1. Email State Senator Mike Frerichs (senator.frerichs@gmail.com) and State Senator Martin Sandoval (sandoval@senatedem.state.il.us) and express your support for the work they are doing to ensure that the University remains accessible to working-class and middle-class people. Tell them to keep the pressure on the Board of Trustees!
2. Come to the Illinois Student Senate on Wednesday, May 5th, at 7pm in the Illini Union Pine Lounge and support GEO member and Student Senator Rich Potter’s resolution in support of a Tuition Freeze! In advance of the meeting, contact your student senator and ask them to support the resolution.
3. Sign Prof. Bruce Rosenstock’s petition in support of an ethical financial policy and tuition freeze online! (http://www.gopetition.com/online/35805.html)
4. Write a Letter to the Editor of either the Daily Illini or News Gazette explaining your concern about the prospect of a tuition increase and in support of the ongoing initiatives by State Senators, students, and community members to ensure that the university remains accessible!
5. Attend the Rally and CFA Press Conference on May 5th at 12:15 pm on the steps of Swanlund Administration Building. CFA members will be raising questions about the ethics of the Administrations funding priorities raised by the breaking news that they will be paying close to half a million dollars to an outside consulting agency. (See, http://www.news-gazette.com/news/university-illinois/2010-05-03/consultants-bring-450000-more-work-ui.html)
Together we can stop the hikes and demand ethical financial policies!
As a member of the LLSGSO, I wanted to share this statement below and encourage the GEO to actively stand in solidarity by writing a GEO statement against Arizona S.B. 1070 2010 because not only is violating human rights for all people; but this law is directly impacting Illinois graduate stuents of color, our families, our friends, and colleagues in Arizona and across the nation.
We the Latina Latino Studies Graduate Student Organization (LLSGSO) would like to enlist the support of Latina/Latino Studies Program, African American Studies Program, Asian American Studies Program, and American Indian Studies in issuing a public statement against the new Arizona Bill signed into law S.B. 1070.
The bill has set up the legal structures in place that ensures a sanctioned Apartheid state in Arizona. As Latina/o graduate students and future educators of this country we cannot allow or condone these laws that foster hate and generate a state of fear for the Latina/o, Chicana/o, Mexican and Native American communities that will be affected in Arizona.
The LLSGSO is committed towards strong human rights for all historically oppressed communities. As such, we are not in favor of laws that dehumanize and suspend common decency and judgment. We cannot allow the incarceration of our capacity to live in a humane and responsible manner.
As Chicana/o Latina/o scholars we cannot condone laws that regress while inflicting pain to our collective well being. As such S.B. 1070 belongs in this country’s wall of shame:
United States Naturalization Act of January 29, 1795 Indian Appropriation Acts of 1851, 1871, 1885, 1889 California Vagrancy Law of 1850 California Indentured Act of 1850 Article 13 of the 1851 Indiana Constitution Illinois Black Code of 1853 Texas Penal Code of 1856 Jim Crow Laws Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 Geary Act of 1892 1942 Executive Order 9066 Operation Wetback of 1954 California Proposition 187 1994 Arizona S.B. 1070 2010
In Solidarity,
The Latina Latino Studies Graduate Student Organization University of Illinois – Urbana Champaign