Our Anti-Discrimination Working Group works to promote racial justice both within the university and beyond, through organizing in coalition with other students, staff, faculty, labor unions, community organizers, and neighborhood groups. By building power and mobilizing together, we can effectively hold university leaders and elected officials accountable and win structural changes that benefit our entire community. (For more on work we are doing internally on membership education around anti-racism, also check out this page.) 

Black Caucus

Black ASEs and Postdocs are warmly invited to join our newly-formed Black Caucus! Please email black-caucus@uaw4121.org for more info and to join.

Join the UAW 4121 Rapid Mobilization Network

UAW members have been taking to the streets nearly every day since late May 2020, joining thousands to take action for Black lives and racial justice. Stemming from this, we have established a network of fellow UAW 4121 members for rapid mobilization to protests and other events in the Seattle/Bothell/Tacoma area, as a way to quickly coordinate about upcoming events we want to attend, and to connect with others on the ground at events to help build safer and more accessible participation. All UAW 4121 members are encouraged to join — please fill out this form and an organizer will follow up with you! Click here for Protesting & Safety Resources.

Crowd of ten thousand people in a park with signs. Two in the foreground read "Teacher for Black Lives" and "Defend Black Lives, Dismantle Racism, Demand Justice"

UAW 4121 members joined 10,000 others for the June 2020 Strike for Black Lives.

Community & Coalition at UW

We are proud to be part of the Coalition to Decriminalize UW, a group of students, postdocs, staff, and faculty working in coalition to fight for racial justice at UW — by supporting each other’s work, pressuring university admin to meet key demands (at Seattle, at Bothell), organizing for greater accountability measures in UWPD collective bargaining agreements, and more. 

  • September 2021: as part of the Coalition to Decriminalize UW, co-hosted a community visioning session on Safety Beyond UW Policing
  • May 2021: as part of the Coalition to Decriminalize UW, participated in nationwide Cops Off Campus day of action
  • November 2020: through the Coalition to Decriminalize UW, we co-hosted a UW-wide teach-in, as a community space to imagine what a truly public, inclusive, and just university might look like.
  • September 2020: meeting with UW Board of Regents
  • August 2020: letter to UWPD regarding collective bargaining and police accountability. 
  • August 2020: UW BLM is starting a month of action, including an art installation around the George Washington statue. They are calling for volunteers to help with setting up events, mutual aid efforts, transportation, and other tasks. If you’d like to get involved, you can sign up here! You can also support this ongoing work by contributing to the UW BLM gofundme.
  • July 2020: statement against the Black Opportunity Fund

Organizing in Seattle and King County

For years, 4121 members have been joining thousands of others in Seattle and around the world to take action against racist and anti-Black policing — joining thousands on the streets of Seattlehundreds in Tacoma in memory of Manuel Ellis (a Black Tacoma man who was murdered by police in early March 2020), and more.

This powerful and ongoing action of thousands is beginning to make an impact in the Puget Sound. For instance, after incredible community pressure and action, the Seattle City Attorney rescinded the consent decree motion, and Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan cancelled the previously-imposed curfew. This movement is the direct result of all of our community’s action — but there’s much more to be done, so it’s critical we keep up the momentum.

Organizing Nationally

We are proud to be part of a growing movement of academic worker unions across the country, and regularly coordinate with our union siblings nationally to build power together. In June 2020, we joined hundreds of academic worker unions and organizations across the US and Canada in calling for a termination of university-police ties.