Our chance to send a message

Dear Friends:

I'm writing as a friend of yours, and as a fellow student. Over the last two years, I've spent countless hours sitting in meetings where administrators--the very same administrators other people want to tar and feather--sit in a conference room and pull their hair out over what the hell they're going to do about the implementation of budget cuts. In the same weeks (and in some cases on the very same days), I've also sat in on meetings of "radical" student organizers planning hunger strikes and walkouts.

Very few people on this campus have experienced the absolute "inside" and the absolute "outside" of "the system" and everything in between the way I have. Please know what I am about to say is reflective of this dissonant experience, which has challenged me to really re-think my values.

That experience taught me this: There is not a single person on this campus who wants to see these cuts take place, including administrators themselves. Period. The problem is structural: The people who have the real power over things in UC are the Regents and the President, and we have no mechanism of control over them. On top of that, those 21 people are participating in a national political and social context where universities are incentivized to make decisions that hurt students.

For this reason, I will be striking on March 4th, 2010, and I am asking you to join me.

If you're like many students on campus, you now might think, "Why the hell would you walk out of class at UCSC if you just admitted nobody on campus--admin included--are happy about cuts either?"

My response is simple: by walking out of class and shutting down an intersection, I do not expect to personally change everything or even anything at all. But by walking out with 16,000 other people, I know I will do a small part of something so great that it may dominate national and international news (perhaps for weeks)--and in doing so turn the public's attention and frustration towards the deep, serious structural problems that have led us to a point where undergraduate instruction is actually a very, very small part of public universities' budgets and priorities.

Students, staff, labor leaders, workers, teachers, faculty and others all collaborated to make March 4th happen--and their movement is developing concrete leadership, advocacy and organizing skills in hundreds of new people young and old alike, skills that everyone should have in a real "democracy."

You may believe that last quarter's protests were "flawed" for a variety of reasons. We are all entitled to our opinions, but that's no reason to not try activism out yourself and doing it the way you feel is right. The people who step up on March 4th will be the people whose voices get heard across the state, and why would you want to be left out of that?

There is a space for you and your views on March 4th. There is a space for every single student on this campus to take part in March 4th--regardless of each person's conflicting opinions on "the effectiveness of occupations" or if the source of the problem is "Sacramento or the Regents."

At this point, it really does not make a difference. The governor thinks he can manipulate all of us into believing that we're getting a bargain when he throws us breadcrumbs (and oh, on top of that, does to prisons what the state did to electricity providers in the late 1990s--remember the power crisis, anyone?) And the Regents, well, they're upping executive compensation while our librarians are getting furloughed. Um, excuse me?

Actions like March 4th, if large enough, can impact everything--the state, the Regents, Yudof, whomever. Some of us will be at the base of campus, and some of us will be elsewhere doing more radical things, but everyone will be sending a similar message, and the more places we call out from, the better.

If this letter inspires you in any way, please share it with your friends. If not, find some call to action that does inspire you, and spread the word. This date is our chance to start to truly shake up a status quo. Thanks to the Supreme Court, we are now living in a society where businesses like Pfizer and Monsanto can literally "buy out" politicians with millions of dollars, and the only way we can make this system listen is by literally shutting things down.

Thanks guys,
Matthew Palm