Faculty, students, and supporters of California public education will be out in force at massive statewide protests for the March 4 Day of Action to Save Public Education. A 21-year-old UC Berkeley student from a working class San Francisco Bay Area family says local communities aren't represented at the university.

 As we've been reporting, student frustration at rising tuition is at a boiling point.

This junior says all the classes in her ethnic studies major are impacted, even as expensive capital projects dominate the university landscape.

Photo by Jon Chang/reprinted with permission.

[UPDATE: Expanded interview with student organizer Ricardo Gomez follows the orignal post.]

BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA- A high energy rally attended by thousands of UC Berkeley students and faculty is building at the university's Sproul Plaza.

Nineteen-year-old Ricardo Gomez is a student organizer with the Solidarity Alliance and Berkeley Students Against the Cuts. He says the rally is the biggest political action he's ever seen on campus, with an array of constituencies, from "multicultural and ethnic groups, to just random ass students."

UC Berkeley police report a turnout of four to five thousand people at Sproul Plaza as of 1:30 p.m.

Gomez says he thinks the rally's impact will go beyond symbolism. "I think it will lead to UC regents and administrators, and the California legislature evaluating their actions a little more closely – I don’t think they want to see this continuously," he said. "It’s important for them to see students involved in this because there are more of us than anyone else on our campuses. When we have students, we have power because we have numbers."

Twenty-year-old Michelle Thomas said she's been inspired by speakers at the rally, especially the custodial workers. "It's amazing to hear the perspectives of people who have been hurt the most, who have lost their jobs. They want us to get together. This is just the start - they want us to sign the agreement to support them, and us." Thomas said she came on her own but plans to join as many groups as possible involved with the action.

Youth Radio Reporter Denise Tejada, covering the protest live via @youthradio, talked to 20-year-old Tracy Nguyen, a junior at Cal. Nguyen said, "I'm a low income student, first generation and a student of color. These past three years I have been working to pay off my tuition and my parents have been trying to get loans and have been working long hours at the laundromat, so already it's been a struggle to pay for education--an undergraduate education--so the 32 percent tuition cuts mean more long work hours for me, less time to study for me. This just means my parents would have to work more hours at their laundromat business to help me stay in school." 

Nguyen said she organizes on campus to help under-resourced students get into higher education, and budget cuts will blunt those efforts too. "When we outreach to students of color in Oakland or Richmond or low income areas, how do we tell them that they can pay for college, when the reality is they won't be able to pay for college, because a lot of them are on welfare or are single parents?" She said, "Berkeley is know for being the best public university in world and soon it will be Berkeley WAS the best public university in the world."

The Daily Californian, live-blogging the rally, reports the union strike has already led to the closure of the Bancroft Library.A KCBS reporter  covering Governer Arnold Schwarzenegger posted a Facebook status update saying she's glad he's addressing global warming, but irritated that he won't address the walkout.

Faculty and students of UC campuses are taking the system's budget cut crisis into their own hands and walking out on Thursday Sept 24th. It’s been announced that 10 UCs are taking part of this walkout--UC Berkeley being one of them. This year alone UC faculty experienced a cut of 4-10 percent in their salary, including 26 furlough days. Students are being hit by the budget squeeze as well. There has been an increase in tuition, less financial aid is available and school resources have been cut.

According to Dan Mogulos, Executive Director of Public Affairs at UC Berkeley: “last year in the fall 1500 classes were held on Thursday, there is no way of knowing how many classes we’ll be canceled for that day.” Mongulos says the number of faculty participating—as of right now—is 100 out of 2130 faculty members. Mongulos says this number is expected to change as the day gets closer.

According to Mongulos faculty members have the right to walkout, but before they do they need to ensure their students have material to work on. “If they—professors—walkout, they have to notify the students ahead of time and make sure the course material is done.”

More after the jump... Read more...