November 8th Rally – Take Back UCI – Protest the Cuts

Prop 30 won’t save you!

The Regents hope to funnel our fears and anger towards the legislature while they continue to fund construction projects, profit from student debt speculations and increase the already bloated UC bureaucracy.

Last school year, with the UC in the throes of the drumbeat of austerity (“Tighten your bootstraps! Pay higher fees! Accept cuts to services!) the number of administrators exceeded faculty–for the first time in UC history! The Regents say we need to keep administrator sala

ries rising in order to “attract the most qualified candidates.” To this we must ask with the thundering of student power, “What good are these candidates if their only role is to manage the cuts to California’s future?”UCPD further entrenched their brutal callousness at UC Davis last year when Lieutenant Pike infamously pepper sprayed unarmed, peaceful students sitting in a walkway. The Regents found their scapegoat: Pike was terminated and the UCD police chief resigned. The Regents took this opportunity to suggest increased funding (and, surprise surprise, salary increases for police officers) for UCPD and to increase surveillance of student protests. To this we must demand with the authority an debtor class consciousness, “Why do we continue to fund a brutal, corrupt police force which stands behind every line of fee increases and as an obstacle to any expression of student independence?”

These are just a few questions that we must ask of the Regents. They will likely not answer. Theirs is a rhetoric of deflection and deception. “It’s not us, we’re on your side.” They are only on the side of our debts and increased impoverishment.

We will not be channeled into mindless electoralism. We will make ourselves present and challenge the neatly shaped (ballot) box they encourage us to squeeze ourselves into. But our blood seeps through and threatens their carefully constructed fantasy of an alliance with the plight of students.

Nothing can suppress the rage.

Be seen. Be heard. Take Back UCI.