somename

I don't think it makes the poster cool by any means, but it's an effective way to deal with chuds sealioning or concern trolling. Often their shitty arguments aren't worthy of being engaged, and you don't want them to have free momentum. Hence, harass them till they are either banned or quit.

Well, it's impossible to really tell now, but you can see some interesting patterns by looking at the voting pattern on our last contract. Contracts have to be approved by a majority of the membership to be put in place, and generally the votes are more perfunctory, with most people approving. Often times you see 90 percent approval. That was not the case in our last contract.

Due to truly terrible bargaining, the contract was deficient for a large amount of people. Cost of living varies quite a bit in California, though it's generally high. In some places it's really bad, to the point of homeless grad students, in the case of Santa Cruz. Surprise surprise, the bargaining team delivered a shit contract that didn't address people's needs fully. We and a lot of others tried to agitate for continuing and escalating the strike, because the leadership was being real shit at it. They still had all the levers of power though at that time, so it was difficult. They even hired a PR firm to push the vote through lol. Despite that, several campuses still very much voted No on the contract, and overall, the results are a rather terrible look for the UAW, for anyone that's clued in.

The vote is split in two here, as this was before the union was combined into one bigger one. The percent is that which voted Yes on the contract. The second grouping was generally a little bit better off on average than the first grouping, though it's complicated as students sometimes went back and forth between the two depending on the quarter.

It's a work in process. The union is kind of split into subsections for each campus, each with their own local stewards/leadership, and then there's some top level admin types lurking above. There are good people in union positions. It's not like a totally lost cause. It's just a lot easier to start at the local level and work up. There's been a good push into unfucking it, especially after our last strike, where the shitty people were obviously incompetent/corrupt.

Different campus also have different material conditions at times, which influences, well, a lot of stuff.

Our strike vote is starting today for UAW 4811, the grad student/student researcher union for the University of California system. For those unaware, this push started back after the raids on the UCLA encampment. It apparently gave the union enough cause to start this proceeding. Which is good! Likely the vote will go through, and then things will get spicy. The vote closes Wednesday afternoon.

On the downside, the highest level of the union leadership still has a bunch of collaborationist fuckers, so they undercut the total power of the strike before it started by declaring it a 'limited' strike, with a maximum deadline of June 30th. Obviously, presetting a deadline for your labor action isn't great. It also undercuts the threat of long term withholding of student grades, which would result in the academic machinery grinding to a halt. That said, it is at the very least past the deadline of the quarter's instruction.

The UC system is weird in that instead of semesters, we use quarters of the year, with a Fall, Winter, and Spring quarter of primary instruction, and then a summer quarter. That means that school goes way farther into May/June than pretty much everywhere else, so the campus won't be empty by any means, and there will be disrupted classes. There will be some form of material impact, and every bit helps I hope.

I was talking with someone, and they think that the University might just play nice and try to wait it out, but I'm really not sure about that. They were pretty chill, in terms of direct force at least, during on more "normal" strike about a year ago, but the harsh crackdowns of students literally just sitting around makes me think it might be different this time. I think it's possible that if our strike materializes, and it has actual material consequences, however mild, they might windmill slam that police brutality button. I feel kind of paranoid typing and talking about this lol. But regardless, I started stocking up on first aid supplies and some protective stuff. I don't know how far away we are from Kent State 2.0.

I can’t tell if you’re 15 or 68.

Nah, Stalinism gives you great stamina

Wait college is the “real world” now? Pretty libbed out of you.

A farmer being willing to kill a cow or a chicken does not translate to them flippantly shooting their dog, not on average.

There are some animal abusers that would kill a dog without caring yeah, but that's not a sizable voting constituency lol.

Hey! It's also discord trans

Eh, I don't entirely agree. Even on the "classic farmer" archetype, just casually shooting a dog is pretty crazy. Lots of farmers have a dog roaming around on their property that may not be materially benefitting them. Even if it's not treated like a child, that doesn't mean it's not an emotional connection for a lot of people.