The Coalition for a Truly Public UC is a group of students, staff, faculty, and community members calling for justice and a truly public University of California. We come together as a group with the understanding that, although each of our respective struggles has its own unique details and dynamics, they are ultimately all rooted in the same foundation. In that spirit, we are uniting our efforts to expose and fight against the ongoing privatization of the University of California system, and accompanying exploitation of working class people in the form of real estate speculation, displacement, and militarized policing – not only within the state of California, but across the world.
We believe the UC has the potential to be an affordable, public university whose future is democratically determined by students, faculty and the surrounding communities and not the endless search for profit. However, we know that these aspirations are a far cry from the current reality. If there is to be any progress toward achieving them, we put forward the following demands:
1. We DEMAND a truly public (i.e. zero-tuition) higher education system, governed according to democratic process where regular people in the system have meaningful power and opportunity to impact major decision making.
2. We DEMAND the UC cease efforts to demolish and displace the 1921 Walnut st tenants and building on People’s Park as outlined in UC Berkeley’s 2021 Long Range Development plan. More generally, the University of California should cease ALL real estate acquisitions and real estate speculation, particularly such acquisitions that will displace people and other threatened species, and instead create housing options that are accessible to students and working class people, which necessarily means priced below the current market rate in most UC campus towns.
3. We DEMAND the demilitarization of and divestment from campus police, with reinvestment into services that actually benefit students. We call for the end to UCPD involvement in labor disputes and in harassing and displacing homeless people in the areas on and around UC campuses, such as People’s Park in Berkeley.
4. We DEMAND an end to the pattern of privatization, devaluation, and contracting out of UC labor across all 10 UC campuses.
5. We DEMAND an end to the UC’s ties to colonial and imperial projects. This means ceasing support of, and direct investment in, the Thirty Meter Telescope project on the sacred Mauna Kea in Hawaii. It also means actively supporting Indigenous-led efforts to rematriate stolen land, remains, and property held by the Regents and Anthropology Departments across the state.
JOIN US FOR A RALLY IN PROTEST OF THE UC REGENTS MEETINGS OCCURRING AT THE SAME TIME. THE UC DECISION MAKING PROCESS IS UNDEMOCRATIC AND THE REGENTS ARE HIDING FROM THE PEOPLE USING COVID RESTRICTIONS