Lakeview Sit-in Sold Down the River by Local Labor Leaders
Jack Gerson is a long time Bay Area activist who up until recently taught in the Oakland Public School System.
Shortly before 4am on Tuesday July 3, Oakland Unified School District police, backed by cops from the Oakland Police Department, the Oakland Housing Authority, and the California Highway Patrol, raided the sit-in and People’s School for Public Education at Lakeview Elementary. All participants were cleared.
For 18 days, the Lakeview sit-in and People’s School shined a beacon of hope for resistance to the ongoing assault on public education. It was a symbol of defiance to austerity as applied to public education, to the politicians and administrators who use budget deficits as an excuse to carry out the program of “venture philanthropist” billionaires like Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and the Walton (Wal-Mart) Family: school closures,
