Every week this podcast will highlight some of the many voices behind the UCSC wildcat strike. Since December 2019, UCSC graduate students have been striking in pursuit of a cost of living adjustment, or COLA, to lift themselves out of rent burden and address, with urgency, issues of housing and food precarity.
While our longer episodes in this series feature snippets from oral history interviews between myself and my fellow wildcat strikers, today’s episode is a more informal minisode dedicated to keeping our listeners up-to-date with all COLA-related news.
Today’s episode consists of a special reading of three items that when considered together tie the suppression of peaceful protests with police violence and systemic racism at work at UC and UCSC in particular.
The first is a reading of UCSC Wildcat Daily Sheet from May 27, 2020 titled “Hands off Carlos” that makes visible the systemic racism perpetuated by UCSC administrators against its black, brown, indigenous, and other POCs on our campus. Link to the document here: https://payusmoreucsc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/hands_off_Carlos_May_27.pdf To read the Vice article on anti-terrorist surveillance used on UCSC graduate students, click here: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/7kppna/california-police-used-military-surveillance-tech-at-grad-student-strike
The second is another official sheet from the UCSC Wildcat Daily Sheet dated May 27, 2020 titled “Drop the Charges! Abolish the board!” that draws connections between punishments issued in the student conduct hearings against COLA activists and the Undocu Collective with both implicit and explicit use of discriminatory rhetoric ingrained in UC’s student conduct hearings and systems of discipline. Link to the document here: https://payusmoreucsc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/drop_the_charges_May_27.pdf
The third, and final item, is a statement released by UCSC’s Graduate Student Association dated June 1, 2020, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis cop that calls for UCSC and the UC system to remove cops from campuses for the safety of its students.
This will admittedly be a long episode, but I hope that you stick with us to the end because these issues are important.
If you are as angered by the UC’s actions as we are, we ask that you take a moment to make your anger known to UCSC admin. We call on every member of the UC community to condemn the racist student conduct system. Per the student code of conduct, the Chancellor has the ‘final authority’ on the outcome of all student conduct discipline.
So show your solidarity by Emailing BOTH Chancellor Larive at [email protected] and Dean of Students Naiman at [email protected], to demand that all student conduct charges be dropped immediately.
Then after you have emailed them, tag us across social media using the hashtags #HandsOffCarlos and #CopsOffCampus
Don’t forget to follow us on Instagram and Twitter at @payusmoreucsc for even more updates.
If you would like to donate to our strike fund to help support striking and fired graduate students, please visit www.gofundme.com/f/support-fund-for-striking-workers-at-ucsc
You can also show your solidarity by liking, subscribing, sharing, and reviewing our podcast. This helps people find us!
And if you have any questions about this podcast or suggestions for content, please email us at [email protected]
Theme song: “Spread the Strike” by David Rovics. For more from him, visit his YouTube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNvnHiMQWkL8E6382mrRx-g
Background Music: “Fly back to me (Instrumental Version)” by Gloria Tells; “Goodbye So Long (Instrumental Version)” by Spring Gang, “Site Specific Memory” by Polar Nights. Creative Commons License via Epidemic Sound.
