The hopes of receiving loan guarantees backed by the federal government to help California secure borrowing to cover short-term cash issues dissipated the moment the media started calling something that wouldn't cost the government a dime a "bailout." With Democrats essentially mimicking their Republican counterparts and the rhetoric of a fiscal reckoning predominant, a solution based on massive program cuts and eliminations appears inevitable to everyone in Sacramento. Only regular citizens - the same ones demonized by elites for daring to vote against what elites call "their own interests" - hold legitimate interests in stopping the drive to cut our way out of this crisis. Students in Los Angeles are holding walkouts over proposed firings of teachers. The families who would be most directly hit by canceling programs like Healthy Families (California's SCHIP), CalWorks (serving poor families) and Cal Grants (student grants-in-aid for college) are speaking out about the real-world effects of those cuts. And a growing movement of activists from across the political spectrum are looking to the future by trying to turn this crisis into a tipping point for a Constitutional convention to get the state onto a sounder fiscal course.
The silence from the political leadership on these fronts is deafening. And yet, absolutely everyone knows the remedies to perpetual crisis and long-term dysfunction, remedies that too rarely cross the lips of leadership so that such opinions could actually make it to the minds of the electorate. Evan Halper today provides some relief in this desert with an oasis of an article, explaining in clear language exactly what steps can be taken to transform California into something other than the failed state it is. I don't agree with all of it - Halper asserts that the richest 1% of the state contribute half of the income tax, which is simply a function of inequality and frankly irrelevant; he leaves out that the effective tax rate for the top 1% (around 7% of income) is LOWER than that for those with the state's lowest incomes (around 11%) - but it's still worth reading. An excerpt:
The oft-cited waste and abuse is a problem, but the deficit is bigger than the entire state bureaucracy.
California could fire every state employee -- including well-paid prison guards and university professors -- close every government office, stop all travel and even cease the purchase of paper clips without closing the budget gap. The government would be gone but the deficit wouldn't [...]
The runaway spending is caused largely by an ever growing group of Californians making use of basic state services as the cost of those services escalates. Since Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger took office, for example, the amount the state spends on Medi-Cal health insurance for the poor has grown more than 40%, from under $10 billion annually to more than $14.4 billion. Spending on community mental health services has nearly tripled, and the state's program that provides services for the disabled leapt from a $1.6-billion annual expense to nearly $2.4 billion.
This has happened despite efforts by the state to contain costs. Primary care doctors, for example, are paid just $26 for an office visit with a Medi-Cal patient. There is no simple way to seriously limit these healthcare costs short of eliminating the benefits for hundreds of thousands of Californians.
Halper's five steps - updating the tax structure, eliminating the 2/3 rule, reining in citizen initiatives, building a real rainy day fund and instituting a performance review - are a mixed bag IMO, but they take a legitimate, serious approach to reforming the governmental structure, coming from the position that the current system is exactly how not to run a state. Regardless of these solutions, a debate on which we can and should have, that viewpoint makes me hopeful. I believe people are starting to understand the intractable nature of the current process, a thought echoed by Jean Ross in her special election post-mortem:
So why do I believe that the May 19 results can be viewed as a triumph of hope over fear? I spent the better part of the last two and a half months traversing California, talking about the budget, the special election, and California's future. From San Diego to the North Bay, I spoke before diverse audiences ranging from Orange County PTA activists to Silicon Valley community leaders, from philanthropists to East Bay nonprofit leaders and community organizers in Los Angeles. While California faces tremendous challenges - the worst economic downturn in the post-World War II era and budget crises that show little prospect of abating - I found a new level of interest, concern, and commitment to building a better future for all Californians.
While I am not going to argue that the thousands of individuals that I met are a representative sample, they do represent the best that the state has to offer. Parents who volunteer to improve the quality of their children's schools and public education more broadly; nonprofit service providers who struggle in the face of tight budgets and rising demand to care for the state's most vulnerable; and interested voters who got up early or stayed out late to learn the about the state's finances, how we ended up in the mess we're in, and how to get out. Almost universally, I met voters deeply dismayed by, but profoundly interested in fundamentally addressing, the state's budget challenges [...]
In the midst of all this doom and gloom, I found an underlying sense of optimism. The afterglow of the November election has brought new activists to the table and rekindled a belief that change is possible. There is also a sense of realism and an understanding that tough choices lie ahead. The ambitious federal efforts to stem the economic downturn, stabilize financial markets, and rein in the excesses of private markets are beginning to help voters see government as a solution to, rather than the cause of, economic malaise.
Our leaders have failed. Our people have not. In fact, they're just getting started.
Yesterday I kicked off an action item, asking people to call and write the members of the House Judiciary Committee or their California members of Congress, informing them that the largest state Democratic Party in the country has voted to support a Congressional inquiry into Jay Bybee and other lawyers for their actions justifying torture, and that they ought to carry this through. Many people have already contacted their members of Congress and you should do the same. One thing that would help is to get them on the record. If you receive any constituent correspondence from your Congressperson about this issue, please forward it to me at david-dot-dayen-at-gmail-dot-com. We need to build a list of who supports accountability and who does not, of who in the California delegation agrees with their own party and who does not. We're starting to get some on-the-record statements, like this nonsense from Illinois Republican Donald Manzullo, who admits that waterboarding doesn't work, who calls it "more torture than not," as if there's a torture continuum of some sort (the fact that CIA interrogators had to add a tracheotomy kit to the proceedings should tell you what they were up to with waterboarding), but who then says that "no laws were broken" (which is patently false), and that, even if there were, nobody should be prosecuted because the whole thing would get "messy."
MANZULLO: Because then you are going to have to go back and you're going to have to go through every single interrogation and every single memo and the whole purpose of this is to relive again the fact that somebody made the decision to allow this.
We need on-the-record statements like this for every California Democrat, preferably in writing or on tape.
In other news, John Conyers and Jerrold Nadler announced their support to Attorney General Eric Holder for a special counsel to investigate and prosecute anyone involved in the decision-making process in the Bush Administration that led to illegal torture of detainees. That letter is here.
Finally, I will be on Angie Coiro's show on Green960 AM in San Francisco in the 7:00 hour tonight to talk about the CDP resolution, the need for an inquiry and impeachment of Jay Bybee, and the fight to restore the rule of law with respect to torture. Tune in if you can.
Thanks again to all of you who signed petitions and made phone calls and helped push the resolution to open a Congressional inquiry into Torture Judge Jay Bybee, which the California Democratic Party adopted at its convention yesterday. I have been told by the authors of the resolution that the pressure from the outside really aided their efforts.
The passage of the resolution was a beginning, not an ending. On the flip, come and join us in the next step.
UPDATE: Ryan Grim of The Huffington Post has the full story of the passage of the resolution at the convention.
It has not been my practice to engage in a great deal of self-promotion in this space, but I'm going to make an exception today...which means you are hereby warned that a commercial lies ahead.
I promise I won't be asking for your money, only for a couple of minutes of your time.
What are we selling?
Your friendly fake consultant is competing for a scholarship to the Netroots Nation Convention this August in Pittsburgh...and I'm looking for your support.
I'll do a fuller convention preview post in the morning, but just a final mention - I have a petition to tell the CDP to support the resolution to impeach federal Judge Jay Bybee, who sits on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals despite having been one of the architects of the flawed legal justification for torture committed in our name. There are musings about independent commissions and special prosecutors in Washington, but I believe we must press on all fronts, and the impeachment of Bybee, who sits on the 9th Circuit in San Francisco, is particularly acute here in this state. Currently I have 4,435 signatures - please sign by midnight tonight and I will present yours and everyone else's name at the Resolutions Committee tomorrow at 3pm. If we get this resolution passed, we will have a powerful tool to force California members of Congress to initiate hearings in the House Judiciary Committee to impeach Bybee. I think it's absolutely possible that we make this happen over the weekend - but the leadership of the CDP needs to know that there's a large and powerful constituency behind this effort.
Please sign the petition if you haven't already. And the Courage Campaign has their own petition, with around 8,500 signatures at last count. 13,000 people arguing for impeachment is a powerful number - let's go for more.
As we read with growing horror the most recent torture memos released by the Obama Administration, knowing that there are more revelations to come, I think a lot of us are asking the question that mcjoan asked yesterday. "Now what?" How can we address this moral rot that continues to eat away at our legitimacy? What can be done? Mcjoan offers a couple suggestions.
The process by which our government came not only to torture, but through torturous logic try to convince themselves that it was legal is not just the product of evil. It's the product of excessive, unchecked power that has proven far too easy to seize, to hold, and to exercise.
And we can't allow that to happen again.
That's why, at the very least, there must be investigations. Whether through the special prosecutor that the ACLU has called for, or Senator Leahy's proposal for a commission of inquiry, America has to know how this happened, gruesome step by gruesome step. There is no other way to prevent it from happening again.
Mcjoan is right that our corroded, accountability-free zone in Washington will require an incredible amount of effort just to bring us to these steps. We need to counter the establishment pressure to move away from this evil with our own pressure, to support the rule of law, to recognize that justice delayed is justice denied, and that a failure to hold accountable these acts will result in them returning, in spades, in the future. Without this accounting, in a very real sense our democracy dies.
And there is an actual mechanism, a way to leverage grassroots anger and push the elected officials who can make these decisions, at least in one case. We can prove the desire for accountability in the country and take a systematic approach to restore democracy and the rule of law. And it starts with Jay Bybee.
Today, Seth Hemmelgarn of the Bay Area Reporter (BAR) ran a story titled "Growing pains seen in grassroots work" which describes some of the tension in the marriage equality movement as the power begins to shift from the old guard leadership to the new generation of powerful grassroots leaders heading the charge for change.
Specifically, the story focuses on Robin McGehee, the head organizer for the large event "Meet in the Middle 4 Equality" or known as MITM. (Disclosure: Unite the Fight is the official blog covering the event.) The tension described in the story rose when Robin was informed by local community member Sandy O'Neill of Visalia, CA, that Geoff Kors, President of Equality California (EQCA), had mentioned to her at the Dinah Shore fundraising event in Palm Springs that they were supporting buses to transport people to Fresno for MITM. In fact, no monetary support from EQCA for the event had been given.
"I went [to the Dinah Shore fundraiser] to tell Geoff and Kate [Kendall, Exec. Director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR)] how excited I was to see MITM on their websites, especially after their absence in the valley during the No on 8 Campaign," Sandy told Unite the Fight.
Tuesday's Daily Roundup by the Capitol Weekly reports on a new poll which shows a closely divided electorate on the question of whether marriage equality should be allowed in California:
"Voters in California are sharply divided on same-sex marriage, and an amendment to overturn Prop. 8 would depend largely on campaigning and voter turnout, according to a Field Poll to be released today," writes the Chron's Leslie Fulbright.
"The poll of 761 registered voters shows 48 percent in favor of a constitutional amendment to allow same-sex marriages, with 47 percent opposing and 5 percent undecided.
"The California Supreme Court is currently considering challenges to Prop. 8, the initiative passed by voters in November that banned same-sex marriage. Proponents say that if the court doesn't side with them, they will work on a measure to overturn the ban."
Though views on same-sex marriage vary greatly according to age, geography, political party and religious preference, the numbers overall are almost equally split."'
Opinions haven't changed much since November,' said Field Poll Director Mark DiCamillo of the election where 52 percent of voters approved Prop. 8. 'The closeness of the divide suggests it would depend on the quality of the campaigning and voter turnout.'" Dan Walters reads the poll and writes: "It could be argued that gay rights groups had their best shot in 2008 as they sought to defeat Proposition 8 and allow an earlier Supreme Court decision, validating same-sex marriage, to stand. It was an extremely high-turnout presidential election in which Democrats dominated from the White House down."
It's likely that 2010's voter turnout will be millions of voters smaller and somewhat less liberal than the 2008 electorate, although it's not certain yet whether a pro-gay marriage measure would be on the June primary ballot, whose turnout would be even lower, or on the November general election ballot."
If the Supreme Court were to uphold Proposition 8 and gay rights groups were to seek a 2010 measure, only to lose again, their cause could be stalled for many years."
So, what do you think? If the California Supreme Court does not overturn Proposition 8, should we try and repeal it in 2010 or 2012? MadProfessah votes for going forward on November 2010. I seriously question Dan Walters' views on this topic since he has been so wrong before.
There are some other interesting facts in the crosstabs of the poll:
According to the poll, Democrats favor same-sex marriage by 63 percent and 32 percent oppose. Republicans are 70 percent opposed and 24 percent in favor. In the San Francisco Bay Area, those polled are 64 percent in favor and 31 percent opposed. In Los Angeles County, 55 percent favor and 40 percent oppose. Voters aged 18 to 39 favor gay marriage by 55 percent while those 65 or older are 58 percent opposed, according to the poll.
In response to the recent Gaza War, a fundraising page was set up on ActBlue.com in order to contribute to elected officials who have been supportive of the peoples of Israel and Palestine. The page is called "A Dream of Peace: Justice and Equality for The People of Israel and Palestine", and can be found here.
The mission of the page states "All of the people of the Holy Land need to live in peace and security. We need to support and elect candidates that are willing to stand up for the rights of the citizens of Israel and Palestine. These candidates support measures to stop violence, increase economic and humanitarian aid, actively engage in negotiation, and promote co-existence among these two Peoples."
So there has been quite a tempest in a teapot brewing over the reports that the Equality Summit set for January 24th at the Los Angeles Convention Center to discuss how to obtain marriage equality in California will not be completely open to the media.
People on LGBT blogs have been howling that this is just another example of the NO ON PROP 8 folks trying to be "secretive" and keep out the netroots and community-based activists.
All the major LGBT blogs Joe.My.God, Pam's House Blend, TowleRoad ran with the story which was clearly fueled by longtime lesbian activist Robin Tyler who was unhappy when the vote on whether to not have a strategic planning summit open to the media had gone against her wishes and resigned in protest.
As someone who is on the call and is still on the Planning Committee for the Equality Summit let me tell you the real deal. Only one blog got it right and it isn't one that you would expect...
I am re-posting this diary for Bruce Hahne (a NO ON 8 "super-volunteer") who posted it on Daily Kos earlier today. It deserves to get much wider attention. I like the fact that it not only includes criticisms of the NO ON PROP 8 campaign from an insider but also recommendations on what to do in the next anti-gay ballot measure campaign. I asked Bruce for permission to re-post it to Calitics and he gave it freely.
The post is (VERY LONG) and divided in two parts:
PART I: Problems with the no-on-8 campaign
and
PART II: Recommendations
The numerous issues inside the No on 8 campaign, and their disappointing mismanagement, has finally bubbled up into the traditional media (we were talking about it a week ago). The SacBee writes about the trouble at the top:
Key staff members - including the campaign manager - were replaced in the final weeks as polls turned dramatically against the No side. Their replacements say they found an effort that was too timid, slow to react, without a radio campaign or a strategy to reach out to African Americans, a group that ultimately supported the measure by more than 2 to 1.
Gay marriage supporters are looking to the courts to overturn the decision. But if another political campaign is waged, said Dennis Mangers, co-chairman of the No on 8 Northern California Committee, "we'll have to do better."
No on 8 campaign manager Steve Smith was shoved aside three weeks before Election Day, after he was slow to counter TV ads in which the measure's supporters claimed that same-sex marriage would be promoted in schools if the measure failed.
And Smith was replaced by a committee - half the consultant class in Sacramento went through the revolving door of that campaign. And they set about to answer unchallenged ads from the Yes campaign and get on radio. But the message remained somewhat timid, and the campaign didn't put much effort into minority outreach or field operations. Late volunteers were told to go out on a street corner and wave signs.
What's remarkable is that the best activism and creativity I've seen from the LGBT community in years has come in the immediate AFTERMATH of this vote. The talent was out there, but wasn't channeled during the campaign. Activists are using wiki-based technology to set up a national day of action on November 15 called The Impact. A comedy troup in LA used the Yes campaign's own words to "advocate" for prohibiting divorce. And Utah lawmakers are turning the tables on the Mormon church by using their alleged tolerance to make major advances for gay rights in the Beehive State:
Leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints have said they do not object to rights for same-sex couples, as long as those rights do not infringe on the integrity of the traditional family.
Now, gay-rights activists and at least five Utah legislators are asking the Church to demonstrate its conviction.
The group Equality Utah says the Church made the invitation, and they're accepting it. "The LDS Church says it does not oppose same-sex couples receiving such rights as hospitalization and medical care, fair housing rights or probate rights," said Mike Thompson, executive director of Equality Utah.
These actions are useful to the future of marriage equality nationwide, and could be the backbone of a smarter, more grassroots movement. Why were they not tapped at all for the No on 8 campaign?
Yesterday, Connecticut granted marriage equality to all its citizens, offering a glimmer of hope. I am convinced that justice will eventually prevail. But you have to treat the campaign like a campaign, and use the assets at your disposal.
There was a lot of excitement in the IAM (Int'l Assoc. of Machinists) union hall this morning in Huntington Beach, where DFA's Jim Dean and a host of local officials testified to the worthiness and strength of Debbie Cook, the Democratic candidate in CA-46, seeking to retire certified nutjob Dana Rohrabacher in Congress. But the best reaction was for the candidate herself, who gave a straight-shooting, no B.S. speech that made clear the stakes in this election.
"Do-Nothing Dana has been in Congress for 20 years and hasn't done a thing," Cook, the mayor of Huntington Beach, said to a pancake breakfast of around 120 volunteers who were ready to precinct walk for her. Referring to a claim from the campaign's latest ad, that Rohrabacher has sponsored a bill to protect the country from an asteroid, she said, "he needs to worry less about asteroids and more about planet Earth."
Cook has really matured as a speaker. She is great on her core issues - energy, the environment, and health care reform - but she's also endorsed the Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq, and really foregrounds smart growth and development issues. State and local governments are so stressed by this financial crisis that it's incumbent upon us to send lawmakers to Washington who understand local concerns. I've heard again and again from local lawmakers in that district - and again today from Katrina Foley, running for re-election to City Council in Costa Mesa - that Rohrabacher is openly dismissive of any federal help for local governments, and refuses to work with his counterparts. At this point that's downright dangerous, creating choke points that will gut basic services and the smart policies we need - in mass transit, for example - to weather this economic downturn and create a 21st-century infrastructure.
You'll notice that Foley, the Costa Mesa city councilwoman, is a Democrat. Gus Ayer, the mayor of Fountain Valley, a Democrat. Debbie Cook, the mayor of Huntington Beach, Democrat. Orange County is changing, and those who ignore this reality and rest on their laurels, like Dana Rohrabacher, will live to regret it. "This is the first time he's had to get off his lazy a$% and campaign," she said. And he was slow to do it. He only spent $38,000 in the third quarter, but once internal Republican polls have shown the race to be a dead heat, he has swamped the district with money. He's got 4 positive ads on the air and a bunch of negative mailers attacking Debbie as an "extreme liberal" on various issues. If it's liberal to advocate for quality and affordable health care for all, as she has done in earning the endorsement of the California Nurses Association, because to ignore the crisis welcomes a "fiscal nightmare" that risks blowing a hole in the federal budget for good, so be it. If it's liberal to recognize that our current carbon-based economy is unsustainable, and that we must encourage policies and practices that move us off fossil fuels, there you are. If it's liberal to understand that smart density with mass transit can improve quality of life, the environment and the economy, well OK then.
The best part of the speech was when Cook talked about all the support she was getting throughout the district, and she mentioned that some people gave her their economic stimulus checks from the government. "To stimulate what? Buying more crap from China?" While a new stimulus is needed, rather than handing out money as a band-aid we need to direct that spending into something useful, something that will create jobs and get the economy moving again. We need to make things again in America.
After the speeches, the volunteers were sent out to walk precincts. CA-46 is a very long and narrow district that hugs the coast from Long Beach and the Palos Verdes Peninsula in L.A. County down to Costa Mesa in Orange County. Putting those blue areas up north into the district to neutralize their power is a big mistake in this wave election. As the Cook campaign finds new voters everywhere, turning out folks in Long Beach is part of the strategy. So I walked part of a precinct in Long Beach and got a very good response. Rohrabacher simply does not have a good reputation among anyone but the wingnuts, and his record on Social Security (pro-privatization), the military (voted against improving veteran's health care) and the environment (he's a global warming denier) is quite extreme. (There's also the dressing up in drag to solve the RFK murder and about a thousand other lunatic stories) I talked to people today who said "We're Republicans, but we don't like Dana." Very few people turned me away.
Cook's volunteer base is the edge in this election. But she also needs some financial help. The campaign estimates that they need $75,000 to meet their budget and get the last few targeted mailers into the field. Debbie is a Blue America candidate and a Better Democrat. You can donate to her on ActBlue. Please do - we have a real chance here. I'm hoping to get Debbie on Calitics Radio next week.
And if you're in the district, consider volunteering by visiting their website.
With roughly 50 days to go, we find ourselves more or less tied in the Presidential election, if the national polls are to be believed.
We have succeeded in motivating our base, and Republicans have, as of today, done the same.
What we are not doing very well is bridging that gap and effectively spreading the discussion to the other side...which is the point of today's conversation.
Where can our conservative friends be found?
What do we need to know about the culture to be found there?
What should we say when we get there?
Your friendly fake consultant has been on a mission...and I have some answers.
We have been busy, these past two weeks...and we deserve a bit of a break before we get right back at it tomorrow...so to that end I have two "mini-stories" for you that will give you a chance to be ahead of the curve, to jump in on something new-and in one case, to help pull a major public prank.
Along the way, I have some "don't miss" video for you to see-including a 1960s classic that is utterly and completely disconnected from politics in every way...but is still the perfect thing for a Monday.
And just to show what a help I can be, I'm even going to leave you with a story idea you can run with that has been almost entirely ignored by the larger media.
This past Thursday evening, nearly 100 Democratic activists got together to kick off the Yolo County Democratic Central Committee's 2008 Campaign - Yolo United! With the primary season over, we are now uniting to make sure that all of our energy is focused on getting Democrats elected to every seat that represents Yolo County.
We were fortunate to have three of Yolo County's delegates to the Democratic Convention with us, all of them ready to join together to make sure that we elect Democrats to every local, state, and Federal position on the ballot.
Don Gibson (Clinton delegate), Martha Beetley (Obama delegate), and Ryan Loney (Obama delegate) will be representing us in Denver in August.
Join me below the fold to learn more about the Yolo United Campaign.
Note: I am a volunteer with the Yolo United Campaign.
Dick Ackerman, man of the people? Mmmmm not so much. Today more than 100 members of the California Partnership, a statewide coalition of community based organizations that fights poverty in California, flooded the offices of Republican leaders in California’s state Assembly and Senate to demand meetings and real solutions to California’s budget through fair tax policy.
Here's a shot of CHP's security officer telling everyone to buzz off.
UPDATE by Brian: Video from current over the flip.
I know that we're going to have a historic new Speaker today, and tomorrow the Governor is going to prevent a revised budget that will set the course for the next few months in the Legislature. But for the moment I want to talk about taco trucks.
Los Angeles County has enacted rules basically banning the taco truck, the rumbling restaurants on wheels serving Mexican food to lunchtime office workers, day laborers and others throughout the city, particularly in East LA. The previous order by the County Board of Supervisors was to force taco trucks to move every hour or face a $60 fine. Most trucks paid it as the cost of doing business. Now the supervisors have upped that fine to as much as $1000 and possibly jail time.
Make no mistake - the taco trucks are being harassed because restaurants don't like the competition. As one truck owner said, "We are hard workers and we pay taxes... we are poor people feeding other poor people." In a rare moment of perceptiveness, Dan Walters noted that this is a "new chapter in an old and dreary story of political interference with the economic aspirations of low-income and/or immigrant Californians." The restaurant lobby is maybe not as powerful in LA as in San Francisco, but it obviously had enough juice to eliminate their competition in this case. Walters folds this into a stupid argument about how all business should be unregulated, but in this case he's right - if you want to offer the opportunity for the new and struggling in our society to experience upward mobility, barriers like this are really restrictive and unnecessary.
Taco trucks are about more than a meal in Los Angeles - they truly are a culture, and one that has migrated onto the internet. The Great Taco Hunt, a blog dedicated to the LA taco scene, has a loyal following. People will drive many miles for a decent taco here, and given the traffic that's a real commitment. So some residents are fighting back. Save Our Taco Trucks has also 6,000 signatories to a petition to rescind the law, which goes into effect on Thursday. Tomorrow, they're holding a final event at Tacos El Galuzo to raise awareness about the ordinance and share one last legal taco.
You can see the stirrings of how politics will be waged in the save-the-taco-trucks movement. There has been a wave of local organizing this year, around the Presidential race, around the budget, around proposed education cuts and park closures, and even around hyper-local issues like the taco truck. This is a new era for California, where technology reduced barriers to communication and allows those with like interests and concerns to find one another. When the Board of Supes takes down this silly ordinance - and they will - they will have seen the power of modern organizing.
What began in Alameda last month is now beginning to spread around the state. As their future is taken from them by a Yacht Party determined to protect wealth and aristocracy through crippling education cuts, California students are beginning to fight back. In rallies that are unfolding across the state, they are speaking out for opportunity, for education, for democracy.
And on April 18 and April 21, they are poised to make the loudest statement yet against the destruction of education in California.
Chanting "Save our schools" and "Shame on you," about 200 teachers, students and parents from across South County lined the narrow sidewalks in front of a Mexican restaurant Thursday afternoon, protesting Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed education cuts as the governor rolled up for a fundraiser.
Sheriff's deputies on foot and motorcycle ordered protesters to stay off the private driveway of El Adobe de Capistrano restaurant in the moments leading up to the governor's 6:15 p.m. arrival. Schwarzenegger entered the downtown San Juan Capistrano eatery through a side entrance and did not address the protesters.
Schwarzenegger's communications director, Matt David, told reporters the governor "wishes he could be outside with these protesters" and that he applauded their efforts.
"This is the last thing he wants to do," said David, explaining that the governor hoped to work with lawmakers to find a different solution to the state's budget crisis. "He understands how important it is to fund education."
Of course, nobody forced Arnold to propose a $4 billion cut to K-12 funding. And he can reverse those cuts in his May revise. But he will get his chance to join these protestors over the next week, as California students are about to unleash an unprecedented wave of activism to stop Arnold and his attacks on public education.
