My partner and I, along with our 3-year old, gave out Facts For Working People at the noon rally of students at UC Berkeley today. About 4,000 students showed up to send off busses going down to LA to attempt to block the meeting of UC Regents who will be voting to raise tuition 32% and effectively block tens of thousands of young working class people from their right to further education.
But the highlight of the day for me was returning to the Strike Assembly at 4pm. About a hundred students, shut out from a proper hall, gathered in a campus building lobby and went about the business of directing the strike.
The first motion was on wether to accept the recommendation of the strike committees' agenda for this meeting. The meeting rejected the strike committee's original proposal to break-up into smaller groups to formulate proposals for the direction of the strike. About 90% of those present preferred the format of a single large meeting. One after another student got up to speak into the bullhorn and express their opinions.
One young woman spoke about closing down her campus building, she explained that a dozen students did well, but appealed for more pickets tomorrow to block the entrance, "all we need is 50 or a hundred more people and it'd be shut down completely." Applause. Another student spoke of the great success of marching down to the city college and high school. A Phillipino-language teacher got on the bullhorn and apologized to the assembly, "we did not have enough of our people on picketlines today. Tomorrow will be different." She apologized again to applause.
A young woman who explained she was from Austria told every one how her university back home was on its 28th day of a student occupation and added, " I bring greetings from the protests across Europe." The meeting erupted and if there was more room there would have been a standing ovation. A slight lady then got the bullhorn. She was a worker. She told the students that the kitchen staff supported the students and told them not to use the University cafeteria, "every time you use it, you're giving money to the University," She was warmly supported.
Finally a student ran through the door to announce that the Architecture and Engineering building, opposite the campus police station, had been occupied and invited the assembly to reconvene there. Another student got up and announced that they'd just received a text that UC Santa Cruz students were occupying 3 buildings.
A retired worker rose and proposed that we reconvene at the building being occupied and there was close to unanimous approval.
Well, it wasn't France 1968, but it was the shape of things to come. Tomorrow I'm heading down to the Carpenters Union hall to get my out of work bag of groceries, and I will tell all about the things that went on today.
No comments:
Post a Comment