Across University of California (UC) campuses, thousands came out in protest against proposed furloughs for teachers, job reductions for campus workers, and a staggering 30% increase in tuition costs for students. School administration and government officials blamed budget shortfalls; however, that did not stop the protests from expanding not only across all the UC campuses but to other California-based universities as well.
State officials were reportedly stunned by the whole situation. What began as “mild” protests last summer between university faculty and their management over cuts in salaries has proliferated into statewide walkout. The breaking point came two weeks prior, “when university authorities warned of savage budget cuts to deal with a $750 million shortfall and mooted huge increases in the cost of tuition. ‘UC regents vote next week to raise student fees, already up 250% over the last decade, by an additional 30%,’” was how one group of protesters summed up the situation today.”
The State of California is broke ($15 billion in the “red”), and there are no signs of abatement arising in the near future. Officials are desperately trying to dismantle the state’s public university system at the expense of working-class youth in the hopes that private donors will pick up the tab.
The one-day staff strike and student walkouts will not be enough to reverse the plans of the state and school administration to decimate the system of public education working people depend so heavily upon to provide them with a first-rate, quality education.
It will take greater organization on all fronts: students, teachers, and campus workers must permanently link arms to fight this battle as long as it takes. Students across UC and other universities must campaign to create an independently based student union that draws in representatives from all campuses to coordinate the fight back against tuition raises and budget cuts. If a student union already exists, then pressure should be applied on its leaders to initiative and popularize militant action, up to and including, campus occupations until all tuition pay is scrapped and all student debts rescinded. Politically, the protests must expand their demands for the state of California to institute a progressive tax on all national and multi-national corporations and financial institutions that headquarter in the state to fund the deficits threatening the public university system. Make the rich pay!
Students must continue to champion the rights of faculty and staff to resist furloughs and layoffs by actively participating in their pickets, marches, and demonstrations. Link up the struggles! Stand together and fight to stop the agents of the capitalists from tearing down the public education system; education is a right, not a privilege for the children of the rich. It must be free for all who wish to partake in it.
The ultimate goal of such education struggles now and in the future must be the complete democratization of colleges, universities, and all other schools across the United States. Kick out the bureaucrats! There is no need for them whatsoever. Students, teachers, campus workers, parents – these are the only people you need to plan curriculum, ensure the smooth functioning of a campus, and provide quality instruction for all.
#1 by Elm Creek Smith on March 5th, 2010
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Grow up, you junior grade communists! Nothing worth having is free. Get a job and pay your own way. The State of California is bankrupt due to the inability of your left-wing legislature to understand that they can’t spend money they don’t have, that by raising taxes on businesses that they run those businesses out of the state, and that they can’t coddle the unionists that hold the state hostage during contract negotiations.
ECS
#2 by admin on March 9th, 2010
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Junior-grade communists? What an insult coming from you!
People already have jobs, and they do attempt to pay their own way through college. But guess what my man, that is near impossible thanks to stagnating real wages over the past 30 or so years and budget cutbacks resulting in extortionate tuition fees throughout the higher public-education system.
Also, taking on tens of thousands of debt does not constitute payment. Upon graduation, an entire generation of young people are now in virtual debt-slavery to their creditors (whether public or private). Even with a job paying above the national average, which isn’t very high, usurious debt payments can go on for years if not decades. Is that what you mean by “paying your own way?”
I assure you that by taking on such debt, you more than pay your own way. In fact, you pay your own way a few times over thanks to skyrocketing interest rates.
Fact of the matter is, the working class and youth are at a point now where an education truly is out of reach for them. But there is plenty of money out there to fund free higher public-education for all…one just has to know where to go and who take it from.
The State of California, like most states (even some local governments), is in bankruptcy due to a wide array of reasons. First off, as this is plain for all to see, is the enormous costs associated with America’s continued occupation of both Iraq and Afghanistan and other military bases maintained all across the world, draining billions out of the pockets of working-class taxpayers to ensure Chevron and Exxon-Mobile, not to mention J.P. Morgan-Stanley and Citigroup, can ultimately increase their profit margins and pay out millions in dividends to shareholders.
Second, are the, now “bankrupt,” neo-liberal policies associated with Globalization – the latest phase of capitalist Imperialism. For the past decade, in fact, the U.S. funded domestic tax cuts, which boosted demand for imports, by running ever-larger budget deficits paid for by selling bonds to exporting nations running dollar surpluses.
Now even though American public debt stands at roughly 36.4% of GDP, it presents a huge problem for both capitalists and their government. They will now have to sell even more Treasury bonds to make up for the budget shortfalls. Thus, the United States is dependent on exporting, dollar-surplus nations buying up more of these to not only stabilize or, even, decrease the debt but also to keep down rates of inflation.
This is, however, getting more and more difficult to do, seeing how, like most of the Western European powers, the American government, banks, and finance houses, are experiencing an historical solvency crisis. This has led to the consistent inabilities of the capitalists to appropriate value through stocks, shares, or credit.
The overall expansion, therefore, of the budget deficit in the manner mentioned above, i.e., to fuel domestic consumption and boost domestic growth, testifies to the decline in value production in the American domestic economy.
This in turn has left the capitalists and their government with few options. But there is one option in which they can all agree: the working class must be made to pay the costs stemming from the systemic contradictions lodged within the global capitalist system we refer to today as Globalization. Raising tuition costs, firing teachers and staff, and upping interest rates to reign in student debt even faster, are just a few examples.
This brings me to my final point on this topic. Lastly, there is plenty of wealth out there, except the people who parasitically appropriate it will hear nothing of taxation to fund public-education programs.
That is why we say, tax the rich (those making upwards of $250,000 or more)! If they’re the ones with the money, the money to provide an education for those struggles to get by, then we should use everything in our power to re-appropriate said funds to serve our, the working majorities’, interests.
If corporations and businesses don’t like the fact that they are taxed to provide free, higher education for all and they try to “flee,” then they should have their property and assets seized with no compensation to either owners or shareholders and have their operations put under direct workers’ control (control over the processes of hiring and firing, production, distribution, deciding on working conditions and the length of the workweek, etc, etc).
If capitalism is incapable of satisfying the demands inevitably arising from the calamities generated by itself, then let it perish.
“Realizability” or “unrealizability” is in the given instance a question of the relationship of forces, which can be decided only by the struggle…
In summation, your arguments against free, higher education for all along with your conclusions regarding the origin of the budgetary shortfalls and cuts are not only erroneous but colored by your obviously simplistic and narrow-minded perspective on the subject.
It wasn’t students, working people, or unionists who caused the crisis of capitalism, it was the system itself that caused it, and now it is these strata suffering the most and are some of the greatest victims of its repercussions. Why should they be the ones who pay for it?
Grow up, you junior-grade Tea-Bagger!