Category: Education

Independent Grassroots Education Movement to March From Balboa Park to State Building Downtown to Protest Next Round of Cuts to Budgets

San Diego, CA – March 10th, 2012 – 9:15am – Balboa Park (Park Ave. & Presidents Way)

The next round of education budget cuts will be devastating to our schools, our children, and our teachers. In an effort to be proactive in fostering a change in priorities at the state level, a broad coalition of parents, teachers, students, and concerned citizens will be marching from Balboa Park (corner of Park Ave. & Presidents Way) to the State Building downtown.

The Ocean Beach branch library is set to re-open this Saturday, March 10th. This, after a period where it was remodeled with a new carpet, new paint, and a new roof.

But with just a few days away from the doors being swung open again to OB, our library needs help.

The place needs cleaning and all the books need reshelving. Before it can open again, there’s a bunch of internal work that needs to happen.

By Bob Sullivan / msnbc / March 6, 2012

If you think privacy settings on your Facebook and Twitter accounts guarantee future employers or schools can’t see your private posts, guess again.

Employers and colleges find the treasure-trove of personal information hiding behind password-protected accounts and privacy walls just too tempting, and some are demanding full access from job applicants and student athletes.

In Maryland, job seekers applying to the state’s Department of Corrections have been asked during interviews to log into their accounts and let an interviewer watch while the potential employee clicks through wall posts, friends, photos and anything else that might be found behind the privacy wall.

Previously, applicants were asked to surrender their user name and password, but a complaint from the ACLU stopped that practice last year. While submitting to a Facebook review is voluntary, virtually all applicants agree to it out of a desire to score well in the interview, according Maryland ACLU legislative director Melissa Coretz Goemann.

Arrests Cap Day-Long Demonstration By California Students Against Cuts to Higher Education

Calif. troopers arrest dozens in state Capitol

By Hannah Drier / Huffington Post / March 5, 2012 08:19 PM PST

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California Highway Patrol officers arrested dozens of protesters who refused to leave the state Capitol Monday night after repeated warnings, capping off a day of protests over cuts to higher education that saw thousands descend upon Sacramento.

CHP Capt. Andy Manard said police expected the number of people arrested to be 68. They would be charged with trespassing, he said.

Police started pulling out protesters who remained in the Capitol rotunda around 7:30 p.m., more than an hour after they began warning them with a bullhorn to leave. Protesters chanted “We’re doing this for your kids,” as they were lifted up by the arms one-by-one, handcuffed with plastic ties and led them away.

The LA Times is reporting:

Thousands of students and activists marched through Sacramento’s streets and rallied outside the state Capitol on Monday to protest cuts to California’s colleges and universities. …

The plaza on the west side of the Capitol was teeming with protesters during the rally, which was billed as a chance to “occupy the Capitol.” Outside the building, student leaders and top Democrats who voted to slash higher education budgets last year addressed the crowd.

“We’ve cut billions of dollars and I’ve hated every minute of it,” said Senate President Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento).

Sacramento CBS is reporting that about 300 students have moved inside and are now occupying the rotunda. CBS:

Some of the thousands of students protesting at the State Capitol have moved inside and are now occupying the rotunda. About 300 people are inside the rotunda, some sitting on the floor.

NEW UPDATE FROM SDSU – See inside…

Yesterday, March 1st, was the National Day of Action for Education. Students at four area colleges walked out in solidarity and staged marches, rallies, teach-ins and even a “sleep-in” at one campus.

Protests were seen at City College, Mesa College, UCSD, and San Diego State University. The National Day of Action to Defend the Right to Education was coordinated by the Occupy Education movement, and there were protests at about 30 California campuses, including one of the most tense scenes at UC Santa Cruz where about 150 protesters blocked entrances and largely shut down the university. (Here’s more news from around the state by the LA Times – but they inexplicably and continually omit news from San Diego.)

Locally, about 50 to 60 students at UCSD marched through campus to the Chancellor’s Complex and occupied the conference room. Many planned to stay the night and discuss future plans.

Here are reports about the actions at the four college campuses:

As part of the March 1st National Day of Action for Education, three area college campuses are planning student and faculty walk-outs tomorrow, the first day of March.

Students at City College, San Diego State University, and University of California at San Diego have all joined in this national day of demonstrations, and each campus has plans for walk-outs, rallies and other protests of budget cuts and the on-going stampede towards the privatization of public schools and colleges.

Here in more detail are the plans for each campus:

City College

At City College, the Walkout is set to start at 11:00 am at Curran Plaza. A rally will be held from 11:00am until 3:00pm.

SDSU

There will be a student walk-out at 12:oo noon, followed by a rally at Scripps Cottage Patio, where speakers will discuss a education from a variety of perspectives. Potential solutions and opportunities for students to stay involved will be offered.

UCSD

At 11:30 am, students will stage the walk-out. At 12 noon, instructors will hold a rally / teach-out at the Silent Tree in front of Geisel Library. There will also be performance art at the Silent Tree. Then at 1:30 pm, there will be a march!

Editor: The following “Call to Action” is from ReclaimUCSD and involves a campus protest against student fees for March 1st, and although student walk-outs are also being planned for City College and SDSU, this “Call” is detailed in its reasons and history (see footnotes at end).

By Reclaim UCSD

Students, instructors and staff you have a stake in the future of the UC. The public nature of the UC is under threat, but on March 1st we are coming together to defend it.

Students, mandatory fees set by the regents have more than doubled since 2001 adjusted for inflation.[1] At the same time, UCSD’s average debt at graduation increased 20%.[2] In 2009, 48% of UCSD students graduated with debt at an average of $18,757.[3] Since 1990 expenditure per student has fallen over 19%.[4] At the same time state support per student fell 60% while tuition support more than tripled.[5] The UC shifted from public funding toward personal, private funding. This shift was not and is not inevitable. Students: the ability of many of your qualified colleagues to attend a UC is threatened by this shift,[6] but you can help.

UPDATE: See inside

A Correia student, 14 years old and under suspicion by police of being in possession of a stolen iPod, was tasered twice by officers as they attempted to arrest him this morning at the school.

School police had been notified of a theft of $5000 worth of iPods and were in the process of questioning several students, when one of them began to resist their efforts to take him into custody. Police had allegedly found one of the stolen iPods on the student and proceeded to arrest him when he fought them. Police tasered the student, he pulled out the taser barb and then they tasered him again for a second time, and arrested him.

NBC reports that “two school police officers had minor knee injuries following the incident. The teenager is facing charges of theft and assault of an officer.”

There’s this book ban
in Arizona
which is supposedly
in the USA
where book banning
isn’t supposed to take place
but they went on and did it anyway.
And it happened “quicker than
you can say,
Jack Robinson,”
an idiom from a long ago day.

Come and experience some of San Diego’s history: The Lemon Grove Incident – San Diego’s own desegregation case from 1930. Filmmaker Paul Espinosa’s award-winning film about the historical case, one of the earliest school desegregation experiences in U.S. history.

The film will be shown on Feb. 3rd, at the Centro Cultural De La Raza, at 2125 Park Blvd in Balboa Park – at 7pm. There will be a discussion with Espinosa after the screening.

Governor Jerry Brown has been getting a lot of media coverage lately for his efforts to promote his ballot measure which he is selling as a way to stop further cuts to education in the coming years and help solve California’s seemingly eternal budget crisis. While the mainstream media has showered much attention on Brown, whose initiative would temporarily raise taxes on those earning over $250,000 and raise the sales tax on all Californians, very little notice has gone to the Millionaires Tax, which is vastly superior to the governor’s measure for many reasons.

While I have written about the Millionaires Tax in a previous column for the OB Rag and for Labor Notes , it is worth reviewing the central arguments why California voters should support the Millionaires Tax rather than the Governor’s initiative. What are the top ten reasons to support the Millionaires Tax?

1. The Millionaires Tax is a permanent tax increase on millionaires while the Governor’s initiative is a temporary 4-year measure that will not bring in enough revenue to restore the cuts that have been made to education, infrastructure, and vital public services—not here in San Diego or anywhere else in the state.