9/24/09 Thousands at labor/student picketlines at California universities

Thousands of workers, faculty and students joined the milestone statewide California university strike on September 24, 2009. We woke up with our minds on freedom this morning, hoping that the American workingclass was finally ready to move, and we realized a dream of a generation, those of us who can easily remember the Free Speech Movement of 45 years ago at UC Berkeley.

This fall is of course the 45th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley that was also a milestone in history as it won the right of the students to be treated as adults and engage in political activity on campus and it was part of the anti-racist movements of the 1960s which resulted in affirmative action programs at all universities to admit more students of color and more women. Previously, most university students were white men. It is only since around 2000 that women were the majority of university students and at around 50% of the students at law schools and medical schools. The FSM website is linked to the strike:
http://www.fsm-a.org/

The goal of having non-white students represented at all universities at least in proportion to their population statewide is far from realized because the privatizing of the universities is a direct attack on the workingclass who are now a majority not white European descendants.

The September 24, 2009 walkout was preceded by a rally on September 23, 2009 at UC-Mission Bay in San Francisco, with speakers in English, Spanish and Chinese, which was videotaped by Labor Video Project at
http://www.blip.tv/file/2639414

The story is at
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/09/23/18622984.php

The University, Professional and Technical Employees, CWA Local 9119, has issued a press release at
http://www.upte.org/about/press/2009-09-24.pdf
stating that thousands of UC faculty, students and staff are walking the picketlines to stop the fee increases, cutbacks, payoffs in the form of high salaries to management, and to demand a union contract for UPTE which has been without a contract for 18 months. Here is more on the UPTE strike:
http://www.upte.org/strikeFAQ.pdf

The Berkeley Daily Planet also has a good story for the morning of the September 24, 2009 strike, indicating a good turnout, at:
http://www.berkeleydaily.org/issue/2009-09-24/article/33788?headline=Walkout-Rally-Hailed-as-Rebirth-of-UC-Activism

While Chancellor Yudof collects over $500,000 plus benefits from the taxpayers, he is busy privatizing our universities by increasing fees, and promoting the same skimming the cream off the top for his cronies, the other administrators, who are no more than glorified budget managers who should not receive more than $200,000 a year. And this is true of the entire American university system, and will continue so long as labor sleeps. Todays' action must be repeated often and everywhere.

All education from pre-school through and including university must be free, paid for with our tax dollars from the progressive income tax, better known as tax the rich, those who make over $200,000 a year. A high school diploma is sufficient for admission to any university and all universities should have open admissions.

California has been building prisons, not universities, and not only is that promoting fascism, that is promoting the death of our society for no society can grow and prosper without education. There is plenty of money in California to pay for education as in California there are thousands of millionaires and billionaires and hundreds of thousands who make over $200,000 a year. The only reason this crisis exists is because labor has been sleeping, and hopefully that era has ended.

Black, brown, yellow, red and white; same enemy, same fight; workers of the world unite!
An injury to one is an injury to all!
Hasta la victoria siempre!
Solidarity forever!