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.
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 Seattle, hundreds 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.
- October 2021: We co-sponsored a powerful Labor Community Listening Post with Nikkita Oliver’s campaign for city council, MLK Labor, and UNITE HERE Local 8.
- September 2021: We again joined with a community coalition to develop and endorse a comprehensive Solidarity Budget for the 2022 Seattle budget process.
- June 2021: Members participated in the Solidarity Budget Summit as part of the coalition work to develop a 2022 Seattle Solidarity Budget that prioritizes racial justice, housing justice, environmental justice, disability justice, and more.
- October 2020: We again joined with a powerful coalition of community organizations to demand a Solidarity Budget.
- September 2020: We joined community organizations in calling for progressive revenue and committing to a Solidarity Budget.
- July – August 2020: UAW members have been active in joining thousands on the streets and organizations like King County Equity Now in calling for Seattle Police Department (SPD) to be defunded and for investments to instead be made in critical community and social services. Check out this press conference we participated in with Councilmember Kshama Sawant, and this letter we sent to City Council.
- June 2020: Check out our announcement that SPOG had officially been removed from MLK Labor.
- June 2020: Check out our statement calling for the removal of SPOG from the King County Labor Council (MLK Labor)
- November 2018: We joined community organizations, fellow union members, Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant in calling for City Council to renegotiate the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) contract in order to ensure it met key accountability measures that had already been passed by the community.
- Petitions:
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.