Updates Episode 2022

I'll bring you some more updates after the break. Garrison is reporting on some stuff that they have covered, just updating various things, and Chris has an update on the mid terms now that we know a little bit more about the results of those. So we hope you'll enjoy these updates. We want to keep bringing you these stories and not just sort of reporting them and then walk away. We are off for the rest of the week after that, so nothing from us Wednesday through Friday, but we'll have

something else for you next Monday. Starting to record, and if you could start off by just introducing yourself, saying your name, maybe what the when you're in something like that, and any like impertinent strike information would be cool. I'm Amy con are usually your pronouns. I am a second year a PhD student in the Computer Science and Engineering department, and I am on the bargaining team after the student

research for union. Hi, my name is Adu Engel. I'm a third year in the math department, third year PhD student, he pronouns, and I'm on uh, the executive board for our union new aw amazing, Okay, great. I'm James he him uh And yeah, I'm a journalist trying to feel like one. So you guys have been out for about a week now, right, and you like, there was pretty good energy today. We just finished a big rally here down by the beach. People could probably hear the ocean

in the background, which is very San Diego. And I wanted to know that how the first week ago and how the energy was, how the bargaining had gone. So perhaps you can give us a bargaining update because we haven't really talked about that yet. Yeah, I can do the bargaining update. I think that you see has really been attempting to avoid us at the bargaining table, and

I think that we're are. Oh, we are constantly finding new ways to put a pressure on them, both through our bargaining strategy and through our on the ground organizing at actions to get them to meet us in a

good faith the UM. Throughout the past year or more of bargaining, depending on which of the bargaining units you're talking about, they have done a numerous unfair labor practices and other forms of illegal and unlawful behavior in bargaining that have I just generally been stopping us from reaching a fair agreement. And UM. We're on strike to show them that we're serious about UM, or to not even to show them, but to apply the pressure necessary to

get them to meet that's in good faith UM. In the past week, we have made a fair amount of progress on many non economic articles from various of the bargaining units. Non economic economic is a blurry a distinction that we think about UM in terms of bargaining and UM. And another thing on everyone's minds is wages, and there you see has still not moved from their entirely unreasonable a position from more than a month ago. For UH, the Student Researcher Union and the other bargaining units are

very are in a similar vote. So what's say, what's the position right now, uh, there a position is a seven percent in the first year, a three percent in all the years afterwards, which is not that doesn't even encount for inflation. That's crazy increase cost like and incredibly unaffordable cost of living. It's basically a pay cut. Yeah, okay, Uh, So what are those non economic issues where you've had most success? Do you want to talk about those two? Yeah?

I mean there's a bunch. I think one of the big ones where we've shown a lot of success, and there's one that actually we've made some progress today. Um, there's a lot. I think there's things that make our union stronger, union access and union A security. We've reached a tentative agreement on for most of the bargaining units I'm pretty sure um uh for working current injury and illness.

This is something that actually that you see was not a budgeting on for a really long time for student researchers that now we're hoping that we can actually reach an agreement soon about UM and we're thinking that's likely a personal a time off as another one that up until now a graduate student researchers I didn't have a legal right to take days off work, and now you see has moved to twelve days a year, which does

this start. We don't think it's good enough, but oh, we're going to see if they moved to UH four is a current plant, and as a bunch of other smaller ones, like there's the access needs access needs article, there's UM I can't remember all of them off top of my head. There's a bunch in that sort of vein that we've made a lot of progress on UM and and yeah, there's also some economic ones that we've made at some progress on, like a transit is a

big one. But there's a lot of things and I'm not sure how to summarize at all, but yeah, it's very complicated, but there's a lot of small things, small things that's good. Yeah, so maybe you could tell that to get you to needed like you had a really good vibe with your picket line. Yeah, totally talk about what it's been like for a week. Yeah, I mean so,

I think the week just started off very strong. So we had great numbers on day one and at day one we did a massive, massive rally with everyone on campus who was striking coming right a little way now, Gonzalez, the head of the California Federation of Labor talk there. It was like extremely electric and I think for a lot of people for the first time they saw just how many people were in this together with them, and that just you know, set the tone like we're doing

something really radical. We're fighting for radical change, but we're all doing it in mass altogether. And and my picket line especially, or I'm sure this is true many picket lines, but we've developed a very strong sense of community. We do like communal meals that are cooked in like five instant pods outside on the picket line. Um, we've done you know, like various chill events like karaoke and trivia and stuff like that, but we also get together and

do some you know, really militant actions. We shut down a conference yesterday. We've like picketed in intersections and done all kinds of stuff and it's just really cool to see. Yeah, maybe we can talk about some of the action zing because I think and a lot of people in this country still maybe have never seen or been involved in a labor action themselves, and certainly they don't know what it looks like at a university, which is a different place from you know, a factory. Or something. So what

have you been doing when you've been getting up to you? Yeah, I mean the base level thing is we just pick it in front of our buildings, so we have a picket line, we encourage people not to cross and in the hope of disrupting the natural flow of university functions. Um, but then they are also you know, the university have some big events such as conferences, and now we pick it outside a conference, and all of a sudden, avery at the conference has to be really uncomfortable crossing our

picket line. And you know, if we're really loud, then it's hard for them to do the regular conferencee things and that kind of stuff. Yeah, I like that. I want to talk a little bit about like what make strike to work generally, solidarity right between people on strike and people outside. So like we had somewhere from the teamsters talking and like I covered the teams to strike last year, did you want me the teams to his refuge workers are on strike and Chula Vista and it

was great. People were bringing them food every day. So have you seen much of that, like from other unions or just from the community. Absolutely, yeah. I one of the big community supports is undergrad support UM have I pickt line, Like undergrads are just coming by all the time. They just drop off some food. They say, just wanted to give this to you, and then they just leave. They just like want to help us out. It's super cute and it is very uplifting for all of us.

And yeah, you wanna. Yeah, I think also a support from other unions and from UM other members of the labor movement has been really important. Like one of the really big ones is the Teamsters UM, like all of them UM sanctioned our strike, which means that they, uh, they've instructed all of their unionized workers to not across our picket line. This means that tons of UPS drivers, tons of a Teamsters organized workers have been turning around

other vehicles when they reach our picket lines. And yeah, has been really inspiring to see the San Diego imperial A County's Labor Federation agreed to to cut the check for anyone experiencing acute hardship during the strike, which is incredible and I think it really makes us feel very strong when we have the entirety of the entirety of

the labor movement at our back. Yeah, it's good to see, right, like, especially um, if we like I'm a historian, and I definitely spent eight years a lot of money here in history. And like when we see students who workers together, that's when we see change, right like especially in you know, the last fifty seventy years whatever, And so that's, yeah, that's very impressive. I wonder, like, I'm sure it hasn't

all been like rainbows and unicorns. Like someone's talked today about a factory member who drove the car through a picket line, and what the fund is happening with that? Can you You cannot name the person if you don't want to, Like, I haven't heard about that situation. There's a lot going on every day. I know there was one motorcycle that nearly drove through our line. Who were pretty sure as an abusive advisor, We're not entirely sure. Um,

there's some good news. Actually, one piece of good news is that we members of the picket line that I'm at basically all engineers. And I mean I keep in mind here that I've been told by a lot of other workers in higher education they you can't organize engineers. And and this morning, I think over a hundred of us marched on the chair of the Material Science a department and she agreed to send a letter to the chancellor in support of our demands, and then she did it.

That's great, which is awesome, But there's also some crazy stuff happening. There are some people that are really infuriated, um when they see the pick of line. Those people we try to de escalate and let through. But overall, I think you see strategy and the community strategy at large too. To overcome our strike is a lot of background noise. UM. I think that the university's main response has not been to crush our strike, though there has

been some retaliatory behavior from some advisors. The main thing is that they just try to ignore it and act like it's not happening. And I mean, we all here know that it is happening. I feel like everyone on our campus at this point knows that it is happening. Um. But yeah, that's sort of their approach, and I think that's the biggest way that they try at a union bust is they don't meet with us, they don't treat us fairly, and they don't and they act like we

don't exist. Yeah, that that's difficult and it'll I'm sure, only get harder. Do you know if people are facing like I know people have talked about like potential academic difficulties and sort of academic consequences I guess for striking, which is obviously a concern when your academic labor and your labor for the university is sometimes sort of blurry or like people feel like their relationship is something that goes beyond their relationship with the university. Yeah, totally. So

there's kind of two aspects to this. There are some illegal things that people in the university have tried, such as UM. For example, many of us work as graduate student researchers. UM. We do research, it is our job.

But because we're also students, we are enrolled course credits for these research and you know, they have said that, oh, if you don't do your research, you're going to fail these course credits, which is completely ridiculous, completely illegal because this is a hundred percent over life with our labor, and we are completely legally protected in our right to strike UM. But another aspect of this is that many

many of us are students who are taking very regular classes. Uh, and many of these classes are still continuing and so for these students who are concerned about their grades in these classes, you know, this has had to you know take them away from the picket line at times to go to these classes. But we've tried to accommodate that as best as we can. UM. For example, in our picket line, we've had you know, we do a lot

of milited actions, but we need time to rest. And during this rest time, we encourage people to you know, work on their coursework together. We have this great community, let's use it. Let's use it to you know, get their course work done, and so we can all be on the picket line as long as we possibly can. That's great. Yeah, and it feels pretty nice to hear

its week. Okay. So in terms of like the hard ships, I'm guessing the longer year at the more difficult, it will get right and and folks will obviously like start to feel more economic hardship. And so I want to know, like I guess how you're preparing, and then I'd like to know how people can help too, if there's a place they can donate or show other support. Yeah. I think when it comes to economic hardship, UM, right now, we're not even entirely sure whether the university is withholding pay.

They have not sent out at testation forms. We think that they might at some point soon, but of course, UM at the end of the day, that's up to the university to decide. Um if or when they do, lots of people will face if a fair amount of economic hardship. The u a W does have a strike fund, so all out of the u a W members on across all the u c s in our union, if they show up for enough shifts on the pick a line, they are entitled to a four hundred dollars a week, which,

mind you, is not enough too. It's not a comfortable wage, but it's enough to scrape by. Yeah. Do you know, for instance, what someone living in grad student housing like well Mirama will be paying in rent in a month. Just to give people a sense of ill expense to yeah, I can tell you my experience. So I live in Nouveau East on Campus and I pay about thousand dollars in rent. But the year that I I started here, just after I started, they hiked the rent buy up

to thirty five percent in some units as an example. Um, even though I pay a thousand dollars in rent in my two bedroom apartment. The other bedroom is which you know, it's crazy. And I think if anyone is interested in supporting the workers on strike, especially if we do have our pay with held, I would recommend you give to the Strike Hardship Fund. This is something that disperses to any striker that's facing any any form of acute hardship,

no questions asked. And this is if you're interested in giving, you can go to the website fair you see now dot or slash a support and that's where you can give to the Hardship Fund. And I do recommend you do UM. And that's the way that we're dealing with economic hardship, okay in those situations. Nice. One more thing I wanted to ask about, and just from my own experience as an international student, was that, like, your situation is extremely fucking precarious and you can lose your visa

for almost any reason. I wonder how international students are dealing with this, and like how the Union is helping to protect them. Yeah, so international students are actually quite protected in the strike. UM. They have the same legal protection domestic students do. And so namely, none of them can be fired for this. Yeah, and because their visa

is tied to their employment, their visa is also safe. Okay, yeah, nicely has that Do you think people still feel that sense of precarity, like, because like just to give an example, Um, I I was in real visa trouble and like that was extremely petrifying for me. Right, Like, so I'm sure people I'm just interested to know like if they feel that sense sort of they feel like protected. Yeah, I mean absolutely, it is. It is tough in many ways.

Like I know one person next week instead of being on the picket line, he has to go back to the UK to renew his visa and that he's all he's very unhappy about this. He actously had the picket line at everyone. But yeah, it is what it is. And um on top of that, many international students come from cultures where such activities are not as common. They

are very unsure about joining it. But like for the last few years, we have been deeply committed to a movement of all workers, and so we organize every single person we can, whether they are domestic, international, we are all on strike together right now. Yeah, that's very cool. Yeah, so this is the end of week one, hopefully hope you guys get what you want? And what do you

have planned for next week? It's Thanksgiving? Yeah, I mean, so we have three days next week before thanks Saving break, and I think we are going to go all out for those three days. Everybody's gonna use all the energy they have and then have a cool break anything. Yeah, I think that's the plan. We're gonna make this university regret not meeting us in good faith? Mega? All right, where can people do? Have? Flick social media for the strike?

Social media for yourselves or your unions probably one of the easiest places as you can go to either of the Twitter accounts for either of the student worker unions, like those are the ones that a tweet the most things. So you can either go to Twitter dot com slash s r u u A W or two uh Twitter again, uh you a W to eight six five, And that's where we do most of our communications. Nice. Yeah, And if anyone wants any info at all, the the best source of all is just fair you see now dot org. Okay,

nice outstanding, Thank you very much, guys. So it was very good. Hey Garrison, here, I'm gonna be giving a few updates on some of the types of stories that I've covered on the show the past couple of months, And I think I'll start by talking about Port Townsend.

So if you remember, from the beginning of September, we put out an episode talking about this wave of transphobic hate and organizing in response to this non incident at a y m c A in the Olympic Peninsula, and this spawned this massive organizing effort for these transphobic rallies led by far right people and by turfs, appearances on Tucker Carlson, Fox News, all of all of this stuff, um, And we were putting this episode out right before a large, well what seemed to be a large upcoming rally on

September the third. There was not like actual like national socialist fascists coming in from out of state to to to join in on this, a lot of a lot of kind of local turfs and far right people, and the rally turned out to be kind of a bust. Uh, So that's some good news. They did not get nearly as many numbers as they were expecting, and the community response was very very strong, So a lot of people coming out in support of trans rights and coming out

in support of trans people. Uh. Um, so that was that was a nice thing to hear. I mean, and across across the Pacific Northwest, there's actually been this wave of of of like turf like trans exclusionary radical feminist, like that term is kind of a misnomer, but there's been a wave of of of kind of these events and protests, well not protests, but these events and uh, these attempts at protests I guess by a few like

turf influencers. They've been going all around all around the Pacific Northwest and Portland, UM, and a whole bunch of cities up in Washington, and similarly, they have been met with a pretty strong resistance, uh, a lot of local people showing up and saying no, we're not going to tolerate this kind of stuff, accented by the occasional pie throwne in one's face. So that's the kind of state of of of some of the anti trans organizing here

inside the Pacific Northwest. And I wanted to start by talking about the story and the successful counter organizing and support of trans people. Um. Mostly because of the mass shooting a few days ago inside Colorado Springs and because the other other thing I spent a lot of this summer covering was this uptick in queer exterminationist rhetoric, and that type of rhetoric results in attacks like what happened a few days ago at queer clubs and queer havens

and queer gathering spaces. And I I think some of the team was gonna talk about this probably sometime in the future, will probably do something on it, but it's still just so current and full of frustration and raw Payne. And the other thing we have talked about on the show that this year is efforts from groups like the unforc John Brown Gun Club and people who are willing to show up armed to defend queer events and queer spaces,

and the use fullness of that is demonstrated here. And the LM Fork John Brown Gun Club has continued to do good work in showing up two places that they were invited to to help hopefully help prevent things like what happened inside Colorado Springs. And then of course in Colorado Springs, it wasn't the police that took down the gunmen. It was queer people from inside the place who were unarmed who did the job of actually having to protect

fellow queer people and themselves. And similarly, since I was talking about the John John Brown gun club in Elm Fork, the other thing that I've covered um is relating to those protests is the group Protect Texas Kids, read by the self proclaimed Christian fascist Kelly Needered. She is among the wave of far right people that are currently being replatformed on Twitter. And it's not it's not just bad

because they have a platform. And this the specific thing I've talked about with Kelly Needert is that they use platforms like Twitter not just as a soapbox, but also as a place to actually organize these types of queer exterminationist events. This is where they actually do a lot of the public organizing and get people to come out. The same thing with Limbs of TikTok. It's not just

it's not just like an amplifier. It's a place that they actually organize these types of hate campaigns, and lots of them are going are getting back on these massive platforms, are getting a lot of cliques. Elon Musk is even interacting with some of these people. Um Elon Musk has interacted with Limbs of TikTok inside her mentions just driving

massive engagement. We talked about Kanye West anti semitism last month and he has continued to make pretty egregious statements UM that are that are very much in the line with very typical anti semitism, doing a lot of the same tropes. He's been dropped by a lot of a lot of com and these who were working with him UM. Just a few days ago he was seen talking with white nationalist Nick Fuentes from our Cowboy episodes UM and

also with Milo Napolis UM. So just paddling around with openly fascist far right influencers UM and continuing to make horrible statements. He is also back to posting on Twitter. We're using a massive and in this case it is a massive amplifier of anti Semitic rhetoric UM and he is he is back and posting as of this morning. So that's kind of the state of things that have covered.

We got good news with the Port Townsend thing and how queer people have been successful in in in combating anti trans and antiqueer organizing UM across the Pacific Northwest. We have stuff in Texas with the un Forked John Bround Gun Club continuing continuing to do that crucial work. Um, even though some of the ashists who are organizing these events are getting replatformed. But the queer extermination as rhetoric has not gone away. It's only become a whole lot

more visceral. And that's the that's the topics I wanted to give updates on. I'm sure we'll I'm sure we'll talk more about, you know, how to various efforts for community defense like within the community, and how queer people can approach that. Um. But yeah, anyway, that's my that's that's my update. For our next update, let's take a look at what happened in the mid tum of elections. Because the American election system is run by a troup of volunteer clowns, we still do not know the exact

margin of Republican victory in the House. What we can confirms the Republicans are in fact going to gain a House majority. It is also going to be a very very small majority. As as we discussed in our last sort of election episode, this is basically the Chaos Bode configuration. The product of this is that Mergerya to Other Green and her sort of tidy cohort a weird fascists are going to be able to extract a bunch of concessions on the Republican Party. And obviously this is only to

the extent that these people actually disagree about stuff. Which it is true that a lot of the sort of mainstream of the Republican Party has gone unbelievably far right. It's also true that a lot of the party leadership doesn't like Mrdery tather Green and you know, you know, the Republican Party is still facing essentially an internal soil war um. Mr McConnell has managed to hold off a power for challenge by Rick Scott, who was at the

head of the RTNC, which is really fun. I don't know why Rick Scott thought this was going to work for him. Like Rick Scott are arguably Rick Scott is a single, like individually responsible for the Republicans losing the election because he's completely screwed up everything. He was a typic to deal with the R and C and like poured a bunch of money into weird targeted like Twitter

ad campaigns that just did not work at all. But you know what, we we we still don't know if if Kevin McCarthy has enough like votes to become a Speaker of the House. Every everything is essentially just complete chaos.

You know, we we we've we've also seen our sort of first quote unquote concession that's been sort of wrung out of this new House majority, which is that they're going to do an investigation into Hunter Biden's laptop, which I genuinely I have been struggling to find a reason for any single person who is not completely Fox News brain pilled to give a single ship about the Hunter

Biden's laptop story, like since it started. I don't know why anyone is expected to care about this, And I, you know, I think the fact that the Republicans the first thing they're doing upon retaking the House is doing an investigation into this stupid laptop is an incredible side of just how out of touch these people are with

just anything even remotely or tenentially related to reality. And I think that this is in some sense of explanation of how the Democrats like miraculously somehow seemed to have managed to win a like to to gain an additional Senate seats in a in a in a in an off your mid term election. I so, right right now, the Democrats have technically gained Walgist The technically have gained majority.

The question basically is whether it's going to be a fifty or fifty one majority, pending the sort of runoff in Georgia between Warcock and herschel Walker. I don't know who knows what's going to happen there. Herschel Walker's running ads about Leah Thomas. So hopefully Leah Thomas fucking does the reaper thing and claims another mainstream American political figure here up. But okay, so what what what does this actually mean in terms of us? Because you know, even

if the Democrats more accuracy somehow, what held the house? Right? No, nothing, nothing really good was going to be happening. It looks like there's been a sort of deal worked out between the Democrats and some of the some of the modern ish wing of the Republican Party to get a vote on a bill that will legalize gay marriage and also legalize interracial marriage, although a lot of fucking Republicans voted against that, which is, you know, not a great sign.

But but again, I mean the the thing that you know, you can sort of see here, right, gay marriage unbelievably popular. A lot of Republicans still voting against it. And again that this this is because you know, insofar as the two things we can learn from this election, one is that the far right evangelical base that the Republicans have been building really since the eighties is not a majority of the US. It's not even close to a majority

of the US. It is you know, it's it's it's it's controlled by a small group of of like, you know, unbelievably reactionary activists, and these people are completely out of

touch with what normal people in the US like. And you know, this has this has positives and downsides, right, It with downsides that in places where the Republicans gain control, they're able to impose unbelievably far right agendas, are able to impose massive anti trans agendas, and you know that that that's been having real consequences, and especially a state

legislators that they control. But it also means that it limits the damage Republicans are able to do because again, like people don't actually like their stuff because it sucks. The other thing that's very important about this is that again legislatively, nothing is going to happen until and this means that as a terre of struggle. No matter what you sort of ideologically believe about, you know what, whether whether or not we should be contesting elections as a

terrate of struggle, the electoral seat is debt. Right. There is very little, if anything that even conceivably could be done there. If you want anything to change in the next two years, you're going to have to be operating outside of the electoral scene, right. And this isn't This is an argument we've been making sort of strategically and surgically, ideologically and morally for a long time now. This is

part of why we talk about dual power constantly. This is part of why we talk about the cons of community organizing that are necessaries, is why we talk about serve community self defense organizing. But this, this specific configuration of of the sort of American system is one you know, it's it's it's it's, it's, it's it's it's a pure deadlock infiguration. Nothing is going to happen. The only thing that can possibly happen is stuff that we do. And

you know there is stuff that we need to do. Right. If you want to stop instead of rolling Republican chanitis side against chance people, if you want to stop them from inciting more mass shootings. You know, if if we want, if we if if you want to stop the sort of rolling bipartisan wave of mass clearings of cancer ameless people, if we want to contain, if you want to actually deal with you know, the sort of looming effort pressed a horror of American border fascism. We're gonna have to

do it ourselves. Because even in a world in which it was possible to get Washing DC to give a single ship about any of this, and mostly it's not. Mostly people in Washington, d C. Vote every single time to make this ship worse. But even in that world, right, nothing is going to come out of there. All all that is going to be happening in the House and these Senates is a bunch of fights over the dead ceiling and in a bunch of increasingly bizarre investing investigations

out of the Republican House. So this is the time to take back the streets. This is the time to before me tennants unions. Is the time to be doing community self defense work. This is the kind of This is the time to be doing the kind of unglamorous work that everyone sort of forgets about when the sort of shiny midterms shows up. But but you know, but that that is the stuff that actually genuinely is going to make things change in this country. Things have to change.

We we we cannot continue to be going on on the path that we are right. We cannot. We cannot allow there to be more mass shootings. We cannot allow Republicans to continue to exterminate trans people. We cannot let this happen. We're going to have to go fight, and we are going to have to do it ourselves, and we are going to do it alone because there is no help coming from the top. There never was any help coming from there, and even if there had been a will, there is now no longer away. It could

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