UC Student Union Demands AFL-CIO Dump Police Union Because Cops Are Racist (and Colonialist)

The University of California student workers’ union wrote a letter demanding that the AFL-CIO, a union umbrella organization, end its affiliation with the International Union of Police Associations (IUPA) because, after all, policemen are racist.

“It is our position that this organization is inimical to both the interests of labor broadly, and Black workers in particular,” the students’ union, United Auto Workers Local 2865, wrote in a letter to the AFL-CIO dated July 26.

“Their ‘unionization allows police to masquerade as members of the working-class and obfuscates their role in enforcing racism, capitalism, colonialism, and the oppression of the working-class,” they continued.

The students’ union cited evidence including the death of Freddie Gray and the fact that “police played a significant role in defending Jim Crow segregation.”

Dennis Slocumb, the IUPA’s legislative director, told the Daily Californian (UC Berkeley’s student newspaper) that the IUPA would not respond to the letter because it did not take it seriously.

— Katherine Timpf is a reporter for National Review Online.