Meeting and flyer against the LRDP

The LRDP affects everyone here. Obviously it affects the 120 acres of forest and chaparral that would be destroyed, the living beings who will be tortured and the genetic heritage tampered with in corporate-subsidiary labs, and the water supply and ecological stability of the Santa Cruz area. But the LRDP is way more than a “green,” “hippie” issue about the forest and the animals. It’s about an institution that’s run by people who care about nothing but money and power. UCSC has turned Science Hill into a police state for the benefit of pharmaceutical companies: already over half a million dollars have been spent on security to harass the Tree Sit; that's half a million dollars that didn't go towards regular workers’ wages, housing, lowering tuition, students services of any kind, or anything else useful to students and other living things. Expanding admissions (when the UC system has already cut next year’s admissions by 10,000 due to budget cuts—will not solve UCSC’s money problems, but only stretch already strained resources. The administration says the guards and cops are there to protect “public safety,” but when they intimidate, arrest, chase and assault us, all they are protecting is the flow of corporate profits into the chancellor’s and regents’ pockets. They are suppressing, not protecting, our ability to make ourselves heard, and our desire to live in a healthy landscape. The school has sued its own students and even arrested a faculty member who participated in peaceful protest. Students, faculty, trees, animals—we are all just sources of profit in their eyes, just like how the medicines developed in the new lab will be produced not to heal people, but because they make money.

Our time is short. Winter break is approaching and if the past is any indication, this is the time the school is most likely to move in and attempt to forcibly evict the Tree Sit. Five supporters have been arrested in the past few weeks, a level of repression that hasn’t been seen in almost a year. What can we do to resist the plan and put pressure on the administration? Tuesday, Nov. 25 at 7pm there will be a meeting in the Kresge Student Lounge (followed by Indigenous Film Night). We will also be gathering for a speak-out at the Tree Sit in the Science Hill Parking Lot on Dec. 7, and a large crowd there could show the administration that people care and are willing to mobilize and resist. They need their corporate sponsors to see UCSC as a nice, calm, safe investment for their schemes, and community action can threaten that. What else? Talk to people about the LRDP, make your own flyers (or download these) and put them up or hand them out, organize protests, do public art projects and creative publicity stunts, do class projects about the LRDP's potential impact, educate yourself about government and corporate power and the struggles against them, think about what you can do to draw attention and obstruct their plans!

We are the people and we can make an impact! And we must. Or else someday, the last tree is gonna fall and kill us all…

LRDPresistance.org StopUCSC.org