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Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I explore what role audio and visual media played in the 2020 UC Santa Cruz wildcat strike. I argue that media helped solidify the collective voice strikers developed during the labor action.

Paper long abstract:

Since Fall 2019, University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) graduate student workers have been demanding a Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) to cope with the skyrocketing cost of living and cost of rent in Santa Cruz. In December, UCSC graduate students went on a grading strike and in February on a teaching strike while maintaining a hard picket line at the entrance to the University. Much changed with the COVID-19 outbreak that obliterated in person organizing and yet, the strike continued: remote teaching translated into remote striking; the picket line went digital; and disruptions became mediated.

In this paper, I explore what role audio and visual media played in the 2020 UC Santa Cruz wildcat strike. I argue that media helped solidify the collective voice strikers developed during the labor action. Media produced by and about the strikers highlighted the mass nature of the movement rather than identifying individual organizers. The media sphere was taken as a site of struggle and contestation. It did not replace but rather it complemented the struggle on the ground. The COLA campaign produced a complex intermingling of virtual and actual mobilization of bodies and voices that revealed and disrupted the working of the Neoliberal university.