WE ARE AT WAR!
There has been a war going on since before any of us were born. The war by the rich against the poor, a class war (oh no, not this commie shit). This is a war that is normally fought without guns but the guns help to keep the status quo if people are ‘stepping out of line.’ Tuition increases are only one element of this war. They make it hard for working people and their kids to afford to go to school. The UIC bureaucrats are systematically trying to make this a middle class school. UIC started as a school that working class people could afford. Now they are trying to erase that legacy. The more money that comes in, the more the bureaucrats can get paid. Over the past 20 years at UIC, the central administration (aka parasites) and their salaries have grown immensely, while student enrollment has stayed about the same. UIC has such a big, inflated and inefficient bureaucracy that North Korea is probably jealous of it. What we get in return is higher tuitions, lower services (less class, bigger class sizes) and beautification projects (yuppificaton? Gentrification?). The tuition increases are only one symptom of a larger disease (capitalism and the state). More and More states are going bankrupt, billions are spent on war so Western Capital can take over the Iraqi and Afghani economies, millions are unemployed, millions have inadequate or no health care and the war on people of color (oops I mean ‘terrorism’) is used to justify racist policies, crackdown on dissent and keep us all in fear. These things all help to keep the status quo and you know what, it just isn’t profitable to give workers good benefits. Voting a different set of rich people won’t change these things. Candidates will promise the world but not do shit when they get into office. They might give some reforms, but reforms are like trying to patch up a hole in a bullet ridden wall. That patch can easily be taken off at a later date. It is better to knock down the wall and build something new (from below of course). All the decent things that the government or bosses has given us (social security, health care, funding for schools, abortion rights, etc.) have been forced on them by popular movements, not elected officials. Many times these movements stop when they get what they were asking for and eventually the government takes away those rights that were won. We need to build a movement that will take reforms but not stop at them and work for real change. We can get rid of class society (capitalism), racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. and realizing that all these issues are linked in the process. Real change must come in people’s minds and actions and through a fundamental change in how society is structured. This doesn’t mean some party taking over the state in the name of the people. That has proven disastrous over and over (Russia, China, etc.). The power needs to equally shared and decentralized in everyone’s hands because hierarchy creates power-hungry people who develop their own interests. We can unite around smaller issues and turn it into a bigger thing, realizing that all these issues are linked. We can work together and fight against tuition hikes and cuts in services if we want and actually WIN. We can reverse this class war and start to win for a change!
FOR A CLASSLESS, STATELESS SOCIETY: FOR ANARCHISM!