"SAN DIEGO — Thousands of people embark on a 400-mile protest march today. The “March for California's Future” is intended to bring attention to a crisis in public education. One San Diego professor plans to spend seven weeks walking from Bakersfield to Sacramento."
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Above: San Diego City College professor Jim Miller, far left, takes a class photos with his son Walt and his classmates at McKinley Elementary School in San Diego.
Kelly Mayhew is preparing the family dinner. Posters of Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead are taped and tacked on the walls. Kelly's husband, Jim Miller is in the living room with his 5-year-old son.
Miller is an English and Labor Studies professor at San Diego City College. He's known as much for his long, blonde ponytail as he is for his commitment to the greater good. Miller says he's ready to take his activism on the road.
Above: A map of the route of the 400-mile long "March for California's Future," intended to bring attention to the crisis in public education.
“We've been involved in lots of different activist groups, but this is the biggest single endeavor, a 48-day march,” Miller said.
Miller laughs because he's 45 years old, has asthma and a bad back. That means the 400-mile long march will be harder for him than most of the other marchers.
The route begins in Bakersfield. It cuts north through agricultural towns like Delano, Chowchilla and Modesto. Miller says the farmland in the Central Valley was fertile ground for the teachings of Cesar Chavez.
“In particular, when we're marching through the Central Valley, where you go through these towns, and the average income is so low, what will be the future for the kids of those farm workers?” said Miller.
“Jim and I are privileged,” Mayhew said. “He went to a public elementary school. I went to a public junior high and high school. We were fortunate California public schools at the apex, at the absolute best time. And what we’ve seen over the 20 years of our teaching is such a decline in support of education.”
Their son Walt goes to McKinley Elementary, a school in the San Diego Unified School District. It’s facing an $80 million state budget shortfall. They see their son's classes getting bigger, school services vanishing, and now a school year cut short due to teacher furloughs.