Dear Columbia University Hunger Strikers,
We support your hunger strike, and we support your desire for change that we too believe is worth sacrifice.
As UC Berkeley students, we also feel that our university does not recognize the importance for the critical study of race through all departments on our campus, nor does it provide sufficient resources for our Ethnic Studies Department. We also feel that our university does not offer adequate administrative support for the recruitment and retention of students of color and their concerns.
We support you because we want our university to realize these needs as fundamental to our lives and because we want to reclaim our university as truly ours.
Most importantly, we support you because we want to reimagine the university. We understand that today, education is a matter of personal investment. The maximization of profit and efficiency measure success, and research is fast and reliable. The university and other institutions of higher education thus operate like corporations. We do not want our university to be an engineer of nation states and empires. We do not want a corporate university; we want a people’s university.
Input on these issues in meetings/conferences, through protests/rallies, and through other avenues of vocalization have also been ignored or patronized on our campus, and the responses to our demands have essentially been nonexistent. We overstand your decision to hunger strike and hunger striking as a physical symbol of your/our intellectual and spiritual starvation under the university administration’s current policies.
From UC Berkeley, we offer ourselves to you because we share your struggle and convictions. We imagine with you and we continue the fight on our campus. We stand in solidarity with you, and we are here for you. We learn from you, and your actions motivate us to persist and to resist. We are your comrades, and every day we send you love and positive energy.
Whose university? OUR university!
With our minds, our bodies, and our souls,
Students for Justice in Palestine
Xinaxtli
Ethnic Studies Undergraduate Student Collective Kalaam
“Until the philosophy that holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned, everywhere is at war.”
–Bob Marley
We support your hunger strike, and we support your desire for change that we too believe is worth sacrifice.
As UC Berkeley students, we also feel that our university does not recognize the importance for the critical study of race through all departments on our campus, nor does it provide sufficient resources for our Ethnic Studies Department. We also feel that our university does not offer adequate administrative support for the recruitment and retention of students of color and their concerns.
We support you because we want our university to realize these needs as fundamental to our lives and because we want to reclaim our university as truly ours.
Most importantly, we support you because we want to reimagine the university. We understand that today, education is a matter of personal investment. The maximization of profit and efficiency measure success, and research is fast and reliable. The university and other institutions of higher education thus operate like corporations. We do not want our university to be an engineer of nation states and empires. We do not want a corporate university; we want a people’s university.
Input on these issues in meetings/conferences, through protests/rallies, and through other avenues of vocalization have also been ignored or patronized on our campus, and the responses to our demands have essentially been nonexistent. We overstand your decision to hunger strike and hunger striking as a physical symbol of your/our intellectual and spiritual starvation under the university administration’s current policies.
From UC Berkeley, we offer ourselves to you because we share your struggle and convictions. We imagine with you and we continue the fight on our campus. We stand in solidarity with you, and we are here for you. We learn from you, and your actions motivate us to persist and to resist. We are your comrades, and every day we send you love and positive energy.
Whose university? OUR university!
With our minds, our bodies, and our souls,
Students for Justice in Palestine
Xinaxtli
Ethnic Studies Undergraduate Student Collective Kalaam
“Until the philosophy that holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned, everywhere is at war.”
–Bob Marley
