Open Letter to UAW 4811 Executive Board: UAW 4811 Must Defend Students for Justice in Palestine, Not Line up Behind the UC’s Witch Hunt
On February 12, UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk issued a public message to the UCLA community accusing Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine (GSJP) of “violent” acts and announcing the interim suspension of both groups. The pretext for this ban was a February 5 protest outside the Brentwood mansion of UC Regent Jonathan “Jay” Sures on February 5. Sures is a multi-millionaire business executive and virulent Zionist who has spearheaded the UC Regents’ recent attacks on the democratic rights of UC students and workers. Notably, Frenk’s letter, titled “A Stand Against Violence in our Community,” is not able to cite a single act of violence, since none occurred.
Two days later, on February 14, UAW 4811’s statewide executive board issued an official statement condemning the SJP protest. The statement reads in full:
Last Wednesday, some individuals from the UCLA campus community staged a protest at the home of UC Regent Jay Sures. Local 4811 has a proud history of engaging in nonviolent direct action to enforce our rights, and we struck last year to protect members’ rights to free speech and protest in the workplace. However, the rhetoric and tactics from last week’s action are divisive, corrosive, and fail to meet our current political moment. Local 4811 members are focused on standing together with academic workers across the country to beat back the Trump Administration’s attacks on workers, higher education, and publicly funded research.
This was a profoundly irresponsible statement, which flies in the face of the recent organizing UAW 4811 has done in solidarity with the anti-genocide movement, and in defense of students’ and workers’ democratic rights. Our union’s most basic responsibility was to say clearly that the UC’s accusations of “violence” are false, that we oppose the suspension of SJP and defend its right to exist, and that this is an attack on the democratic rights of all students and workers.
Those on the UAW 4811 executive board who disagree with the tactics employed at the February 5 action could have also approached SJP with their criticisms, or even aired them publicly—the active involvement of our union leadership in student movements would be a welcome development. But rather than constructively voicing its criticisms, the UAW 4811 executive board aligned itself with the UC’s condemnation of SJP—and crossed a class line.
It will not be lost on UC students and workers that the administration took no stand against real acts of violence when they occurred on our campus over the past year. When the UCLA Palestine Solidarity Encampment was attacked by a fascistic mob on April 30, 2024, UC administration issued a statement lamenting that “physical violence ensued,” as though the two sides were equally responsible. In fact, the UC administrators are themselves directly responsible for the mob attack, after having spent the previous year attempting to whip up a moral panic on our campuses, including by seizing on false rumors and smears propagated by the far-right, and vilifying anti-genocide student protesters in official statements as “hateful,” “despicable,” “reprehensible,” “racist,” “appalling,” “shocking and shameful,” etc. UC Administrators allowed a long string of attacks against the encampment in the preceding days, which predictably culminated in the mob assault on April 30. The following day, UC called in the California Highway Patrol to clear the encampment with violent force; riot police fired rubber bullets and other “less-lethal” rounds directly at protesters, severely injuring many.
And then, of course, there is the fact that the UC invests untold sums of money in war profiteers that have supplied the munitions for a genocide.
It is a basic responsibility of our union to point to the profound hypocrisy of the administrators and regents. The UC is in no position to inveigh against violence! These latest claims are no more than a pretext for a ban on SJP that has long been in the works. Our union leadership has now, shamefully, aided the UC in this witch hunt by legitimizing their claims.
It should be noted that UAW 4811 also protested outside of Jay Sures’s mansion less than three years ago, during our 2022 strike. According to Frenk, SJP’s mere presence outside of Sures’s house amounted to harassment. Is UAW 4811 now denouncing their own tactics? This much is clear: the same policies used to suppress SJP have been and will be used against our union.
The UAW 4811 executive board statement claims that the union is focused on fighting back against the “Trump Administration’s attacks on workers, higher education, and publicly funded research.” By this, they mean phone-banking “our elected representatives.” But they have not called any membership meetings or even issued a statement on the threat of mass deportations, which threaten immigrant workers and international and undocumented students in our union; they have backed away from any pretense of standing for divestment or defending the anti-genocide protests; and they have failed to oppose the repression of SJP only weeks after Trump issued an executive order on deporting international students for political speech.
It is past time for us to organize mass meetings, and to begin a discussion in our union about the threat posed by Trump’s regime to our members, and to the entire labor movement. At the UC, we should organize joint actions and meetings with AFSCME and UPTE, which will be going on strike February 26-28. All of our unions will be affected by the funding cuts and anti-immigrant and anti-labor attacks.
The only way to defend ourselves is through a united front of unions and mobilized, politically-educated memberships, not appeals to Democratic Party politicians, who run California and the UC, and support the Zionist agenda. We need democracy in our unions, not corporate unionism. We need open discussion, not phonebanking our “elected representatives.” We need a leadership with the courage to take a firm stand for democratic rights, not pitch our allies overboard when they think it is to their advantage.
We call on the UAW 4811 executive board to immediately retract their Feb. 14 statement, publicly oppose the ban on Students for Justice in Palestine, and return to organizing for divestment and a free Palestine from the river to the sea.
Signed,
Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine, UCLA