SF State protesters advocate priority shift for California
By Hannah Weiner, Ramsey El-Qare and Alex Emslie
The Guardsman
Thousands of public education supporters amassed at San Francisco State University for the statewide March 4 Strike and Day of Action to send a stark message to California leaders: universities belong to students and the state should prioritize education for all.
About 30 picketers blocked the main path near SF State’s Humanities and Social Sciences Building until the group grew to hundreds and moved to 19th and Holloway avenues at about 9:30 a.m. At the same time, other groups of protesters blocked entrance to the Ethnic Studies and Business buildings.
“We have the ability to shut this place down,” art major Rachel Lasse said. “We don’t run it. It’s run by a bunch of war profiteers who don’t have our best interest in mind.”
Lasse hoped to graduate this semester, but SF State’s art program is impacted, meaning classes have been cut, and she couldn’t get into the courses she needs.
Bay Area March 4 actions grew out of a meeting at UC Berkeley in October 2009, where more than 800 delegates from northern California colleges, labor organizations and other supporters formed a coalition to fight budget crises afflicting all levels of public education. That umbrella organization, dubbed The General Assembly, spawned branch general assemblies at universities across California.
By 11:30 a.m., a group of 200 protesters on 19th Avenue moved into the street, blocking traffic for roughly half an hour before 30 San Francisco Police Department officers pushed the crowd back onto the sidewalk.
“The biggest change I want to see is proper funding for education. And not just higher education, but K-12 education too,” said Bobby Farlice, who has been an Education Opportunity Program adviser at SF State for 25 years. “I think Sacramento has got to acknowledge this. It’s too big and too noisy not to.”
“It’s a historic day,” Jerald Reocica said. “It really shows the power of organization.”
Despite his full-time job at San Francisco General Hospital, increased tuition at SF State has forced graduate student Reocica to become a part-time student.
“It’s not a funding crisis, it’s a priority crisis,” SF State student Wes Vasquez said. “California is number one in prison spending and number 48 in education spending.”
Not all students chose to participate in the March 4 events.
“I was studying the whole time today,” SF State student Connie Wu said. “It should have been on a weekend instead of a weekday.”
Another student who refused to give her name said, “I agree with what they’re doing, but I have to get to class. I’ve just got to get to class.”
Protesters booed anybody who crossed their picket lines.
“We need to alter the routine, because our routine has been altered,” said theater arts professor Carlos Baron, adding that he was disappointed in the instructors who didn’t cancel their classes on March 4.
“The professors who didn’t shut down class are like the people playing violin on the Titanic,” ethnic studies professor Jason Ferriera said. “They either have a boat waiting for them or they are just totally oblivious.”
Shortly after noon, the scattered clusters of protesters met at Malcolm X Plaza to create one massive crowd of about 2,000 people. Organizers entertained the crowd with spoken-word poetry and political theater, highlighted by a battle between the Draculator – representing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as a vampire sucking the blood from California students and universities – and the vampire slayer, played by SF State alumna Nadia Conrad.
SF State protesters began to leave the campus at about 3 p.m. to join a massive rally at the San Francisco Civic Center.
See Civic Center Story