STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES
From the Solidarity Alliance, UC Berkeley
September 28, 2009

The Berkeley Solidarity Alliance wishes to congratulate all the participants and organizers of the triumphant Walkout on September 24, 2009. We are proud of our collective commitment to a peaceful and inclusive day of action. However, this is only the beginning of our campaign to defend public education in California. We kindly accept the thanks of UCB Chancellor Birgeneau and agree that we must mobilize people off the campuses, working with both the Sacramento Legislature and the voters of California. However, our movement is equally focused on holding accountable the University Office of the President, the UC Regents, and each campus administration. We will continue to protest the lack of democracy and transparency of UC President Mark Yudof and the Regents because of their dangerously misplaced priorities and destructive project of privatizing the UC. In calling for the 9/24 Strike and Walkout, the Solidarity Alliance has made history by reaching across the deepest lines of division that falsely separate workers, students and faculty. In our project of building and defending this newly won and beautifully demonstrated Solidarity, we hereby affirm, and urge our allies to adopt, the following principles:

1. We believe in democratic participation by everybody. Every voice is equal, all are also listeners.
2. We are committed to protecting the rights of others, with maximal sensitivity to the vulnerable.
3. We are determined to practice Solidarity in alliance with all students, workers and faculty groups who share our goals while respecting each others' constituencies.
4. We know our diversity to be our strength, and we know that ensuring Solidarity among the students means standing up for working class and middle class students, defending students of color, out-of-state and international students, and supporting transfer and first generation college students.
5. We are committed to workers' rights. The staff of the UC are just as vital to the health of this University as the faculty and students. The services provided by UC staff must be protected and not slashed; workers contracts must be honored and their Unions protected from those who would see the lowest paid members of our community driven into poverty.
6. We will uphold the value of higher education as a public good that must remain accessible and affordable to all the people of California and beyond.
7. We believe that public education should be democratic in its organization and governance. Unelected Regents, incompetent presidents with "emergency powers," outrageous spending on administration and secret budgets are real threats to what is best about the University of California.
8. We believe that this must be a fight to defend all public education in the State of California from kindergartens to colleges. UC must not use its privileged position to make a special deal with Sacramento at the expense of the Cal State System, the Community Colleges and all the public schools, most of whom are suffering far more debilitating cuts than UC Berkeley.
9. We recognize that while the State of California is in an unprecedented financial crisis, we reject as false the faith that diminishing opportunity, cuts to the most vulnerable and privatization are inevitable. We believe that higher education should be free and must expand as a necessary response to this crisis.
10. We firmly believe that Solidarity can and must win this fight.

The Solidarity Alliance, UC Berkeley

A CALL to WALK OUT and TEACH IN
September 9, 2009

In response to the drastic financial cuts now impacting the University of California at every level, and to the general attack on public education of which they are part, the Solidarity Alliance at Berkeley joins colleagues from across the UC system and calls upon faculty, staff, students and community members to support a Walk-Out and Teach-in on September 24, 2009.

Specifically, we urge:

1. All members of the campus community to honor the picket lines on Sept 24th.
2. Students to demand, and faculty to devote, teaching time to discuss the crisis, its history and its consequences, in the days leading up to the Walk-out.
3. Faculty, staff, students, and community members to gather on Sproul Plaza between Noon and 2:00 on Sept 24th for a Rally and Teach-In.

We believe that these actions are necessary to preserve and fulfill the mission of public education at the University of California and beyond.