Cal Hunger Strike for Ethnic Studies
BERKELEY, California – Students at UC Berkeley began a hunger strike yesterday, April 26th, to save Ethnic Studies from being consolidated with Gender and Women’s Studies and African American studies into a single department as a part of the UC’s plan for Operational Excellence. This follows a hunger strike from last yeardemanding a public denouncement of SB1070 by the chancellor, among a list of 5 other demands. Their demands:
1. Reinstate the FTE staff positions in Ethnic Studies cut by organizational simplification under Operational Excellence
2. End the current process of Operational Excellence
3. Publicly support the Legislative Resolution ACR 34, co-authored by Ricardo Lara and Luis A. Alejo in
AWDU’s Message to UC TAs
from AWDU:
The union that houses all of the University of California’s 12,000 TAs – the UAW – will be holding statewide elections from April 26-28 (next Tuesday-Thursday). The current leaders of the UAW local have displayed a consistently conservative and accomdationalist approach towards working the UC administration and an undemocratic and highly centralized, bureaucratic relationship towards its own members – determining from afar what campus campaigns will look like. The UAW has actively worked to disenfranchise members both overtly – illegal vote counting tactics – and subtly through years of bureaucratic management that has hidden the leadership from accountability. In response to a flurry of anti-democratic actions in the wake of a contentious contract ratification earlier this year – wherein the current UAW leadership negotiated a terrible contract that