UC students walk out

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all jobless workers and youth! Employ people to build what we need — low-cost quality Convert the war industries to making products for people’s needs and to combat global Editor: Michael Schreiber International Editor: Gerry Foley Canada Editor: Barry Weisleder Socialist Action (ISSN 0747-4237) is published monthly by Socialist Action Publishing Association, P.O. Box 460501, San Francisco, CA 94146-0501. Periodicals postage #721090 is paid at San Francisco, Calif. Postmaster: Send address changes to: Socialist Action, P.O. BOX 460501, San Francisco, CA 94146-0501. RATES: For one year (12 issues, 1st-class mail): U.S. — $20; Canada and Mexico — $20. All other Signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of Socialist Action. These are expressed in editorials. Socialist Action is edited, designed, and laid out entirely by volunteer labor. It is printed by members of Local 583, Allied Printing Trades Council, San Francisco, Calif.

Subscribe to Socialist Action warming. Name City Phone BERKELEY, Calif.—On Sept. 24, the first day of classes, University of California students and faculty across the state walked out against fee hikes, cutbacks in services and classes, increased class sizes, and faculty and staff layoffs, furloughs, and pay cuts.

Out of the 10 UC campuses statewide, Berkeley had the largest walkout by far; some 5000 students (out of a school enrollment of 35,000) joined a rally in Sproul Plaza that day.

Observers said it was the largest protest gathering at the university since the Vietnam War days.

Also at the rally were students from local community colleges and from San Francisco State University, some faculty, and a fair number of workers from UPTE (on strike for unfair labor practices), and some from AFSCME, the UAW, AFT, and CUE. After the rally, students and workers joined a march through the campus and into the streets of downtown Berkeley behind a banner reading: “Solidarity with Students, Teachers, and Workers!” Marchers chanted, “It’s our university!” and “Defend public education!”

The walkout was promoted throughout the UC system by a call signed by over 1200 faculty members. Some faculty members at Berkeley led “Teach-out” seminars inside and outside campus buildings on topics such as “The Free Speech Movement Was Just the Start” and “Confronting the Crisis.”

The UC Board of Regents has ordered faculty and staff pay cuts of from 4 to 10 percent. In addition, UC President Mark Yudoff proposes raising student fees by close to a third—to More than 40 trade unionists have been killed this year in Colombia by para-military death squads. Every day, more union activists are threatened with death by these forces, who carry out the orders of big business and the political establishment.

On Aug. 31, Jairo del Rio, the president of SINTRATUCAR (the union representing workers at the Tenaris steel tube company in Cartagena) and a member of the Socialist Workers Party (Colombian section of the International Workers League), received a written message threatening death to him, his wife, and chilA WORKERS’ ACTION PROGRAM TO FIGHT THE CRISIS We propose an EMERGENCY CONGRESS OF LABOR to discuss and take steps to implement the following demands — 1) Bail out the people, not the bankers! Open the account books of the banks to full public inspection. Nationalize the banks to be supervised by workers’ committees.

2) No foreclosures! No forced evictions! Cancel usurious debt payments, and reduce mortgage payments in proportion to their capitalist-caused decline in value.

3) Full employment at union wages! An emergency public works program to employ housing, efficient mass transportation, cheap and renewable sources of power, schools, clinics — and to conserve our water, forests, farmland, and open space.

4) Immediate and full withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq & Afghanistan! Close all U.S. bases abroad! No money for the military — use funds instead for public works!

5) Reduce the workweek to 30 hours with no cut in pay, and cut the retirement age to SOCIALIST ACTION. Closing news date: Sept. 29, 2009 countries — $30. Money orders and checks should be in U.S. dollars.

Address State Zip E-mail over $10,000 a year. The university system faces a budget shortfall largely because of cutbacks in financing from the state. Many signs at the rally read, “Chop from the top.” Yudoff, for example, has a salary of $540,000 a year—plus lucrative benefits, such as free rent for his house.

In the evening, some 500-600 enthusiastic Berkeley students assembled at a meeting to decide what to do next. Plans were made for an Oct. 24 conference in Berkeley to coordinate the struggle to defend public education across California—from K-12 to community colleges and universities. — ARI KILPATRICK dren. The message said in part: “We would remind you that in this country guerrilla communists like you and your group die fast, so you better stop interfering in things that are not your business.”

The following day, the union vice president, Deivis Blanco, received a similar note. The union is pushing for work stoppages of a few hours in response to the threats. International solidarity with these union activists is extremely important. E-mail: Mr. Ruben Fidalgo, Gen. Manager, Tubos del Caribe Tenaris S.A., [email protected]. Copies: Alavaro Uribe Velez, president of Colombia, [email protected], and [email protected]. More information: www.litci.org. n benefits.

system.

origin. tions and place them under the control of elected committees of workers.

ones outlined above.

workers’ government!

Chicago P.O. Box 578428 Chicago, IL 60657 [email protected] Connecticut (860)478-5300 Florida socialistaction_tampa@hotmail. com Kansas City [email protected] (816) 221-3638 Minnesota Duluth: P.O. Box 16853 Duluth, MN 55816 [email protected] www.the-red-raven.blogspot.com Twin Cities: (612) 802-1482 [email protected] New York City [email protected] North Carolina Carrboro: (919) 967-2866; [email protected] 55. Provide unemployment and retirement payments at the level of union wages and 6) To combat inflation: A sliding scale of wages and pensions that matches the rises 7) Immediate citizenship for all undocumented workers. No job discrimination; equal pay for equal work — regardless of gender, sexual orientation, skin color, or national 8) Nationalize manufacturing, big agribusiness, energy, and transportation corpora9) To mobilize support for the demands it adopts, the EMERGENCY CONGRESS should organize ACTION COMMITTEES in every workplace and neighborhood threatened by the crisis. These committees can draw up more concrete demands than the 10) To put all these measures into effect, we need a LABOR PARTY — based on a fighting union movement and all people who are oppressed and exploited. For a (continued from page 1: “UC students walk out”)

by the Pittsburgh-based Thomas Merton Center.

In addition to Oct. 17, several groups are focusing on other October dates aimed at deepening antiwar consciousness. The ANSWER Coalition has initiated a number of weekday actions on Oct. 7 to mark the eighth year of the Afghanistan War.

What has appeared in recent years as a marked retreat in the fight against imperialist intervention may be heading for a period of new opportunities to return the movement to the kind of united and massive mobilizations that are so sorely needed.

A case in point was the Sept. 24 one-day strike and student walkout on the University of California campuses statewide. At the University of California at Berkeley, 5000 students, faculty, and campus workers mobilized to protest drastic cuts in the state’s education budget.

More than a few speakers at the rally on campus related the funds cut from public education to the massive increase in funds for the Afghanistan war budget. Oct. 17 activists distributed 2000 antiwar leaflets to the very receptive crowd.

Similarly, trade-union leaders from the Oakland Education Association and the San Francisco-based HereUnite SEIU affiliate will be represented on the Oct. 17 speakers’ platform, linking the antiwar struggle to the fight for jobs and against a broad range of cutbacks. n For info about Socialist Action and how to join: Socialist Action National Office: P.O. Box 10328, Oakland, CA 94610, [email protected], (510) 268-9429 Socialist Action newspaper editorial offices: [email protected] Website: www.socialistaction.org WHERE TO FIND SOCIALIST ACTION Philadelphia [email protected] Oregon Portland: (503) 233-1629 [email protected] Ashland: damonjure@ earthlink.net San Francisco Bay Area P.O. Box 10328, Oakland, Ca 94510 (415) 255-1080 [email protected] Wisconsin Ashland: northlandiguana @gmail.com Superior: [email protected] Socialist Action Canada National Office 526 Roxton Road, Toronto, Ont. M6G 3R4 (416) 535-8779 www.socialistaction-canada. blogspot.com

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Tony Savino / Socialist Action and has become increasingly so under the impact of austerity; and it failed to dismantle the fee-for-service payment system for physicians.

Contrast this with the British National Health Service (NHS), which from the beginning was a national service requiring conscious planning. Canadian Medicare, in contrast, is chaotic and uneven compared to the UK or indeed to private health-care conglomerates in the United States.

The current right-wing offensive in the U.S. against even the timid reforms advanced by Obama are reminiscent of the struggle for Medicare as it unfolded in Saskatchewan in 1962. Medicare was the product of class struggle. It was achieved only after a hard-fought battle by working people over several generations.

There was a massive campaign launched by business, the press, and the medical profession to defeat the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) government and its Medicare plan, culminating in a month-long doctors’ strike. On the other side were the unions, farmers, and the base of the CCF. A mobilization at the base of the CCF broke the doctors’ strike by organizing a network of democratically controlled community health clinics, with the aid of pro-NHS physicians who came from the UK.

In the U.S. today, a class confrontation is also taking place, with a similar aggressive reactionary campaign but with a much weaker response from the left. The workers’ movement is much more demobilized than 50 years ago, and the Democratic Party lacks even the

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