Gamelyn Oduardo shares lessons of victory

December 2010

Students protest at the Río Piedras campus of the University of Puerto Rico during the student
strike of Spring 2010. The two-month strike stopped budget cuts, fee hikes and the sale of
university resources. Photo: Ricardo Alcaraz

“Wow, I never heard that Puerto Rican students shut down their university for two months!”
exclaimed a student at City College of San Francisco after a recent presentation. It was a
common reaction to the eyewitness account of Gamelyn Oduardo, who helped organize the
victorious strike at the University of Puerto Rico (UPR). Last spring’s student takeover of 10 of
the 11 UPR campuses, with support from community and labor organizations, stopped fee hikes
and prevented the sale of university resources.

The Puerto Rican Student Tour Committee and the Freedom Socialist Party co-sponsored
Oduardo’s one-week tour of California in October. The visit was a priceless opportunity to build
solidarity between education battles in Puerto Rico and in California, where a huge walkout shut
down kindergarten through university classes last March 4.

Whirlwind tour. In Los Angeles, Oduardo met with feminists, education and immigrant rights
activists and high school student organizers. After speaking to a California State University-Long
Beach class, he was featured at a forum put on by UCLA campus groups.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, Oduardo gave the opening address to the Statewide Mobilizing
Conference against the Privatization of Public Education and Public Services, and spoke at an
FSP forum, “On the Barricades for Public Education — Defying Privatization from San Juan to
Berkeley.”
He took part in a tribute to Puerto Rican independence fighters Lolita Lebrón and Juan Mari
Brás, spoke at UC Berkeley and community college classes, and met with members of the
International Longshore and Warehouse Union.

Lessons from the front lines. Interest in the UPR strike was especially intense because the
corporate media gave it little coverage. Activists thundered applause as Oduardo described how
students maintained their occupation of the university by facing down baton-wielding, pepper-
spraying police more than once. They organized street theater, teach-ins, websites and radio
stations to reach out to unionists and community members, who defiantly ferried food and
provisions over campus fences to the strikers.

And they were inspired by the November 2009 and March 2010 actions in California.

Oduardo opened many people’s eyes to puertorriqueños’ status as U.S. citizens who have no say
in electing the President, and no representatives in Congress. Disgust with Washington’s imperial
policies on the island motivated attendees to make alliances with students and other fighters
there.

In all his presentations, Oduardo identified neoliberal capitalism as the political and economic
policy responsible for cuts and privatization. He stressed that Puerto Rico, as the U.S.’ oldest
colony, is being hit hard by free trade and unregulated markets designed to maximize corporate
profits.

At the FSP forum, UC Berkeley co-panelist and unionist Nancy Reiko Kato encouraged
Californians to take a cue from Puerto Rican students, and go beyond being just a campus
movement to ally with labor and the community. She emphasized the importance of international
solidarity to stop neoliberalism and its cuts to public education.

Long-term solution — general strike. Audience members noted in discussions that the victory
of the Puerto Rican student strike is amazing in light of the recent history of workplace
safeguards and public services being decimated.

However, as Oduardo points out, “we knew that we had won a battle, but not the war.” As he was
speaking in California, UPR students again began occupying buildings to stave off tuition hikes
announced for January 2011. He says students In Puerto Rico cannot achieve lasting victories
alone. “We must strengthen ties with the labor movement.”

Education defenders in both places have looked to strikes as a means for ending the assault on
public services. Student and campus organizers from California and other states achieved only
one or two-day symbolic strikes in the past couple of years, and these had a limited effect in
curtailing funding cuts and fee increases. Inspired by the militancy and success of their Puerto
Rican counterparts, U.S. activists had many questions for Oduardo on how to build longer
strikes.
A San Diego State student wondered how to motivate U.S. students to strike when they fear
delayed graduation or disciplinary action. Oduardo said it’s a matter of being united and seeing
the long-term victory a strike makes possible. “We encourage, as we have for a long time, a
prolonged, multi-sector general strike that will halt the government offensive. The strike is one
of the most effective weapons to fight power.”

And how! Using the alliances built during the tour, students and working people in the U.S. and
Puerto Rico can build movements capable of general strikes to win free public education, from
kindergarten through university — and much more — once and for all.

Bob Price is a chemistry professor at City College of San Francisco, and a member of American
Federation of Teachers Local 2121. Email him at rpchemist@aol.com.

Related story: Read an interview with Gamelyn Oduardo