherington occupation (the longest anti-cuts occupation, running since 1st of Febuary) fell victim to a heavy-handed eviction by police, including 80 officers, dogs units and a helicopter. Several students were injured with one having to go to hospital for concussion. In response to this violent treatment, the occupiers joined a crowd of hundreds and marched to the main university building where they occupied the Senate. At the time of writing SOAS has also just gone into occupation.

More Fee Hikes, More Administrative Lies

Last Thursday, UC administrators including President Mark Yudof sat down for an interview with reporters for a number of UC newspapers. In between the bullshit and propagandizing, the following exchange took place:

California Aggie, UC Davis: So LAO [Legislative Analyst's Office] also recommended a 7 percent fee hike in the next academic year — what do you think about that?

Yudof: Well, my position right now is, we’ve hit you so hard I’m not planning on recommending a fee hike beyond what is already on the books, which is 8 percent in September.

Today, the UC Regents (among which Yudof counts himself) met at UCSF Mission Bay. Here's what came out of that meeting:

SAN FRANCISCO -- Students are likely to bear the brunt of the University of California's budget crisis for years to come.

UC likely will face a $1.5 billion budget gap in the next few years even under the rosiest scenarios, UC regents were told Wednesday.

As a result, administrators said, the university probably will need to lean on students for annual tuition increases. Among four scenarios discussed Wednesday, only one would come close to bridging the deficit: annual tuition and state funding increases of 8 percent.

But a rebound in flagging state money is unlikely, so the university most likely would rely on a combination of cuts and tuition hikes. If the state contributes no additional money in the next four years and UC does not make additional cuts, for example, tuition would need to rise more than 18 percent per year to make up the difference, the university said.

In other words, 40 percent in the last two years wasn't enough -- despite their "good intentions," despite their sympathetic words, despite their lobbying in Sacramento, despite their bullshit "advocacy," they're still raising our tuition. The decisions apparently won't be finalized until May. But whatever happens, we can say one thing with certainty: the administration lies. Fuck the administration, fuck their cuts, and fuck their fee hikes!

FIGHT BACK - WALKOUT - STRIKE - DISRUPT EVERYTHING - OCCUPY EVERYTHING - TAKE WHAT'S OURS - DO IT NOW

Warts and All: On the Occupation at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee

Posted at the Burnt Bookmobile:

The occupation is a feast at which we may satisfy our hunger for beautiful and intense moments.
- Graffiti from the occupied UWM theatre building

The stage is set: years of defeat-induced, pessimistic depression and a more-than-healthy dose of cynicism; cut backs, layoffs, and foreclosures piled on top of already extreme levels of poverty, hopelessness and social disintegration; a context notable for its glaring lack of collective struggle against this misery.

Then suddenly an outburst of activity: the occupation of the State Capitol building in Madison; anti-austerity demonstrations involving tens of thousands of people; massive wildcat sick-ins, student walk-outs and murmurs of a general strike.

Of course this attempt to get back on our feet will include its fair share of missteps and stumbling. All the more so because for many of us, nothing quite like this has yet touched our lives. Even for those of us who desperately track such moments of conflict through the pages of books, across oceans and continents, this is a new and strange place we find ourselves in.

General Strike

From burnt bookmobile:

Senators in favor of stripping unions of their collective bargaining rights figured out a way to split this section from the rest of the budget and pass it without the presence of the runaway Democrats who were stalling the passing of this part of the bill. People in Madison are running angrily to the Capitol and storming the doors, starting shoving matches with the police holding them shut until the police gave up and retreated. Once inside thousands of people filled the building and chanted “general strike” and “occupy”, amongst other things. Strikes seem more imminent than ever. They appear as certain. Thus chanting and marching in circles appear as more than obvious to everyone as finally and obviously inadequate. News sources are describing firetrucks driving around Madison blaring their sirens as sense of a state of emergency prevails across the city. They are joined by an endless stream of cars in traffic honking their horns constantly as well.

March 2 [Updated with images]

(pdf here)

State-wide actions are listed here (via Mobilize Berkeley).

[Updates Wednesday 5:32pm]: Pictures from the rally that's happening now in front of Wheeler Hall.

(via @jpanzar)

... and, as always, the cops are hovering in the background...


Images from UC Davis here. Some details from earlier in the day are here.

University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee Sick Out

From Burnt Bookmobile:

We’ve heard, from numerous sources and from talking to TAs at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, that a large and indefinite “sick out” is taking place among the teaching assistants. Exact numbers are unknown, but appears to be many. As state employees and students they are doubly effected by the new austerity measures proposed in the looming legislation at the Capitol. People who aren’t TAs or involved with teaching on campus are mostly hearing about this through rumors. Apparently there’s of a constant stream of emails in the email lists shared by the TAs, saying things like “It looks like I’m coming down with something. I’m not going to be able to teach my class. Can someone cover it?” To which others reply with “oh no, it looks as if I’m also coming down with something as well.” And this goes on and on. We can only hope that it continues, strengthening the resolve of others who are on the verge of their own collective sick outs, strikes or occupations.

Occupy Wisconsin

March 2011 Month of Action

March 2011 -- National Month of Actions to Defend Public Education. Kicked off March 1st, March 2nd actions in Cali, March 3rd actions in defense of ethnic studies.

(via millions of fragments)

Spring 2011 Statement

From Lines of Demarcation [PDF here]:

Many of us are looking back right now at the sets of actions that trace student/worker/faculty opposition to the programmatic final neoliberalizing of the university. We have engaged in various actions over the course of the last two years, some of which we have seen the immediate effects of and some whose effects we have not been able to see or anticipate. Those actions in the second group are the source of much anxiety; we wonder if they have been a waste since they appear not to have advanced anything. We should remember that actions have a dispersed life and bear on our moment in many ways. One way that we can understand this is by the effects that we can see in the actions of our enemies. The administration is shaken. This is evident by the unprecedented police presence on our campuses after the Regents' meeting. They are trying to forcibly enter our meetings, scare us with heavy handed legal consequences. Collectively, we are students, faculty, student-workers, and service workers, we are the classes that make the university, we provide the labor that it uses as capital and cache in its attempt to sell the university as a commodity. They hold us in precarious positions and divide us from one another through bureaucratic distinctions like job titles and degree designations. They pit us against each other, making us think that we have to fight each other for resources. This is a lie. They know that we produce, collectively, the product that they sell and profit from. They keep our wages down and our ability to determine the university by keeping us from aligning with one another. We have learned in the history of our actions that we are already aligned. When we act together, as we have, they cannot stop us. The problem emerges when we are again divided by our fear: fear of sanctions, fear of violence, fear of future retribution. We must not let this be the case. We must remain in solidarity.

It may be easy to feel depressed about the lack of apparent wins, but our actions have had consequences. Now is the time to push those consequences to the conclusions that we want. Let's not let the round of repression from the university, the police, and their allies keep us from reconfiguring the spaces that we live and work in. We are angry at the wave of arrests, home 'visits', police standing guard on our campuses, sending students to jail, and charging them with 'serious' crimes.

The convention of looking backward as one begins something new only reveals what is normally concealed; the past can only exist in the present. We look to the past to get a sense of what to do in the present, but the present is opaque to us too. The present is the name that we give to what has just happened. To be concerned with the present in this way is to think ideologically about what is possible. We can and must think with the conjuncture, not about it. The present that we occupy is under construction at every moment in the sense that we produce the narratives of our actions that give them meaning. We live here. We live now. We act in the relations that we live in if we do this, we move against ideological separation and we move in solidarity. This is to say: they are afraid; if we were not threatening, they would not push back with this force; however, their fear alone isn't a win and it doesn't mean that they can't hurt us. Let's push the situation further. We should begin to disrupt every aspect of business as usual. Engage in every tactic that brings the university to a halt. Solidarity means that we act in concert but not in unification. We should have one demand: the control of the place that we both produce and are produced by. We must do everything we can to disrupt every process that forces us to produce our own debt and hold us accountable for it. Shut down the processes that are mobilized to keep students and workers from controlling the university. Let's realize the relations that capital tries to conceal from us. Categories of hierarchy (graduate students, lecturers, adjuncts, undergraduates, faculty, staff, service workers) though material, conceal the ways in which we are all precariously situated in the institution that we make.

WE WANT EVERYTHING * WE WILL NOT COMPROMISE WITH ADMINISTRATORS OR POLICE * DISRUPT * OCCUPY * STRIKE * TAKE OVER * SHUT DOWN * BARRICADE EVERYTHING // OCCUPY EVERYTHING

Yudof himself says: "There can be no business as usual." For once, we agree.

Police Violence at the Universidad de Puerto Rico Strike

The strike continued today at the University of Puerto Rico. At the Facultad de Ciencias Naturales on the Rio Piedras campus, heavily armed police clashed with students protesting the new $800 tuition hike. Protesters marched through the building clapping and chanting to try to enforce the strike -- according to some news reports, they also used smoke bombs to force those inside to evacuate. At this point, the riot cops, which had been standing more or less on the sidelines, stepped in to shut down the protest. Police attacked indiscriminately with batons and tear gas, by the end of the day arresting at least twenty protesters and beating some as they lay on the ground. One of the arrestees, Germaine Ramia, had her left shoulder dislocated by a police blow. Despite the heavy police presence, protesters fought back, throwing rocks at the police, apparently popping the tires of a police car and, if we choose to believe the official police statement, injuring eight officers.

The arrested students were taken to the police station Hato Rey Oeste. At around 8:30 pm, about two hundred students and sympathizers arrived to protest in solidarity with those arrested. In part, they were responding to reports that they had received via text message stating that the police were beating them inside the jail. Again, riot police violently attacked the protesters outside. As of about 9:15 pm, police armed with long-range weaponry and machine-guns have cleared the street in front of the station, keeping a close watch on the protesters.

Like many universities in Latin America, the UPR is considered autonomous, which makes it illegal for the police to enter. Last week, however, the police invaded and occupied numerous UPR campuses, including Rio Piedras, Humacao, Bayamon, Cayey, and Carolina, for the first time in about thirty years. Furthermore, protests and demonstrations have been prohibited on university grounds. In this video from last week, riot cops at the Rio Piedras campus read what is essentially an expulsion order as they push students out: "You may not protest on school grounds: it is illegal" (No pueden manifestarse dentro de los predios: es ilegal").



Last week, a letter signed by 74 Puerto Rican professors was sent to Attorney General Eric Holder, condemning the police occupation:

As Puerto Rican scholars teaching in the United States we have decided to write to you in order to express our deep concern with regard to recent developments at the University of Puerto Rico (UPR). For the past months, the University has experienced a continuing conflict that began last semester with a call for a strike by the students in response to an increase in academic tuition and related to fears about the future of public higher education on the island. Unfortunately, university administrators, professors, and students have not been able to negotiate a satisfactory agreement. The whole process has recently culminated in the intervention of Governor Luis Fortuño and the deployment of a massive police presence on the main university campus at Río Piedras and on other campuses in the system, including a private security contractor and fully armed SWAT units.

On December 13, Chancellor Ana R. Guadalupe banned all meetings, festivals, manifestations, and all other so-called large activities on the Río Piedras campus for a period of thirty days. In our view, this represents a clear breach of fundamental constitutional rights. The justifications given by the Chancellor are that this measure is required in order to keep the campus open and to return it to normal operations. Furthermore, professors and workers are being asked (under the threat of punishment) to continue working despite the intense volatility caused by the police presence on campus.

We remain very concerned that such use of force may in fact increase the potential for violence and continued tension, especially if the guarantees of freedom of speech, association, and assembly have been revoked. Both the United States Constitution and the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico guarantee these rights. Moreover, this week the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico (which, without the opportunity for serious public debate, was recently restructured by the government of Luis Fortuño in order to ensure a clear majority of judges in his favor) declared, in a disturbing resolution, that strikes will be prohibited at all UPR campuses effective immediately.

It appears they were right. The strike continues tomorrow.



(much of this report is culled from the minute-by-minute updates from el nuevo dia and primera hora)

Solidarity with the Georgia Prison Strike

From thosewhouseit:

The rally is on! We will be gathering in front of North County Jail in Oakland at 7th & Clay this Friday (12/16) at 4 pm. Shortly thereafter we will march to 14th & Broadway armed with reams of flyers, at which point we will hold a larger rally and concert in front of City Hall beginning at 6 pm. If we are going to successfully challenge this veritable media blackout and get across our message -- that demonstrating solidarity with prisoners is both legitimate and desirable -- we will need as many people as possible. We need to show the corporate media and the world that the Georgia prison strikers’ struggle is our struggle. We feel a certain affinity with all of their demands, and in fact their demands are our demands. Our struggle against preposterously high levels of incarceration in California, against oppressive prison and jail conditions, against police violence, and against austerity measures and privatization is their struggle as well. Our struggles are one and the same!