 Okay, friends and colleagues we're going to get going it's about five after the hour. Welcome everybody who has joined us tonight. It would be disingenuous if I didn't mention that I know that some of you chose to be here instead of joining that star studied Amazon Webinar tonight so we especially appreciate the seriousness of purpose that brought you here instead. Obviously, in the real world these things do not compete but they enhance one another. The reason that we're actually here and that we're doing this webinar is because we have reached a moment in our labor movement, and in the unfolding in the dynamic change that's going on in our labor movement, where it is impossible not to recognize that there are qualitative changes taking place. There are quantitative changes. Of course, we see the massive organizing in Starbucks, the amazing event in Amazon the incredible degree of organizing going on among journalists and in other sectors in education and in health care. There is also some qualitative shift that we believe in labor notes, we believe may be going on and that's what this webinar is designed to explore. And specifically our topic tonight as you know, is this question of minority strikes as we've titled it minority strikes and majority power in our labor movement. Certainly as long as I have been part of it so the last half century, the idea has been of course you can't go on strike, unless you have a very, very solid majority is super majority of your members who are committed who are willing to go out or willing to stay out as long as needed to win what you're fighting for. There are many, many campaigns for contracts that were strong contract campaigns that stopped short in our view that stopped short of what they could achieve, because they felt they didn't have enough strength to go on strike. And the fact that the panelists here tonight represent to very recent very powerful minority strikes is something we really wanted to dig into and investigate. It may be something that has to do particularly with the nature of the education sector and graduate student union, or it may be broader than that it's something for us to come to understand. So, with that we are going to begin. It's a great pleasure for me to be together here with four comrades that I had the chance to work with a lot through each of their strikes. I'm Ellen David Friedman I'm on the board of Labor Notes. I've worked as an organizer in the education sector for for many years. And with me tonight are Katrina evansson and Joanne Lee from Columbia University Jack Davies and Stephen young from UC Santa Cruz, all really outstanding principle hardworking and lovely leaders in their own unions they are members of the way And the format that we are going to use is I'll be asking, I'll be asking them questions that we hope get it some of the most salient issues here who are welcome to put questions into the question and answer chat. And we'll probably talk for about an hour or so and then begin taking questions and wrap up at 930 Eastern time. Okay, before we get going with the, what was this what do we mean by a minority strike how did you do it. I'd just like to ask each of you to respond to the question. Well, what did you win, because we don't go on strike just for fun. Well, it would be fun. We go and strike because we are fighting to win stuff. So, please answer in whatever you way you want and just to sort of save time here. Colin folks. Sure. Thank you. You know the most obvious and directing that we won was an 11% raise effectively mid contract. In the middle of a four year contract with a pretty clear in a strike clause in it. So on top of that, as well as like a funding guarantee is sort of minimum of five years of funding for workers on our campus. In addition to that like to far more robust campus organizing culture has sort of come out of the other side of this as well and you know it's that was all great. And I hope I wonder what might have been without the pandemic. Yeah, I'll pick a line ending with the pandemic lockdowns as well. Thank you. Please pick up from there. I would say that, you know, what, what we want was like a real shift in the organizing capacity among, you know, people who self identify as organizers on our campus but also among workers in the sense that since the strike, what we've had is like a real building of connections among workers who are who are willing to take initiative within the, you know, individual departments and so on, where you know, when we when we started organizing around cost of living adjustment around Cola. And we had in fall of 2019. We will all sort of attending Union meetings and being in Union spaces and attendance at those meetings was in around the single digits. Now, that's kind of a distant memory. It's like a real robust, you know, both organizing capacity and also maybe a reputation on the campus in which when, when we mobilize around issues because of, you know, the Wildcat strike and all its ups and downs. Organizers on this campus have developed maybe like a little bit of a reputation that we are we're serious people, and we're willing to organize around concrete issues and get results, and we're willing to put concepts into actions. And that has gained us a lot of support and a lot of new connections. It has allowed us to build a ton of trust, to be honest with with new people who maybe were around during the Wildcat strike, but especially with people who are not around during that time. And so we've come to a workplace in which, you know, the core organizers from that time come across as as serious as committed, and as people who are willing to come up with plans to win demands around concrete campaigns. So that makes my organizers heart saying stuff on changing the culture and giving legitimacy to the union to the ideas of unionism has got to be our goal. That's magnificent Joanna please tell us what you want in Columbia. Yeah, so I can speak a little too. I'm sorry everyone I'm just like I have a little cold so if I sound a little hard just just put it in the chat so that I know. We won a really strong first contract, and that first contract meant that the lowest paid workers got a raise of almost, you know, 23% or so. Those of us who were on nine month appointments, who often find ourselves very vulnerable got raises up between nine to 11%. For other workers some of the highest paid workers amongst us they got raises of around 6%. We want dental care. We also want third party, you know neutral arbitration which is a standard labor procedure for discrimination harassment which Columbia, and many other Ivy League universities have been trying to carve out of labor contracts on the grounds that it's considered as a student issue and not a labor issue, which of course you know we know they want to hide behind their own processes. And on top of that and I think this is really important we won recognition of our union. And for a lot of people they might think that you know that's not a big deal but for us, you know, we got recognition from the NLRB and Columbia still refused to recognize us for them, they were willing to do something totally illegal, right the highest kind of body for labor law said that we are a union, these other people in it, and Columbia still refused to recognize us as a union and consistently try to carve workers out of that definition so that's something that we want. And it's a really strong first contract I think has set a new standard for lots of other labor, you know unions in the higher ed sector. Excellent Joanna and just in case people have missed it and she says recognition, it means everybody there are no one, no one that does graduate student work is excluded. And on the basis of hours or job titles it's an extraordinarily broad wall to wall definition, which the university did not want to give up. Katrina, please go ahead. Yeah, and I think one of the big ones for recognition to is that we also included undergraduates so undergraduate workers. I'm in this battle but it's really significant battle because it's one that that's the case that at the NLRB was given to that recognition was a fight that we already already started in 2016 right away before. So, and we're still on that path but I think we'll talk a little bit about that today I think I guess just to add on to what Joanna was saying. One of the things that we won was, and this was a learning process that through the number of strikes that we did since 2017. We've changed also the culture of our union and we really this was the strike and I hope we'll get to talk about this today too but this was the strike that we were able to kind of carry out in the way that we wanted or we thought was going to do it and not following traditional union models that we didn't really believe were in the spirit of the kind of unionism that we believed it so. Yeah, but the main gains I think Joanna mentioned so. And that's an excellent jumping off point for the first question which I'll post to you Stefan. You know, so as I mentioned before the conventional wisdom is you can't have a strike without a majority or super majority. Can you tell us what a minority meant in the case of UC Santa Cruz. What did it mean in your context. Well, to be honest with you, you know in the in the build up to the decision to go on Wildcat strike in December 2019. These terms, minority and majority, they did not come up for us. I feel pretty strongly that at the time, you know we had, we had deliberations around what was possible and what was not possible, but but these exact terms around majority and minority were not things that were in the mouths of either workers or rank and file workers who we were drawing into the struggle. And I guess, as the, you know, as we discuss and say a bit more about the blow by blow of how the strike unfolded those kinds of different questions will become a bit more obvious, but it's really only in this kind of hindsight that the minority question becomes relevant to us at the time. And I'm thinking especially of that period of December 5 to December 8 so that period where the decision was ultimately made to go on Wildcat strike. I think it's unequivocal that, you know, all respect to the conventional wisdom conventional wisdom comes from somewhere right like no one would dispute that having more workers on strike is better than having fewer workers on strike. At the time, in the context of a Wildcat action, like what was being contemplated on our campus, we were thinking across sort of like different lines, thinking about willingness to take action relative to the newness of the campaign that we were putting forward, about this idea of maybe like a critical mass, where one of the things that we did here at the time was, you know, we don't need to have everyone, but we do need to have enough. And I think when it comes time to talk about a critical mass of about how many workers is enough. We need to be attuned to the concrete conditions of a particular workplace in order to make that call. And that's those were the lines that we were we were thinking along. You know, it's not through preset formulas or percentages that you can know how many is enough. It depends upon like an analysis of the conditions in a particular workplace. And in our context, you know, we can talk more about, you know, varying stages through our Wildcat strike, what were our numbers at different stages of the movement. But for that critical pivotal moment where we decided to go on strike December 2019, we cannot discuss the numbers without also discussing the nature of the disruption. The nature of the disruption that was being discussed was a grading strike. So, right at the end in December at the end of the fall term. What was being discussed was a decision to withhold all of the final grades from the many many undergraduates that the teaching assistants were responsible for. So the number of those grades and the short notice for management, where management needs those grades to kind of, you know, carry along with its normal functioning. And the fact that the grades were due sort of 10 days after the idea of a strike first came about that it was very short notice that we knew at the time that a large number of workers were willing to take that disruptive step that we knew would be extremely kind of overwhelming for the administrative apparatus of management, because they were not expecting it to happen. And frankly, neither would we. But we were acting upon a sentiment that we felt. And, you know, based on our assessments at the time, we thought that, yeah, we didn't have everyone but but we had enough. So let's have them kind of introduced this idea of this strategic analysis strikes are supposed to hurt the employer. That's the purpose of strikes they're not supposed to be symbolic. They're not for photo opportunities they're supposed to hurt the employer from doing business so Joanna actually why don't you pick that up for Columbia because you all made a strategic decisions about this as well. And I think something that might be helpful is to also contextualize our fall 2021 strike against the spring 2021 strike. And this is the cat that I'm finally going to let out at the back, which is that our fall of fall 2021 strike actually had lower participation in terms of numbers than the one in spring 2021. This was not something we talked about a lot during the fall. But if we actually looked at absolute numbers, we had more in spring 2021. The difference, the reason why the spring 2021 strike did not get us a contract that we could ratify with a you know unifying yes. The fall did was precisely because of what Stefan talked about where we actually looked at the concrete conditions and made decisions to continue. Right, so, you know, in the spring of 2021, we had a three week strike, it was paused, undemocratically by the bargaining committee. And after that the energy kind of fell away, it dissipated and there was no more leverage, right once we ended that strike. It didn't change history but it gives us something something to think about right what would have happened if that strike had actually, you know, taken on that momentum that was there and just continue to kind of victory. Right where we could actually say this is when we have won. And, but what we decided to do in the fall of 2021 when we recognized that, you know, with the kind of burnout and disappointment of the last struggle we were not going to get, you know, the same numbers let alone a majority. And one thing that we were consistently told was that we need 1500 out of 3000 for us to be able to have a majority strike and that was why the last strike was paused. Instead of thinking of it that way we asked ourselves. Exactly what Stefan said what is the critical mass that we need to actually build that momentum and hurt the employer. We actually made many strategic decisions. So for example, we really focused the organizing around instructors of record and teaching assistants. Instead of organizing, say some of the groups that have never had, you know, any sort of like strike experience interactions with the union we serve had them as part of our consciousness in terms of how do we bring them in without necessarily saying from the outside your first contact with the union is, is that you have to go and strike and that we have to just like get these commitments to get 1500. Like instead of doing that we really focused on like building deeper relationships, including saying to some of these people that there will be other ways for them to participate and focusing on solidifying the kind of commitment of the core that would really hit Columbia where where it hurts. Joanna, thank you. And so this really, you would both introduce this concept of sort of critical mass, there needs to be a core you need to be very clear and directed. We still have to go from small to big, it may not have to be everybody but it's got to be big so, Jack, can you address in the Wildcat strike to Santa Cruz, how you went from small to big. Thanks so and yeah I think it's a very important question because I think the de facto is we're all small groups whether we are organizing our campus whether we're the union leadership, wherever we are we're probably starting small in the current moment or at least in our workplace that's true. And actually, our, you know, demand which you know we're calling a caller, which we call the caller rather but really was about the category of rent burden. And it was a demand to lift every worker on our campus out of rent burden such that we would be only paying a maximum of 30% of our wage on our rent, and Santa Cruz is extremely expensive rental market. So this demand actually was articulated a full year before this fall 2019 in the context of some like coalitional organizing that a few of us were involved in. So it's like a, you know, sort of like group of small little groups self identified activists organizers, and you know we were there as you know people in the union on our campus. And our demand, you know pinned on to a very long laundry list of, of other demands, extremely different qualities, you know, different, just very very different very different priorities. And, you know what ended up happening is that our messaging activity, everything was sort of guided by our internal dynamics and interpersonal conflicts and it was a very much like, you know, like a whole of mirrors, sort of like organizing and unsurprisingly we got absolutely nowhere and disintegrated. And so as you know the group of Unionists who had survived that we decided that we need to regroup and become much more coherent ourselves as like a small group. Before we joined any other, you know, coalitionals kind of thing. I think this dynamic is, is actually more prevalent than than people think that there's a certain, often like a certain wishfulness inside self identified organizing groups which are, you know, often very small and just people who are willing to go to meetings all the time. There's a wishfulness or sentiment that the workers should care about something. You know they ought to care about this set of legislative proposals or they should care about this technical demand or this petition of whatever kind like it should speak to their interests. This is sort of what's guiding a lot of activity or action, because this is what the internal group decided was important, this existing small group. So across the way it turned out and this is this is like a lesson we've learned in hindsight but so stumbled upon a different approach which was to plan out year long campaign over the summer around the singular demand for the cost of living adjustment and rent burden. And for this fall which Stefan described the end of the fall term, the whole plan was simply to make the demand circulate. So we're emailing it out. On the slide, it's like everywhere we could we had lots of conversations everyone's emails thing you just had their rent burden in it. All this like most visible way we, in every visible way we could imagine we made this issue of people's rent burden, like circular, you know, marchers confrontations with the chancellor, big day out the base of campus like organizing meetings in public, all this sort of thing. Basically this took off like quicker and more explicitly than we ever could have hoped. And it got to the point right before where Stefan started earlier where workers who we did not know had never met started using the terms of our campaign. They were talking about their rent burden and their need for a caller. And they were calling for strike action. In fact, people we'd never seen in a meeting before in our lives were saying, if, if, if we're serious about this we need to strike we need to take action. And what I'm most proud of of our small group is how quickly we responded to that. And some of which Stefan described earlier. The lesson for us here is that in hindsight, it's obvious this demand was a good one. But the reasons for that were not necessarily clear at the time. And we think now that it was because it was the singular demand. It wasn't a list. It was, it was, it was clear intuitive in its terms, and spoke to them, really the most humiliating part of workers lives, you know, on our on our campus in our workplace. And the demand itself carried with it like its own solution like a really transformative, robust demand that would fix the problem and really change people's lives in a deep and material way. And maybe it's only in hindsight that you can know that anyone like demand has this quality. But what it does require of your small group is a certain receptiveness, a willingness to like listen and watch how people are responding and change, shift, drop things, you know, totally throughout your plans as necessary. And I think those are things we did really well. You know, as we look back at it now and that's what allowed this, you know, pretty insular group of like kind of, you know, pathological people to make a demand like really expand and have have the demand get taken up. It was no longer our campaign. And that was, that was clear by early December. Thank you. I just want to point out to people listening that in both cases we've already heard that each core group of very, very committed activists had to overcome a previous a prior event that had not ended well. It was a prior bar campaign or prior strike that was weak. And so I just want to underscore that because organizing is never linear. It is always relies on your ability to keep your intentions in front of you to face the the unexpected thing, and figure out a way to keep going. I think, Jack just given a beautiful example of that, you both have a Katrina if I could ask you. As has been said here already, it's not like you don't want to have a majority strike that's always a really good goal, but it's not always possible could you talk a little bit at Columbia. What do you think were the obstacles to achieving a majority and what allows you to take the lead anyway. Yeah, I think. Well, I guess I would want to add something before I answer that in with regards to the numbers because I think that for us also we really recognize how this number issue is was a question of control in our spring 2021 strike. So having access or not to what the numbers of our strikers was was a point of contention so when we got to the strike in the fall, we really wanted to kind of take control of and make it make this like a decision making process so that's how we sort of implemented these polls where everyone could weigh in and vote on whether to continue and so get an assessment of that. In terms of the, in terms of the obstacles I think that one of the biggest things that we faced was that there was a change of the structure. So as we that meant that students or workers that were coming into the fall were suddenly faced with not having enough money to pay for their big lump sum payments that they have to issue to Columbia housing for instance where you have the semester in full or these kinds of issues right so there was there was a lot of demoralization of students in front of that change but there was also a lot of anger and a lot of clarity around how the university was, you know, in the middle of a pandemic, not interested in its workers or students or whatever they want to call us so so I think that that was, it was kind of like it had like this dual element of on the one side people were, you know, we're scared and rightly so because they didn't know how they were going to financially sustain a strike that they, a lot of didn't, and on the other hand it really helped us galvanize on that and it was a moment of, yeah of clarity a learning moment of understanding what the antagonism was and how. Yeah, so so I think that, though it was about turning these opportunities into something that we could organize around. And I think in that way we were able to prepare. Well, we had a hardship fund that really had, you know, helped sustain strikers materially we had these polls where everyone. You know as coming from this experience that I mentioned earlier about numbers being an issue and people really trying to control and make decisions that without you know being fully transparent about what the numbers were. Now we had these polls and the results were, you know, shared publicly, and it was also an organizing tool for us because we could you know we could get to see what the numbers were what the composition of our workers was. So how many you know instructors that have full classes versus how many research assistants or we could have like these numbers and understand the composition of our strike. And in that way it really also helped us target the kind of workers we needed to organize in order to you know sustain the hurt that we were. So yeah, I, you know I think that those were, you know the Union busting the belief I mean there was a little bit not as much but I think that also more traditional Union models where at the beginning, especially when we, you know we, it was a bit of a leap of faith in a moment where we were like okay do we have the numbers do we not we go on strike we do this we push with the with the moment and and in those moments that was talk about having. I forget what you call it like the rotational strikes where people come in and out of the strike, and we talked about, you know there was more of like reactionary forces within the Union they were talking about you know the peak of our strike where is the day before we go on strike. So those were all kind of discourses that we really need to kind of push through and convince people that no this was a this, this was the way that it was going to work. Maybe to finish I would say that like the we were coming from a strike a few months earlier where we had been on strike for three weeks. We had mentalizing people that we were going to have to be in this for four weeks at least right before we were going to see any results so really kind of working and sustaining people's morale and knowing that you know that this we were going to be in for a while, this wasn't going to be two weeks strike and we're done so you know we ended up staying on strike for 10 weeks. And maybe you know I would say that I think that the three week strike really taught us that that in order for us to really impact it was going to you know it was one and done we needed to get out of here we needed to have a contract it was four years. So, yeah, so I think that all those things were as much as obstacles as they were opportunities to organize people and help them see that we could push through. So, let's let's move to the question now of power. The strike is obviously always about power. Jack I think I'll put this to you and then Joanna to you. What was your analysis of power. How did you think you were going to move the employer. What happened. I mean, we've been to do certain things. That's for sure. Yeah, so, you know, as Stefan and I was saying earlier the original labor action here was the grading strike, which just means withholding final grades at the end of the fall quarter or turn two months later we were out on the picket in the threats of retaliation was a sort of like escalation but for the original for the original decision to go to take that first leap and take that first action was partially determined by timing. Because there were no classes really after you know for another month from from the point we're making the decision. And we also thought look it's a good, easier step into like a real strike you know what would be like a real obvious withdrawal of labor. But what was interesting, as it turned out is that, at least as measured by how manager responded and what they retaliated for the missing grades have perhaps more power than the empty classrooms. And this is maybe just a commentary on public higher education or something but more, you know, more concretely in terms of our struggle with our boss, it, it was extremely disrupted to have, you know, in excess of 10,000 grades missing for all kinds of processing mechanisms, but as we discovered later, not necessarily at the time. It had an effect on financial aid roll over and student debt stuff. So effectively it disrupted certain funding mechanisms that you typically roll over from quarter to quarter when the grades come in. So this, you know, made the university, let the university sort of message that we were we were harming the undergraduates we were holding them back we were affecting their financial aid. I guess what was good about this for us was that it gave us some specific organizing tasks that really I think catapulted our organizing for in our power and put us in a position to take to take the kind of picket line action that we did later. Because you know, at least on our campus where we're outnumbered to the poor to one with undergrad so undergrad support is a crucial to big public spectacular things like a picket line. So what I mean by that is, you know, a group of grads started like meeting with the registrar regularly and really rigorously understanding how the financial aid system work how the grade processing worked this whole kind of like this process that is totally a paid to anyone who's not in those office in those offices meant that we could communicate very clearly to the undergrad what actually happens with their grades with their debt, you know, with and who really actually needs it, and who are they saying needs it. So, we were able to give the grades to the students who like call for you know we made these FAQs like if you are this person then this then this then this and if it led to ask your TA for your grade, you got your grade. And what and then, you know, the university for example started not accepting partial rosters so you couldn't just give one or two grades you have to give them all. But then of course the question is who is really harming these undergrads and holding them back and preventing them from getting their, you know, their aid was an obvious one. And then the final final point of this was that it put it on us as like an organizing task for every single striker to go get their own undergrads on board with this plan to and then you know we had undergrads like, they were begging their TA's to withhold their grades in certain cases. So just to say that it was a, you know, like an atypical strike action clearly it didn't, you know, it involved with holding a one hour, you know the time it takes to submit a roster or something like this. But it was extremely disruptive. And the university was entirely unprepared for it. In some ways we were as well for exactly what it meant to do what we did when we did it. But certainly like a lesson to take forward to you know thinking of what kinds of actions and saying that the you know the picket also did a lot of important work. And, you know, people got to spend time together. They got to, you know, really confront the repressive forces of this university and the battalions of police. And, you know, sort of, and like stare down those kinds of threats. It made it extremely public moves it from sort of local news to national news led us to build a strike fund that could support us when we were fired. And all these kinds of things so just to say like, you know, multiple, multiple vectors of like understanding what power within the moves of this of this strike of this strike sequence. Thank you Joanna. Yeah, so um, I'll start with where our key leverage lay and also talk about the things that helped us kind of preserve that. So the most important thing for us was keeping our core on strike, but a lot of the core work in what we call instructors or record. What it means is they are students who teach their own classes they don't ta. And they formed the core of the group that went on strike. Part of that is because Columbia has this core curriculum that all undergrads have to take and most of those courses are taught by student workers. So, that was really the kind of core focus and the core group we had to keep going for the entire period so language instructors people people teaching the core curriculum people teaching introduction to university writing those people. And the other thing is that it was extremely expensive for Columbia to hire scabs to replace these instructors. And part of that has to do with the fact that many of us are kind of like specialized. So it's really hard for example to hire someone from the French department to like teach a Portuguese in the Latin American I've been in culture department they might be some overlap but chances are probably not. So we knew that Columbia then had to seek people outside the community. And that would have been too costly kind of process for them. And that if those people went on strike would really hurt undergraduate education in a way that really cuts Columbia off from one of their, you know, key revenue streams which is tuition, right from undergrad so they were also these under gods who then participated and I'll struggle, who's, you know, parents families were also really upset that they were paying you know thousands and thousands of dollars in tuition, and their education was being disrupted. So we also had to work with under gods to kind of educate them on what's going on so their parents writing in emails in our favor. Really telling Columbia enough is enough. Along with that, something that was really important and because I think some people in the crowd may be also organizers and higher ed but something that was important for us was hitting a kind of timeline where students would lose credit for the courses they were taking, because they did not have enough course hours in the semester. Because we started in the middle, it was a long way to go before we thought to the grading strike. We were like what is our other source of leverage, and that was hitting kind of around the four week point of a strike. Most undergrads whose instructors were on strike would not be able to get credit for those courses. And that became really important when we were trying to negotiate pay, because we didn't get paid during the strike at all. We were basically saying to the university you need us to do the makeup work so that these students can get their credits. And if you want us to do makeup work you should pay us our wages that we had lost on strike. So that was a really key point of leverage. But of course it's incredibly difficult to keep these people on strike people were losing almost $1000 every week in terms of wages people couldn't pay their rents. It was really difficult. So something that I think was really important for us was looking outwards in moments of crisis for support from the broader labor movement. And actually, every single panelist and this call was really important to that, because it was actually Stefan and Jack, who had kind of intervened in that moment. But around a fourth week of our strike, Columbia responded with retaliation threatening to replace all striking workers in the spring so they basically sent an email that said that by December 10. If you were still on strike, you would not get a spring appointment, which is terrifying because for a lot of people that means, you know, you might not have, you know, income in the spring. You might lose your visa status, you'll lose the employment status. It's very complicated. So everyone was kind of in a frenzy. And in that moment. We sort of drew on the cola strike at new CSC and realized that what we had to do when the boss retaliates is to escalate. And that's what we did. We shut down campus on December 8. We had these hard picket lines and what happened in that moment was the entire labor movement showed up for us. So we had, you know, people from other unions new skill teamsters like NYU G suck showed up. Everyone in the city showed up. And it was really a show of force to Columbia. It was on the picket line when some of Columbia's bargaining team members were like trying to get through the picket and just got yelled at, not even by Columbia students by, you know, members of the labor movement in New York City. And they had to address it at bargaining the next day. They were like, you know, this can't happen again. And when your employer responds, it's really a sign that you're doing something right, like your employer saying don't do it suggests that you're creating an impact. So that kind of really turned things around for us very soon after Columbia gave into all our demands. And something that, you know, was an outcome of that too was that the people who are on the fence, the people who weren't sure who were like, you know, it's time for me to back out it's too much risk that action when they saw the whole city come out for us. They were like, actually, I can do this, I can stay on strike, I can continue fighting for what I think is right what what me and my co workers deserve in this moment. So I think that that was really important for us in our analysis of power and that question of like we have a majority at that moment wasn't really part of the discourse. Instead we were thinking about how we can really show Columbia, they were going to fight till the end. So the intention of bringing other actors to shift the balance of power it is always on our minds in the labor movement. Because it is true that when you find other people walking sort of shoulder to shoulder with you and in the case of grad students strikes obviously if you can get undergraduates if you can get faculty members if you get other feels very important. One of the really interesting things that I would like to focus on in addition to this which is pretty unusual. Actually, amazingly unusual is how in the Columbia strike. You managed to find important roles and methods of democratic participation for your co workers, who are not on strike. Those are the people we normally call scabs and won't ever talk to and shun and reliable and so on you took a different approach Katrina, could you talk about how non striking co workers and members of the Union were brought in to support the strike. Yeah so and I think I'll give a little background context of that of the categories because there's the scabs like the people who decide not to strike that are what we're calling on appointment which means that are in the bargaining unit at the time that we were on strike and then there was a lot of people that weren't couldn't strike, but we're on in solidarity with the strike and would have struck if they'd been on appointment so so we had like these two categories or three categories with the strikers and I guess the first thing is that in the spring of 2021 when we did our first strike, the administration implemented the system of attestation which meant that we would have to say whether we had worked in a certain way in that those periods were renewed every so often like there were we would be sent an email, you know, every 15 days saying, had, have you worked in the past 15 days. And so, so by the time we got to the fall strike, the university just automatically implemented this. The system again, and so that we knew that that was going to happen so there was a lot of organizing of like okay you can, you know, can you at least not attest so that we don't give away our numbers to the university and so we I think we were quite successful in that, because everyone kind of was familiar with the system and they knew that we're going to get paid at some point. So, so if you were someone who was scabbing for instance and decided not to attest in solidarity, you would then be able to claim those wages, after we had gone back to work and just said like I did, I did work in those periods and you would get your wages So there was a you know there was a lot of sort of movement to do that and we would we did that a lot at a department level, where we could really track who was on strike and who was not. Other ways in which we did that and I think are quite unconventional is that because we implemented this poll system to vote whether we would stay on strike on a weekly basis. And that was something that was really key to bringing people in to decide in a moment where they had felt very alienated in the spring where this strike in the spring was undemocratically stopped. And we didn't, you know, weren't able to really have it participate in that decision. So it was very important to us to have some sort of system where people could voice, whether they were supporting the strike another week. And so in that we also allowed non strikers so scabs to vote. And even so we were able to, to win the vote every week. And so I think that was really key I think another way with in which we brought in, you know, scabs was, or non strikers was in our open bargaining session. So everyone was able to attend. I mean, everyone means the large audience. And then so we would have faculty in those open bargaining sessions it would be administration, you know people from the administration in them. But then in caucus where what you know when we made decisions on strategy and on the kind of demands and how we would orient our next session or our next. session with the university, we would allow people to also have an opinion and decide, you know, and weigh in on these demands weighing on strategy so I think that in that way it really sort of showed how we could really cultivate that this was a majority of people. So even though you're not striking you're actually deciding, you know what what the demands are you deciding what the strategy is. Yeah, so I think those are kind of, and I, yeah, those, those were, I think those were the ways I don't know if I'm missing anything Joanna, but just for the record. I have never heard of a strike in my 50 years of experience, in which he allowed the scabs to vote. It was breathtaking, but I kept seeing the evidence. You were building majority power, that's what you were paying attention to, through a really strict understanding of democratic decision making. It was, it was extraordinary and my thinking about this entire question has changed as a result of having been through that. Question for you, Stefan from someone in the audience. How did you go about doing your analysis of power, especially with respect to the grading strike. So a typical but interesting conclusion, and your analysis had to be spot on. So, please go ahead can you talk a little bit about your analysis that led to the decision about the grading strike. So, you know, in the, in the immediate lead up to the decision to go on grading strike. I think it's important to emphasize that there was such a short turnaround between the, the day that we knew that there was a strike in the air. So like the event that Jack referenced a bit earlier the day that people from outside the core organizing group who we had never, we had never seen in meetings before was sort of openly calling for a strike. The time the period between that day, and the day that we eventually made the decision to go on strike. That was those three days. So, it was, it was a very high pressure situation in which, like, the best thing we did was probably to, you know, abandon all our previous plans, and act quickly upon energy that we saw on the ground. And we did this in a number of ways. So the first indication that we got was this sort of outpouring of energy and militancy from rank and file workers who are not already organizers. The second thing we did was to do a kind of, you know, cursory like quantitative study, or at least like a survey of the workers who could be on strike. And at the time it was about 750 to 800 workers who could have gone on strike in that term. And within less than 24 hours, we had over 400 of those workers like filling in like a hastily created Google form that that was basically, you know, a very straightforward survey about would you be willing to take wildcat strike action over the demand for a cost of living adjustment and the responses were overwhelming. So in turn, that survey made us call like a real emergency in person meeting of grant workers on our campus in which we booked up a whole large lecture hall. It was full to spilling people sitting on seats. We had like, definitely over like 100 people in the room itself, with more sort of on the stairs, and then a solid like 40 to 50 people on zoom. On Sunday afternoon, mind you, and again on this very short notice and and the energy in that room where we tried to do our due diligence. You know, seizing upon the energy and acknowledging that people were calling for this grading strike. We tried to present two things first pros and cons of going on strike right now. And second pros and cons of doing the grading strike as the action. So we presented these things. And at the end we called for a sort of like show of hands to see who was willing to take action, literally the very next day, like Monday of finals week this was the the next day. It was like a sort of unanimous show of hands in that overcrowded lecture hall that kind of like in person energy and, you know, willingness to take action and you know people's people sort of inspiring each other in person was honestly nothing like I've ever seen before, and has has like shaped a lot of my feelings towards what is possible. And so from that moment on, you know, we kind of fed off the energy of what was possible at the time, I think in response to this person's question like right at the beginning, we knew that something was there like we saw all we, we took a bunch of different measurements of what the energy was and every time we did that we got a positive response like a positive feedback that an overwhelming number of people more than we could have imagined prior were ready. Subsequently, we had to take two paths. One was to consolidate and one was to escalate. And what I mean by that is, when I say escalate I mean the sort of public facing stuff that most people think about when they think about the UC Santa Cruz Wildcat strike they think about the photos from the ticket line the big groups of undergrads that we turned out the grad students who were not on strike who came out in solidarity. You know, the press, the kind of like confrontations with the police, our big strike fund, you know, sort of statements of solidarity from other unions from politicians and so on. That's the sort of escalation path which I think we did well. The funny thing about the grading strike and this is this is a thing that we've had to acknowledge among ourselves is that when you do a grading strike, it's a grading strike for a certain term. And so once you get X number of people on strike who have already withheld the grades. It's not quite like other strikes where you start with a certain number and then you build when you do a grading strike you can only lose people, because the only option is you've either either already submitted the grades or you withheld the grades and then you folded and then you submit belatedly. And so those were the kind of two parts escalation or consolidation. And what we, you know, this is a kind of like reflective thing that we think about is, we should have done a lot more to consolidate to sort of bring in the like strengthen our networks among the people who decided to go on strike, who like, you know, as Jack and I have said, lots of those people we are no prior connections with them. And it was, you know, objectively hard in the timeframe that we had to build those connections and to build those relationships of trust. And I'd say, you know, one of the things that we have now is we're much more capable of doing that kind of thing now than we were in 2019, 2020, because of the kind of shift in the balance of power that has emerged since then. But at the time, you know, we were, we were, there were two options that we could go and we should have done both, but we lean much more into this sort of public facing escalation, rather than a sort of more internal among people on strike consolidating that power and the leverage that we already wielded. Useful analysis, we have, we have a couple questions that I'd like to bring up to to this will be first a question for Santa Cruz comrades for people who are listening who are not aware. When we refer to minority in the UC Santa Cruz strike. In this way, Santa Cruz is one of nine campuses in the UC system. It was the only one that was on strike. It is a single bargaining unit. That is to say they bargain a master agreement that covers the whole state. And it was also was I think you have gathered it was a wildcat strike meaning they were bargaining mid contract. And I think that is relevant because this was something that began to happen, because the strike was so compelling and so powerful. It did begin to spread to other campuses, and then the pandemic struck. So the question is, could you speak to both the difficulty and the necessity of spreading the strike to other campuses. And how did this change the balance of power. Do you think it was needed to win and I would say, do you think it would be needed to win in the future. So, Jack, maybe you want to take a take a shot at that. Yeah, it's a really fascinating question I think I would probably address it in the same way as that then address the previous question where, once you have the grades withheld, and then you're facing retaliation. Great respond and Joanna said this as well, and we did this with the picket line we did this by, you know, fully closing the campus. A few times, this sort of thing, and a huge part of this was trying to, you know, spread the strike as like a, you know, as a as a motto and as a deep practice I mean stephan and I traveled up to Berkeley, other people traveled. And in fact also went to went to Southern California at one point. And the images we saw another campuses was firstly like gave us a lot of morale, you know that just staggering numbers of people out, not only you know there was a sort of like, you know, don't retaliate against the Santa Cruz Wildcats, and also like give us a color as well. You know we need a color. And the parts of that they were really, really important, really, really valuable. At the same time, I think, maybe a former self criticism would be to say that we, we maybe tried to do this too much. Whereas, you know there were only so many hours, so much time that we didn't consolidate the group of people who had the grades, which was the question, which was the decisive question about who was to be fired was who still had grades, and who didn't. And, you know, were like, you know we lost, you know more than half of the people when we had the firing threat and the deadlines and Janet Napolitano and had more held on or had almost everyone for example hold on to that time who knows how that would have shifted things and saying that it was still really important to see this, you know, spread across the UC system I think it struck fear into not just the local administrators but the, you know the system as a whole, and it represented like huge amounts of like possibility. You know, again it's one of these impossible counterfactuals but what might have happened had the you know the very first day of the wildcat as it was declared at UC Berkeley not being the first day of the California lockdown, the very same day. Because I, you know I wasn't up there obviously that my, I can only expect it was similar to our situation where, you know we were able to build a certain kind of solidarity and confidence by being with each other. Because have we tried to do that strictly online from the very first go in the onset of this, you know global pandemic that that's a different kind of challenge. So who knows like that may have paid off differently in a different world. But nonetheless, I think a lesson that will take forward for any other moment like this is like the people who are doing the action are like that's where the power is, and as like distracting as like spectacular as some of the things that were right in front of us on that picket line in that intersection at the sort of, you know, the major entrance to our campus, we could have spent more time, you know on the phone meeting talking with with the people who had, who still had the grades and still had that that power that leverage that we needed. So there's another question and observation and a question, which I'll pose to our sisters from Columbia, let you decide which of you would like to respond. The foundation of both of your strikes seem to have been set far in advance by building up rank and file relationships and millancy. And to higher ed organizers who are listening, who may feel the pull into the active space to try and convince ambivalent leaders, instead of building rank and file power. By the way, this is a question from many of us in the labor movement, what the poll away from focusing on our members and building up those rank and file relationships so I am very appreciative of the person who asked this question. Katrina and Joanna, who would like to respond. Yeah, maybe we can take this. Yeah, this is because I've been organizing in the context of a caucus for a long time, and our caucus has only been in leadership quite recently. I will say that in the early kind of days of the caucus we spent a lot of time engaging in these kind of fights of leadership, inconsistently bickering and spending meetings like filibustering, because we were just like unhappy with the decisions that were being made. And there was kind of this turning point where some workers actually after the UCSC color strike wanted to go and strike and union leadership kind of turned away from those people who wanted to go and strike that the organizing started to take place outside of these sort of classic union spaces. So the bulk of my kind of organizing experience didn't happen in the organizing committee meetings or in the bargaining sessions like they happened when I was kind of organizing a rank and file led rent strike. I was talking to a lot of people and trying to like build up a kind of network. Some of us started organizing the language departments. Not under the caucus or anything we were just like we have shared, you know workplace conditions. Let's talk to one another. And then I think it's the most important thing getting workers to talk to one another. And when we started doing that that really became the foundation for the spring 2021 strike, the no vote. And then putting down the contract it was using that network, and then being able to go on strike so soon after in the fall. And I think on hindsight what I saw with this entire arc and narrative is that, you know, directly fighting with union leadership throughout the whole thing, just do arguments or theory or even, and now I think I'm even trying to convince hesitant people in the squishy middle is what I call it or some people call them you know the liberal left, who are already in a way in the core, they're in the core but they have chosen not to share your position. Instead of focusing on winning those people. Why not look outwards to people who have never been in the core and kind of bring them into the core, while also, you know, convincing them to share. You know your perspectives and your approach, and the best way to do that I think it's often through campaigns through practice. So when we did the rent strike it was there was a clear demand we couldn't pay our rent yet to do something about it let's get talking to one another. Right now there we have an ongoing recognition fight. So we, we still need to you know fight Columbia the nrb regarding you know the scope of our unit. And once we started realizing oh there are more people excluded than we thought these people who have never come to a union meeting before our writing back to our emails are responding to forums saying, I want to be engaged. And I think that that really should be the focus about organizing, if we are to build militancy and power. Great answer. We often talk about in the, in the labor notes world when you are in a contract campaign. Obviously, everybody should always have in their mind that you were building towards a strike the very best thing that you can do is make boss fights. It's a long standing theory that you don't want to be too militant because you're going to piss off the boss, and it's going to make it harder for you at the bargaining table. I think we now know that that is not wise. It's the opposite thing that is wise engage people find out what's going on for them. Build those fights it builds their militancy builds their confidence in the union. There's the boss. Here's a question. I'm not sure which of you might like to address it. Given the craft unionism at universities with grad workers in their own union service workers in their own union maybe faculty and another. Does the concept of a majority strike even make sense when only one union is striking, even if that one union gets 100% turn out does anybody have thoughts on this. You might have and not have any thoughts on that. Anybody want to try that. I could offer and just quickly that I, you know, so far as this is not a semantic question about whether it, you know, even 100% of, you know, grad workers strike for example is truly a majority strike. Yeah, you know, you know, maybe it's not if you if you take all the workers at once for example. And our university is not as wall to wall like a couple of them are. I guess you know what I take what I take from this question is, yeah, but it doesn't, you know, it doesn't matter whether we call our strikes majority or minority. This is like, this is a sort of question for self identified organizers to debate internally or, you know, think about abstractly without the context mobilization in a real situation of mobilization, such as happened in our workplaces in recent years. It's, it's a different kind of assessment. It's, it's, it's not, you know, have we hit this magical figure does this like give us the right or something like this to go take this action. You know, in so far as any workers on our campus, a taking action, you know, we want to be there with them. And, and, you know, we've seen, and as Joanna described so nicely with New York like the the inverse is true as well. In some ways, I think you have answered. Also another question which has been posted. Numbers are not necessarily what you were building towards. How did what did your strike organizing look like. How were you setting goals, measuring organizing process progress and changing tactics. I can maybe make this one I can maybe respond. And I'll actually serve respond someone kind of asked a question about whether we focused only on teaching work and I think this kind of fits into part of my answer. So, one we kind of knew, like I said before we knew which groups were kind of the key leverage groups, and also the groups that have gone and strike before, who were very sort of committed to a vision of a strike that is really you know you strike to win like you strike until you win your demands, or until you make a collective assessment that you know maybe it's time to stop for some reason or another. So that was very, very important to us. It doesn't mean that we ignored the rest of the union, right, it means that we engage them and met them where they were. So for example with research assistants, many people were unwilling to go on strike, often because they were probably the only person in their lab that knew about the union, who knew anything about you know labor action at Columbia University. And on top of that they had a different relationship to the employer where Columbia often is a middleman so they have external grants so they're these grant agencies and the money goes through Columbia. Of course, Columbia still takes a cut. So there's a whole conversation around you know how Columbia so profiting from their labor, but you know for someone who is sort of in that position we met them where they were. So I think the way we, for me at least when we were setting goals kind of collectively it's how we move everyone kind of an inch closer. It's not necessarily that they go from like I've never heard of this union so I'm going to go on strike tomorrow. But it's I've never heard the union but I'm going to come to the pick a line every day because you've told me about it and we've had a conversation about it and I'm really compelled by what you're telling me. I can go on strike tomorrow. But I'm willing to kind of participate. And for the people who are already like that. Maybe the focus was, are you willing to organize your whole lab to go on strike with you. Maybe yes maybe not people different people have different reasons. So for the people who are like you know I'm 100% strike to win all the way. The question that I often have for them is, are you willing to, to convince your coworkers to do that with you, are you willing to talk to coworkers so I don't have to call them as well you know since you know that you can talk to them right. So that's kind of how we, we set goals and it's a very different kind of goal setting than numbers. Right, it's very different from like we need 1500 strike commitments because at the end of the day, you can say that you're going to commit to go on strike. And when you actually go and strike and it suddenly becomes 10 weeks long. That's an entirely different question. And it's really that's that's why I think the relationship building aspect and the kind of building a deep commitment to what we are fighting for is is the more important goal and it's kind of abstract it's really hard to evaluate. You know, I always ask myself are people moving closer to this core of people, or are they moving away from it. Can I add something to that. Yes, I think that also, in addition to what Joanna was saying I think it was with that came kind of educating ourselves or training ourselves to move out of a bottom line kind of mindset. So, which we would be sort of drawn into because we would be going to these bargaining sessions with the university and so there was this sense that there was this, you know, give and take and like, what are the demands that we can sacrifice what are the ones we cannot and so there was a lot of work of like actually we don't have to give up any of these demands these are all very basic things that we're asking for. And so there was a lot of work around making that the kind of mentality that people would go in with. And so, you know, we were even there was moments where we even tried to I know some organizers that are even here today in the in the crowd. You know really tried to do this thing where they wanted to identify what Columbia if they were you know we would make these calculations like, oh maybe we could trade this for that or and then we would realize that Columbia actually was not at all you know seeing these two things as something that were that were bargain able with each other and so. So just kind of like sticking to our principles and and making sure that people would get on board with these very basic things again because it was about we weren't I mean, we weren't even asking for a living wage in New York City we you know we were asking for recourse or third party arbitration. As Joanna was saying earlier something that is, you know, standard and all kinds of labor contracts so I think, yeah just like that no like like kind of changing the kind of mentality that people would go in with and I think that through those 10 weeks we really got to the point where the last struggle which was the recognition struggle so the one where all our workers that are recognized by the NLRB get to be considered under our contract. And that was the last battle we had to fight which was a hard one even internally because people were tired. And there was kind of the sense of like, we, you know, we can fight for them later we can, you know, we can't, we can't continue this fight much longer and so it was really about in our GBMs are general body meetings we would which would be the main decision making bodies. We would have like these breakout rooms and try and talk with each other about why recognition was important. And, and it took a while because in the spring of 2021 and that strike that was actually the recognition point was the one that really pushed the novel. And this, you know, basic principle that all our worker, you know, workers who have struck with us cannot be left behind, especially when they are recognized already by the law. And so it took us almost a full year to get everyone to see this how this was very important and to kind of bridge the gap between what sounded like a very legalistic kind of argument to make it actually, you know something that resonated with people and that, you know, even now as we're kind of preparing to to fight that that struggle and to really get the university to recognize them. You know, and in their full right because as now we there we're already seeing that they're doing all these, you know, sneaky movements to like not recognize or not act as if these workers were in the unit. So people are still getting on board with this so people who are not even on board with the recognition fight in December are now getting on board with. So, anyway, just between thank you. And again, I think this reflects on what we've heard from from both campuses both unions, a tremendous shift in the culture. And understanding now that there is power that has been built. People have panels in its open it's accessible the union is is broadly democratic, which is very attractive to people. I, there is one question here which we're going to defer it's more technical question about how he talked with the students who felt that their financial aid might be at risk. And just say to that person and to anybody else who has more follow up questions that you should definitely be planning on coming to the labor notes conference June 17 through 19 in Chicago, because the unionists and many others will be there talking about their experiences, both on strike and building democratic unions. And so I'm going to reserve our last few minutes, let me just check this showed that we can win contracts with minorities but can we also implement them and defend our rights on a day to day basis I actually think that's what you've been addressing because of the culture that you built with these strikes, or in fact, defending the contracts without workers in every department cohort lab social group activated. Once a strategic minority wins the contract, how do you actually reach most workers and get them to defend their co workers using the contract. I would say using the contract and other means. Why don't we finish with this and the question that I'll ask to spend a minute or two on before we close for tonight is this fundamental question of democratic unionism. Certainly, this is for people that are, you know, here tonight, that is to say, aware of the pole of the labor movement that labor notes has most exemplified for the last 40 years. A incredibly strong belief that a radical, not not formulaic not mechanical but radically inclusive radically participatory form of democratic unionism is essential for building power. I think that's just a good idea or an interesting ideology. It's absolutely necessary. I wonder if you could close out by reflecting on some aspect of how democratic unionism expressed itself in your work. At any point, the build up to the, the contract campaign to build up to the strike, how the strike was conducted the aftermath of the strike. And that will be, that will be that will close out. So, Stefan, why don't we begin with you. I guess, you know, for me. It's always about being open to what this idea of democratic unionism can mean, because, you know, sometimes when people talk about democratic unionism what they mean is numbers. And I think it's always important to think about how it is we're measuring our power and like in exactly the kinds of modalities and relationships between workers that are revealed in that measuring of power. So, you know, when, when a when a union is trying to assess power and what it has to go on a sort of perhaps like surveys that it does about workplace issues. Surveys the workers represented by the unions and says, do you care about these five issues. And, you know, in a context in which you fill in a survey of petition as a worker. You know, if you're doing it at home on your on your computer on your phone, and you're filling things in alone. You could all you could easily take yes I care about all of these issues. They are suddenly important to me. I don't tell you much though about like what people are willing to do like how much people are willing to go to the mat. I think you can only find this out through, you know, as as as Joanna Katrina, especially was saying these kinds of like difficult to measure metrics, where you need to see people together in a meeting. It's either a mass meeting of the workplace or it's a meeting of organic units within the workplace like departments in a university, you need people to come together in their organic groups or in a mass setting, and see what the expressions of solidarity and unity in those spaces, and have those spaces be open to many interventions that if you're an organizer you were not expecting that are coming from people you don't know who you've never seen before who are taking ownership of the issues at hand, and are generating ideas new ways of building solidarity that to me is is a you know that's the kind of if that's democratic unionism. I'm on board with it. Yeah, let me just say that. Thank you, Stefan, Katrina, how about you. I couldn't agree more with Stefan and I think that what was kind of peculiar of our situation was that we had this. And this is something we've talked to Ellen about a lot but this open bargaining, which is already not very common and then it was online because of the pandemic so I think that that was a very good platform that we had like at first going into this we you know in the first strikes we thought you know it was going to really mean that our participation was going to dwindle the attachment to the strike people you know people's commitment but in fact what what happened is that people had access to this raw material and so they were able to come and see for themselves. First how the university would treat us. And so they would, they were kind of educated in that process of like oh my goodness how are they, you know the lawyers would talk to us in these super rude ways and so so just like that first step of like really realizing what the relationship of antagonism was, and then bringing people in and creating that sense of like in lieu of not being able to be together all the time because classes were canceled etc or because we had like strong restrictions or whatnot. And so they'd like there was 250 people in these meetings or 300 people we would then go to caucus everyone would have a chance you know there was all these. Someone was asking earlier about whether our decision making processes I think we're online or not and I think they're not but there was all these ways in which people would be noted you know communicated how you were, how you could participate. I think that that just really sort of eliminated that intermediary step where the bargaining committee tends to be the translator of what is going on or tends to be the one that synthesizes what the encounter with the university has been. And really it was a moment where everyone just kind of was able to form their own opinion, and then shape their opinion through the conversations with others so I feel that that was really kind of like paradoxically. I never want to have like organizing the online, but it was an instance and where it really was able to bring a lot of people together and really politicize and educate people in that process so I think we were very lucky that, you know that this conjuncture was the one we were leading with. And you handled it with tremendous creativity and I should say because it could have gone south, but it did not. Yeah, I would reiterate a lot of the points that I made and I would perhaps even go a little bit further to say that, you know, even the sort of one on one organizing conversation where I go in there is like Mr organizer and say, here's this petition and like do you care about this petition, just tell me and get a signature on it. Even then you don't necessarily, you're not necessarily learning anything about like what's going to move people and what people will really fight for. And I think, in so far as we can create, you know, forums opportunities places where we can, you know, we as people who, you know, understand ourselves as organizers or whatever can hear for that and listen for that and see what's moving people, like that's, that's what, what really matters and, you know, to give a somewhat tangential example, you know, from our strike, you know, we had this crucial decision to make about whether or not we continue as a movement past the deadline to turn in the grades when the firings would start. And there were, you know, we every single night about pick a line we would have these general assemblies. Sometimes they were more cosmetic than serious depending on the day but the question was always at the end do we come back here tomorrow. Answer was always yes, etc. But then this time it was, you know, do we keep these grades, and a little bit in a way that's similar to what the folks Columbia have been describing. There were people who are deeply involved in organizing who were not on strike in the sense of holding grades because they weren't teaching at the moment that the grades had to be withheld. But these people still needed to participate in they were, you know, in many cases like very very core figures in the whole process. And in addition, we really worked hard and I think this was important to make the to sort of frame the discussion around this vote as, what can I do individually. Like, totally, you know, maybe I'm pregnant, maybe I'm, you know, you know, and to have those conversations through the day on the picket line as much as possible. But then keep the discussion in the in the collective thing like what does this movement need to do what makes sense for us strategically right now should we yes or no go through this deadline. You know that is that is falling tonight at midnight. And when the question was posed like that. And everyone was out of vote on it, it was pretty resounding the like, yes, we need to do this and then, look, we trust you to make your own decision you're going to have your own individual risk calculus that we can't possibly work through but. But yeah, that's something I would offer to this question. Excellent. Thank you, John, and we'll finish with you. Yeah, I think in the context of our fight. And this is where I think building democratic participation. Right, so the kind of like mass meetings that Jack and Stefan have talked about the kind of attendance we got at bargaining is so important. Beyond just like surveys beyond just something that's really passive active engagement is really important but for us, the kind of direct impact was that. And at many, many points during our 10 week strike, our leadership, even when it was, you know, reform caucus leadership and whatnot. The bargaining committee, they all had their doubts. Like, all of them, there was no one who kind of escaped that that pressure because there's so much pressure when you're on the bargaining committee. There's so much kind of indoctrination into the employer's logic when you do negotiations at the table. Like, they're experts at gaslighting at persuasion. They know how to do that. And it was really because of democratic participation at every step of the way that we had mandates for our bargaining committee where they could not pass a contract without us approving it in a kind of mass meeting setting where we all got to look at the proposal. And so we voted up or down. So there were some times when the bargaining committee is like, you know, I think it's time to like drop our wage demands. And people in the meeting were just like, no, you're going to hold the line you're going to hold the line because we're on strike, and you're not going to, you're not going to abandon the demand right now. And this happened for like, you know, our arbitration demand for non discrimination harassment at some point there was a discussion of like, do we treat the economic stuff for the non economic stuff, because we thought that you could trade it. It doesn't work that way right that's not how power works. And, and it was actually the rank and file who had that clarity every step of the way, who were like, we've been on this strike for six weeks now, you're going to hold the line because we're not giving up. And that was so important to our struggle, so that they eventually did reach one day where we got almost all demands and the economic non economic thing the costing we did so many costing exercises and university like how many millions would it cost the university to give us like a 2% raise, like, all of that didn't matter. At that moment, what mattered was that the employer could no longer tolerate our strike that the balance of power had shifted and so the employer had to say, we are going to do what you want us to do right now. And that's because of the rank and file participating throughout the whole strike. We could not possibly end on a better note than that. The power is in our relationships solidarity to one another. The four of you have represented a brilliantly a process that has your for which there is so much necessity to bring this into the mainstream of the labor movement. Obviously the conditions are different for graduate students. The spirit, the intention, the goals of this are the same. Thank you all so much. Thanks everybody for joining us tonight. Thank you labor notes for sponsorship. And we will see you all at the labor notes conference in June in Chicago. Stay strong.