A Promise of Equity, Still Unfulfilled

Forty years have passed since the inception of the third world Liberation Front (twLF), when, in 1969, students at UC Berkeley first took a stand to combat oppression by demanding access, equitable resources and justice for all marginalized communities on campus and throughout California. twLF envisioned and demanded a Third World College and alternatively established an Ethnic Studies department.

Almost 10 years after twLF students went on a hunger strike to protect the Ethnic Studies department from cuts in 1999, twLF is rising up again. Proposition 209 has changed the numbers and dynamics of communities of color on this campus and, for that reason, we can no longer wait for a safe refuge for marginalized people to be established.

Within the walls of this often hegemonic and oppressive university, we need a space where we can celebrate, learn, express dissent and critically analyze our histories as third world peoples. With this in mind, and with the temporary contract for the Multicultural Center set to expire this summer, the need to establish a fully functional multicultural center is crucial and urgent.

The university needs to reevaluate its priorities and remain accountable to the campus community. Despite the university's increased rhetoric about diversity and its recent hiring of a vice chancellor of equity and inclusion, marginalized communities on this campus are still not being prioritized. Instead, this university is perpetuating oppressive hierarchical systems by upholding deals with corporations, incarcerating native remains in the UC Berkeley Hearst museum and continuing to not provide student resources.

The university and the Berkeley campus need to be critical of the language of diversity, equity and inclusion they use. They need to prove that there is real substance behind these often ambiguous words and that the university is committed to changing a campus climate that is hostile to marginalized communities.

Fulfilling their long-overdue promise of a multicultural center would be a step to show students that people of color and other underrepresented groups and their histories have the right to exist in the institution of higher learning beyond Ethnic Studies.

A multicultural center would also encourage all students to dialogue interculturally and go beyond "tolerance" towards deconstructing "difference" and analyzing the origins of hierarchies. A multicultural center framed in this way is not simply a space; it is another step towards realizing visions of a just and democratic university that values student voice.

Let us be clear: We do not proceed naively. We harbor no illusions that a multicultural center can fix fundamental problems nor completely alter the oppressive structure of our increasingly militarized and corporatized university. It can be, however, a start.

While twLF has demanded and defended Ethnic Studies and the interests of third world peoples, we do so in a larger vision of reclaiming and transforming our social, racial, political, economic and cultural hierarchical institutions in the interests of all peoples and taking the power out of the hands of the few and redistributing it into the hands of the people at large. twLF has always been and will continue to belong to all students committed to the struggles of decolonizing the university and bringing justice to all oppressed communities.

In the words of 1999 twLF, the coalition "represented a collective vision of real empowerment for which many people fought at great personal cost. There were never twLF members, merely a number of people who found each other on the same political path."

After 40 years, the struggle continues in our society and campus community. It is time for the university to be accountable to the condition of its students and surrounding communities.

This week, teach-ins on the history and purpose of twLF will be going on as well as a week of events March 3-8 entitled "Reclaiming the Space" in the temporary multicultural center, Heller Lounge.

With the aid of all students, we can remain critical and send a message to the university that students will not be fooled by empty rhetoric and symbolic gestures. We demand real change and action. Students need to realize the breadth of their own power and hold the university accountable to a speedy fulfillment of its promise for a permanent and comprehensive multicultural center.

No justice, no peace.

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