In February 2020, University of California–Santa Cruz graduate student workers refused to turn in final grades unless their demand for a Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) to match the cost of housing was met. As the administration refused to meet this demand, the graduate student workers’ protest became a wildcat strike.

Emails recently obtained by Vice as part of a public records request reveal the lengths the administration was willing to go to to thwart the strike. Rather than meeting their demands, the administration worked with campus police, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, the California National Guard, and the California Office of Emergency Services to police the strike.

These agencies also turned to the California State Threat Assessment Center, a “state fusion center.” Fusion centers are affiliated with the Department of Homeland Security and share intelligence between state, federal, and private entities. According to a 2012 Congressional investigation, fusion centers produce intelligence of “uneven quality — oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering citizens’ civil liberties and Privacy Act protections, occasionally taken from already-published public sources, and more often than not unrelated to terrorism.”