A-Infos (en) US, Statement of the Workers Solidarity Alliance In Solidarity With the California Worker/Student Movement

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 occupaantions. 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 long-standing 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-optation 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 neoliberal 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
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