Getting Ready to March Over Education Cuts
By ANNA BLOOM AND RACHEL GROSS
Ramon Quintero, a geography major at the University of California, Berkeley, hopes his 1979 Toyota mini-motor home becomes more than the place he slept in last semester to save rent money and more than just a mural on wheels.
Mr. Quintero has become somewhat well known on campus: He was arrested during Berkeley campus protests in December and the university found him affordable housing so he moved out of the vehicle. He wants his vehicle, dubbed “St. Rita,” in honor of the saint of impossible cases, to float down the streets of Sacramento, then Berkeley and finally Oakland on Thursday, sending a message of fellowship to the disparate groups around the state participating in the protest of cuts in state support for education.
Rallies and marches are planned for Thursday around the state. In the Bay Area, a march has been planned on Mission Street in San Francisco towards the Civic Center where a rally has been planned for 5 p.m. Another march along Telegraph Avenue from Berkeley to downtown Oakland begins at noon. There will also be rallies at Laney College, the Fruitvale BART station in Oakland and in Sacramento.
Organizing, at least at Berkeley, has had its own complications, including quarreling factions, last week’s violent riots as seen on YouTube and a recent history of unwieldy takeovers of campus buildings that have ended in arrests and wariness on the part of police and administrators at the University of California.
At the University of California, Santa Cruz and Laney College, one of four community colleges in the Peralta Community College District, organizers have gone to classes to give “pep talks” to students to encourage