SAN FRANCISCO, California – On Thursday afternoon, some 30 students began a sit-in at the Conlin Hall building at the City College of San Francisco, Ocean Campus in response to the ongoing accreditation issues facing the college. Demonstrators have published a list of demands directed at Chancellor Thelma Scott-Skillman, including:
1. Call on the Board of Trustees to reverse all cuts to classes, services, staff, and faculty. Stop downsizing the mission of CCSF and promote equity.
2. Organize town hall forums at all campuses so that students can have their voices heard.
3. Make a public statement calling for Prop A funds to be used for education as voters intended. Call on City Hall to give CCSF a bridge loan until Prop A and Prop 30 funds become available.
4. Speak out against CCSF being put on “Show Cause” without prior sanction. Call on the Department of Education to take action to stop the ACCJC’s misuse of the accreditation process.
UPDATE: Demonstrators ended their sit-in the following day after agreeing to organize town hall forums. Read more.
In California hundreds of rallies took place (more than listed below). Other good sources: SocialistWorker, Indybay.
(Feel free to comment with corrections. Last update: 10:10am mar.7.10)
University of California
UC Santa Cruz
5:00am: Students out blocking streets at the intersection of High & Western, Hagar and Coolidge, and the western entrance of campus effective shutting it down. Only people on foot can enter campus.
6:30am - High and Western
7:00am: Some people have been hit by cars breaking the picket line, breaking someone’s leg and hitting another 3 or so people.
Tan volvo plowing through strikers despite it was being let through slowly. The car accelerated as strikers were trying to control traffic flow traveling down High street.
8:00am: Campus administrators activated the CruzAlert messaging system with the following message “Please avoid both campus entrances due to safety concerns. Check web or 459-INFO at noon for update.” (source)
9:40am: Currently a rally is being held at the main entrance (i.e. the east entrance) with 250 participants. For a while 2 helicopters were flying above. The students blocking the intersection of High and Western have left after most of the workers were blocked from entering campus (it would appear some dining hall workers were able to get on campus, but many others were unable to get on campus). Many of the workers are now here supporting the students.
Earlier this morning, multiple students were injured by two separate incidents where cars rushed the strike line (one at the intersection of Hagar and Coolidge, and the second at the intersection of High and Western). The car at Hagar and Coolidge was tailgating a police car being let through, students then approached the vehicle to stand in front of it and tell them about the strike. The car hit the gas and drove into the mass, injuring a student’s leg, fortunately not broken. In the incident at High and Western, a tan volvo began accelerating into the crowd blocking the street, despite the fact that cars driving down High (away from campus) were being slowly let through. The volvo hit around 5 students, one student flipped over the hood of the car and over the top, breaking the rear window as the student fell off the back. As the volvo sped away, students kicked the car, denting it. Several cars and motorcycles have tried to slowly push through the crowd through out the day, but all failed. Rumors of other car incidents exist, but the others have yet to be confirmed.
Also, earlier this morning a banner was hung over highway 1, stating “March 4 Defend Education!”
11:40am: While most of the protesters are at the main entrance and the west entrance, some of the protesters are at Hagar and Coolidge to watch out for supervisors forcing workers to trek up the long and steep hill to get to work. Supervisors began leading the workers up the hill past a handful of students in the intersection before the students could organize themselves. As more students came to support the other students in the intersection, they realized the workers and supervisors were already around 50 feet away up the hill to campus. So around 15 students ran up the hill to form a line to blockade the workers. The police arrived and dispersed the line, telling the students that they had made a “physical threat” on the workers. As the workers passed by, they shouted that there was no physical threat. So as the police returned to their vehicle, the students yet again ran up the hill the block the workers from getting further into campus. The police immediately turned around and approached the students to disperse them. However by now, the workers turned around and spoke to their supervisors claiming they couldn’t get through, the supervisors conceded and the workers were allowed to go home
1:00pm: Around 500 have rallied at the base of campus. Video below was taken around 12:45pm, the rally as of 1:15pm is still going.
1:55pm: Students are redistributing themselves around campus for maximum effectiveness. Around 60 people are at Hagar and Coolidge warning people that they may not be able to re-enter campus if they leave. They are also watching out for supervisors forcing workers to get onto campus still.
2:50pm: Strikers are now relaxing on the grass at the main entrance listening to a live band. The strike is mostly split up into three locations, Lower Campus (Hagar and Coolidge), Main Entrance (i.e. East Entrance), and the West Entrance.
3:20pm: Earlier story about a prius running into students and driving onto sidewalk at High and Western has been confirmed. At least one student broke some fingers when the car recklessly plowed through the crowd.
5:30pm: A general assembly starts
6:30pm: The general assembly decides to take the protest downtown.
7:11pm: 300 Students walk through Pacific Ave.
7:30pm: The students have rallied at the clock tower.
9:10pm: Students dissipate.
UC Berkeley
1:20pm: Around 1000 people walking down telegraph (currently crossed at 66 ave.) for a rally with students from community colleges, CSU’s, and elementary school folks at city hall in Oakland.
3:10pm:The march has reached Frank Ogawa plaza.
After the rally, protesters marched to highway I-880. Around 150 protesters were arrested.
7:00am: Most all of the ~40 arrested taken to North County Jail in Oakland out, charged with 2 misdemeanors and an infraction (obstructing traffic, unlawful assembly, failure to obey signs).
8:00am: Approximately 80 of the arrested at Santa Rita jail should start being released around 11am. They need rides!
12:50pm: Students at UC Davis have shut down the bus terminal and the main street in Davis.
1:12pm: Students march down Russell st. and are now shutting down the freeway.
3:10pm: One student has been arrested, dozens of others have been shot by rubber bullets. They are currently on the street near the offramp and have been given a deal from the police stating that they will release the student arrested if they leave the offramp now.
3:30pm: Police using pepper spray pellets!
4:00pm: Students walking back to campus.
4:30: Students march through buildings pulling fire alarms, and from there they returned to Russell and La Rue where they shut down the intersection for several hours.
UCLA
1:40pm: Soft occupation at Murphy Hall
2:00pm: correction, sit-in
6:20pm: Outside supporters have been lead to believe that students sitting inside will be arrested.
6:40pm: Sit-in protesters all released.
UC Irvine
1:50pm: Around 400 students are walking around campus urging others to join them in striking. According to OC Weekly, numbers increased to 800. One of the largest protests in recent campus history.
2:00pm: Students take to the streets and head towards freeway 73. Students clear one police line and continue down University Avenue.
2:34pm: Students moving back to campus after being stopped by police again. Police: “Immediately return to campus!”
2:50pm: Students gathering at Langson Library.
2:55pm: UC Irvine temporarily occupied with barricades at Langson Library. Students move to Gateway Study Center and lock down several doors before clearing out.
3:30pm: Students were unable to hold down the occupations, so they are now out and marching again.
3:45pm: Aldrich Hall, the admin building, was locked down with 15-20 police inside, so students held an impromptu general assembly in front of Aldrich.
Students blocking traffic on Campus Ave. (from local news)
UC San Diego
4:00pm: According to one source, 2000-3000 people, another source 1500-2000, (mostly students, with some teachers and parents) marched from Balboa park to the Governor’s Office downtown.
March 4 Banner Drop
UC Riverside
3:21pm: According to Daily Cal, somewhere near a 1000 students marching downtown.
UC Santa Barbara
According to one commenter:
12:00 noon rally at UCSB Arbor plaza draws 1000+ students, workers, teachers, biggest rally in UCSB’s recent history
1:30 PM – Rally heads downtown, most people use free bus service while about 50 take part in a Critical Mass ride downtown
3:40 PM – UCSB students, students and teachers from other schools gather at De La Guerra Plaza downtown, ~500 people take State St. for an unpermitted march down State.
4:00 PM – March has turned around and marches back up State, grows to ~1000 as it passes De La Guerra Plaza again. State St. is totally clogged with a massive march.
4:30 PM – Marchers arrive at the courthouse for a rally, with speakers including students, faculty and local politicians. Crowd disperses following the rally.
(special thanks to coyote)
UCSB ~4pm
California State University
San Francisco State University
They held a rally that ended at 2pm with 500 people. The rally later turned into a dance party. Another party is going to be held Thursday night at 10pm at Malcolm X plaza.
San Francisco (General)
According to Socialist Worker, [20,000+] people are protesting at the civic center.
CSU Northridge
DailyCal says that a Rally with thousands come out for a “funeral service”. While Socialist Worker is stating that nearly 6000 come out for a protest in Northridge resulting in at least one injury and several arrests. Protesters are apparently waiting outside the jail.
According to one commenter:
A few of us started organizing for the day around 10AM; making posters, mostly.
Around 11:30AM, we ran screaming for a walk-out with noisemakers/pots/bullhorns throughout various campus buildings. A lot of people joined us and we marched to a nearby busy intersection (Nordhoff/Reseda). There was an invasion through the library and some more buildings with a long line of people calling for a walk-out.
We met back at the busy intersection and invaded the center…police came soon and cleared up the streets. A few people refused to move. A couple local news stations came to report, and the occupation of the middle of the street continued.
Around 2:30PM, we went back to campus and gathered a huge crowd on the Oviatt Library quad.
At 3:45PM, we began the march with CSU Channel Islands students/faculty. We all took to the streets and marched around campus.
By 6:30PM, enough of us had begun an occupation of yet another intersection (Reseda/Prairie). This was when police threatened to arrest due to “unlawful assembly in the streets” and “trespassing.” A little while later, they began to threaten tear gas. Two people got arrested so far.
By 7:30PM, five people had been arrested and one of our professors, 74-yr old Dr. Olsen, was knocked down and her arm stepped on by the police. She’s currently at the hospital.
By 8:00PM, we invaded the space outside the library and talked to the media, reorganized, and planned for a press conference March 5th (today). Word started to go around that the students who got arrested were getting booked/released.
Summary ? Huge misrepresentation by the media. Police not the nicest of nice. Lots of people from the surrounding community made this CSUN protest big. Anger at our president for misrepresenting what happened last night through her statement. Good energy going around those who were part of the event; plans of having CSUN fund buses for the March 22nd rally at Sacramento.
According to the blog EastsideLA, a March 4 rally started at CSULA which later traveled through parts of Los Angeles, through areas like Little Tokyo. Sometimes the marchers were on streets, other times they were corralled by police to stick to the sidewalks. EastsideLA remarked how controlled the march felt, from both police and some organizers. They also commented how elements of the march were joyous and fun as such a protest should be. Crowd estimates appeared to be a little over a thousand.
Around noon, students, staff and faculty participated in a walkout and marched from either end of campus to a rally in front of the Student Center. A few hundred people attended the rally. Some student bands played throughout the day while students danced to the music. Student, staff, and faculty members spoke about cuts to public education and related issues, from spending money on wars and prisons to the systemic injustice that prevents so many people from attaining higher education.
In the evening, some of the protesters from campus went to a community rally at Colton Hall (the sight of the first public school in California) in downtown Monterey. They joined people from local community colleges, K-12 schools, and members of various labor unions.
We got all these corporations erasing education
standarized testing placement exam evaporation
this is no exaggeration; let’s get rid of this abberation!
Student Occupation- it’s now ours for the taking
what should have been all along, this is democracy in the making
not a fire evacuation or a sly accusation
THIS IS NOT A DRILL, now you know were not faking
aint gonna hide under desks of leave the classrooms vacant
just teach-ins reclaiming the history you were debasing
free food with Food Not Bombs special catering baking
Love and knowledge; it’s a collage at City College
all the cultures reconnecting and solving the problems from the bottom
[Chorus]
[i]Put your hands in the air if you want books not war
Democracy (what?),Tthat’s what the people is for!
Put your hands in the air if you want books not war
Democracy (what?), That’s what the people is for![/i]
Grass Roots, we’ve all got em- in the soles of our feet
and the souls that is a part of every energy being
every day they working hard to try to tear up your dreams
racism on the radios and consumerist bling
but now it’s time to shine and let freedom sing
The future is now; we’re the ones here to claim
The Rosenberg Library? I say it’s time to rename it-
repaint it like all the murals that made the Mission famous
aint gonna let a business suit calm us down or try to tame us
we’re WILD and free; we love it can you blame us?
Sorry Swarzinagger but we broke out of the cages
with solidarity K through 12 and all ages
[Chorus]
[i]Put your hands in the air if you want books not war
Democracy (what?),Tthat’s what the people is for!
Put your hands in the air if you want books not war
Democracy (what?), That’s what the people is for![/i]
Textbooks is now free; take copyrights off of pages
Don’t need leaders or sages to mold our consent
when our rights is threatened it’s our time to dissent
throw up your middle finger to this one-party government
I didn’t vote for this war; I say you bring back our men
That’s my word and it’s as sure as the ink in this pen
that causes hysterics with these lyrics to throw me back in the pen
but I’ll do it again; a no compromise kinda guy
we comprised a bee storm after you swapping us like flies
like a video game set to unlimited lives
the people never give up and they infinite as the skies
We took off your disguise and blocked your deflectors
The board of directors is just a horde of rejectors
aint gonna listen to us until we unite as protectors
Call out to all sectors; we’re here and we’re permanent
The powers that be; you better be learning from it
We’re sick of your greed and sick of your rules
you wanna gut education well…
you about to get schooled!
We ‘ve taken over the Student Services Building. We started on the bottom level, turning a meager rally into a protest-party on the inside.Students are chanting, singing, dancing. The energy moved upstairs to the second floor where a folk group is performing right now. Downstairs another band is about to play. We are holding space and reclaiming it as ours. We will not leave!
The local media showed up for the rally outside but left before we went inward. Channel 12 and other local media sources watched as the president of our school spoke. Students were the real stars, the expression of solidarity was fantastic. Food not bombs came out to feed everyone that was hungry, we screened the occupation of wheeler hall so passerbys could connect with the struggles in the west. Students are making noise!!!!, and celebrated our ability to come together. It’s more than just tuition hikes and budget cuts,
After the Fall: Communiqués from Occupied California is now available as a pdf for download and for viewing on-line at issuu. We have also posted the original conclusion of the publication No Conclusions: When Another World is Unpopular for you to read on-line and repost widely. 10,000 copies of After the Fall, a 44 page compilation of texts that emerged from the struggles on California Campuses in the last months of 2009, were released on Valentine’s day. They have all now been distributed to various sites across California and the world and the stacks that cluttered a living room have dwindled to a few bundles to be handed out locally.
Individual copies can still be obtained through Little Black Cart for the price of shipping and handling. We can also help put people in contact with those in their regions distributing the paper, to the best of our abilities. Please email paper@afterthefallcommuniques.info for more information.
Our decisions to embark on this project came from a collective desire to experiment with print as a weapon for the struggle we currently find ourselves in. While much of the writing published in After the Fall was previously available on-line, we felt that the act of compiling it into one place, formatting it for maximum accessibility and readability, and distributing 10,000 printed copies hand to hand was an exercise worth pursuing. After the Fall spans a range of styles and ideas to emerge within this ongoing moment and does not adhere to any singular political goal. In releasing this compilation, we aim to extend the reach of these ideas far beyond their original circulation among the blogs as well as to strengthen our resolve and tighten our individual connections with one another. After four days, that initial phase of our distro has been completed and we are now excited to bring this print project back into the digital realm with the release of the PDF.
Please note that we designed this document with its tabloid web offset print format in mind and thus the PDF is not sized or built to be easily printed on a home printer. Each page is slightly smaller than 11×14″ and the type is set in 10pt Bembo over 12pt leading which means that it will be hella small if you try to reduce it down to a standard 8.5×11″ sheet. It can be read easily online with issuu’s reader and if you do decided to download it and print it out we recommend you center it on an 11×17″ sheet and print it front to back. This PDF does not include the two color poster pullout that is included in each printed copy.
We look forward to hearing your comments and meeting you on the barricades as we continue on towards March 4, the summer and beyond.
The original introduction to the paper, We are the Crisis, can be read here. And we have also made a special March 4 edition of the pullout poster available for download and distro here.
SAN FRANCISCO, California – Students at the City College of San Francisco are holding a study-in/open occupation. From their website:
Last semester, our Library hours were cut by 3 hours, threatening our studies. Join us as we keep the doors open, restoring our hours lost to the draconian cuts to our education.
occupy california 