From students in Canada and Chile who fought for the right to an education, to students of color in the United States who established Ethnic Studies departments across the country, to the current uprising in South Africa where students are fighting fee increases, student activism and resistance has fundamentally transformed the landscape of higher education worldwide.
In the United States, and specifically in California, we know all too well the pain of the state divesting from higher education and forcing students to pay more while receiving less. Just four years ago, California passed a critical threshold, now expecting students to pay more than the State toward higher education in per pupil spending.
We have felt the impact of tuition and fee increases that force us to graduate with unforgivable, debilitating debt.
We recognize the parallels between South African universities’ labor outsourcing and California’s reliance on a system of precarious, working poor adjunct lecturers and pursuit of sub-contracts with non-unionized laborers.
In California, we have felt the tear gas, the pepper spray, the police batons, the trumped-up charges, and the sting of the media narratives that claim we are not being “reasonable” in protesting a state and a university dedicated to privatizing higher education.
In South Africa, mass demonstrations using the toyi-toyi and peaceful occupations of buildings are widely-accepted nonviolent tactics of resistance, to which the state, at the behest of the university, has responded with police brutality, mass arrests, and charges as severe as high treason.
In California, we as students have endured the brutality of this system all too often, and we know when enough is enough.
That is why we stand in solidarity with you.
We, the students of the University of California Student Association, completely and unequivocally support your decision to hold direct actions for your education. Education is a right, not a privilege, to which all students are entitled, regardless of race or ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation, ability, religion, or national origin. Rejecting the neoliberal model of customers and suppliers for higher education is essential to its survival. Keep fighting. Keep going. Do not stop until you win what you seek. #FeesMustFall, and we urge you to accept nothing less.
In solidarity and struggle,
The University of California Student Association
