Happy May Day!
The Executive Board of SCFA sends you greetings and solidarity in advance of this international workers’ day. We write to encourage faculty to attend tomorrow’s May Day rally in solidarity with the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions. The rally begins at 11am at the Science and Engineering Library.
We strongly condemn the recent repression experienced by students across the country and express our unmitigated support for the rights of students to engage in protest and dissent on their campuses and beyond. We echo the sentiment of a UC-wide faculty letter that “protest is essential to our democracy and a basic human right” and that retaliation against students who protest is “antithetical to our university’s highest ideals of learning and scholarship.” We invite UCSC faculty to sign this letter and call on our administration to respect these principles.
In light of the International Court of Justice characterization of Israeli violence in Gaza as plausibly genocidal and given the UC’s past histories of divestment from South Africa during apartheid and from the fossil fuel industry, we believe that a serious conversation around UC divestment is in order. Workers in the UC system deserve transparency and information about UC’s investments and budget so that we can shape the direction of those investments toward the creation of a more just world. UC has an historic opportunity to make good on its stated commitment to social justice and we join those calling on it to do so.
The SCFA Board