In Solidarity With the California Worker/Student Movement: Statement of the Workers Solidarity Alliance

[Estudiante Insurgente]

Defend and Expand the Campus Occupations!

The campuses of California have been occupied. Last week, the
California Board of Regents decided to impose a 32% tuition increase
across the University of California system. Forced to quit school or
go even deeper into debt, workers and students across the state have
responded by launching widespread protests against the new austerity
measures in the best tradition of working class resistance - with
pickets, barricades, and occupations. The Workers Solidarity Alliance
extends its full support and encouragement to the students and workers
across the state of California in their struggle against astronomical
tuition increases and other measures intended to make workers pay for
a crisis deliberately manufactured by the state’s governing elite.

We take inspiration from your fight and the militancy of your struggle
and wish to offer any support and solidarity we are able. We are not
directly present in your struggle, and as such, we do not have the
understanding of what is happening that you do. However, as an
organization of working class militants engaged in struggles across
North America over the last 25 years, we would like to humbly offer
not only support, but also analysis based on our own experiences as
you move forward in your fight. We welcome communication from you
about ways we can support you, about lessons you suggest we take away
from your struggle, and above all about how to extend this struggle
further.

As news reaches us, we find it encouraging to hear that the struggle
so far has been waged in a largely libertarian and confrontational
manner - through general assemblies and direct actions, such as
occupying buildings or physically preventing the departure of the UC
Regents from their meetings. We believe that it is vital to avoid
efforts by politicians and other opportunists to mislead the students
and workers into narrow reformism or accommodation into existing
channels for dissent that demobilize social movements, such as
lobbying, waiting for the next election cycle, or waiting for a
bailout from the federal government. Your time is now.

While we applaud the bravery of those who risk life and limb
confronting the forces of the capitalist state on the picket lines and
behind barricaded doors, we also feel we must soberly acknowledge that
this is a defensive struggle. Unless the struggle rapidly grows, it
will succumb to repression and dissipate in the face of meager
concessions.

It is therefore necessary to expand the struggle, building on the
already impressive participation in the struggle by working class
students. We lack specific first-hand information, but it seems that
the racial and ethnic composition of the movement fairly closely
parallels the composition of California’s working class. Workers of
color have once again taken the lead in advancing the class struggle
in the United States. It is unclear to us if white workers and
students are participating in the struggle in proportional numbers,
but we hope that white activists play a role in building class unity
across racial lines- encouraging participation by working class whites
and actively combating any attempt by the bosses to offer a white
supremacist sweetheart deal to white workers or students in order to
split the movement. The involvement of large, diverse working class
base of previously “unpoliticized” students and workers is the only
hope for success in the struggle, and also the only real defense
against the repression of the movement.

One urgent task facing the movement is the extension of the struggle
to the California State University campuses. If resistance to the
longstanding efforts by California’s owning classes to shrink and
privatize both university systems is to be successful, the students
and workers of all the state’s educational systems must stand united.

Beyond broadening participation in the struggle amongst students, it
is necessary to expand the struggle to other sectors of the class that
are impacted by the crisis. We are heartened by the level of
collaboration between students and workers in the current struggle. We
understand that this has been possible because of years, if not
decades, of committed organizing between these two groups. This sort
of solidarity is critical if we are to avoid co-optatation as an
“interest group” grasping for benefits from the bosses. Capital can
shift resources around to buy off and pacify one particular group. It
cannot deal with one big union of all the workers, all in support of
each others’ demands. The long, slow work of mass organizing must
continue even in the period between mass mobilizations to build this
solidarity and prepare for the next upsurge.

In discussions among ourselves based on your struggles and our own
experiences, we brainstormed a few possible ways to expand the
struggle to other sectors of the class. Some of the ideas we discussed
are for working students to mobilize their coworkers around workplace
demands, for masses of students to shut down businesses in areas
around the universities that depend on students as customers, or for
workers to stage job actions in workplaces that employ large numbers
of students. You could also seek out workers currently on strike in
other sectors of the economy, or ask your parents to participate by
coming to campus or organizing their coworkers in support of your
demands. Another option would be to bring non-student coworkers to
assemblies on occupied campuses, as was common in the 1968 uprising in
France. You might also look for inspiration to the 2004 Quebec student
strike, in which student unions shut down university campuses and then
went on the offensive by creating “economic perturbances”- student
occupations of critical sections of the highway system, the port, and
the stock exchange. The Quebec students won their demands with broad
support from unions and workers across Canada.

If steps are taken to deepen and expand the struggle, the student-
worker movement will be able to extract more favorable concessions
from the California capitalist class, hopefully leading to the removal
of some of the burdens they seek to foist on UC students and workers.
However, we believe that it is only through a national, if not
international, unification of campus struggles that the worker and
student movement will be able to move from a defensive position
against Neo-liberal cutbacks to more radical changes in the education
system such as democratic self-management of the universities by the
staff, faculty, and students.

We ask respectfully if the California students in action consider it a
useful step to form a national student union to coordinate solidarity
not just between campuses and across states, but with students and
workers around the world. We see this as a potentially useful tool for
advancing your struggle, the struggle of working class students, and
of our class generally. We welcome response on this suggestion from
the students in action now, and would be happy to collaborate to the
best of our ability on such a project.

The protests and occupations of the students and workers in the UC
system have captured the attention of the nation. Such actions speak
louder than our words ever could. We hope that your example will find
its echo on campuses and workplaces around the world as university
managements and governments seek to further immiserate workers and
students in the wake of the economic crisis. Furthermore, we hope that
your fight in turn inspires workers in other sectors across the world
to organize and fight their own bosses, building the unity and
strength of the workers movement in preparation for the long years of
struggle ahead, and setting the stage for the eventual global workers
revolution.

The Workers Solidarity Alliance
workersolidarity.org