SF State students walkout at noon

Hundreds of outraged SF State students marched to City College of San Francisco Thursday in an effort to unite the two campuses and fight for their threatened education.

At noon, roughly 200 students gathered at Malcolm X Plaza for the walkout, organized by the Student Unity Power group, to protest the recent CSU budget cuts.

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The energized protesters shut down 19th Avenue as they marched from Holloway Avenue to Ocean Avenue to reach City College. Along the way, police attempted to redirect the route along Eucalyptus Street, but students marched right through the police.

Student Unity and Power, a month-old student group, organized the walkout as a militant movement for liberating education.

"We've got to do more than just tell them what we think if we want to speak over the sound of the donors pockets" said Ryan Sturges, 23, an organizer of the walkout and a bio chemistry major.

"A squeaky wheel gets the oil, but the broken wheel gets fixed," Sturges added of SUP's plans to shut down SF State similar to the shut down in 1968. "We need to do something that makes it impossible to run, to build a movement that will enable us to get our demands met."

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger cut $97.6 million to the CSU for 2008-09 and announced an additional $66.3 million Feb. 20 for 2009-10. The reduction places the CSU approximately 10 percent below its operational needs, according to CSU officials.

University spokeswoman Ellen Griffin said "The university's agreement is that education is the key to California's future."

She declined to comment about the walkout.

Students react to cuts

"This is the first step in building a movement to challenge the budget cuts," said Alex Mejia, a 24-year-old La Raza Studies major and walkout organizer. "This is a statewide situation that needs statewide support."

"Any society that doesn't value people or education and spends more money on war and occupation and finding new ways to kill people - there's fundamentally a problem with it," said Drew Vanzee, sociology major and a member of Students for Social Change.

Many students were chanting along the way "Walk out SF State, shut it down like '68," was heard often, along with "Education should be free, bail out the students not the bourgeois."

Alberto Luna, a history major and co-chair of the College of Behavior and Social Science Students of Color, spoke of a lack of unison for SF State at the budget teach-in on Feb. 26.

"I thought that there was a lack of community," said Luna. "But right now it's united and that's really good. We must work on this and I hope this can be a wake up call to the rest of the students."

Margaret Decuir attended the walkout to unite with students who were just as angry as her. "I'm pissed off about so many things," she said.

"My education has been really good from SF State, but I'm sick of all the pointless classes, and the stupid JEPET. There are 40 graduating seniors in every class, sitting on the floor, trying to crash so they can graduate," Decuir said.

Decuir's solution echoed many others, "I want free education. We need socialization."

University officials were also there to oversee the event.

Students organize at CCSF

At City College, organizers rallied the students in front of Smith Hall for a mass strategy session for planning action on May 1, International Day of Worker Solidarity and Immigrant Rights.

The crowd then broke into smaller groups and discussed specifics plans of action.

Sturgis led one group asking, "How do we shut it down, I don't mean burn it down, I mean shut it down."

A.B. Burns-Tucker, a 20-year-old political science and criminal justice major, was grateful for the strategy session. "Everyone knows '68," she said, "but they knew what they wanted, they figured out how to get it, they had a plan."

"You march like this to get people together to hear your voice," she added, "then you come at them with facts and information and knowledge."

Sergeant Jim Miller of the San Francisco Police Department said that aside from the walkout itself, there were no incidences. "It's been pretty good, a peaceful expression of students concerns."