Large protest at Capitol draws attention, results unclear

by Brian Leubitz

If you have been paying attention, you have noticed the appalling cuts that the state’s university systems have taken. In fact, a recent study showed that for most middle class students, Harvard is now more affordable than the CSU system.  No matter what your goals are for the CSU system, this is a very bad thing. It is not functioning as a way to improve the lives of middle and lower class Californians, and it is not providing the resources for economic development that it should.

And so we get yesterday’s protests from students of both university systems and their supporters:

Another day of protests played out at the state Capitol on Monday with thousands of demonstrators denouncing soaring higher education costs and a select group spending most of the day inside the rotunda to achieve one goal: getting arrested.

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The main group of arrestees, who will be charged with trespassing, apparently felt they had made their point, although it was unclear at times exactly what that was.

The ballooning cost of attending public colleges and universities in California was the primary focus, but at times the leaderless Occupy movement supporters discussed issuing demands on a range of issues, from the repeal of Proposition 13 to being allowed to use Capitol restrooms during their sit-in.(SacBee)

Occupy is very good at actions and getting attention. But in this case, and in others, the message got overpowered by the theatrics.  And maybe that’s fine, as there are more than enough wonks in Sacramento. Maybe the theatrics will be just the thing to open a few eyes.

But those eyes are just as recalcitrant as ever. The Republicans just look out on this, behind their anti-tax pledge suits, and glaze over.  Will this be the action that breaks through?  Or will there be more actions until it does? This protest was something of an organizing nightmare. But whether the state can continue to ignore the protests, when the function of our higher education systems continues to dwindle, is the larger question.

But as Dan Walters points out, higher education has taken a drubbing:

The thousands of college students who marched on the Capitol on Monday to protest rising fees and decreasing state support had a point: Higher education has taken a disproportionately heavy drubbing in recent years as politicians attempted – and largely failed – to balance the state budget.

The Legislature’s budget analyst has calculated that under Gov. Jerry Brown’s 2012-13 budget, state general fund spending on the University of California, the state university system and community colleges will have dropped 21 percent in five years, while fee and tuition revenue will have increased by 64 percent.(Sacbee)

There are a number of reasons for this, but you can mostly chalk it up to the fact that cutting higher education is the easiest. It involves the fewest lawsuits, and so the students get screwed over and over again. It is just one more piece of the dysfunctional governance by committee that gives the legislature strange cues.

We need more revenue, and we have two initiatives that would do that.  However, the Millionaire’s tax would actually get some of that to higher education for a change. Gee, isn’t that a novel idea.

From today’s Beyond Chron.

I didn’t join the street protests against Proposition 8 right after it passed.  My gut reaction was: “where were all these people when we had the chance to defeat it?”  But “No on 8” ran a terrible campaign that would not have effectively used more volunteers, and it’s possible that many had tried to get involved.  Now the state Supreme Court will decide what to do about Prop 8, and City Attorney Dennis Herrera has put on a strong case to have it overruled.  But that doesn’t mean the Court will do the right thing; even the best legal arguments can lose.  A mass movement of peaceful protest is crucial at building the political momentum to attain marriage equality – which can convince the Court it’s okay to overturn the “will of the voters.”  Social movements rely too much on lawyers and politicians to make progress – without effectively using the masses of people who want to help.  Now people are angry, and this weekend we saw mass protests across the country.  It’s now time for everyday people to get involved.

As Barbara Ehrenreich once argued, Roe v. Wade didn’t just happen because a majority of Supreme Court justices decided women have the right to choose.  It was after a mass movement worked hard for many years to make that politically possible.  While we like to believe the best legal arguments always win in Court, judges are – at the end of the day – politically connected lawyers who wear robes.  As much as Dennis Herrera’s lawsuit is well written and legally sound, it’s still a leap of faith for the state Supreme Court to override a popular majority in the last election.  And citizen action – if done effectively – can go a long way to give them the political courage to do the right thing.

Public outrage at Prop 8’s passage has not just been a few angry protests in the Castro, or righteous indignation at churches.  People who never thought of themselves as “activists” have suddenly been spurred into action – and they’re using the same tools the Obama campaign used to win the presidency.  For example, my friend Trent started a Facebook group called “Californians Ready to Repeal Prop 8.”  He expected a few hundred people to join, but in less than a week the group had over 200,000 members.  Efforts are afoot to collect signatures for a statewide proposition – in 2010, or sooner if we have a special election.

This viral activism is in stark contrast to the “No on 8” campaign – where people relied on political leaders who failed us in waging a statewide effort.  My first involvement with “No on 8” was in July, right after the San Francisco Pride parade.  The campaign had just collected thousands of postcards at Pride, and our task was to call these people and recruit them to volunteer.  But a lot of people come to SF Pride from across the state, and all the volunteer activities were in San Francisco.  It was a lot to ask someone who lives in Monterey or Santa Rosa to come table at a Farmer’s Market in San Francisco for a day.

I asked the campaign why they couldn’t just get people to do “No on 8” activities in their own communities.  They didn’t have to wait until the campaign could afford to open offices in other parts of the state.  Online groups like MoveOn have perfected the model of using the Internet to connect like-minded activists to each other – and get them to meet in “offline” locations to push their political cause.  My suggestion was ignored.  Now we see spontaneous efforts – organized online via social networks, without any “leaders” – to lay the groundwork for a future Proposition campaign to restore marriage equality.

November 15th was a massive “Day of Protest” against Prop 8, and we predictably had a huge rally in San Francisco.  But we also had nearly 2000 people in Sacramento, a whopping 12,000 in Los Angeles, 5000 in San Diego, 2500 in Santa Rosa, and over 1000 in Downtown Ventura.  And it wasn’t just a statewide action – 12,000 took to the streets in Seattle, 5000 in Boston, thousands in Chicago, 1000 in Albuquerque and even a rally in Peoria.  Prop 8 hit a nerve felt past California’s boundaries: during a presidential election that gave millions hope, one of our bluest states voted to take away peoples’ fundamental rights.  People are upset, and want to get involved.

Now Prop 8’s fate is in the hands of our state Supreme Court – who must decide if the greater good (equal protection under law) is worth telling 52% of California voters they can’t eliminate marriage rights.  Peaceful protests can give judge the resolve to do the right thing.  Unlike George W. Bush – who said he didn’t “listen to focus groups” after 2 million people across the world marched against the Iraq War on a single day – I believe that our justices will take these protests seriously.  Which is why they matter so much.

L.A. teachers walked out of their classrooms for one hour yesterday to protest proposed education cuts in the budget.  In West LA they stopped traffic.  Speaker Bass, at LA Trade Technical College for a ceremonial swearing-in event, offered support to the teachers.

State Assembly Speaker Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles) said the demonstrators — who included teachers in red T-shirts, parents with young children and students — were heard by the governor and state lawmakers wrestling with a $17-billion budget shortfall. She said Democrats in the Assembly and Senate will not accept any budget that is balanced through cuts only.

“I absolutely support the action taken by the teachers, and if it wasn’t for the swearing-in activities, I would have walked on the picket line right along with them,” said Bass at her ceremonial inauguration as Assembly speaker at Los Angeles Trade Technical College. “What the teachers did today was they sounded the alarm for the people of Los Angeles to understand how serious this crisis is.”

Of course, it would be nicer if this show of support translated into a revenue solution more robust than picking up the Governor’s ridiculous lottery borrowing idea and running with it.

Democratic lawmakers made an opening pitch Thursday for closing the state’s $15.2 billion deficit, using lottery borrowing as well as unspecified proposals to close tax loopholes […]

Assembly Democrats have supported the governor’s plan to borrow from the lottery but rejected his proposal to put the money into a so-called “rainy day” account. Instead, they would like to use the money to pay down debt.

Democratic leaders in both houses proposed giving schools more than the governor recommended. They include cost-of-living increases for teachers.

I think the move here for Bass is to get the necessary short-term revenue by whatever means necessary to balance the budget this year, and then put her taxation task force in motion thereafter and make the real fight through the next two years of her leadership.  But that’s unfortunately a shortsighted proposal.  Borrowing from the lottery means greater deficits in the future, and Californians understand this and have rejected the idea.  Every year that we fail to address the revenue side is a year where we have to borrow more and more to get the budget balanced, meaning that we’ll need more revenue when we finally get around to structural change.

Post-Pennsylvania and… well, nothing much different actually.  But next time, for sure!  Meanwhile, here are some California-centric notes:

• The California School Employees Association made their endorsements for the June primary.  In addition to Migden, they strike of an aversion to go out on a limb.  They only endorsed one Congressional candidate in a Republican-held seat (Charlie Brown), and they opted out of a lot of contested primaries in the legislative seats as well.  Manuel Perez did get the endorsement in the 80th AD, however (he is a school board member, so not a big shock).

• We don’t get into a lot of rural issues on the site, probably because of the bias toward writers here in urban environments.  But this salmon fishing ban is a big deal along the Mendocino coast.  This actually goes back to the Klamath fish kill in the beginning of the decade and Darth Cheney’s efforts to ensure that.  I think there are going to be a lot of angry fishermen wanting answers this fall.

• I keep forgetting to write about the State Senate primary in my own backyard of SD-23, between Fran Pavley  and Lloyd Levine.  Here’s some background on the race to succeed Sheila Kuehl.  I actually attended an environmental forum with these two last week and found them both to be really solid, with different strengths.  While Pavley is an astonishingly effective lawmaker – she probably has her name on more far-reaching climate change legislation than anyone in the entire country – Levine really seems to understand the nature of the fight in Sacramento and how best to bring about sweeping change.  I’m not going to be disappointed on June 3, regardless of the winner.  We’re hoping to get both Pavley and Levine on a future Calitics Radio show.

• Here’s a user-created video of our debate protest at ABC last week.  We have our own video set for release as well.

• Adam Liptak in The New York Times today: “The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners.”

Yet we must remain “tough on crime,” even though rises and falls in the crime rate are not correlative to imprisoning people (Canada’s rate goes up and down roughly at the same time ours does, without a corresponding increase in the prison population).

• John Yoo won’t talk to the House Judiciary Committee but it’s really not his fault, you see:

In a letter, Yoo’s lawyer told Conyers he was “not authorized” by DOJ to discuss internal deliberations.

“We have been expressly advised by the Office of Legal Counsel of the United States Department of Justice that Professor Yoo is not authorized to discuss before your Committee any specific deliberative communications, including the substance of comments on opinions or policy questions, or the confidential predecisional advice, recommendations or other positions taken by individuals or entities of the Executive Branch,” Yoo’s lawyer, John C. Millian, wrote in a letter to Conyers.

As we all know, the executive branch can ignore subpoenas and prevent Congressional oversight.  Why, Yoo wrote it in a memo!  But he can’t discuss it.  Because the executive branch follows the law.  That he wrote.

Round and round we go…