It’s on at campuses across the California as the state seeks to impose a series of steep tuition hikes. Here are a few on-site videos that give a flavor of what’s going on. These actions have made my week. Much more at Student Activism. One criticism: while “hell no, we wont go” retains all of its potency, the egregious chant “…ain’t no power like the power of the people, cause the people don’t stop ” just won’t die the death it so richly deserves.
Here’s a report and some links lifted from the Solidarity webzine and written by Isaac:
California knows how to party – students strike across UC system
Building on more modest actions one month ago, California’s statewide public university system has exploded in protest as thousands of students rally against outrageous tuition hikes. Tactics have ranged from mass rallies to five building occupations. At UCLA and UC Berkeley, the professional union UPTE staged a one-day strike Wednesday, followed a day later by a rally of 2,000 students encircling the Board of Regents meeting as they voted on the monster 32% fee increase.
Under a call for “No Business as Usual,” the student activists have united around several demands:
- That the Regents vote no on the proposed fee increases.
- That the UC stop cuts and layoffs, and end its aggressive union-busting tactics.
- Transparency of the UC budget, including complete figures on how much of the additional revenue from fees will be diverted for construction and used as bond collateral.
- Expand enrollment of underrepresented groups and ensure equal access to education for all by maintaining all educational institutions as sanctuary spaces for undocumented students and workers and by providing adequate financial aid for undocumented and underrepresented students.
- An explanation for the failure of the UC leadership to make an effective case for public higher education. As both students and taxpayers, we demand leaders who can make that case, and an administration whose transparency can once again inspire the confidence of the state and its citizens.
Intimidation of the protesters has ranged from tasering of African-American UCLA students to slapping one demonstrator at Berkeley with the major charge of inciting a riot, and rumors of threats of tear gas. Student occupiers at UC Santa Cruz have included in their demands the disarming of campus police – which is the case in many countries throughout the world.
While this round of demonstrations is not yet concluded, the Regents decision is a real blow to education access. However plans are underway for more action this spring, as California students lead the way in refusing to pay for the fallout of the capitalist crisis.
For on the scene information:
Rustbelt Radical 
Also see occupyucla.wordpress.com and neverbeenuaw.wordpress.com, plus the excellent Infoshop News article “18 hours inside Carter-Huggins Hall” (link appears to be down at the moment but it’s at http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20091123191037121 ), for first-person accounts of the UCLA occupation, untainted by the self-appointed “student police” who wrongly spoke for the occupiers in the mainstream media in liberated Carter-Huggins Hall’s final hours. Confusingly, some MSM articles, as in the L.A. Times and the Daily Bruin, are accurate and fair up until the final paragraph or two, when the reporters understandably conflate these bullshit “student leaders” with the glorious horizontally-powered movement of the first 17 hours.
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agreed. another reason to not like the slogan is that “power” is not in making demands,but in imposing solutions. so used to losing are we that we seem to have come to think that “democracy” is exercised by voicing one’s opinion rather than in being able make the decisions. the chant sounds like a sign of impotence rather than strength it wants to convey….like the chant “whose streets? our streets!” as the cops water-cannon and gas you off of them. our streets? really?
RR
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I couldn’t agree with you more insofar as “the egregious chant “…ain’t no power like the power of the people, cause the people don’t stop ” goes. The only chant more “egregious” is that old Pop Front Stalinist stand by, “the people united, will never be defeated.”
The unfortunate reality has been (and still is) that the people, i.e., the workers, united with the capitalists by way of the Democratic Party, will always be defeated.
And while there, indeed, is no power like that held by the working class within capitalist society, i.e., the power to stop production, unless it is expressed in independent economic and political struggles against the bosses and their bought and paid for politician pals like Arnold and Obama, it’s not only going to stop, but won’t even get started!
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