“Solidarity”
By Isaac Miller
What is a public university?
Is it our laboratories and lecture halls?
Our libraries and theatres?
What makes these buildings
More than monumental tombstones?
Berkeley is the people
who learn here, teach here, and work here.
Faculty who could teach anywhere in the world
But choose to teach at Berkeley.
Students who were told they couldn’t come here
And fought their way in.
Workers working three jobs, who struggled for two years to gain a living wage
And now are being laid off and furloughed back into poverty.
The powers that be have made it clear that this is only the beginning of their cuts.
This walkout is our time to make it clear
that these cuts will be the beginning of our power
to be citizens of this university and state.
Privatization is like feeding water to quicksand
And realizing too late that your house is built on top of it.
What will you give up
To stand on the other side of the glass
Watching the rest of the world cave in?
How far can you run before you too are sucked under?
Warzones from Afghanistan to Richmond
Eclipsed by twitter feeds about Kanye.
What will it take for us to see this everyday war?
To see working class students locked out,
Middle class students locked out,
Students of color locked out
To ask why our prisons lock in
More Black and Latino men
Than our schools are built to teach.
As one of my professors said about this walkout:
“Do not think that this does not affect you
Or that you do not affect it.
Whether or not you choose to act
You are still making a choice.”
The word crisis means a turning point
A moment where we are forced to make a decision
A state of danger, but all change is dangerous.
Now we are forced to choose what that change will endanger:
Us or the status quo
But students are experts at crisis
Our adrenaline spikes and crashes like the stock market.
We live a constant budget crisis,
relationship crisis, roommate crisis,
my family’s far away and in crisis and I’m here in Berkeley? crisis,
a what am I doing in this major? crisis,
a write my final paper the night before crisis because my life is in a state of crisis
and I had to solve another crisis first ——– crisis.
So why are we hurting the people
who are adept at solving our personal states of emergency?
This university is a fractal of potential futures
Living in the minds and hearts of its students, teachers, and workers
So why isn’t the administration talking about solutions?
Instead of only trying to amputate the arms that could be writing them.
I never took a class from a Regent.
But if I did
I bet I could teach them
A lot more about this university
Than they could teach me.
So today we set the due dates.
We assert that another university is not only possible, but necessary.
We stand side by side
With faculty, students, and workers
Across the State
Across the UC,
Across the CSU,
Across the community colleges,
high schools, middle schools, elementary schools, and preschools.
Our problems have the same roots.
Our struggles are connected.
If a crisis is a moment of choice,
then it is time for us to make an educated decision.
Our solidarity cannot be cut.