Declaration of Solidarity

The Graduate Employees’ Organization (GEO) at UIUC, IFT/AFT Local 6300 reaffirms our commitment to centering justice and equity in the labor struggle and our dedication to collective action and fervent solidarity as the Trump administration infringes on our democratic ideals and continues its descent into authoritarian rule. We recognize that the ongoing threats to political and institutional infrastructures have contributed to a sense of fear and uncertainty amongst our campus community. GEO rejects the acts of discrimination and force that this administration has perpetuated along the lines of race, gender, language, sexual orientation, ability, class, caste, ethnicity, religious belief, documentation/immigration status, and nationality against our communities at the local, national and international level.

Since the beginning of this administration in January, the Trump administration has:

• Rolled back Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, fired Black workers from jobs designated as DEI-related, and attempted to erase Black and queer history from national parks, museums, and websites.
• Revoked international students’ visas and announced new “duration of status” limitations on visa holders.
• Conducted violent ICE raids in immigrant neighborhoods, systematically targeting immigrants of color, assaulting them in broad daylight, and disappearing them without access to due process.
• Antagonized queer and trans communities and deprived them of life-saving healthcare.
• Endangered freedom of speech by punishing student activists protesting against the Palestinian genocide and revoking journalistic access to government agencies.
• Restricted equitable access to reproductive and healthcare providers.
• Severely limited funding for scientific research and demanded that academic institutions conform to their ideological pressure campaign in exchange for federal support.
• Shutdown the United States government, leaving thousands of workers stranded without the ability to provide for themselves or their families.
• Engaged in anti-labor practices including stripping over a million federal workers of union protections and collective bargaining rights, firing pro-labor National Labor Relations Board member, and introducing sweeping tariffs that increase the cost of living for workers while wages stagnate.
• Cut Medicaid, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) funding, and funding for rural hospitals.
• Bribed universities to accept a “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” in exchange for federal funding. This compact would prohibit race and gender equity in admissions and hiring, limit international student enrollment, restrict political speech, and enforce gender binaries on campus.
• Continued to promote divisive rhetoric that alienates, disenfranchises, and furthers the marginalization of diverse communities in American society.

We stand with the masses of people around the world fighting back—from the Chicago residents forming watch groups and “walking school buses” to protect immigrant students from ICE, to the residents of the all-Black town of Lincoln Heights, Ohio, whose self-defense organization forced neo-Nazis to flee, from the general strike in Italy which halted the transportation of weapons to Israel, to mass youth-led protests in Morocco, Peru, Indonesia, Madagascar, Nepal, and the Philippines demanding an end to corruption and access to public goods like education, healthcare, water, and electricity. These movements show that our country’s backslide into authoritarianism is not inevitable or without resistance. Our greatest antidote is collective, strategic, and courageous action.

The GEO remains committed to supporting workers and the broader community in their efforts to organize against the threats to their political, social, and cultural sovereignty. We condemn the politically-motivated attacks upon this country’s immigrant, international, working-class, and queer communities, and we stand against the marginalization of speech and intellectual freedoms on university campuses. Now more than ever, the labor movement must engage in a unified, intersectional, and solidarity-centered fight for the common good that achieves justice not only at the bargaining table, but in our communities.

GEO will continue to fight for the fair and just treatment of all workers, on campus and in the Champaign-Urbana. As our current contract with the University administration comes to a close in August 2026, we are bringing our commitment to solidarity to the bargaining table and to our engagement in the local and global struggle for liberation. We are dedicated to:

• Maintaining our status as a Sanctuary Union and our commitment to not cooperating with ICE or law enforcement in the prosecution or attempted deportation of our members and in safe-keeping the personal information of our members.
• Strengthening our contract protections for international, non-citizen, racially marginalized, disabled, queer and trans graduate workers.
• Engaging in listening sessions to understand concerns within our campus community and how GEO can support in finding solutions and protections.
• Showing up for and supporting, whether materially or intellectually, aligned community movements and organizations engaged in social, economic, racial and gender justice in Champaign- Urbana, Illinois, and beyond.

Our greatest strength is our unity. When we fight together, we win. Solidarity forever!