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Wrote this early this morning written for a local audiance... --David Just woke up (4am) for work. Rally in San Francisco was huge...10 to 15 thousand. Every school, collage, high school, etc provided the main feeder march from the Mission district...we had at least 10,000 marching down Mission toward Civic Center. Started with about 4,000 but *g r e w* along the way. Total of 15,000. But...this was the most spirited march and demo I've ever been on. In many ways, even more than the May 1, 2006 immigrant rights strike (which was certainly larger). [A note on 'form'. Drums. Drums are now a mandatory tool for any mass action. Drums...and there were several contingents of various drummers...from bongo drums to Taiko drums, totally kept and revved up the thousands. Luv 'em. Can't march without them.] I would say that over 95% of the people at this march and rally had *never* been on a march or rally in their lives. The average age had to be about 19. Dozens of HS struck and rallied with teachers and students, mostly, completely, organized by the rank-and-file caucus of the United Educators of SF (the joint NEA/AFT local here) called "Educators for a Democratic Union". Every conceivable chant was loudly scream and yelled. It was total energy, a sense of power, a sense of history being made. We organized from Skyline Communiut College a large banner with dozens of students marching behind it, in conjunction with Cañada CC and College of San Mateo district CCs and unions (the AFT local in our district). This whole march followed dozens of walk outs by *thousands* of more students who did not come to the SF rally. The real story is this. At my collage (where I was registered last year and my son is a full time student), close to a 500 students and staff walked out at 10am. We totally took over the 'official' student gov't action scheduled for the same time in reaction to our grass roots efforts. Thousands more students walked out/went home or stayed home with most classes effectively shutdown. This is true through out the San Mateo Community Col. district (the county south of San Francisco). Our local 'feeder' high schools: classes canceled, held local rallies in Pacifica and San Bruno. Labor presence was there at the rally including *small*groups of effected workers (TWU 250, SEIU 1021, etc etc). "Small", IMHO but they may of been bigger. Didn't hear the speeches. Education unions, though, obviously, were well represented. Politically it was "NO CUTS" and everything that comes from this. Any speaker, usually a union official who tried to put through a compromising "no "more" cuts" was greeted with the above mentioned response or "Reverse the cuts, no layoffs, NOW!" There were hundreds, literally, of actions and strikes throughout the state. The NYT doesn't give a good sense of California (albeit a decent job of national actions). Every single public college had some sort of action. David ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
