An Independent Paper Now!
On October 7th, the Unity of Fields broke through the concentration camp walls, sparking Richmond to rise up under the banner of Palestinian National Liberation. Gaza has borne an enormous cost in their courageous struggle for freedom, with well over 30,000 Palestinians, the number growing every day, massacred by Zionist forces in what is now the most documented genocide in human history. It would be a great injustice for us to ignore the sheer quantity of these crimes and abandon the people of Gaza in their moment of need. In this moment when state repression against the anti-imperialist, pro-Palestinian forces is unfolding at a scale unseen in decades, we believe that there has never been a more important time for the establishment of a new, independent voice for the VCU community, especially in light of the violence meted out by the VCUPD this past Monday. We have named ourselves the Student-Worker for two reasons; first, because we seek to reforge the link between the working classes and the intellectual classes that was successfully broken over the course of the Cold War; second, because student-workers, whether they are grad students, international students, or low-wage all hold a double relationship to VCU as the institution which is both training and exploiting them simultaneously. It is worth noting also worker-students, workers that are not exploited by the institution training them share some of these relations with student-workers and also play an important role in reforging the alliance. This unique relationship to the institution gives a special importance to organizing the student-workers because they are the best situated to weld together the interests of the students and the workers.
We call for revolutionary minded students, workers, worker-students, and student-workers to unite and organize against world imperialism.
VCU: a Bourgeois Institution
It is important for the Richmond community to understand that Virginia Commonwealth University is not a neutral party seeking to fairly act as intermediary between the various interest groups on campus. In actuality, VCU is not simply a university, but a hedge fund boasting over 2.4 billion dollars in its endowment according to a report entitled “U.S. and Canadian Institutions Listed by Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 Endowment Market Value and Change in Endowment Market Value from FY21 to FY22” by the National Association of College and University Business Officers and TIAA. VCU, as of 2020, has the 53rd largest endowment in the country. It is a bourgeois institution with far more interest in acquiring Richmond real estate than in educating its students or the people of Richmond. VCU is Richmond’s leading force for gentrification, under cover of “improving” student life the University hoovers up property in all corners of the city. Black people who grew up in Richmond are slowly pushed out of homes and priced out of rent until they are forced out of the city entirely. Richmond, like Washington D.C., has progressively whitened. Sojeong Mun writing for Richmond Confidential notes “In the past four decades, Richmond’s Black population has dropped 41%. Nearly half of Richmond residents were African American in 1980. By 2020, only 18% were.” One needs look no further than the recent acquisition by VCU for 435,000 dollars of 402 E. Grace St. or the broader Grace St. “revitalization” project to see this trend continue to play out. One can also look to the political appointees of Glenn Youngkin to the Board of Visitors to see the merger between the political elite and the big bourgeoisie.
VCU is an organ of class power, utilized by the imperialists, to exploit students and faculty alike. Universities serve as sites for both value production and ideological reproduction. On the one hand, Graduate student-workers have course work that includes the exploitation of their labor in the form of grading, teaching, lab work, and more as a part of their professional training. Student-workers employed at minimum wage by the school or, at best, only a few dollars more which requires many students to take on a second job to attempt to make ends meet. International students have visas that require they become student-workers for minimum wage at the school preventing them from seeking higher wages away from campus. And, faculty can and do have their wages and benefits cut with barely any notice. If you need proof, you can look to the 14 Focused Inquiry teachers who were switched to terminal contracts in 2023 despite significant backlash from the student population and other faculty. Even faculty without budget cuts are paid less than the average Virginia Commonwealth University faculty wage average, despite constant raises being given to VCU administrators being paid more than average. Further, VCU plans to hire Postdoctoral Fellows with terminal contracts rather than reinstating the contracts of time tested faculty who have benefited thousands of VCU students through courses building necessary skills, career planning support, and detailed recommendation letters.
Meanwhile, the tuition raises higher every year. In fact, the 3% tuition raise from the Summer 2023 BOV meeting was approved by the Board members despite listening to multiple faculty and students speeches protesting the decision before the vote.
On the other hand, the training and education students are receiving is carefully presented within clearly distinguished ideological boundaries. Seemingly open discussions are littered with unspoken boundaries, and Palestine is a prime example. Decisions about the structure of education that appear apolitical, such as the acceptable topics of discussion, the courses that are offered, or the professors chosen to present the material, all stem from, to quote Gramsci, “a definite conception of the world” in other words a philosophy, a worldview, an ideology. In other words, institutions, like people, represent a particular class standpoint with a definite conception of the world. That conception is structured by class. The real decisionmakers at VCU are all of the same class, the bourgeois class, the class of owners and exploiters who run VCU and Richmond. The Board of Visitors is composed of executives, polticos appointed by israeli bootlicker Glenn Youngkin, and wealthy school administrators like Rao and it has control over the most essential decisions especially those regarding money. The bourgeoisie decide on how much tuition will cost, how to allocate the universities resources, which weapons contractors to partner with, and when to call in the cops to brutalize “their” students. Bourgeois institutions cannot be trusted to serve the interests of the very people they are exploiting, so we must establish our own institutions, on and off campus, that accurately represent our collective, proletarian class interests.
How do we Fight Back?
Our primary task is to unite the nascent revolutionary forces that exist in the community so that we can move in a single direction towards Palestinian liberation and against the forces of imperialism that exist on campus, in our city, nationally, and internationally. We are just one section of an international movement against the world system of capitalist imperialism. Zionism has deep ties to Richmond in the form of economic investment, institutional collaboration, and political influence that manifest in programs like the VCU “israeli” study abroad program with the Hebrew University. The American college campus has become a hotspot for revolutionary struggle today with the emergence of a broad based mass movement of students and workers joining together to occupy campus’ in solidarity with the Palestinian people in Gaza.
VCU established its own encampment for a few short hours and joined that movement. At this juncture revolutionaries in Richmond, on and off campus, need to rally together and implement new methods of disruption for the Palestinian people in Gaza in pursuit of disclosure, divestment, and an academic boycott. Nothing short of a full severing of all institutional ties to Zionism.
You can take part in this work by joining VCURed or by submitting your essays, strategies, poems, or art at the-student-worker@proton.me.
SEVER TIES WITH GENOCIDE!
FREE PALESTINE!
REFORGE THE STUDENT-WORKER ALLIANCE!
WORKS CITED
www.wtvr.com/news/local-news/vacant-grace-street-building-sells-in-downtown-richmond-october-12-2023
www.axios.com/local/richmond/2024/02/14/vcu-grace-campus-main-street
https://richmond.com/news/local/education/virginia-commonwealth-university-faculty-budget-vcu-job-cuts/article_bfd8285c-e85f-11ee-be79-4babc84740f6.html
vcu.csod.com/ux/ats/careersite/1/home/requisition/5179?c=vcu&source=Higheredjobs
https://redsails.org/appunti/
https://worldstudies.vcu.edu/academics/real-world-learning/study-abroad/israel/
