We write as faculty, tenure stream and contingent, in support of a university that is accountable to the people on whose labor it depends.

Graduate students at the University of California, Santa Cruz are currently on a wildcat strike [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/us/ucsc-strike.html] for a Cost of Living Adjustment [https://payusmoreucsc.com/], which is sorely needed to offset the astronomical housing costs in Northern California. In centering the cost of living, the strike has directly challenged and brought renewed attention to the historical and ongoing exploitation of grad student instructors and researchers, as well as staff, service workers, and undergraduate workers within higher education, reanimating concerns that have spurred labor actions in the last 25 years from the University of Illinois, the University of Oregon, and the University of Michigan to Yale, Harvard, and New York University.

For weeks, the attention of scholars and researchers, union members, students and faculty across the US and beyond has been fixed solidly on UC Santa Cruz and the entire UC system. We the undersigned pledge solidarity with the strikers. We condemn all administrative efforts to break the strike or otherwise intimidate or retaliate against strikers. We condemn reported threats to international and undocumented students and reported police violence against strikers on Monday, February 10, 2020. [https://www.labornotes.org/blogs/2020/02/university-california-intimidating-international-students-defeat-wildcat-strike]

Until the University of California system provides a more equitable standard of living not only for striking UCSC graduate student instructors and researchers, but for all of those who labor, live, and learn within the University of California system, we will not hold or attend events on the UCSC campus. We are also committed to extending this pledge of support and noncooperation to other UC campuses if UC graduate workers at the University of California, Santa Barbara; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of California, Merced; the University of California, San Diego; or the University of California, Davis, who are currently also organizing for a cost of living adjustment, authorize a strike. We will urge our colleagues to do the same.

View current signatories at: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EYeFgciH7uRKTXVUuFvQtnQD3pBZqvu1gBeSOnVTG3k/edit#gid=1873083883