On Thursday, March 4th, California's college students staged statewide protests that were the epicenter of an international day of action against the mindless bipartisan war on public education. The actions were called for coming out of student protests last November, and were joined in by teachers and staffs from K-12 as well as all three branches of California's higher education system, along with student-lead actions in 30 other states and some countries overseas. At Democracy Now, Juan Gonzales reported:
Students and teachers held hundreds of demonstrations on Thursday as part of the National Day of Action to Defend Public Education. Hundreds of thousands took part in what was the largest day of coordinated student protest in years.
Much of the day's focus was on the university and state college campuses of California, where students face a 32 percent tuition hike. Thousands of California students staged a one-day strike and took part in rallies from San Diego to Sacramento to Humboldt County.
At UC Santa Cruz, students blocked both entrances to the school before 7:00 a.m., essentially shutting down the campus for the day.
At UCLA, 300 students staged a five-hour sit-in outside the chancellor's office.
The blog StudentActivism.net, written by Angus Johnston, a historian of student activism and student government, offers a great wrap-up of the day (not that things are necessarily wrapping up). California -- not to mention the rest of the country -- saw a ton of activity today. A huge day for students.
But the real challenge is what happens tomorrow. As Johnson writes --
Today was more about activists talking to each other, working with each other, than it was about talking to or working with -- or working to overthrow -- university power structures.
At Calitics, Courage Campaign Public Policy Director Robert Cruickshank (aka "Eugene" or "Robert in Monterey")--also a speaker at one of the protests--reported:
From Anger To Action
Yesterday's outpouring of protest against the deliberate decision to destroy California's public education system was characterized by one dominant emotion: anger. And that was exactly as it should be. If you're not angry at the collapse of our schools, colleges, and universities, and the stealing of an entire generation's future, then you're really not paying any attention.
I spent the day at Cal State Monterey Bay, hearing student after student take the microphone to express their anger at what has happened to their dreams. This was not a violent anger, but instead the kind of deeply rooted anger that anyone would quite rightly feel when they have been betrayed. The state of California has betrayed these students, having asked them to work hard to succeed in school and promising an affordable quality education, only to yank that promise away from them in order to deliver tax cuts to huge corporations.
On other campuses, anger was clearly the dominant emotion, such as the students at UC Santa Cruz who shut down the campus, or the students at UC Davis who tried to block Interstate 80 in order to show the rest of the state what it feels like to have your life disrupted by forces beyond your control.
Anger can be a very healthy emotion. It focuses the mind, and can create a sense of determination. That too was on display at the events I attended - a belief that this anger was being expressed in order to build a mass movement of students, faculty, staff, parents, and other Californians who know that this state has no chance whatsoever at prospering in the 21st century if these cuts are not reversed. It is further evidence of how effective and valuable the March 4 actions were.
Students now understand what is happening to them and why. Their education is being gutted and their already meager financial resources are being stolen from them by a state government that believes corporations matter more than students. That propping up the failed status quo matters more than building California's future. Most of the speakers I heard understood this very clearly, almost instinctively. It has been beaten into them these last two years.
Democray Now! also reported on protests outside California:
AMY GOODMAN: Protests were also held on campuses across the country Thursday. At the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, police used pepper spray to break up a student protest organized by Students for a Democratic Society. Fifteen students were arrested. At SUNY Purchase in New York protesters took over the Student Services Building. Students at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill staged a sit-in at the chancellor's office. In Washington state, the Olympia Coalition for a Fair Budget held a mock funeral for public education and healthcare and brought a coffin to the state Capitol building. And here in New York City, students and teachers at the City University of New York rallied outside Governor David Paterson's office.
Here are some of the voices from that rally....
PROTESTERS: The students, united, will never be defeated!
JACKIE MARIANO: My name is Jackie Mariano, and I am a student at CUNY Hunter College. I've come out here today as a student of a public school to put pressure on Governor Paterson, the New York government and all public school administration to stop cutting the budget of education. Students of public schools are suffering a lot because of this economic crisis. CUNY is made up of 75 percent of people of color, a lot of working class. About 40 percent of CUNY students work part-time. And 75 percent of Hunter College students are women. So a lot of marginalized communities continue to feel the blow of the economic crisis. And the New York government hasn't done anything yet to solve that.
KEVIN RANKIN: I came from the Borough of Manhattan Community College. My name is Kevin Rankin. And I came from a life where I neglected school, a life where I didn't have a future. But then I came to the United States, and I found school. And it changed my life. And I know school has changed a lot of your lives, also. And because of that, I ask, why would we antagonize the schools? Why would we continue to hike tuitions? Why would we continue to cut the budgets towards school?
This is the United States of America. We claim to be the most powerful country in the world. And indeed we are. But if we continue to antagonize the education, how long can we proclaim that we are the leader of the world?
In the Borough of Manhattan Community College, we have men and women, young and old, from the different walks of life. We have single mothers, single fathers, trying to get an education, because they know they have to provide for their families. We have students who are trying to break the generational gap of poverty within their family, knowing that education is the only way. And we are trying to antagonize education today. This is unacceptable!
BARBARA BOWEN: We want to teach the students. We want to teach students in great conditions, not substandard conditions. We want funding to make our university a great university, and that takes money. So don't believe anybody from the Governor's office, which is right up here, when they say that budget cuts are inevitable, that CUNY and SUNY will have to tighten their belts this year. We have already tightened too hard. We wait in lines for classes. We sit on windowsills to be in a class. We stand in line to get to a lab. We wait all day to register. That is not acceptable. And if we have more cuts, we'll only get more of that. CUNY and SUNY have been cut proportionately more than any other state agency in New York. Think about that for a minute. CUNY and SUNY, the public higher education system, has been cut, proportionately to its size, more than any other state agency in New York. What does that tell us? That someone has an agenda of your not getting an education, not getting a first-rate education. We have to change that political agenda. That's what we're here for today.
PROTESTERS: Bail out the students! Not the banks!
AMY GOODMAN: That was Barbara Bowen, president of the Professional Staff Congress in CUNY, speaking Thursday at a protest outside New York Governor David Paterson's Manhattan office.
In a companion piece focused on primary and secondary education, Democracy Now! interviewed education scholar Diane Ravitch, long a leading proponent of charter schools, privatization and testing, who has changed her mind, based on the overwhelming record of failure of these "bipartisan" "reform" ideas, as she details in her new book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, which jeffbinnc will be reviewing for Open Left next weekend.
I hope to post more about what Ravitch had to say in another diary later this weekend. But for now I'll just say that her book, and the change of heart and mind it reflects are signs of hope for a broad-based alternative and opposition to the direction of the braindead bipartisan elite consensus that has declared a de facto war on education in America.
The emerging movement that demonstrated this past Thursday is a potent force because it seeks to unify all those who are being short-changed by the current elite consensus-students, parents, teachers, staff and society at large, from kindergarten through graduate school. This the logical, natural, organic place for a new coalition of progressive forces to coalesce. It's happening already. It's up to us to look and see what we can do to support it.
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