Official Statement on the 2025 Presidential Inauguration

Below is our official statement on the 2025 U.S. Presidential Inauguration and incoming Presidential Administration.

Approved by the UCWAZ Executive Committee and released publicly on Wednesday, January 29th, 2025.

Solidarity Forever!

Despite the events of last week, we choose to focus on the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. While most prominently known for his civil rights work, Dr. King was also a labor organizer. Before his death in Memphis, he organized with sanitation workers and joined them on their twelve day strike, during which they won their demands. He explained, “We can all get more together than we can apart; we can get more organized together than we can apart. And this is the way we gain power. Power is the ability to achieve purpose, power is the ability to affect change, and we need power. What is power? Walter Reuther said once that ‘power is the ability of a labor union like UAW to make the most powerful corporation in the world—General Motors—say yes when it wants to say no.’ That’s power.” With this in mind, we are proud to continue the tradition of organizing.

The elite surrounding the incoming presidential administration have presented a vision for higher education, many parts of which we fundamentally disagree with. We see a public education, free and accessible to all, as a public good. Our fellow workers, our students, and our community, all deserve a university environment where they feel safe and dignified and can freely contribute to humanity’s collective knowledge for the benefit of all. Our students, staff, and faculty are the driving force behind our universities and deserve job security. We are the learners, the subject matter experts, and the workers who make higher education possible. We deserve a permanent seat at the decision-making table to serve as a voice for ourselves and our communities in how our universities run.

The next few years hold uncertainty for us all. The erosion of protections for our LGBTQ+ neighbors, the threats of deportation for our undocumented neighbors, and the increased policing and censorship of what is taught in the classroom all threaten to erase communities that contribute deeply to our universities. The Arizona State Legislature’s continued cuts to funding for public education makes higher education inaccessible for poor and working people, and drives us further into debt.  

The one thing that remains true: the power of labor organizing. We, the United Campus Workers of Arizona, your labor union, enter 2025 representing students, staff, and faculty from all three state universities in Arizona: ASU, NAU, and UA. We continue to build collective power in pursuit of our vision of higher education as a freely accessible public good for all. By organizing and working together, we have the power to realize this vision, and we have the power to win. Join us. Join your union today.

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