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Students' 'Day Of Action' Protests Grow As Education Goes Private
More than 100 such events in over 30 states were scheduled for a "Day of Action" in support of public education across the country, prompted by tuition hikes and program cuts that reflect financial problems affecting nearly every U.S. state.
Students at UC Berkeley block Sather Gate as they demonstrate during a national day of action against funding cuts and tuition increases.
(Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) Weakening of the education system is considered particularly severe in California, one of the states hardest-hit by the recession.
Several hundred students, faculty and staff rallied at the University of California at Berkeley, the 1960s hub of Vietnam war protests. Yoga students there held classes outside to avoid crossing picket lines.
A UC Santa Cruz radio broadcast advised the public to avoid that campus after protesters blocked a traffic entrance.
Thousands were expected to rally at public schools and at state university and community college campuses up and down the state.
Students are not alone in their dissatisfaction with cutbacks. Polls show that voters see the quality of life in California in decline with a gaping budget shortfall, legislative gridlock, slashed social services and double-digit unemployment.
The protests also reflected a growing debate about whether Californians should temper their aspirations or be willing to pay more to maintain universities and other hallmark institutions like state parks and social services.
"They are not prioritizing education. That should be at the top of the list -- on top of everything," said Yesenia Castellanos, 18, a Berkeley freshman heading for a march with a sign reading, "Do UC what I see? Injustice."
PUBLIC EDUCATION SEEN GOING PRIVATE
Newly approved fee hikes of more than 30 percent will lift education costs at University of California campuses to over $10,000 per year, making the UC system more expensive than rival public schools in many other states, students said.
Escalating fees also make it more difficult for less-affluent, minority students to attend, adding to the effects of a 1996 state ballot initiative that banned affirmative action at state institutions. Students see the trend as a form of privatization that also reduces diversity.
"When you disinvest from public institutions, it is by definition privatization," grad student Shad Small, 23, said.
California faces a $20 billion budget shortfall after closing an even bigger gap last year.
The current budget provided the UC system 20 percent less than the year before, and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal for next year would only partially reverse that cut, leading to fee hikes and fewer classes.
The state also is facing the possibility of record layoffs in public schools, from kindergarten through 12th grade, spurring Thursday's joint action between educators and students at all levels. The California Teachers Association said more than 18,000 teachers have been notified that their jobs could be eliminated next school year.
Financial pressure is mounting in other states, as well. The public university system in Illinois, a state facing an $11 billion deficit, has seen its tuition triple over the past decade, with another 20 percent hike possible.
"You could end up with an institution where the kids come from wealthy families," University of Illinois professor James Barrett said at a march by several hundred protesters.
Students, parents and teachers rallied on the steps of New York City Hall to protest the impending closure of 19 failing city schools and the expansion of charter schools.
Under the state budget proposed by New York Governor David Paterson, state and city universities and colleges would lose $208 million in funds, and tuition aid would be cut, to help close a state deficit of several billion dollars.
(Additional reporting by Andrew Stern in Chicago, Jim Christie in San Francisco and Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Philip Barbara)
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35 Comments so far
Show AllPRIVATIZATION is the key word.
for teddy:
"Core GOP Value: Cheap, Disposable Labor"
here you go, check it out here:
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/george-will-displays-core-gop-value-c
If today's students were learning anything about economics they would have been protesting Obama's shutting single payer medical insurance advocates out of the health care reform legislation one year ago.
Millions of baby boomers are delaying or cancelling retirement from their family wage jobs solely to retain relatively affordable employer-sponsored medical insurance.
Single-payer would allow them to retire tomorrow, opening millions of family wage jobs to young Americans. Obamacare will result in an even greater number of boomers delaying or cancelling retirement.
If today's students hope to land family wage jobs after graduation they need to be dogging Obama to implement single-payer medical insurance.
Right on ! with the students. More Money for education not Wars!
These kids don't realize it but if they got this excited about ending the "occupations" of Iraq and Afghanistan, it might happen a lot faster. That is the ONLY argument for reinstating the draft and even that isn't a good one; however, I believe it would be effective in getting more bodies on the streets.
Sure hope this "movement" spreads nationwide.
EDUCATION not Military occupation.
March on WASHINGTON,D.C. MARCH 20,2010.
Too bad the energy isn't directed at the targets most responsible for the financial mess--Wall Street, the US Empire and its wars, as well as the D & R polticos who engineered it all.
Intersting how it's being called a nationwide action by the MSM (I just scanned google news), yet almost every report is datelined California.
Isn't the goal to empower triumphal dunces and extinguish critical resistance? Poverty, inadequate health care, soaring public debt, the bailout of corrupt financial institutions, the prison binge, the destruction of public and higher education aren't just problems we all want to join together and solve.
These situations are foisted upon us without our say, without democracy. 20 million of us took to the streets to stop the attack on Baghdad. We were totally brushed off, herded into free-speech corrals, rendered invisible by lack of fair media coverage.
Mr. Kucinich has it right again. We misappropriate our funds and our focus. To solve the education financial problem, all we have to do is stop the war. Half of all our taxes goes to military, past and present. But students haven't been educated to connect the militarization of American society and the world to specific problems in the schools. The culture of fear has already silenced them--and their professors along with the rest of us.
Because critical thinking is at odds with authoritarianism it is being suppressed, even demonized.
I'd like for the "movement" to succeed, but I think the pundits have made human beings superfluous, politics depoliticized, schools into prisons. As Orwell's Winston Smith and Julia say: We are the dead. The totalitarians have joined the terrorists and have won. Is anybody alive in here? Nobody but us.
dwyerj1 said, "Because critical thinking is at odds with authoritarianism it is being suppressed, even demonized. "
And yet, where I live and teach, they are all told that the US system is so much better because it encourages critical thinking skills. It's all I can do to stop laughing out loud. But the sad part is, that compared to some places, it's actually true. (To some extent.)
God bless the children
Thank God the bushmonkey is not still in power.
He would have these good kid all labeled: domestic terrorists trying to interfere with Wall Street's rape of the school system.
Many textbooks are now 200 dollars and the kids are required to buy them even though the teachers don't want those texts. The ugly wall street camel's nose is now poking under the education tent. It's just a matter of time before the whole camel comes crashing into the school system.
Is no one safe from Mafia Capitalism?
TJ
"Timid men... prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty" - Thomas Jefferson to Philip Mazzei, April 24, 1796
The cutting of school programs is partly (even largely) due to budget short-falls, but I also suspect a crazy kind of anti-intellectualism. Unless you have a kid currently in college you may tend to think of them a rich and pampered brats who party more than they study (true in too many cases). You might question the value of higher education itself when you see English Ph.D's pumping gas. You might be suspicious of any form of critical thinking as that threatens one's cozy little imprisoned worldview. So to hell with higher ed! They all ought to get out in the "real world" and earn a living. Ditto their pointy-headed instructors.
Gary
"Honesty is the best policy, but insanity is a better defense."
-- Steve Landesberg
Good on you students! Don't take this crap lying down. Maybe if we didn't spend so much money on war and arms, you could have an education. Good luck! Do any of those students fly aircraft?
Have our students finally learned that all their higher degrees give them is a certificate of lifetime indentured servitude to the corporations. Heckuva job!
Good going students.
The budget cuts are happening nationwide. The majority of the budget cuts are occurring due to the filthy bath many of the universities took in the stock crash. Many universities, nearly all the elite ones, copied "THE YALE MODEL" and invested in risky assets and bad real estate gambles. In short the head honchos at America's BIG Academia took the money from the University pool and gambled. They made tons of dough, got fat on the gravy and then the game sank. Guess who's being asked to pick up the tab now? Ain't the head honchos. Sound familiar?
There's a joke goin' around the University where I (barely) work.
Q: What do all those administrator's do in those meetings?
A: They must be fuckin', cause when two go in three come out.
If you want more insight into this read Bob Samuel's blog:
http://changinguniversities.blogspot.com/
He chronicles in excruciating detail what has been going down in the California University System.
Essentially we find, once again, the mad genius of capitalism fucking us every step of the way.
It's so incredible how education and health care are so devalued in our greed-soaken society. My daughter owes more than $35,000, after grad school, despite being a high school salutatorian, phi beta kappa, psychology teaching assistant in her sophomore year, helped by me as much I can do and to a lesser extent by my sister and her mother, and her continually working during the school years and summers.
My son, on the other hand, lives in Vienna, Austria. He first went graduate school at Queen's College in Kingston. Instead of it costing him money they paid him for his teaching assistantship. In Austria, he only held part-time jobs; but, w/the birth of their baby he was allowed a year off with paid leave (w/out being a citizen) receives 2 years paid leave. Their health care and higher education are cost free.
Such is the value they place on health care, education, and child development.
They are much less shy about taxing the rich and are not sacrificing their country to maintain a multi-national corporate empire. Austria is not nirvana; quite conservative outside "Red Vienna".
Austria has a serious problem with their higher education. Not with cost, but class size. Their protests are more like Berkeley '64. They have taken over buildings for long periods over class size. I'm sure you've seen this on the most trusted network in news, as well as the actual truth about Haiti, Honduras, Greece, Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Somalia, Nigeria, and, for godsake, Palestine. In sympathy with the California protests Vienna held a huge protest on the American embassy.
Thank you for this first (okay, second) hand report.
"They are much less shy about taxing the rich and are not sacrificing their country to maintain a multi-national corporate empire. Austria is not nirvana..."
This information needs to be drilled into everyone's mind.
Perfectly ordinary countries, with perfectly ordinary mixes of views and attitudes amongst the Citizenry, are able to function as actual, coherent, Democratic-Republics, that at the same time give a State-based structure to enterprise and labor.
The secret is not some impossible dream.
It is simply a Citizen focus to balance the Corporate interests, a sensible tax system, and (not mentioned in your post but I believe critical) a reasonable population size and territorial scope that has been the result of learning the historical lessons of Empire (namely, they decline).
-matti.
Thank you for the reality check. It's enough to make a patriot choke on their tea bag.
Despite all the advantages your son and his family are enjoying in Austria, he is having to forego the privilige of living in the greatest country on earth. Hope he's not losing too much sleep over that.
Has your daughter got a passport?
* * * * *
Glad to see academia hitting the streets. I've been wondering where they were for the last 30 years.
"Family values" should include health care, education, and child development. What you listed are the true family values. In this country, those that espouse "family values" are only concerned with abortion and homosexuality. What a farce!
If you can read this article and comments,
THANK A TEACHER!
Students and environment suffer while Trillions in public money go to the banksters and their military industrial machine. We can hope this re-awakens progressive activism among students accross the nation and world.
This is very encouraging. People come to political understandings through different experiences. Education cuts beg the question of economic priorities and once we start questioning those priorities, we see the problem everywhere. $$$ for education, for health care, for a sustainable environment - not for war and banks and insurance companies. It's simple. Go students!
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
I heard that buffoon Ah-nold back-peddling from deeper cuts to education like an Austrian cheese maker having an aneurysm on the radio today thanks to these protests. He sounded like a used car salesman just after the engine fell out of the lemon he'd been selling.
Arnold is probably rattled, too, because California was NOT accepted into the "Race to the Top" program for expanding charter schools in states. Unfortunately, New York was accepted into the program -- which means more money from Bill Gates and privatized schools.
Democracy Now! covered this issue, too!
www.democracynow.org
The coverage here, and on other 'alternative' media sites is either weak or non-existent. Nothing for example on Indymedia, IndyBay, Alternet, etc.
Yet, CNN had the best coverage I could find with video of the protests, etc. A sad day for 'alternative media' when CNN does a better job of covering a protest of this size. Where was Norman Solomon? What's David Corn doing? They were probably having a glass of wine and watching a movie.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/03/04/us.day.of.action/index.html?hpt=C1
Oh well, never mind. If the revolution is covered, I guess it will be on CNN? The SF Chronicle coverage was okay, but their video didn't work. At least those guys at Reuters showed up, but they wrote a crappy piece.
Check the Pacifica Radio archives at http://archive.kpfk.org/parchive/. Today (3/4) at 5 pm the Daily Briefing had interviews with activists and considerable depth.
I didn't see CNN, but if they did half as well, it was probably the best program they ever aired.
Check Democracy Now, they did an excellent report: http://www.democracynow.org/
Anyway, I'm not complaining if CNN had heavy coverage of this... isn't that a good thing?
If the students were protesting against the wars or protesting against Obamacare and support of Medicare for All would CNN have picked that up? Maybe it's time the students protested these three things today, with the posters to match: Support education and Medicare for All, end the wars. I see covering education protests as "safe" for an MSM like CNN.
Privatization is the goal because the rich will get educated and the rest will be cannon fodder in the MIC for corpoRAT greed. If you don't know how disasterous privatization is, you haven't needed a doctor lately. Divide and conquer. At least those kids are doing something directly. The rest of us are sitting on their asses. Well, I did go to a peace meeting tonight.
Tea Party Animals-roll over cause here come some to shed light on what is going on! Money for endless wars and none for education? None for, health care, jobs? None for cleaning up our devastated ecosystems? None for sustainable agriculture?
What will last longer:
Students protesting their higher fees or Afghanis protesting their occupation?
Yesterday at the Bronx Community College in Bronx, New York, High school students protested the relocation of their school from a college campus to a building adjacent to a juvenile detention center. I am impressed and hopeful that these movements will spread and gain momentum. It is now up to us all to help and support the youth and again our collective futures depend on the success of the nations youth.
This is a bottom up rebellion against the power elites in this hierarchy which we all should support. We must seize the moment and seize the power that is rightfully ours based on traditional values as exhibited 90 to 95% of human history. All should decide together with equal voices, not allowing a few power elites to have the power over us and our lives. We must be the power to restore the rights we should have to decide together what our future should be and that we should all have a level playing field. We should demand it.
Those who have power have been corrupted by it, giving them a false sense of entitlement to continue having power over us and our lives. They are parasites on the system and us.
AD
This is a bottom up rebellion against the power elites in this hierarchy which we all should support. We must seize the moment and seize the power that is rightfully ours based on traditional values as exhibited 90 to 95% of human history. All should decide together with equal voices, not allowing a few power elites to have the power over us and our lives. We must be the power to restore the rights we should have to decide together what our future should be and that we should all have a level playing field. We should demand it.
Those who have power have been corrupted by it, giving them a false sense of entitlement to continue having power over us and our lives. They are parasites on the system and us.
As John Pilger would aptly put it "Freedom Next Time."
AD
"'You could end up with an institution where the kids come from wealthy families,' University of Illinois professor James Barrett said at a march by several hundred protesters."
Ummm. Yep. Isn't that the ruling elite's plan? After all, they need people to wash their cars, mow their lawns and be the nanny to their kids. Hey, somebody's got to clean up the mess.