Thousands rally in San Diego, California against education cuts
By a WSWS reporting team
6 March 2010
About 1,000 students and faculty gathered at a March 4 rally against education cuts at San Diego State University in California. A similar number of people demonstrated at the University of California, San Diego. A subsequent demonstration in downtown San Diego drew several thousand.
The events in San Diego were among the largest demonstrations in the state. Tens of thousands of students, parents and workers demonstrated throughout the country against school closings, tuition hikes, and teacher layoffs. (See, “Students and staff protest against education cuts in US”)
Among the main speakers at the San Diego rallies were members of the International Students for Social Equality, the student organization of the Socialist Equality Party. The ISSE, which helped organize the demonstration at SDSU, called for a break with the Democratic Party and for a socialist movement to defend education.
Despite their size, the San Diego rallies went largely unreported in the media. If their numbers were mentioned, they were generally reported as “hundreds.” This was part of what appeared to be a general attempt by the media to downplay the significance of the demonstrations.
The first speaker at the SDSU rally was Priscilla Diaz, a straight-A high school student who was denied admittance to SDSU because of budget cuts. The university cut its total enrollment by 4,500 this year, and expects to cut another 11,000 over the next two years.
The other speakers included representatives of the March 4 UCSD educational committee as well as various other student groups on campus. These groups, to the extent that they had any explicit political perspective,