Battles Over California School Cuts Show: Worker-Student Alliance is Growing

BERKELEY, CA, November 20 — Early today, several hundred University of California-Berkeley (UCB) students and workers fought baton-swinging cops when the former rushed to campus to support a lecture-hall occupation and to protest fee hikes and “crisis cuts.” Despite heavy police presence, there were valiant attempts to hold the line at the barricades. The alliance of workers and students was marked by 90% of the ironworkers’ union honoring the picketing lines, disrupting construction. Solidarity greetings came from Pakistan, Canada and Britain.

“Today 3,800 students were unable to attend class in Wheeler Hall,” grumbled UCB Chancellor Burgeneu in a campus-wide letter. But constructive education did occur, outside the classroom.

On the 18th, a three-day system-wide Strike and Call to Action set the militant tone, responding to mounting attacks on workers and students by the University of California Board of Regents — the UC bosses — amid the intensifying capitalist crisis.

A worker-student coalition group organized the Strike and Call to Action, timed to coincide with the UC bosses’ meeting on the 18th at UCLA (see page 3). They were set to approve a 32% tuition increase over and above an earlier 10% hike.

By this time, attacks on students and workers were already being felt — cutbacks, furloughs and layoffs. UCB custodians were overworked fol- lowing 38 layoffs. Now 900 more service workers await pink slips throughout the UC system. Staff and faculty were hit by a 4-10% pay cut. Many lecturers won’t have jobs next semester.

Students face higher tuition — a 90% rise from just six years earlier — even larger classes, slashed resources, and messed-up premises. The cauldron bubbled. The UC clerical workers’ union — unable to gain any favorable contract — supported by another campus union, the Coalition of University Employees, together with students, staff and faculty, called for the system-wide strike from November 18 to 20.

On the 18th, the strike’s first day, pickets were out and rallying on campus. When news reached the rally of the 32% tuition hike being approved, and of a tazering incident at UCLA, the nearly-400 people jeered. Energetic speeches followed. A student noted that the cuts and hikes were inherently racist, as they will hit blacks and Latinos disproportionately hard, effectively eliminating working-class students from “this great university.” Amid this anger, political contradictions surfaced, alarmingly from some UCB professors.

Prof. Ananya Roy who teaches a course on global poverty, noted growing inequality in the world, but then said that “we need not look for radical instruments of [wealth] redistribution” and promoted an approach of institutional reform-lite. She touted warhawk Obama’s awesomeness as a “community organizer, which you all now are!”

Anthropology Prof. Laura Nader (Ralph’s sister) would solve the crisis cuts by eliminating subsidies to campus athletics. The imperialist war (and war budget) and the current bloody crisis of capitalism (with slashed social services, crappy health care, growing unemployment) were not connected to State budget cuts. Instead, mismanagement, greed or incompetence were blamed, dismissing systemic faults.

All their “solutions” to the crisis tells the working class to either “adapt” to the attacks or await rescue by “heroic” politicians. This could easily open the door to fascist oppression. Prof. Lakoff says “we” have a “dysfunctional system of government.” “forgetting” that capitalist government is supposed to work for the bosses, on the backs of workers. These racist budget cuts are, in reality, U.S. capitalist cuts.

The working class must see these attacks for what they are, in order to guide our actions towards smashing capitalism with communist revolution.

The International Monetary Fund has forecast ten years of cuts for the industrialized world. U.S. imperialism has priorities and California complements them. Between 1970 and today the state budget for UC has been cut in half. In 1965, the state covered 94.4% of a UC student’s education. Last year it was 58.5%. This year, California will spend an estimated $3.3 billion to operate UC. It will spend triple that — $9.9 billion — on the state’s 33 prisons.

On the 19th more cops shut down on-campus meeting spaces and the Open-University teaching panels. The remaining custodians piled garbage bags at the Chancellor’s office doorway. UC President Mark Yudof posed “empathy” with angry students and workers now holding militant actions at UCLA, UC Davis, and UC Santa Cruz. “We do not have the money to...run the University of California,” he cried, implying that the attacks are “necessary” to offset capitalism’s $535 million “budget deficit.” The ruling class and its lackeys will always cover for imperialism.

By Friday, anger mounted. News of a semi-spontaneous occupation of Wheeler Hall garnered more support from students. The occupiers demanded a rollback of the 32% hike, the re-hiring of the 38 laid-off custodians and dropping of all charges against themselves. Hundreds showed up. Sure enough, cops from throughout the Bay Area were sent to guard Wheeler. Clashes erupted when police pushed to set up barricades, brutalizing students.

Chants arose. “Peacekeepers” spoke. Contradictions boiled. Rain poured. A chant about “democracy” outside Wheeler Hall revealed the nature of capitalist democracy: attacks on students and workers, illusions and promises. Students and workers realize their potential power when they unite against the common capitalist enemy, represented here by UC bosses. Then the police, fearing a riot if the occupiers were ousted and arrested, released the group of 41 students.

“Hey, Hey, UC! Education must be Free!” will not happen without more ideological and class struggle. One of the released occupiers summed it up: “What we did in there was nothing compared to what you all did out here! But it cannot end to- night! None of our demands were met! This should be the start of something bigger!” Plans to build on this newfound unity are emerging. The struggle continues.