Berkeley, CA – While the University of California's Board of Regents were at UCLA voting to increase the cost of education by a whopping 32%, students, labor and faculty from across the state were fighting back.

At UC Berkeley, staff unions called a strike to protest the regents' plan of layoffs and cutbacks as well as the proposed fee hikes. A noon rally and march of thousands featured a militant message of unity and resistance to the regents' attack on lower income and oppressed nationality students. The strike and other actions are to continue throughout the day on Nov. 19 and 20.

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Berkeley, CA – Over 600 activists gathered on Oct. 24, for a conference to organize against the statewide education budget cuts.

Public education is under attack across the state of California, from kindergartens to universities. The struggle has intensified as public officials have brutally cut funding and launched a campaign of privatization.

The conference came out of last month’s massive university walkouts, which drew thousands of workers, students and faculty demanding an end to layoffs, furloughs and tuition hikes. Excitement filled the room during the proceedings as students and workers came together to hammer out a unified plan of action to defend public education.

“We did not make this crisis, but we are paying for it!” said Kathryn Lybarger, an organizer with AFSME local 3299. The pay cuts, forced furloughs, tuition hikes and slashed department funds will only account for 2% of the gaping hole in the state budget, she explained. “So the question has to be asked – why go after education to pay California’s debt?” According to one of the University of California (UC) regents, the state-appointed board that manages the UC system, the answer is simple: The public schools are an untapped business.

The people of California are making it clear that they do not share this view, through protests and direct actions. John, a middle school teacher in the Bay Area, heatedly argued that “education is not a commodity to be bought and sold.” His school participated in a ‘sick-in’ this past spring, joining dozens of other Los Angeles Unified School District schools that held actions against the teacher layoffs.

Oppressed nationality and working class students have been hit the hardest. “Recruiters used to come to our community college two to three times a year,” explained Brian Donovan, chapter president of Diablo Valley Students for a Democratic Society. “But now we see them nearly every week.” Lately, the chapter has been organizing counter-recruitment actions, often pushing the Air Force to pack up before they even get started.

By the afternoon, the conference attendees agreed to a day of action against privatization and cutbacks, scheduled for March 4 of next year. Break-out sessions (grouped by system – University of California, California State University, community colleges and K-12) were used for more specific brainstorming.

The conference ended with participants marching on Mark Yudof’s Oakland home. Yudof, the president of the UC system, was hired to run it like a corporation. In a recent interview he arrogantly compared his job to “presiding over a cemetery.” In response, the workers of Healthcare, Research and Technical Employees-CWA and AFSME erected a graveyard on the front lawn of his taxpayer-subsidized mansion.

In recent weeks, occupations, sit-ins and other militant actions have exploded across the California education system. Organizers of a building occupation at UC-Santa Cruz explicitly mentioned the Republic Windows and Doors workers as a source of inspiration. The way forward is being paved and the workers of the United States are refusing to pay for the economic crisis that the rich have inflicted upon us. On Nov. 19, UC students and workers will descend on UCLA’s campus to shut down the regents meeting and demand an end to the attacks on public education.

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Thousands of union workers, faculty, undergrads and graduate students across the University of California system stood up and said “no more!” to the severe budget cuts, layoffs, furloughs and tuition hikes. On Sept. 24, they stood up and walked out. The UC faculty initiated the walkout. The United Professional and Technical Employees (UPTE) union called a one-day unfair labor practices strike. All ten of the UC campuses saw protests. UCLA saw 1000 students walkout and sit-in at the administration offices, demanding, and winning, a meeting with the chancellor to discuss grievances. At UC-Berkeley over 5000 took the streets, shutting down busy intersections. Students at UC-Santa Cruz occupied a campus building to protest the cuts.

As the U.S. government stumbles over itself to bail out the billionaires who caused the economic crisis, the broad masses of the people are left out. Already we have seen working and poor people lead struggles that have exposed some of the sharpest contradictions of the crisis. From the movement to save the home of Rosemary Williams in Minneapolis, to the Republic Windows and Doors factory occupation and the SK Tools strike for healthcare in Chicago, people are fighting back. Rightfully, the students, workers and faculty in California are joining this call for a people’s bailout in demanding that state budgets not be balanced on the backs of their jobs or their right to an education.

The students and workers who walked out, sat in and fought back throughout the UC system have a done a great thing. They are showing the way forward, especially for the student movement. And the way forward is struggle.

The student movement made its biggest gains in the period during and following the Civil Rights Movement, first in smashing school segregation and then advancing further as oppressed nationality students such as the Third World Liberation Front fought huge struggles to win university programs like ethnic studies to teach the history of racism and national oppression in the United States. Likewise, women’s studies, queer studies and similar programs were fought for and built by students.

Now these programs are faced, in many places, with the chopping block. Many scholarships that are supposed to help working people attend college are being completely eliminated. These programs must be defended. Students, workers and oppressed people on campuses across the country must raise the slogan “chop from the top.” Every cut that the ruling class and their flunkies succeed in pushing forward further elevates the universities as something unattainable to working people and slams the door on oppressed nationalities.

The chants of the students at the rallies in California were advanced and correct: “No cuts, no fees, education should be free!” Others are rightfully calling for “Money for education, not war and occupation,” saying clearly that the trillions of dollars being sunk into the U.S.’s wars and interventions could be better spent on people’s needs here at home. Now the student movement needs to advance, moving beyond a struggle for ‘accessible’ education, and into a struggle for the right to an education, instead of the current system that, despite the gains that have been made, still privileges the rich.

The student movement needs to take the lead, building on the momentum of the UC protests, and spread the struggle for the right to an education throughout the country like a prairie fire. Ultimately, we need socialism. We need to tear down the ‘ivory tower’ and make the public universities serve the people.

Josh Sykes is a member of the National Executive Committee and co-chair of the Student Commission of Freedom Road Socialist Organization

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