UCU Goldsmiths Solidarity Message to Amanda Echanis

Dear Amanda and comrades,

We want first to convey our heartfelt joy and relief that we can write to you and that these words reach you in freedom and safety, reunited with family and surrounded by friends and comrades.

Our branch has sought to build links in the spirit of workers’ internationalism with our sibling union in the Philippines, the All UP Academic Employees Union (AUAEU). When we first made contact a few years ago, the sense in our branch was that it was important, as an act of solidarity, to support our comrades in the Philippines facing intensifying repression and violence.

However, we also knew that comrades in the Philippines were fighting back with courage, conviction, and an abiding hope for a more just future. It was our sense that by learning about and supporting struggles in the Phillipines, and coming to understand the perspectives of comrades there, we would also strengthen our own struggle, and recommit ourselves to the principles and ideals that we all aspire to as trade unionists.

Your fight has embodied this. Comrades from AUPAEU brought your fight to our attention. We discussed it in branch meetings. We were heartbroken to think of your separation from loved ones, but your principled stance, courage and generosity made a deep impression.

The solidarity shown by students, scholars, activists, and organised workers, many of whom risk serious repression themselves, all organising for justice, reminds us of the power of organisation and solidarity.

As we write this, our own branch is involved in a long industrial dispute in defense of jobs and services supporting our students. One of our students has been sentenced as a terrorist for taking action against the Israeli war machine. In a climate of intensifying exploitation and repression in England, your victory is not simply an inspiration: your victory is an example, a strategy, for everyone in the struggle. You have reminded us, in difficult times, that we can struggle and that we can win.

Welcome back comrade, and thank you.

In solidarity,

Goldsmiths UCU