In the last few weeks, students from the University of São Paulo, one of the 100 best universities in the world (according to some ranking last year), started a strike. The strike started in the São Paulo campus, but has now spread to the Lorena campus and a few parts of the Ribeirão Preto campus.
The students on strike are demanding a few things, including the hiring of 1400 new professors (to reach the same student/professor ratio as it was in 2014), more financial assistance for low-income students, and a quota for trans students.
The university leadership (I forgot what "Reitoria" means in english, lol) said they will hire 800 new professors, but students think it is not enough, since there are people who are close to graduatinng without having some mandatory classes because of lack of professors.
Also, about the quota for trans students, there are already quotas for students from public high schools (I'm one of them) and for black/mixed race students, so this wouldn't be really without precedents.
My campus (São Carlos) will vote about whether to go on strike next tuesday. There is some resistance to the idea, but it seems like we'll end up going on strike too.
Here, we have two main areas on campus. One of them was the first one to be built, and is on the center of the city. It is where most of the courses happen. My course is on the second area, which is quite far away fron the city center. We always take an university bus from Area 1 to Area 2, which was privatized (it is not operated by the university anymore, but is still free at least). There is literally nothing to eat here other than the subsidized R$2,00 lunch (also privatized) which we can only eat at lunchtime. As such, improving the bus and placing some cafés here on Area 2 will probably become one of the demands of the strike on São Carlos.
So, what do you guys think about this?
Uncritical solidarity to student strikes. Sadly they are not such a clear threat to industry (compared to, for example, a bus strike), so y'all will have an even tougher fight ahead you.
The demands seem on point. I know that it's on the state level rather than federal, but I can't help but feel that Haddad's fiscal austerity is to blame somehow. Leave a note on his office.
By the way, this came out of left field for me, do y'all have some public relations website or something we other Brazilians could stay tuned to?
Well, I do not know any websites or anything like that, but in the newspaper Folha de São Paulo there are many news about the strike (although they are basically one-sided agains the students).
Also, I think that the state governor, Tarcísio de Freitas is way more responsible for this than Haddad, since Carlotti, the Dean of the University of São Paulo, wants to be part of the Department of Education of the state of São Paulo, so he is pretty much invested in being "tough" on those "students that only want to cause chaos" or whatever because Tarcísio is basically a "far-right centrist" (he wants to privatize everything and he applauds police brutality, but he tries to not be seen as fash).
edit: I think my poor english made this sound kinda weird, so I'll rephrase it:
Tarcísio de Freitas, state governor of São Paulo, is fash. Carlotti, Dean of the University of São Paulo, wants to cozy up with the fash to get a job in the government. As such, Carlotti is very invested in not appearing weak to "rioters" and as such it will be pretty hard to force him into negotiating.
Sorry, yeah the Haddad thing was meant as a (bad) joke. It's usually a good idea for coordinated action like strikes to have your own publicity section, to help fight back against misinformation from bourgeois media, like the wgacontract2023.org website. It doesn't need to be anything to fancy, but I think your local DCE cell could organise something simple like a wordpress blog, porkbun sells some really cheap domains too. Urgency dictates that getting something out there is more important than having something perfect, and word of mouth can only get so far.
Usually they stick to Instagram, which is a pretty big beef I have with them over it because IG and other recommendation-based networks are entirely unreliable to get information across.
As for the governor and dean partnership, that is a bit of the norm. One thing to keep in mind is that the most prestigious and possibly lucrative portion of these universities is not the teaching, but the all the research (specially private research), so by impeding that somehow it'll put them in a worse position for negotiation. If the post-grad (just grad for English speakers) students are onboard too that'll be a good sign.
The professors' union, ADUSP, has entered the strike in the São Paulo campus, so at least there the research has probably stopped.
I do not use IG or social media in general (Lemmygrad is the exception) so I do not know if CAASO (the student organization responsible for the São Carlos campus) or the DCE are using them to communicate. I'll look into it right now to know the answer.
edit: CAASO has an Instagram page and the DCE has a Facebook page. (I can't access any of them because I do not have an account)
I'll take a look at those, thanks! If you know somebody from the orgs, tell them about the awesomeness of email lists for me.
We do not use mailing lists very often here. I think it would be hard to convince them. I suggested reviving the old CAASO website, which is abandoned, but it seems like it will remain abandoned for now.