The Capitalist crisis has plunged the state of California into its
worst budget crisis in history. Billions of dollars have been already
slashed from the budget and billions more will be cut this year in
order to“fix” the shortfall of $20.7 billion. Unable to find any other
solution on the basis of Capitalism, workers and students will bear the
brunt of these cuts.
California has the highest economic output of any other state; it
alone accounts for more than 13% of the total GDP of the US, and saw
tremendous economic growth in the years before the crisis. However,
this increase in wealth only benefited a minority. According to the
California Franchise Tax Board, from 2001 to 2007, corporate net income
skyrocketed by 578.1%. From 1995 to 2006, the income of households in
the top 1% increased by 108.7%, while the income of the bottom 60% grew
only by 9.6%. And when inflation is taken into account, their income
actually fell by 17.1%. And these were the good years! With the
recession the situation has certainly gotten worse.
With the economic crisis already taking its toll on hundreds of
thousands of jobs in the state, working class and poor Californians
were hit even harder when the “bi-partisan” state legislature approved
steep cuts to essential services such as Disability and Social Security
Insurance payments, unemployment insurance, Children’s Services,
Medi-Cal, Caltrans, Calworks, etc. To add insult to injury, thousands
of workers where given pink slips, furloughed, or forced to take cuts
in pay and work hours. Education suffered severe cuts, even though the
buildings in some schools are literally falling apart.
Education is in dire straits. According to the California Department
of Finance, K-12 school district education cuts in the last two fiscal
years will amount to more than $9 billion. Cuts in the State
Universities and University of California will amount to nearly $2.0
billion, and cuts to the community college system will be at $702
million. The tally of all of the cuts to education statewide will be an
incredible $16 billion. These cuts have meant layoffs, overcrowding,
furloughs, etc., This is on top ofthe already declining quality and
infrastructure of the California education system that has been going
on for years.
The educational crisis is being felt everywhere, the lack of
resources is having a profound impact on education, as high school
student Lane Erickson, quoted in LA Youth magazine, stated, “My school
doesn’t have the money to let teachers make enough copies to give one
handout to each student. One class set of each handout is all it can
afford … We’re being forced to spend time copying down questions,
rather than thinking about and writing down answers.”
The struggle begins
On
September 24th, the first day of classes at the University of
California, the “University of California Walkout” took place on many
campuses around the state. Beginning with a petition, it called on
faculty, students and workers to walkout to protest the cuts at the
UCs, the proposed 32% fee increase, and in solidarity with striking
workers. There were sizable demonstrations on many campuses, with
solidarity actions taking place at other universities, but the
highlight of this campaign was a 5,000 person-strong demonstration that
took place at UC Berkeley. Perhaps an even more important development
is the general assembly that took place after the demonstration, which
called for a statewide conference on October 24th to organize the
defense of public education. These are the kinds of structures and
actions needed to build a mass and democratic student movement that can
end the cuts and improve education across the board.
The October 24th conference brought together more than 800 students,
faculty and workers from K-12, CSUs, UCs, and Community Colleges, as
well as various individuals from labor unions and other organizations.
The high attendance of the conference demonstrated the willingness of
the participants to fight for what they considered theirs, their right
to access education. Many present voiced their concern about how the
increased fees and budget cuts would put higher education out of the
reach of most working class students. Unfortunately, no clear strategy
or program was developed from this conference, however, it was agreed
that March 4th would be a day of strikes and other actions at all
levels of education all across California.
There followed significant demonstrations on the 17th, 18th, 19th of
November. During those days, meetings were held in which the CSU system
approved further budget cuts and a whopping 40,000 student enrollment
cut; the UC Regents approved a 32% fee increase on top of the 10%
increase enacted the year before. About 2,000 protesters from all over
California descended on the UC Regents meeting at UC Los Angeles on
November 18th. Smaller actions were carried out at UC San Diego, UC
Davis, UC Irvine, Fresno State, and others. In addition, there were
several building occupations in November, such as Kerr Hall at UC Santa
Cruz, the Business Administration Building at San Francisco State,
Campbell Hall at UCLA, and Wheeler Hall at UC Berkeley.
The Response from the State
A sit in occupation was staged at Wheeler Hall in UC Berkeley on
November 20. Some 40 students placed themselves in the building the
night before and had reinforced the entrances. Hundreds of supporters
had come to show solidarity with the occupation. Eventually riot police
and SWAT teams were called in to evict the occupiers, by 5 pm that day,
police had broken through the entrances and it was reported that 43
arrests were made.
Other occupations fared similarly; 52 were arrested at UC Davis, 16
at the UC Regents meeting at UCLA, 33 at SFSU, and one arrest each at
UCSC and UC Irvine. Repercussions on the arrests range from brief
period of detention to more serious charges such as arson. Some of the
students arrested have been injured.
Then, on January 6th, 2010, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger endorsed a
constitutional amendment to cap prison spending at 7% of the general
fund, and ensuring higher education spending would receive at least
10%. Schwarzenegger has pledged to stop any further cuts to K-12 and
the universities, yet further cuts were not ruled out for California’s
community college system, the largest in the nation. Further fee
increases are also not off the table. In addition, many other vital
social services remain on the chopping block, which will negatively
affect the poorest Californians.
Some activists have denounced actions such as protests and walk outs
as futile, but the statement from the governor proves the validity of
such actions, if they are well coordinated and have broad support. As
quoted in the New York Times, the governor’s chief of staff, Susan
Kennedy, “Those protests on the UC campuses were the tipping point.”
This clearly demonstrates the effectiveness of the education protests,
despite their limited scope, and shows that the way forward is to build
even larger and better organized demonstrations. If we were able to get
the state to partially back down through protests, imagine what we
could win with an all-out strike?
School occupations are a tactic, not principle. Every action taken
must be weighed carefully and must form part of an overall strategy. We
must make careful considerations before engaging in such
actions.Isolated groups on the fringes carrying out occupations with
out any clear demands, program or goals can only lead to further
repression just not only against the occupiers but the movement in
general.
Occupations must be well organized with mass support and the
participation of students, teachers, other university workers and the
broader community. They should be agreed upon democratically, not
initiated at the whim of small groups. Occupations for the sake of an
occupation can actually be counter-productive and can serve to alienate
the movement from the rest of the students.
The way forward
plight of education and poor living conditions of most people in our
state are the product of the current crisis caused by the capitalists,
which workers have to pay in the form of cuts to public services, lack
of jobs, and deteriorating living conditions; this is a reflection of
the exploitative nature of capitalism. This situation is reflected in
the inequality between rich and poor, and the privileged access to
education for the rich and the denial of the right to education to
working people through economic and selective constraints.
Schools and universities have a top-down structure, where decisions
are the responsibility of one person or a select group of people who
depend on and are loyal to the system. This form of management
guarantees that ideological and political control of the educational
process remains in the hands of the defenders of the system, and does
not allow for the active participation of the students, teachers, and
workers in the political, administrative and academic decision-making
of schools, universities, colleges and other public educational
institutions.
This prevents the academic, scientific and democratic development of
education, and inhibits the social character of public education. We
disagree fundamentally with the current state of education in our
state. Despite being supported financially by workers and students, we
are not benefiting from the system. It is only serving to perpetuate
the differences between the majority of society and a rich minority.
That’s why we, the students and workers grouped in the Workers
International League and the International Marxist Tendency fight for
free, quality public education, without restricting the right or
freedom to choose and study the profession one wants. We are for an
education the contents and orientation of which are determined by their
direct participants: students, teachers and other education workers. We
are for the creation of truly democratic and participatory
representative bodies with broad community involvement within and
outside the formal institutions. We strive for a scientific and secular
education linked to social reality. An education that has its
foundation in practice and in scientific and academic development. An
education that meets the needs of social development and not the
interests of Capital.
Capitalism has no interest is spending the resources necessary to
produce more doctors, nurses, artists, astrophysicists, historians,
linguists, etc. when there are no jobs for them. And yet, all of these
things and more are very useful for humanity as a whole. This clearly
shows how the narrow limits of the Capitalist system constrains the
further development of individuals and society as a whole.
As students we have shown that we are ready to fight. To meet our
objectives we propose to replace individual, dispersed actions with a
collective unified force united by one program for all students in the
state, ending the isolation of our struggles. We seek to build a broad,
democratic, dynamic and permanent organization of the student movement.
An organization that brings together students in K-12, UC and CSU
universities and has strong and direct links to the working class and
its trade unions. Our organization must be independent politically,
economically and ideologically from the state, capital and the
educational authorities. Contact us for more information on how you can
get involved in the planning for March 4th and the struggle for free,
quality public education for all.
Source: U.S. Socialist Appeal
