On Tuesday evening, the UBC Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) student group held a community meeting to plan student strikes in solidarity with Palestine.
These strikes are part of the Canadian Revolutionary Communist Party’s Towards a Student Strike for Palestine movement.
Students and community members have expressed discontent with UBC’s response regarding what human rights experts call a genocide in Gaza. According to a report issued by a United Nations-appointed independent expert, there are “reasonable grounds” to believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
UBC’s MacInnes Field was occupied by an encampment in solidarity with Palestine. Organized by People’s University UBC, the encampment began on April 29 and voluntarily dismantled two months later. The encampment demanded UBC to divest from companies complicit in human rights violations in Palestine and to cut ties from Israeli university institutions. Neither of these demands were met by UBC.
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“We clearly did not achieve our goal [during the encampment]… so we need to change our tactics,” said RPC member Enzo, whose full name has been withheld due to safety concerns, to Tuesday’s meeting’s 100 attendees.
Enzo said it’s crucial that the community “move forward as a united direction,” and that students across the country are working “to spring up a student strike campaign.” U of T’s RPC has also announced a similar strike.
“Our common goal is to mobilize massively to end the support of the Zionist war machine, to ask for the end of the repression of the Palestinian movement and to finally fucking end this genocide,” Enzo said.
Enzo went on to say that the broader goal of the movement would be to “disrupt business as usual.”
The Canadian Revolutionary Communist Party wrote, in a statement, that “it is … important to begin politically convincing as many students as possible of the need for a strike.”
“Every single person who agrees with the need for a student strike for Palestine, should be put to work to help convince more people and build towards the strike,” read the statement.
“We need to be able to form groups of action that are entrusted with the mission of doing propaganda, coming up with speeches, leaflets, mobilizing the people, mobilizing devices and organizing protests and obviously strikes,” said Enzo.
“This task will clearly draw the line and create the solid foundation towards the success of the movement.”
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