At CSU San Bernardino we had over 1000 faculty, staff, and students gather in a standing room only meeting to discuss the budget cuts for the CSU that are on the table.  The CFA campus president (who has been very active in CFA for 25 years or so) said that he’d never seen the CFA and CSU work together on something as they are working now.  (You’ll recall that faculty nearly struck a year ago over egregiously poor salaries and other problems.)

They’ve set up a website to help stand up for the CSU:

http://www.allianceforthecsu.org/

I encourage all of you to speak up for the CSU and to encourage others to do the same.

It won’t be easy.  Just yesterday I received a newsletter from my Senator (Margett) which read like an internal memo to GOP loyalists  written by Grover Norquist.  Really strong stuff; I was pretty shocked that it was coming out in a general newsletter.  I’m getting similar stuff from my Assemblyman.

But we have to win this fight.  I grew up in Illinois in a family that wasn’t rich.  When I was a child, I wished I lived in California.  It had such amazing public high schools, and after that, I would have a chance to go to some of the greatest public universities  virtually free of cost.  It was an educational beacon on a hill to people outside the state.  No longer.  We can’t let it get any worse.

I just talked to someone with the California Democratic Party, and apparently no one has stepped forth to run for the Senate seat of Bob Margett in the 29th District.  I was told that “[someone] would step forward to take it on.”

Not that this fact bothers me.  I just love being told by my Senator, when I write in support of a single-payer health plan, that it would make the doctor’s room look like the DMV (from what I can tell, if a doctor takes HMO patients, the room already does…).

I hope that organization in other parts of the state where people are being termed-out is better than it is here.