AAS 126: Comparative Race & Indigeneity Final Project

PEOPLE OF THE UC UNITE!

A

History of Cross-Racial Coalitional Organizing at the UC

ASIA AM 126: Comparative Race and Indigeneity

Final Project by Vanessa Diep

June 13, 2023

I N T R O D U C T I O N

The central question this project attempts to address is frequently asked, simple in abstract, and complex in practice: how do we forge cross-racial solidarities to sustain a movement? In a digital iteration of the traditional zine format adopted by many student movements, this project takes up a local lens to this question, looking into three movements throughout the history of the UCs to offer insight into how student organizing on college campuses can work as a model for coalition-building across multiple different racialized struggles. From the Third World Liberation Front Strikes of the late 60s to the UC Divest from South African Apartheid campaign of the 80s to the current, ongoing UC Divest campaign, it is from these movements in our own backyard that we can extract lessons for a greater international struggle. After all, as demonstrated here, many cross-racial student organizing campaigns are often just local expressions of very global issues.

Richard Aoki, Charles Brown, and Manuel

Delgado, key Third World Liberation Front leaders, UC Berkeley (1968)

THE STRIKE FOR A

THIRD WORLD COLLEGE

THIRD WORLD LIBERATION FRONT

Photo courtesy of Oliver Jones, pictured here in the beige jacket and sunglasses, leading a march of TWLF activists through Sather Gate at the height of the strikes. (1969)

THE PROPOSAL FOR BLACK STUDIES

ORIGINS

Excerpt from the proposal for a Black Studies program at UC Berkeley, submitted by the Afro-American Student Union to the administration in spring 1968. The proposal demanded a "program which will be of, by, and for Black people", which was in its essence, a demand for self-determination and sovereignty within higher education for Black people, a struggle other peoples of the "Third World" would come to identify with. The struggle for Black Studies would become the foundation for the Third World Liberation Front strikes for ethnic studies. (1968)

Excerpt from the Third World Liberation Front constitution, clearly adopted from Afro-American Student Union's constitution, demonstrating how the later-stalled struggle for Black Studies led the way for the greater Third

World ethnic studies struggle. This draft included three of the organizations in the final Third World Liberation Front coalition: Afro-American Student Union (AASU), Mexican-American Student Confederation (MASC), and Asian-American Political Alliance (AAPA). The coalition would later include the Native American Party (NAP). (1969)

ADOPTION FROM AFROAMERICAN STUDENT UNION TWLF CONSTITUTION

THE ROLE OF ASIANAMERICAN STUDENTS

Third World Liberation Front picket at SFSU, taken from a newspaper printed by the Asian American Political Alliance (1969)

Excerpt from Asian American Political Alliance (AAPA) general statement. The TWLF strikes is an opportunity to highlight not only Asian American solidarity with other people of color, but also the significant role they played in the internal structure of the movement. Here, the AAPA initial proposal for the coalition structure emphasizes trust, kinship, and effective action. To envision a revolutionary future, the coalition must first build non-hierarchical and democratic structures within itself, which importantly, included building friendships and a community, one which transcended the structural antagonisms imposed by oppressive powers. (1968)

"AFTERALL,ATTHEHEARTOFANYSTRUGGLEISTHESENSEOFUSAND COMMUNITYTHATISHELDANDCHERISHED."

-THE BERKELEY REVOLUTION.

STRIKE DEMANDS

"Togiveanythinglessthanthese demandswastodenyfullhumanity andself-determinationtoThird Worldstudents."-The Berkeley Revolution

The MexicanAmerican Student Confederation (MASC) was one of the organizations at the forefront of the TWLF. Its leader, Manuel Delgado leads a rally of strikers through Sather Gate at UC Berkeley. (1969)

Clipping from Berkeley Barb, showcasing Cal TAs striking in solidarity with the TWLF. The worker struggle and the struggle for racial justice are intimately intertwined in their demands for sovereignty within higher education. The TA strike significantly deepened the impact of the TWLF strikes, displaying the power of solidarity in joint struggle. (1968)

S O L I D A R I T Y !

Excerpt from an eight-page pamphlet distributed in order to mobilize the student body to Solidarity Day, or Third World College Day. The pamphlet sought to agitate the masses to put pressure on Chancellor Roger Heyns for his tactics of stalling, as well as mobilize people of color under a united front through its analysis of the conditions for people of color and emphasis on solidarity in joint struggle. (1969)

Top: Clipping from Los Angeles Times, reporting on the UC Berkeley faculty voting overwhelmingly in favor of creating an ethnic studies department through a resolution in the Academic Senate. (1969)

Bottom: Clipping from Berkeley Barb, seven months after the TWLF strike. Activists John Turner and Oliver Jones reflect on the gains and limitations of the strike, citing lack of support among whites and internal emergence of cultural nationalism over desire for fundamental socio-economic transformation as causes for the failure of the TWLF to achieve all its demands.

(1969)

UC DIVEST FROM SOUTH AFRICAN APARTHEID

UC Berkeley students walk off campus to UC administrative offices to demand divestment from South African apartheid (1984)

VIA THE LIVING HISTORY PROJECT: A COLLECTIVE HISTORY OF STUDENT ENGAGEMENT AT UC SANTA BARBARA

DIVESTMENT FROM SOUTH AFRICAN APARTHEID

EDUCATION &

Cover of Fall 1977

"Disorientation" from Campuses United Against Apartheid (CUAA). Disorientation is a form of radical education, developed by students "as means of challenging the prevailing image of the university as a center for liberal education." It outlines analysis of South African political conditions and the case for divestment of over $448M invested in apartheid. In their analysis, CUAA link the divestment campaign to a greater joint struggle, connecting to the legacies of the anti-Vietnam War movement, the Civil Rights Movement, and the global struggle against imperialism and colonialism. (1977)

Statement from the UC Divestment Coalition emphasizing unity in demanding divestment and solidarity with the South African people. The coalition consisted of various diverse organizations at UC Berkeley tasked with coordinating anti-apartheid and divestment work across the UC. (1984)

Top: Student World Federalists at UC Santa Barbara invite former UCLA college chaplain Bishop Edward Crowther to share his talk titled "Apartheid: U.S. or South Africa? Syndrome of Suicide". Bishop Crowther was exiled from South Africa in 1967 for his militant views opposing apartheid. (year unknown)

Bottom: Anti-apartheid propaganda poster created by Lincoln Cushing depicting a Black man peering out of the area of South Africa on a map of Africa. This poster was issued by the Bay Area Free South Africa Movement, one of the key external allies of the UC Divestment Coalition. Other key allies included the United People of Color student group, local labor unions, and faculty at UC Berkeley, demonstrating the interconnectedness of divestment, racial justice, and the worker struggle. (1985)

PROPAGANDA

ACTIONS! 1984-85 UCBerkeley

UC Berkeley students occupy the steps of UC administrative offices, demanding a meeting with the chancellor and president. Keen eyes will spot a protestor flying the Palestinian flag, demonstrating just one instance of South African-Palestinian solidarity within a greater long-standing history of solidarity in the struggle against apartheid. (1984)

Divestment activists stage a sit-in at Sproul Hall, renaming the plaza “Biko Plaza" in honor of slain South African activist Steve Biko. (1985)

Protestors at UCLA (top, middle) (year unknown) and UC Berkeley (bottom) (1986) occupy their campuses with shanty towns and tents to highlight the horrific living conditions of South Africans oppressed under apartheid. Note the protest signs declaring "PRESENTE ESTA LA MUJER" AND "LATINAS AGAINST APARTHEID" (middle), demonstrating the solidarity of Latine people and the feminist movement with the anti-apartheid struggle.

1985-86 UCLA

Clipping from Daily Bruin archives, in which approximately 2,000 students demonstrated at Murphy Hall, condemning the UC Regents for $2.3B investments into companies supporting apartheid. Protestors boycotted classes, occupied the halls, sat-in overnight, and engaged in chants such as "What do we want? Divestment! When do we want it? Now!" (1985)

UCLA students engage in a sit-down protest while facing two UCPD officers. They hold a banner reading "UC Out of South Africa!

DIVEST NOW", highlighting the role of the UC in upholding apartheid. Captured by Thomas Kelsey, Los Angeles Times staff photographer.(1986)

Top: Students from Afrikan Student Union protest the UC’s investment in companies like Coca-Cola and Bank of America, which supported South African apartheid. They highlight the UC's vested financial interest in maintaining apartheid. (year unknown)

Bottom: Students hold a banner reading "DIVEST" at UCLA's June 1986 commencement ceremony to advocate for divestment from apartheid at a high-visibility event. The banner was later confiscated by UCPD. (1986)

UC REGENTS DIVEST FROM APARTHEID 1986

Approximately 3,000 students show up in front of the UC Regents' meeting in Berkeley, the pressure making it impossible for the regents to ignore the issue of divestment. The regents would vote to completely divest from companies supporting apartheid by the end of the decade. (1986)

Clipping from a Daily Cal Op-Ed detailing the enormous impact of the UC Regents' decision to divest $3B from companies doing business in South Africa, pointing out how UC divestment was five times larger than New York City's divestment and over seven times the amount all other universities combined have divested since 1977the success of the UC Divestment campaign was no small feat. Divestment can be understood as a uniting issue which reallocates money (and therefore power) and targets local manifestations of global issues.

The article goes on to discuss the conditions of higher education for Third World peoples, connecting the issue of divestment to the greater Third World struggle, as well as demonstrating the legacy of the TWLF. (1986)

Top: Excerpt from UC Divest Coalition's Statement of Opposition to UC Profit from War (2020)

Bottom: Excerpt from UC Divest Coalition's Statement of Opposition to UC Profit from Police and Military Violence (2020)

The coalition's visions of abolition, antiimperialism, anti-colonialism, and anti-war are demonstrated here, operating on a maxim of "work local, think global."

Largely inspired by the success of the UC Divest

From South African Apartheid campaign, as well as the work of the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions movement, UC Divest targets local manifestations of global issues of imperialism and militarism, seeking unity in a joint international struggle against a common system of oppression. Just as UC Divestment targeted companies profiting from apartheid, this campaign targets companies such as BlackRock, which funds weapons manufacturing. Given that the imperialist war machine UC Divest aims to dismantle impacts a broad range of communities at home and abroad, UC Divest strives to draw connections to a multitude of related campus and global issues, as well as include various campus organizations, many of which engage in racialized struggles.

USAC RESOLUTION

Excerpt from a Resolution Calling for the UC to Divest from War, passed by the Undergraduate Student Association Council in 2021. The resolution cites the various ways in which the UC serves as an extensions of war and policing around the world, as well as the various ways in which divestment has historically been used as a tool for materially enacting justice, such as with the Darfur genocide in Sudan, South African apartheid, the private prison industry, fossil fuels, the Thirty-Meter Telescope, and against ethnic cleansing in Palestine by the Israeli state. (2021)

Top: Graphic for a UC Divest Worker Solidarity Teach-In taking place on the picket line during the Fall 2022 UAW strikes, which sought to the draw connections between divestment and the worker struggle. (2022)

Middle: Graphic for a UC Divest teach-in in collaboration with Students for Justice in Palestine's 2023 Palestine Liberation Week programming, aiming to draw connections across multiple communities to the ongoing struggle against neoliberalism (2023).

Bottom: Graphic for a UC Divest Orientation in collaboration with MEChA de UCLA (Chicano Student Movement), once again connecting the issue of divestment to racialized struggles. (2023)

JOINT EDUCATION

RALLY &

Top: Over 100 protestors gather in Bruin Plaza at UCLA to rally the community in support of UC divestment from war and weapons manufacturing in the lead up to the May 2022 regents meetings, the first in-person meetings since before the COVID-19 pandemic.

(2022)

Bottom: Protestors hold signs at a UC Divest rally, including one reading "FROM PALESTINE TO THE PHILIPPINES STOP THE US WAR MACHINE", a common chant at protests targeting imperialism. This is just one instance within a greater history of solidarity between the Palestine liberation struggle and the National Democratic Movement in the Philippines in the global anti-imperialist, anti-colonial struggle.

(2022)

Over 200 protestors gather in front of Luskin Conference Center at UCLA during the May 2022 UC Regents meeting to put pressure on the regents to divest from weapons manufacturing companies. (2022)

Top: Protestor holds up a banner reading "COPS OFF CAMPUS". UC Divest's stance against militarism includes the over-funding and militarized presence of cops in the UCs, building in tandem with the abolitionist and BLM movements. (2022)

Bottom: Cultural performance from Mauna Kea Protectors' Uncle Liko and the Daniel Harris Quintet during the May Regents Rally. Indigenous struggles are also deeply intertwined with divestment, with calls for the UC to divest from projects which encroach on sacred Indigenous land. (2022)

MOBILIZE

CONFRONTING THE REGENTS

UC Divest organizers rally directly in front of the Luskin Conference Center entrance at UCLA to disrupt the regents during their January 2023 meeting (top) and May 2023 meeting (bottom), in order to make their demands for divestment known before entering the meeting to deliver public comment to the regents themselves. (2023)

Students outline their grievances and demands within a short one-minute time window, speaking on the devastation caused by the war and weapons industry on communities at home and abroad, and confronting the regents for their intentional neglect of student and worker issues such as high tuition, job precarity, low wages, food insecurity, lack of affordable housing, and more.

UC Divest organizers speak directly to the UC Regents by delivering public comments during the investments committee at the May 2022 regents meeting (top left) and the January 2023 regents meeting (bottom right).

Various coalition organizations are represented including Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Student Labor Advocacy Project (SLAP), and Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA).

As of June 2023, UC Divest is still an ongoing campaign, continually growing and expanding to multiple UC campuses, including UC Irvine, UC Santa Cruz, and UC Santa Barbara. One common thread in the success of past student organizing campaigns has been the building of a united movement too large for the UC administration and regents to ignore, a movement that is sustained through solidarity not merely in theory, but continued action and conscious relationship-building. Solidarity is not something you stumble across, but rather it is forged with intentionality, through recognition of joint struggle and creation of shared visions for a liberated future. In the words of a chant often heard at protests, the people united, will never be defeated!

UC Divest Coalition mobilization in front of the Luskin Conference Center during the January Regents Meeting. (2023)

Sources

Fullversionsofarchivalexcerptsfromthroughout thiszinecanbefoundatthesesources.

“End Apartheid. South Africa Must Be Free. Divest Now.” Digital Collections Home – Digital Collections, 1 Jan. 1985, digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/42268.

Idea, One Bold. “How Students Helped End Apartheid.” University of California, 8 Nov. 2021, www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/howstudents-helped-end-apartheid.

"A Resolution Calling for the UC to Divest from War," usac.ucla.edu/docs/resolution.2021.A%20Resolution%20Calling%20for% 20the%20UC%20to%20Divest%20from%20War.pdf. Accessed 10 June 2023.

Staff, Daily Bruin. “Maia Ferdman: UC Divestment Should Be Independent of US Policy.” Daily Bruin, 2 April 2013, dailybruin.com/2013/04/02/maia-ferdman-uc-divestment-should-beindependent-of-us-policy. Accessed 10 June 2023.

“The Third World Liberation Front.” The Berkeley Revolution, revolution berkeley edu/projects/twlf/ Accessed 9 June 2023

"TimelineJS Embed", cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline3/latest/embed/index.html? source=1cqCDXgJykqLBnucCwDeQiojQ3Tkl7PuyZqvuXrTWfM&font=Default&lang=en& amp;initial zoom=2&height=650. Accessed 9 June 2023.

“UC Divest (@UCDivest) / Twitter.” Twitter, twitter.com/UCDivest. Accessed 10 June 2023.

“UC Divest Coalition (@uc divest) ” Instagram, www.instagram.com/uc divest/. Accessed 10 June 2023.

“UC Divestment from South Africa.” Living History Project: A Collective History of Student Engagement at UC Santa Barbara, scalar.usc.edu/works/livinghistoryproject/uc-divestment-fromsouth-africa. Accessed 9 June 2023.

UCLA, Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library. Accessed 10 June 2023.

“University of California Berkeley Students Win Divestment against Apartheid South Africa, 1985.” Global Nonviolent Action Database, nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/university-california-berkeleystudents-win-divestment-against-apartheid-south-africa-1985 Accessed 9 June 2023.

Uzes, Laura. “Gallery: UCLA’s History of Protests.” Daily Bruin, 16 Feb. 2017, dailybruin.com/2017/02/16/gallery-uclas-history-ofprotests.

“With Mandela’s Passing, Activists Recollect 1980s Divestment Movement.” Al Jazeera America, america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/the-stream/the-streamofficialblog/2013/12/5/with-mandela-spassingactivistsrecollect1980sdivestmentmovement.html. Accessed 9 June 2023.