photo: Fibonacco Blue/ BY-NC-SA

On the March 4th Day of Action, colleges around California and across America joined in solidarity with protests, walk-outs, teach-ins, and marches against major budget cuts in public education. This is far from just a California UC system march; k-12 schools and 4-year and 2-year colleges in New York, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota all participated  totaling in 33 cities and over 125 events across the nation.

Every level of education has been affected by these budget cuts. K-12 schools are receiving less funding and firing more teachers. Community colleges will be turning more than 20,000 students away. Tuition has drastically risen at UC’s and California State Universities are crowing classrooms and furloughing professors.

Here are some reactions from every perspective:

Students have varied opinions. UC Berkeley’s the Daily Californian reports, "For me, it is about the symbolic statement-I don't expect anything to come out of this," said Jackie Moore, a UC Berkeley junior, as she marched to Oakland. "We need to say we value public education."

High school students explain how important it is for them participate. "I'm only 16, I can't vote, I don't really have a say in the politics of it all, as much as I would want to," said Hope Schwartz, a sophomore at Oakland Technical High School who joined the march. "This is the only thing I can do."

Elected officials responded to the protestors in California, “a spokesman for Schwarzenegger said he wanted a constitutional amendment guaranteeing that higher education received more funding than the state's prison system”. State Senator Leland Yee, D-San Francisco/San Mateo said, “In all my 20 years in elected office, this is the largest rally I have ever seen; I've never seen a gathering where they just take over the entire Civic Center area"

A lot of the media perpetuates the negatives of the protest. The students who shut down the freeways in Oakland, CA and in Santa Cruz, CA. The window some students broke at a few universities and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee protesters who threw punches and ice chunks. UC Davis had some violent reaction from the local police, and arrest were made nationwide. The media raises the question, were these protests effective? And how do we measure an effective protest? Instead let’s look and the solidarity formed across the country on all levels of education. March 4th was a Day of Action, the multitude of support and media exposure. Let’s see if any politicians actually hear the thousands of student who screamed to “Save Our Schools”.