three page
SF State Student Strikes RRS 480
Image source: Nacio Jan Brown, Dec. 3, 1968
Agenda ❖ Reading overview + context ❖ Film: Agents of Change (67 min) ❖ Forum post ❖ Reminder: forum due Sunday by 11:59pm
SFSU 1968-69 Strike Collections ● Digital Special Collections
● ScholarWorks
● DIVA
● LibGuide Chronology
● J Paul Leonard Library SF State College Strike Collection
Image Description: Policemen in riot gear face off with demonstrators on 19th Ave during student demonstrations meant to
shut San Francisco State College down. Associated Press 1/12/1969
VERY brief overview of events leading to ’68 strike ● Black Student Union (BSU) at SF State organized to begin
teaching Black studies classes by Spring 1966. They also demanded the university admit more Black students, resulting in ~400 slots for incoming Black students. BSU members began to do outreach in their community to recruit Black students
● Other ethnic groups join forces with BSU to pursue greater demands, creating the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF). TWLF releases first official document on March 5, 1968
● Layoffs of faculty of color + demands for more relevant education for students of color prompted ~400 students to strike on Nov. 6, 1968. See list of demands here
● Strike included students, faculty, & community members; admin + CA Gov. Reagan were in strict opposition to strikers, called on police to violently attack strikers
● Strike ended on March 21, 1969. Several demands were met, including the creation of a College of Ethnic Studies at SF State -- the first in the entire country
Image source: Dennis Beall
Source: SF State Strike Collection Source: SF State Strike Collection
Source: J. Paul Leonard Library Collection
“Contrary to a general misconception, the women of the movement were not passively involved; they worked tirelessly alongside the men in various capacities and supported them from the conception of the strike to the end. During negotiations with the administration to end the strike, male BSU negotiators were barred from the meetings, being labeled as troublemakers and instigators. A core female member of the BSU, Ramona Tascoe, agreed to meet with the college president, S.I. Hayakawa to negotiate the demands of the students to bring the strike to an end”
(p. 6 of Sharon Ann Jones’ MA Thesis, 2018)
“Women of the BSU were not silent, passive beings as they were portrayed by the ‘fake’ media. They were focused diligent workers; some of them exposed to activism, long before they entered State. Women, Black women in particular, have always had a reputation as fighters for their home and families, as well as for the entire race”
(p. 69 of Sharon Ann Jones’ MA Thesis, 2018)
2016 Fight for Ethnic Studies at SF State Budget cuts for the College of Ethnic Studies were announced in early 2016, prompting student action
“We know that the College of Ethnic Studies will be constrained to an allocation that does not truly constitute a budget… We know that fully implementing this allocation means cutting all funding to the Cesar Chavez Institute, the college’s primary support for faculty research, creative work and partnership projects with students and community; cutting all work study student funding; cutting core graduate classes making it impossible to earn a master’s degree in Ethnic Studies, cutting all classes that would replace teaching faculty on sabbatical (unless the university violates contract and cancels these earned sabbaticals all together); defunding the Student Resource and Empowerment Center which provides advising and counseling to students; basically cutting any expenditures that are not directly funding the salaries of existing tenure track faculty member and permanent staff; and suspending for the next several years all future hires even to replace retired faculty or faculty recruited to teach at other institutions. In fact, we know that the allocation does not even provide enough funding to even pay the legally required salary of tenure track faculty members and permanent staff, guaranteeing the College an artificial deficit even before the College copies a single document, buys a single piece of equipment or funds a single piece of material to support a student or faculty member’s work. Specifically, Academic Affairs has provided $76,136, $114,052, and $275,096 fewer dollars per year respectively for the last three years than is required to pay the mandatory salaries, and this is the practice proposed for the future”
- Kenneth Monteiro, February 25, 2016 (Dean of the College of Ethnic Studies in 2016)
“The university administration is playing a lot of smoke and mirrors with the numbers to be able to say that they are paying for things when that may not
be the case… [The administration] says that we’re overspending when the reality is they have slowly drained and underfunded our budget”
Dr. Andrew Jolivétte, (former) professor and chair of SF State’s American Indian Studies department in 2016
Mourning the Loss of Hassani Bell
LINK to GoFundMe page
2016 Student Hunger Strike for Ethnic Studies ● First public meeting w/ President Leslie Wong, admin, students, & faculty held on Feb 25, 2016 on
campus at the Seven Hills Conference Room; hundreds of students were in attendance ● Several rallies followed, culminating in the student hunger strike
○ “We saw nothing was being done because we were doing rallies and our voices were still not being heard” - Ahkeel Mestayer, one of the strikers
● Hunger strike began May 2, 2016 and ended May 11, 2016 ○ Four students:
■ Hassani Bell, 18 ■ Julia Retzlaff, 19 ■ Sachiel Rosen, 19 ■ Ahkeel Mestayer, 20
○ Third World Liberation Front 2016 ● Some of the demands met:
○ $482,806 for the CoES ○ Funding for 2 full-time tenure-track positions in Africana Studies ○ Race and Resistance Studies minor → department status (making it a major) ○ Development of Pacific Islander Studies program within 5 years ○ Full list here