Resist the UC Regents Using Your Tuition and Labor to Fund Genocide! Register for Public Comment Here and Attend Our Rally on Wednesday 3/21 at 1:30 PM.
ACTION ITEMS BELOW.
Hello all,
We write to update you on the status of an ongoing genocide, and of the material investment of our institution, the UC, in this genocide. If what you read in this email upsets or angers you, then we are calling on you to join us to protest the upcoming UC Regents meeting at UCLA Luskin Conference Center on Wednesday 3/20 and Thursday 3/21. You can find out more about how to get involved at the end of this email.
It should trouble all of you to know that this week, the UC Regents will be meeting to congratulate themselves on their investments in war-profiteering, as well as how to implement items J1 and B1, which sanction pro-Palestinian speech, on Wednesday and Thursday at UCLA. These are the same Regents who have overseen the transfer of billions of dollars—including undergraduates’ tuition money and money taken from graduate students’ wages—into Blackrock, and the weapons manufacturers in their portfolio (Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, Elbit Systems), all of which have explicitly and directly manufactured the death, dispossession, and unfathomable trauma we are witnessing in Gaza. Not for housing or living wages for their students, not for basic needs, but for the profit generated from genocide.
For every picture of an emaciated child–of bodies piled up in their thousands in mass unmarked graces, of orphaned children and now childless mothers, of living people reduced to skin and bones, and gaunt faces reminding us of the Holocaust–there is the money UC Regents have funneled into the zionist death machine.
For every stage of genocide not known before–of dispossession not once, but ceaselessly; of being exiled from one’s ancestral home to the vestiges of an open-air prison, only to be dispossessed again decades later–there is the money UC Regents have funneled into the zionist death machine.
For the fact that shelter and safety and home have become myths suspended over the heads of the exiled, until their third homes, tents and refugee camps, are knocked down again–there is the money UC Regents have funneled into the zionist death machine.
For every reminder of the psychic condition of colonialism–of every video of a zionist soldier mocking the people they’ve evicted (upon whose suffering their nation is built and exerts their claim to safety and democracy), lounging in their homes, mimicking their language, adorning their valuables–there is the money UC Regents have funneled into the zionist death machine.
For every instance of force–of men murdered by occupation forces while attempting to procure insulting and dehumanizing amounts of food, either dropped from the sky or tossed out of vehicles, as though the people waiting for this food are not human, as though their suffering is a natural disaster, a consequence of the state of the world, a forethought rationalizable as part of the natural landscape, as well-deserved, rather than the violent imposition of the end-goal of zionism, of the logics of colonialism laid bare–there is the money the UC Regents have funneled into the zionist death machine.
For every one of these instances, there is the money the UC Regents have funneled into the zionist death machine.
Our Regents choose to prioritize the ever-profitable industries of apartheid, genocide, and dehumanization over the needs of the students they claim to serve. They choose to take the money generated by our labor and tuition and funnel it into the business of dispossession and war. Having been to the last two Regents meetings, in January at UCSF and in November at UCLA, we have seen students cry when recounting the numbers of their family members that have been killed by UC-funded bombs, and we have seen the callousness of the Regents’ response. We see Regents roll their eyes, check their phones, and do anything but listen to these brave testimonies. They make it clear that this pain cannot be legible to them. They don’t see these testimonies as anything other than fanatical background noise. They remind us that they are committed to ignoring the suffering of those outside the bounds of their university’s profit-driven mission. They then call the police and choose to arrest these same students, punishing them for having the audacity to protest genocide.
If this enrages you, as it should, then we call on you to attend a rally or give public comment at this week’s Regents meeting. The scale of the devastation in Gaza has only gotten worse, and we know how much easier it has become to feel hopeless and desensitized. But that’s why we need you, your voices, and your passion, there with us.
TAKE ACTION
Join UC Divest in our protests of the Regents meeting on Wednesday 3/20 and Thursday 3/21 to:
- Show up to the rally at UCLA Luskin Conference Center at 12:30 PM on Wednesday. We will be coordinating rides if you need them or can provide them, sign up is here.
- Register for public comment to present IN-PERSON at 8:30 AM on Wednesday OR Thursday morning. The link to the form to register is here, as well as a toolkit of what you can say. You must register the day before you hope to attend. This is an opportunity to speak directly to the Regents about how you feel about your labor fueling genocide. We will be coordinating rides at the same link.
- Register for public comment to present OVER THE PHONE at 8:30 AM on Wednesday OR Thursday morning. The link is the same as the toolkit above.
Please consider coming in person if at all possible, and if not, please register for phone comments. If you would like more information on any of these asks, check out the UC Divest post on the Regents here, as well as more information on the B1 and J1 Resolutions the Regents will be discussing.
We will be there. We invite you to join us in this communal ceremony of resistance, creativity, joy, and collective liberation.
In solidarity,
Rank and File Irvine
Rank and File Irvine 
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