Today is a national day of action to defend public education across the country, with actions planned in 32 states and dozens of protests across California alone.
Students in the University of California system are facing a staggering 32% tuition hike along with cuts to department budgets, faculty, libraries, graduate student funding, even janitorial services. The Cal State and community college systems--which, together, serve nearly 3.5 million Californians--are facing a similar attack. While the CSU and community college system don't have the prestige of Berkeley and UCLA, they may be the only shot at a college degree for millions of working class Californians, disproportionately people of color and immigrants. California has probably the best public higher education system in the country, and it's being dismantled before our eyes.
At the same time, Los Angeles K-12 public schools are facing an unprecedented wave of pay cuts, layoffs, furlough days, increases in class size, and the potential privatization of a significant chunk of the LA Unified School District through an invasion of charter school corporations.
Privatization, union-busting, slashing social programs and gutting the public sector: when the IMF comes into a Third World country to do this, it's called structural adjustment. Here, we have our own government to do it for us.
The good news is that Californians are putting up a fight. You can check here to see the extensive list of actions planned across the state. A great live blog of the day's actions can also be found here, including a live video feed of the main Bay Area rally beginning at 5pm PST.
And California's fightback has inspired struggles in other states, including protests at Hunter College in New York, and this one in my home town, Baltimore, calling on the state of Maryland to divert some of the $280 million it has allocated for more prisons for juveniles and women into funding for education and youth jobs instead.
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