As the Socialist Equality Party candidate for US vice president, I condemn the arrests of UCLA students protesting the genocide in Gaza. The ongoing slaughter, which has already claimed the lives of 46,000 Palestinians, is politically, military and economically supported by the Biden administration and both capitalist parties.
The latest arrest of at least 25 protesters at UCLA follows the mass arrests of over 3,000 demonstrators, overwhelmingly students and faculty, in the last two months. These arrests have been carried out by police on campuses almost universally controlled by the Democratic Party. The Democrats are working in tandem with the trade union bureaucracies, which are attempting to suppress opposition to the genocide and American imperialism’s escalating wars for global domination.
The shutdown and isolation of the University of California strike by the United Auto Workers bureaucracy gave UC administrators and the police a free hand to carry out the latest violent attack on protesters. The strike, which the UAW apparatus never wanted in the first place, was initiated by rank-and-file workers themselves. It signaled the powerful entry of the working class as the decisive social and political force to stop war and police state repression.
The fact that UC workers raised political demands, that they and their students have free speech rights, which must be protected, was and continues to be a direct political challenge to the Biden administration and both corporate controlled parties. They are seeking to shut down all internal dissent.
In the face of mass worldwide demonstrations demanding a halt to the genocide, both the Democrats and Republicans continue to support and arm Israel. They have invited Netanyahu, the butcher of Gaza, to address a joint session of Congress next month.
The California judge who intervened against the strike did so out of concern that the UAW bureaucracy, which has endorsed the reelection of “Genocide Joe,” could lose control of the situation. The ruling class feared that the strike could become a catalyst for a far broader movement of the working class against war abroad and austerity and repression at home.
The main takeaway from this struggle is not that political strikes are futile, which is what the UAW bureaucracy would have workers believe. Instead, it is that these struggles cannot be left in the hands of the pro-war and pro-capitalist trade union bureaucracies like those that control the UAW apparatus, which is now enforcing the California judge’s strikebreaking order.
Instead, UC workers must form rank-and-file committees to unite with UAW members and all workers throughout the auto, weapons and aerospace industries and other sections of the working class to prepare common action to halt the war machines of American imperialism and the Zionist state.
Such an industrial and political counter offensive by the working class is the only way to put an end to war and repression at home, and to put an end to capitalism, the source of war and dictatorship.