I have not been opposed to the entering of what they call private property and holding it for a period of time or doing what we did at the Chancellor's office. There was a goal, a target. But simply occupying buildings in and of itself will not work if its not connected to building and diversifying this movement. Also, indiscriminate destruction of property is counter productive, acting out of rage and frustration on the property of individual minor bureaucrats in the scheme of things is counter productive, it will not draw workers in to this movement and it will not draw students in to it; if not done on a mass scale and agreed upon collectively, and if it doesn't stop production (in the University's case, the production of ideas, specifically, the ideology of the capitalist class) it is simply adventurism; it can also have a tremendous drain on our small forces as the group defends its members attacked by the state. Such methods will also turn the public against us.. And we should remember that this is part of a generalized attack on working people and our families. Yudoff and Birgenau are merely functionaries of it, and minor ones at that. Their bosses are the regents and they have been pretty much left alone. They and the politicians in Sacramento are responsible for this situation acting on behalf of big business.
And we should be clear in our minds about one thing; we are dealing with a vicious, brutal and racist state here. It has two million people in prison; it killed three million Vietnamese people pouring dioxin, the most poisonous substance known to us on to its victims and their food supply, not to mention its own troops, working class youth it later abandoned. This is not a game for sure.
From what I understand we are trying to organize a strike of education and any allies that will join us on March 4th. Our top priority is to build for this. Where we don't have the resources, we are asking for people to take days of action or organize events in support. But a shutdown is what we must have as our goal. I for one want to be part of building a permanent national movement to counter this offensive of capital that goes beyond March 4th. This means linking with the rank and file of the Unions and, where we can, helping them build opposition caucuses that challenge the failed, and equally catastrophic policies of our present leadership. In strike after strike, dispute after dispute, locals have been left to struggle against what amounts to global corporations alone, isolated from the rest of the movement. We have our own crisis in the Labor movement as the dominant policy of the people in control of the resources and apparatus is the Team Concept, the view that workers and bosses have the same interests. This is why they won't mobilize their members, why they won't challenge laws, you can't do that when your view is that the boss is on the same side as you. The Team Concept on the job and the Team Concept in the political arena through continued support of the Democratic Party and refusal to build an alternative mass workers alternative has been catastrophic for us. Get a Democrat elected and maybe they'll pass a law is the main goal of the heads of organized Labor and they spent $400 million of our hard earned dues money doing it last cycle. And what do they get? Obama sends 30,000 of our youth (a huge percentage of black youth as unemployment leaves the military as the only choice) to US imperialism's predatory war in Afghanistan. The cost: one million per person ($30 billion. Thats why we must demand fully funded education at all levels--- the money is there.) It is so high they are trying to raise the debt ceiling, (presently at $12 trillion ) tax us more and cut spending in order to pay for it. That is why the attacks.
To make it successful we have to reach out to the fellow students, and workers in the universities and schools, as well as in the wider community. This is where our energy must be directed in my opinion along with fellow students and workers at CAL of course or at the other institutions where we are active. In order to draw others to the movement we have to have demands that appeal to them, that make it worthwhile getting involved. We talk and talk about racism and all that but just the other day in the paper it was reported that the unemployment among black male youth (I think it was 24 year olds or something) was 50%. We can add another 20% to that. This is a social catastrophe. We must make jobs an issue as well as wages and have on our banner a specific figure and take this in to the workplaces and communities we have access to.
At Santa Rita the other day I noticed a young black man (24) sitting on the wall, some of you may have noticed him. I got to talking with him. His mother was visiting his stepfather, her friend, as he described him. He said he had done 9 months in the Byron youth facility.
"What for?" I asked
"Robbery" he tells me with a bit of a smile, not a cocky smile but a bit of an embarrassed one I thought.
He said that him and his buddies robbed individuals, stuck bb guns in their faces and robbed them The police came to his school and the admin showed pics of everyone and a victim picked him out.
We talked of the crisis and the future for young black men like him; he knew what was up. He said that Richmond was about as bad or not worse than Oakland, "But its a smaller place" he added. I gave him my information and told him I would like to come interview him and any of his friends, just have a bullshitting session and share experiences. I told him about how I had been stupid and robbed a store when I was in my teens but had avoided continuing in that mode and later in life fighting the boss instead. But what a calamity. What massive stress must his mother be going through? Here she was inside visiting her guy, her son just out and sticking guns in people's faces. I know as a father how much my son means to me, and he's 30; they'll always be your kid no matter what. What af*&%ed up world we live in.
He was decent I could tell that. he asked about the students and I told him why we were here and what was going on. We have to have a strategy and plan for reaching out to people like this. We owe it to him and those like him to offer something that they can turn to. The movement needs reinforcements, and the courage and audacity that led him to stick guns in people's faces can be turned in a political direction and directed at the system itself. We are not doing this as well as we could.
There are the high schools, a number of them around UCB and in the area. We must develop a flier directed at these students and guys like the one I met and spend time leafletting the schools urging them to contact us and that we want to unite with them for jobs, education and against racism. There are workplaces around UCB. we can do the same here. it doesn't take masses of numbers, even a few with a couple cars can have an effect. We managed to get out to Santa Rita pretty quick We do not want to spend our resources, human and physical, going back and forth to Santa Rita and courthouses; we can't build that way. If we take the General Assembly, how many campus workers come there? I can count them on one hand. How many workers do you talk to in the course of the day at CAL I am not blaming anyone for this but we cannot win unless we change this situation.
Workers are obviously more cautious than students. They have mortgages, sons and daughters in school. Many co-workers of mine are working much longer than I did because they have kids in college. They are in debt but still, at 60, have to work hard physical labor to educate their kids, they have a lot to lose. And students have a lot to lose. When people are in this situation, they have to become part of the process and involved in it, not passive bystanders; which is how the Labor tops like it, pay the dues and keep quiet unless they need to traipse you out for an innefective protest here and there. Its like that fear we get as a passenger of a car driven fast by someone else. We are more confident when we are in the drivers seat. We have to all be in the drivers seat in this issue. Most of the tactics and desire to occupy everything, will turn workers away. We can plan an occupation but not have a flier and an approach to building workers at a site 40 yards away? I realize some students are not quite sure how to approach workers, some workers for sure don't have confidence approaching students. We can feel very intimidated by them, after all, I'm just a janitor and they are educated; it's a product of class oppression. When we add gender, race or other forms of discrimination to this it becomes a huge weight.
I know this is long but I'm a bit frustrated too. I want to give an example. In our negotiations in 1996, we formed a solidarity committee. We leafleted the welfare offices. We leafleted the unemployment office, we leafleted other corporation yards like the city of Berkeley and Oakland and called on them to join us and help us win. We were demanding Union jobs and a shorter workweek. Our success was limited, not because our approach was incorrect, but because we lacked the resources and social weight necessary, the resources that the heads of organized Labor have at their disposal. This approach should have been taken up by the Central Labor Council which ran the Oakland General Strike in 1946, and the leaders of the major Unions, instead, small unions are left to fight alone pretty much. In my place we even had two afscme locals, white collar and blue. The employers just love that.
But I'll never forget one of my bosses approaching me one day and telling me that one of the supervisors from another agency had told him at a meeting they were at (where they coordinate their efforts to get more work out of their employees for less pay) that fliers from my Local were on the lunch tables at his workplace, "What the fucks going on down there" he had told him.. "How did they get there?" "Who do they have in his workplace?"
They are deathly afraid of this sort of thing. Keep people apart, keep all struggles isolated (and the Union heads agree with this) . They didn't kill Malcolm X when he was calling white people devils, he served their interests they only took this route when he was talking of oppressors and the oppressed and making statements like "You can't have capitalism without racism."
Education is being slashed at all levels. As that resolution from my local pointed out: 1.6 million construction jobs have been lost since this recession began with 136,000 construction jobs lost in California this past year. some 322,000 public service jobs have been lost in the last four years and 1 in 53 housing units received a foreclosure notice in the California during the third quarter of 2009. There is a lot of anger out there and we have to tap in to it with a program of demands and a strategy for winning it. How much we win, how far we get, is determined by how succesfull we are in building and the balance between class forces. it is our resolve to take this approach that will win some concessions along the way.
I am not a pacifist, as I said before, I agree with what Malcolm X said about violence. I believe in being non violent with people who are non violent with me. But the best protection against violence by the state its agents, and violence in general, is numbers and being conscious of where we are going and what we need. They have the money, we have the numbers. Workers, students, all victims of this crisis and system of theirs, we far outnumber them.
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