Dear colleague,
During contract negotiations, our unions and student and community allies agreed to establish a Beloved Community Fund, with initial funding of $600,000 from the New Jersey state government. Though President Holloway and his administration reneged on a previous commitment to also contribute to the Fund, our members voted during contract negotiations to ask everyone in the union to contribute the $50 to $100 (on a sliding scale, with more from those who make more) when we got our retro checks.
As you know from our recent emails, Rutgers bungled our retro pay—most egregiously for adjunct faculty. But most full-time faculty, biomedical faculty, graduate workers, postdocs, and EOF counselors did get pretty close to what you were owed. So we are asking you to support the Beloved Community Fund. You can donate by clicking here.
We want to show our members’ commitment to social justice, Bargaining for the Common Good, and supporting our students and communities. This fund is not about short-term support but about system change—we want to hold Rutgers accountable as one of the largest employers and landlords in our communities.
Money donated to the fund will be dedicated to getting BIPOC migrant students and workers the support they need to pay their rent and put food on the table, with specific emphasis on communities who were left out of stimulus payments during the pandemic. The fund will build relationships with directly affected residents and give them the tools they need to build a campaign for housing justice in our communities.
We are working with our community allies to establish a 501(c)(3) organization to administer this money, but it will take some months to meet the legal requirements to establish such an organization. So for now, your contributions will not be tax-deductible. But you will be helping this social justice initiative to get off the ground.
We are asking you to invest in a long-term campaign for justice, one that will pressure Rutgers to reckon with the communities it exploits, including our members among those communities. We can bring our communities together to build on the historic wins of our strike. Please donate today by clicking here.
In solidarity,
Rutgers AAUP-AFT, Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union, and AAUP-BHSNJ
Rutgers AAUP-AFT Facebook page: https://facebook.com/RUaaup/
Follow us on Twitter @ruaaup and Instagram @rutgersaaup
Freedom School YouTubeChannel: https://rutgersaaup.org/YouTube
Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/rutgersptlfc
Follow us on Twitter and Instagram: @ruaaup_ptl
Visit our redesigned website: https://rutgers-ptlfc.org/
AAUP-BHSNJ website: https://onerutgersfaculty.org/
AAUP-BHSNJ Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/RUaaupbhsnj