May 6, 1999 Defend and Extend Ethnic Studies!
In 1969, the Third World Student Strikes exploded on U.S. campuses. Students, faculty, community and radical activists won Ethnic Studies departments, affirmative action, and Educational Opportunity Programs. Now 30 years later, students are once again on the move, fighting to reverse the constant cutbacks that threaten to decimate these hard-won gains. We must not let the University of California and its greedy corporate cohorts get away with stifling the growing movement for multi-cultural, multi-issue equality on campus and around the world.
Students Spark Outraged Resistance
This spring, after trying to negotiate with the UC Berkeley administration, students have organized and are currently engaged in a hunger strike to demand: increased funding for Ethnic Studies; the hiring of tenure track professors; student participation in decision making; the creation of a multi-cultural student center, an Ethnic Studies Research Center, a community mural, and, finally, the dropping of all charges against students arrested for defending Ethnic Studies. By sending in the police on May 4 to arrest 83 peaceful demonstrators at the cowardly hour of 3:00am, and by refusing to meet their demands, Chancellor Berdahl has declared war on the campus community that is fighting the institutional censorship of people of color and their histories.
UC Reveals Its True Colors
The mission of Ethnic Studies is to provide the truthful history of the vast contributions of men and women of color to U.S. economic, political, and social life, and that truth is dangerous - at least to the ruling class. A powerful institution and big business, UC is not committed to education which fully represents the diversity of California. Nor is it interested in building student leadership through democracy in decision-making. UC is interested in maintaining the status quo. The political awakening and economic advancement of students, especially students of color, is their worst nightmare.
By gutting the Ethnic Studies Department, rescinding affirmative action, and using every means at its disposal to divide students, staff, faculty, and the public, the University is attempting to weed out "undesirable" students and mold those who are left into being passive workers for corporate America. Opponents of Ethnic Studies don't want students to think critically or challenge the foundations of the profit system - racism, sexism, homophobia, national chauvinism, and class exploitation. There is no way we will learn our true histories under an education system run for corporate profits. Across the country, as the haves get richer and the have-nots are increasingly scapegoated, democracy and social programs for women, people of color, workers, queers, and disabled people are deemed too costly. They become expendable!
Learning from a Legacy of Struggle
As Malcolm X said, "Of all our studies, history is best qualified to reward our research." To win strong Ethnic Studies programs, students of color and their allies need only look at their own inspiring history and build on it. In the 1960s, Ethnic Studies was won when oppressed students formed united fronts by forging connections to the communities from which they came and by linking up with staff and faculty. History also teaches what doesn't work--like relying on liberal faculty who will sell out student militancy for academic privileges and respectability. In the early 1980s, UC Berkeley tenure/tenure-track faculty in Asian American Studies became tools of the administration. Students fought faculty attempts to eliminate student input into departmental decisions, community-related courses, and to prevent the firing of grassroots lecturers and radicals like Merle Woo. We can learn from Woo's two landmark free-speech victories against UC's firing of her for supporting student democracy and being a unionist, a socialist feminist lesbian activist and member of the Freedom Socialist Party and Radical Women.
The Winning Strategy: A United Front
Nice, quiet ways have never won civil rights or student demands. And don't bother looking to so-called liberal Democrats who have allowed immigrant rights, welfare and affirmative action to be dismantled. Sit-ins, picket lines, and strikes got us Ethnic Studies, graduate student union recognition, affirmative action, and other community-won programs like Women's Studies, the minor in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Studies, and student-initiated classes.
Together, a broad-based multi-issue defense movement composed of UC staff, lecturers, students, unionists, feminists, people of color, queers, environmentalists, and radicals united against our common enemy can build on this inspiring rebellion, and ultimately help usher in a new world based on economic and educational democracy and universal human fulfillment, not on greed and lies. Radical united action has once again got to be at the top of our agenda!
Support the third world Liberation Front demands!
Defend and extend Ethnic Studies and Women's Studies!
Hire and retain community-based professors!
Restore affirmative action for staff, faculty & students!
Build a student, faculty, staff and community alliance to save Ethnic Studies!
Free multi-cultural education for all!
Issued by: Freedom Socialist Party & Radical Women
New Valencia Hall, 1908 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
415.864.1278 (voice) 415.864.0778 (fax)
e-mail: website: www.socialism.com
