Coming together for schools

A MARCH 1 day of action turned out thousands of Californians to walkouts, rallies, teach-ins and other protests to take a stand against brutal cuts to public education.

At every level, from K-12 classrooms to universities and city colleges, students, teachers and staff are feeling the budget ax. California was the epicenter of the protests, but there were also other cities, such as New York City and Chicago, where activists also used the opportunity to show their resistance to education cuts in their states.

At the University of California (UC) at Berkeley, March 1 day of action began with "teach-outs" on a variety of subjects, including the re-segregation of higher education. A noon rally brought out about 150 students, faculty and workers to Sproul Plaza, where the program began with a solidarity message from 15 students from Occupy Stanford.

Occupy Stanford organizer Anna explained that most of the students in her group were products of public education. "The 99 percent is the product of public education, and quality public education should be a right for all students," she said.

From there, protesters marched to Oakland's Oscar Grant Plaza to help send off marchers headed for Sacramento as part of the "99-Mile March for Education and Social Justice." Protesters will join hundreds of others traveling to the state capital for a demonstration and Capitol occupation on March 5.

Students in Occupy Berkeley High School organized a walkout of more than 250 and a speak-out on the steps of the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) office. The mood was energetic, as students gave speeches, performed dance and music, and talked about why they walked out. Many students spoke of how the cuts were taking away programs like art and music that were important to them.

Later that afternoon, Berkeley Federation of Teachers (BFT) members joined Berkeley High students and held a rally of over 300 people with speeches from local teachers who talked about the importance of fully funding schools.

Jasmine, a Berkeley High student, spoke about being homeless in the past and how she wants to grow up to be like her mother, a proud educated woman--but she is being told college is financially out of reach for her and future generations in California. "What will my little sisters have to fight in 10 years in order to get an education?" she asked. She ended her speech to roaring cheers, saying, "When I see all your faces here, I know we can fight and we can win."

She was followed by her English teacher and Occupy Education organizer John Becker, who spoke about how the fight for justice--educational, economic and social--is all one fight. He spoke about the need for the "millionaire's tax," a union-sponsored ballot initiative that would bring an estimated $5 million into Berkeley public schools each year. During the rally, BFT members circulated through the crowd gathering signatures for the tax.

Marchers from the 99-Mile March encouraged everyone to come to Sacramento on March 5 to participate in the occupation of the Capitol and demand that Brown drop his austerity budget. Marchers took with them one of the giant 20-foot yellow pencils created by Berkeley teachers and stamped with the words "Tax the Rich" along the side.

At Laney College in Oakland, about 150 students and workers from the embattled Peralta Community College School District held a rally before they marched to Oscar Grant Park to join UC Berkeley students and workers. The speak-out included students and Peralta Federation of Teachers in their bright orange union shirts.

The day of action was the culmination of two years of organizing that has finally coalesced into a district-wide organizing body, No Cuts Laney, Save Our Schools, the Anti-Swap Coalition and Occupy Education NorCal, which spent many hours building the March 1 events.

The Anti-Swap Coalition and Peralta-wide action planning committees played pivotal roles in organizing the smaller, but vibrant march. The anti-Morgan Stanley swap action was the high point of the day, bringing broad layers of activists and supporters to raise anti-swap and pro-education chants in front of the large building in which the Morgan Stanley East Bay branch is housed.

AT THE City College of San Francisco (CCSF) activists organized a rally and teach-in featuring activists from Occupy CCSF, student government and American Federation of Teachers Local 2121 President Alisa Messer. To generate last-minute interest for the rally, activists marched around campus with a huge "Students Oppose the Student 'Success Task Force'" banner, chanting "Walk out!" and "No cuts, no fees, education should be free."

CCSF protesters were joined by students from SF State, and they all went to the State Building, where 100 people--including K-12 teachers, students and community college faculty--participated in a teach-in about the budget cuts. Protesters occupied the lobby of the building until 4:30 p.m. when they then joined the evening convergence at the Civic Center, which grew to about 700 people.

"It felt great to see folks converge from all different walks of life come out to the event," said Occupy CCSF activist Phil Haggerty. "City College is truly the school of the 99 percent, and we need to continue to put community colleges at the center of our organizing."

In Santa Cruz, students were setting up picket lines before sunrise to attempt to shut down UC Santa Cruz. With a combination of two major pickets at the two main campus entrances and a series of flying pickets at different side entrances, students succeeded in forcing the campus to shut down for the day and won a day off with full pay for campus workers.

Despite rain and cold, hundreds of students and workers came throughout the day to observe and participate in the strike and to take part in a rally and a series of educational workshops.

Organizers began planning the strike in January. Through a several weeks-long campaign of outreach to students and workers, including circulating a strike pledge that garnered some 2,000 signatures, organizers were able to mobilize support and shut the campus down. Most classes were canceled in anticipation of the day's protests. Although a motorist attempted to break through picket lines by driving through students before being forced back, the day otherwise passed without incident.

Schools activists in Castro Valley, where some 400 students, parents and teachers came together for one of the town's largest demonstrations ever, saw March 1 as a kick-off to their campaign to preserve reasonable class sizes. They have two months to organize before layoff notices are finalized by May 15.

On March 1, the same day as a special school board vote, activists held a 45-minute speak-out where students, union leaders and rank-and-file teachers hammered home the message that millions of dollars sit in reserves, making any cuts unnecessary and wrong.

Protesters held some 300 signs with slogans like "No layoffs," "Value Kids, Value Teachers" and "California Gets an F for School Funding." CTA President Dean Vogel was the keynote speaker, and the crowd's numbers were greater than usual thanks to students and teachers from San Lorenzo, Hayward, Alameda, New Haven, Fremont and CSU East Bay.

Students took the initiative the week before to organize themselves, with the Castro Valley High School leadership class holding a lunchtime student speak-out to build for the rally.

After the rally, 75 people attended the board meeting with students outnumbering teachers and speaking eloquently against the cuts. When the board president cut off a kindergarten teacher's speech after three minutes, the next student in line got up, took the speech from the teacher and finished it herself.

That night, the board voted to increase class sizes, but the March 1 rally made clear: Teachers know there is enough money to preserve all student programs and staff positions next year--and they won't be intimidated. In just three weeks, they put hundreds of people into the streets unlike any previous struggle in Castro Valley.

BEYOND CALIFORNIA, activists in several cities took up the call for a day of action for education.

In New York City, 11 campuses held actions on March 1, including a picnic with workers at Columbia University, a teach-in about privatization "From K to CUNY" at Hunter College and political theater in the dining hall at other City University of New York campuses.

The day of events culminated in students from around the city meeting at the steps of Tweed Courthouse, headquarters of New York's Department of Education. There, they held a speak-out focusing on student debt, tuition hikes at public universities and the overall privatization of education and its racist impact. Students from high schools facing closures spoke against the New York Mayor Bloomberg's Panel for Education Policy (PEP) and the Department of Education.

After 300 students marched across the Brooklyn Bridge chanting, protesters held a "student debt exorcism" at Chase Bank led by Reverend Billy. Hunter student Julian Guerrero called for debt refusal and said, "Symbolic actions like this exorcism are powerful, but the key thing is to organize so we can fight back and win."

The protest ended at the PEP hearing, where students held a press conference denouncing racist education cuts in the city. The day of actions showed that a committed core of university and high school activists is developing that will set the ground for a powerful student movement.

In Chicago, students organizing through Occupy groups at several campuses and the citywide Committee Against the Corporatization of Higher Education staged local protests before coming together for a march.

At Columbia College, students met to protest twin attacks of a proposed 5.2 percent tuition hike along with "Prioritization"--a program of budget cuts that is poised to dismantle many of the school's most cherished departments, from fiction writing to cultural studies. DePaul University's Anti-Capitalist Coalition mobilized several dozen students for a speak-out on campus before traveling downtown as a contingent.

Occupy groups from the University of Illinois-Chicago, Roosevelt University, Columbia College, DePaul and elsewhere converged for a rally at "the horse"--a statue in downtown Grant Park that has been the site of most major Occupy Chicago protests. Together, some 200 students shared stories of the cuts and tuition hikes targeting each campus. Then they marched through the Loop to a Chase Bank office building to call out the growing mass of student debt serviced by notoriously profitable bailed-out banks like Chase.

Following a short performance of political street theater and picketing, a contingent took the protest to the office of the DePaul president, Father Dennis Holtschneider. Students delivered a stack of petitions against planned tuition hikes--2.2 percent for current students and 5 percent for incoming freshmen--and demanded Holtschneider agree to postpone a board vote on the increase scheduled for Saturday.

When he refused to consider their demands, students grew more determined. Protesters refused to leave Holtschneider's office, sitting in for several hours before deciding to regroup the following day with an occupation in a more strategic location.

In Seattle, a diverse crowd of 150 teachers, students, parents and Occupiers marched to the global headquarters of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is a leading backer and promoter of corporate education reform.

The Gates Foundation spends billions of dollars a year pushing measures that open the door to charter schools, intensify the use of high-stakes standardized testing, strip teachers of due process and collective bargaining rights, and seek to scapegoat teachers and their unions for the mounting crisis in public education.

Demonstrators sought to push back on this agenda and demand full public funding and full public control of education.

Jesse Hagopian, a history teacher at Garfield High School who was arrested at the Capitol in November while protesting budget cuts, kicked off the rally at Westlake Park. "They want us to believe that teachers have ruined education," he explained, "but Washington state has cut $10 billion from public education and social services, with over $3 billion cut from K-12 funding alone. This state now ranks 42nds in the nation in per-pupil spending and has the third highest class sizes in the country."

During the open-mic speak-out, Joy, a parent in West Seattle and longtime education activist, related how angry she was when her daughter asked her why she had never had a Black teacher. "How can Black students get excited about their education when they never see people who look like them at the front of the classroom?" she asked.

Demonstrators then marched through downtown to a Wells Fargo branch. The march continued in the streets to the Gates Foundation chanting "Hey, hey! Ho ho! Charter schools have got to go!" and "Education is a right! Not just for the rich and white!"

Upon arriving at the Gates Foundation headquarters, protesters were surprised to find that the Foundation had accepted their invitation to an "education policy throwdown" in which the 99 percent would finally have a chance to directly challenge the foundation's policy "experts." Using the people's mic, demonstrators criticized the education policies promoted by the Gates Foundation and gave voice to the harsh impact they have on teachers and students.

Olga Addae, president of the Seattle Education Association, asked why it takes people marching on the Gates Foundation for them to finally come out and talk to teachers. "We are in the classroom every day," she said to the Gates representatives. "We are doing everything we can to educate our students, and we know where the problems are and have ideas about how to fix them. But you don't ever talk to us or try to work with us. Instead, you promote policies that make the problems worse."

Mohawk, an Occupy Seattle activist, explained how his high school was broken up as part of the Gates-backed initiative to promote smaller schools and, as a result, he was moved away from his favorite teacher.

The action was organized by the Occupy Seattle Public Education working group and endorsed by Social Equality Educators, Occupy Seattle Labor Caucus, Parents Across America, Ndns for Justice, and Parents for Skateparks.

In Boston, about 50 students from some six schools marched from Dewey Square, the former site of the Occupy Boston encampment, through the financial district to the Statehouse.

Along the way, they stopped at the Bank of America to protest how they have taken advantage of students and workers with debt and foreclosures, chanting, "Banks got bailed out. Students got sold out." At the Statehouse, 30 students went inside, dropped banners and mic-checked, addressing the lack of funding for education in Massachusetts.

At an event happening at the same time for Mass White Ribbon Day addressing domestic abuse, organizers welcomed March 1 protesters. Students joined and spoke out against violence against women along with issues regarding education.

"This action shows that there is a core group of students in Boston dedicated to stopping the privatization and corporatization of higher education," said UMass Boston student Chris Morrill. "While this was the first action organized since the end of last semester, it was an important step in a long process of building a mass movement for education."