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Type
text
Identifier
CES ARC 2015/1 Carton 1 Folder 3 CES0005
Subject
Student movements Student strikes Third World Liberation Front
Place
Berkeley, Calif.
Source
Location
UC Berkeley Ethnic Studies Library
Transcription
VIOLENCE AND THE STRIKE
WHY WE MUST STRIKE
Many of the people on campus who do not support the TWLF strike justify their position by saying "I agree with your goals, but not your tactics." This statement reveals a basic failure to understand the conditions which require a strike. If there was another tactic which could gain the demands, we would use it. Those who have power in the University, Reagan and the Regents, do not want to give the Third World what it is asking for, a College controlled by Third World students, faculty, and community leaders.
The Regents and Reagan do not want to grant such a college because it would disrupt their control of the channeling process that keeps most TW people in low-paying, unskilled jobs and demands as the price of admission to better jobs that TW people subject themselves to a Regent-controlled education which isolates them from their own peoples and denies them the opportunity to fight for the betterment of their peoples as a whole. The TW College would teach people the history of their own battles for freedom and who the present-day exploiters in their communities are. It sets a dangerous precedent that white students might be tempted to follow. This obviously poses a threat to the positions of people like Reagan and the Regents since it threatens the status quo that is very profitable for them. The reasons for their opposition to the College are the very same reasons that it is a necessity for Third World people. For them, upsetting the status quo is a life and death matter, since the status quo is one of hunger, poor health, shabby housing, and daily brutalization.
The only way we can force those who have power to give some of it up to a Third World College is to make the cost of refusing higher than the cost of giving in. That is why a strike is necessary. Letter-writing to legislators and petitions to Regents is one way, but they know what their interests are, and reasonable pleas won't change their minds. Only by showing them that we have the power to completely shut down the University, choking off the supply of trained personnel and research to their corporations, can we win the demands.
The Meaning of Repression
It was inevitable that any serious attempt to shut down the University on behalf of Third World demands would meet with police repression. No one expected the Regents and the Administration to roll over and play dead as soon as the demands were presented. We expected a protracted struggle and that is what we have. The administration is using a two-fold strategy to defeat the strike. On the one hand, they have tossed out all sorts of irrelevant and misleading plans for Black Studies departments, "Ethnic Studies" programs, etc., non of which gives an inch on the fundamental demand of self determination. This is done to undercut the strike by "proving" that the strikers are not interested in anything except disruption for disruptions sake"
"Americans don't go around carrying guns with the idea of using them to influence other Americans. This is a ridiculous way to solve problems that have to be solved among people of good will." -- Gov. Ronald Reagan, Oakland Tribune, Wed. May 3, 1967.
The other side is more important. On the pretext of "preserving law and order" the Administration calls in the cops to crush the strike. The beatings, the arrests, the trumped-up charges, the periodic sweeps, the "state of emergency" are all designed to intimidate the TWLF and its supporters into giving up the strike. In this context it makes no sense to oppose the cops on campus in the abstract, and demand that they be removed without any reference to the strike. The cops are here for a specific purpose, to break the strike, and they will leave only when they have accomplished that purpose, or the strike has been won. Since we are not planning to give up, the best way to get the cops off campus is to join the strike and help bring it to a successful conclusion.
The Illusion of Non-Violence
Many people on campus have been urging non-violence on "all parties". Since the cops are obviously not going to stop using their clubs, they must be talking to us. Some of these people fall in the category of Roger Heyns, who, when he says "Be non-violent", actually means "Be quiet". Others are people who sincerely believe that major changes can come about without violence. To these people we say, look around you. Any attempt at change that is forceful enough to get the rulers' attention, let alone to force them to give in, will be met by violent repression at least as harsh as that we have seen on campus the past few weeks. We assert the right to self-defense, and in any serious attempt to bring about changes that Heyns/Hitch/Hearst/Reagan et. al. do not want, we will have to exercise that right. To ask for non-violence at this point is to ask us to give up and allow the greater violence that goes on everyday in Third World communities to continue unchallenged. One does not get rid of violence by wishing it away, or even by exhorting it away, but by forcefully and vigorously attacking the causes of violence - oppression and exploitation. This strike is the beginning of the attack. Join us.
Strike Support Committee
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