Rooted in the 1999 Ethnic Studies Strike and Agreement, the Multicultural Community Center has had a dynamic history of struggle, student-visioning and vibrant programming in the decade since. Today, the MCC exists as a multipurpose community center where you will find people studying, meeting, engaging in critical dialogue and taking part in various student and community programming.
ON STRIKE makes an encapsulated, incisive study of the context and events that led up to the Ethnic Studies demonstrations, hunger strikes, and student arrests that surprisingly roiled the UC Berkeley campus in May 1999. Opening with a quick historical study of the struggle that established Ethnic Studies in the late sixties, this record of modern-day activism soon moves into the urgent present-time, detailing the nineties' twLF (Third World Liberation Front) movement and their pitched battle against the university administration.
Directed by: Irum Shiekh
Runtime: 35 minutes
Release year: 1999
http://www.facebook.com/onstrike
MCC History
1968 - TWLF Strike at SFSU
A coalition known as the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF) is formed between the Black Student Union and other student groups at San Francisco State University to lead a five month strike on campus to demand a radical shift in admissions practices that mostly excluded nonwhite students and in the curriculum regarded as irrelevant to the lives of students of color.
1969 - twLF at UCB Demands Third World College
A multiracial coalition of UC Berkeley students comes together and forms the third world Liberation Front (twLF) to demand that the University acknowledge the histories of communities of color as vital scholarship through the creation of a Third World College dedicated to the underemphasized histories of African Americans, Asian Americans, Chicanos/Chicanas, and Native Americans. The three month long protests that followed resulted not in a Third World College but in the Department of Ethnic Studies.
1999 - twLF Hunger Strike
Under the banner of the third world Liberation Front, University of California Berkeley (UCB) students protested a series of cuts to the Ethnic Studies Department by holding rallies, sit-ins, building occupations, and a hunger strike resulting in a five point Agreement in Suppout of Ethnic Studies. Included in this agreement was a commitment to establishing a Multicultural Community Center on campus.
2005 - MOU I Created
Representatives of the ASUC, twLF and the University agreed in 2005 that the Heller Lounge and OCF space in the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union would serve as a temporary location for the MCC until a permanent MCC was established. After a year of dialogue and negotiation, on September 16, 2005 the first Memorandum of Understanding (2005-2008) was established between the ASUC and University.
2008 - MOU II Created
Students negotiate a second Memorandum of Understanding with the University to secure funding for student positions to run the Center and for a full time Multicultural Community Center Coordinator.
2009 - MCC Hires First Full Time Staff
Elisa Diana Huerta is hired as the first full time staff member in the MCC. With Elisa's support, the MCC student staff is able to carry out much needed renovations of the Heller Lounge space.
2011 - MOU III Created
2015 - MCC moves to Permanent Space
In the Fall of 2015, the MCC moves into it's permanent space (as guaranteed in 1999 Agreement).
