Ep 87 - If UC Pay Me w/ 3 FIRED UCSC strikers

This Wreckage

Sean KB and AP Andy

Music, Arts

4.2 • 970 Ratings

🗓️ 11 March 2020

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A wave of wildcat strikes, blockades, and general militant organizing is spreading the University of California system based on the demand that academic workers be paid a living wage. We're joined by three union members of UC Santa Cruz who were fired for refusing to turn in grades until their demands are met. We discuss the history of UC strikes starting with the 2009 occupations that were a precursor to Occupy Wall Street, how this struggle began, the meaning of Bernie's support, its broader political vision, and what lessons the broader working class can draw.

Support their strike fund: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-fund-for-striking-workers-at-ucsc

The roots of the strike: https://thefilemag.org/the-roots-of-the-santa-cruz-wildcat-strike/

Letter to UC President Napolitano: https://thefilemag.org/dear-president-napolitano/

The strike spreads: https://www.kqed.org/news/11805470/uc-berkeley-graduate-students-stage-walkout-push-for-strike-authorization?fbclid=IwAR2Z2XKKgHX-rzs6HtwFBfGnLIFbYNgNfH_guZVBC0fX55xBq6_R7NER0us

Another essay from a striker: https://communemag.com/become-unreasonable/

Closing song: Lost Kids - Cola Freaks

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the Antipata where unrest is best.
0:13.1	I'm Jamie Peck.
0:14.4	I'm AP Andy.
0:15.9	And Sean is tempting fate right now
0:19.2	by taking a beautiful Caribbean Corona cruise.
0:23.0	B'an Voyage.
0:25.0	Hopefully we will see him again.
0:27.0	If not, it's been nice knowing him.
0:30.0	Women and children first, Sean.
0:32.0	We're going to talk today with three of the fired UC Santa Cruz strikers.
0:40.0	You've probably heard something about the situation. It's been going on for over a month now.
0:46.0	But, you know, the basics of it is adjuncts and graduate student workers are heavily exploited as part of the
0:55.4	neoliberal university model and all over the country they have been striking, occupying, you know, making heavier and more militant demands.
1:08.0	And this is so far the high watermark of that emerging struggle of adjuncts and grad student workers.
1:15.0	They went on a wildcat strike starting, I believe, last month.
1:20.0	Part of that strike is they stopped giving out grades, which is like a kind of a nuclear option,
1:27.0	really disrupting the flow of the university by not giving out those grades and a bunch of them were
1:36.3	fired the the number that usually gets thrown around is 54 but it was actually more
1:41.2	than 54 and some of them weren't on strike some of the people who
1:45.6	were on that Wildcats strike didn't get fired and other people so they just you
1:49.8	know the the university is just totally bungling even their repression of the strike and I
1:56.0	think as a result of that and also the you know the momentum from the organizing
	...

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