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Campus protests unite students, instructors

Published Apr 27, 2005 4:35 PM

Although carefully concealed or downplayed by the big-business media, burgeoning campus rebellions and related struggles are rising to a fever pitch across the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico and elsewhere.


UMass-Amherst grad student
protests.

Throughout the spring 2005 semester hundreds of campus community actions including boycotts, counter-recruitment protests, hunger strikes, tent cities and walkouts have taken place with the peak of activity thus far happening the week of April 18-22.

Many of these actions are in response to budget cuts in relation to the U.S. war on Iraq, union contract struggles, education and fee hikes, fighting racism, military recruitment, living wages and union recognition for campus workers.

In the Northeast one of these actions took place April 21 at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst where students demanded: “No contract? No peace” and “Hands off student organizations!”

“If we’re going to fight against oppression we have to fight all oppressions. Everything is connected. We have to unite. If we don’t unite the students, faculty and community, nothing is going to happen,” said a Venezuelan graduate student and teaching assistant while picketing on April 21.

This international graduate student, a member of the Graduate Employee Organization-UAW Local 2322, who requested anonymity due to the increasing repression of the Department of Homeland Security, walked out with her union sisters and brothers and thousands of undergraduate students boycotting classes in solidarity. (http://www.geouaw.org)

GEO, with a membership of 2,400, has been working without a contract since last July 1, and has been bargaining with the administration for over a year. Other campus unions are in similar circumstances. About 18,000 undergraduate students and 6,000 graduate students attend UMass-Amherst.

The union called the one-day walkout in response to the administration’s proposals of real wage and health-care cuts, an end to health benefits for currently covered same-sex couples, and drastic increases in childcare costs. Escalating protest actions beyond A21 will increase if the administration continues to bargain in bad faith, says GEO.

The graduate students and their allies in the Take Back UMass Coalition, the student- worker coalition representing undergraduates, the faculty union, the Massa chusetts Society of Professors-National Education Association (MSP) and many others came out en masse on A21 in solidarity with GEO.

They were also pro testing the admin i stration’s proposal to strip undergraduate student organizations of their independence and power by placing undergraduate student organizations under administration control. (http://www.takebackumass.com)

An injury to one is an injury to all

The MSP supported A21 by issuing a petition solidarity statement with the boycott and walkout. Over 200 faculty members signed this statement in a few days and it was published as an ad in The Daily Collegian, the undergraduate student newspaper.

The MSP, GEO and Take Back UMass have jointly advanced five key demands: Support the Community Action Plan, not Chancellor John Lombardi’s student “reorganization” plan; increase the number of faculty in classrooms and labs; no cuts to real wages or benefits, including same-sex domestic partner benefits; student control of student organizations; and fair contracts for all campus unions.

To build for A21, GEO, Take Back UMass, the MSP and their allies held 50 teach-ins informing over 9,000 graduate students about issues related to the current struggles.

Chants from bullhorns such as “No contract, no peace,” “What do we want? Contract: When do we want it? Now,” and “Racism? No Way” could be heard all over campus, and also by Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney when he tried to sneak into a Massachusetts Board of Higher Education meeting on campus.

Pavel Payano, newly-elected Student Government Association president and Take Back UMass member, summed up the day’s mood among participants: The day was “very successful. We shut down campus. It shows how much this community supports us.”

For more information on upcoming actions and how to support this struggle, visit http://www.geouaw.org or http://www.takebackumass.com.