Socialist Equality Party candidate for US vice president calls on workers to strike in defense of students, faculty protesting genocide in Gaza

Tens of thousands of grad student workers in the University of California system have taken the courageous and absolutely necessary step of voting to take strike action to defend students against the crackdown on anti-genocide protests. I call on Local 4811 members to urge UAW members across the country to join your strike and answer the call of the Palestinian trade unions to halt the production and shipment of weapons to Israel.

Not only should the 48,000 members of Local 4811 take immediate strike action to shut the UC campuses and protect the rights of students to oppose the US-backed slaughter in Gaza, but the entire 400,000-strong UAW membership, including workers in auto and defense plants must join them.

More than 2,300 students have been arrested across the country in a violent display of police state repression, which is backed by the Biden administration and both pro-war parties. For peacefully voicing opposition to ethnic cleansing, students and faculty have been assaulted, pepper sprayed, and arrested.

Urgent action is needed. But the UAW bureaucracy is blocking strike action because it is allied with Biden, Governor Gavin Newsom and the Democratic Party.

Far from being the 'lesser of two evils,' let alone a party of the working class, the Democratic Party is the party of war and Wall Street. Together with their fascistic “Republican colleagues” both parties have run roughshod over workers’ democratic rights, including blocking the railroad workers from striking in 2022, while passing trillion-dollar military budgets.

More than 34,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been murdered with bombs and other weapons supplied by the US, which in many cases are produced by UAW and other members. Although the UAW has adopted a toothless ceasefire resolution, written by his Democratic Socialists of America advisors, Shawn Fain & Co. have blocked strikes at General Dynamics, Allison Transmission and other corporations that build weapons for Israel, Ukraine and other US client states.

While delaying any meaningful action, the UAW has taken charge of suppressing workers' voices. At their political action convention earlier this year, the union apparatus, over the objections of workers, endorsed “Genocide Joe,” for president. When workers at the convention objected, they were thrown out.

This endorsement must be rescinded. Additionally, all UAW officials involved in police sweeps at UCLA or any other university, and every UAW official who aids in suppressing workers’ democratic rights, including the right to protest, should be brought up on charges and expelled from the union. The rank and file must organize to take the initiative out of the pro-war and pro-corporate labor bureaucracy, forming rank-and-file strike committees to push for and prepare for a national strike.

As the last seven months have shown, appeals to the conscience of university or government officials to defend free speech and end the genocide are fruitless. The defense of democratic rights is a class question; it is only through the mobilization of the working class on a socialist program and perspective, independent of all capitalist parties, that rights won in previous eras can be defended and expanded upon today.