What the Times article doesn’t mention is that Occupy Wall Street was one of the 90 coalition groups that helped make this protest happen. That’s how I found out about it, and was able to attend it, because I saw it on the Occupy Los Angeles tumblr page.
It was a great protest. Glad to see coalitions forming around such an important issue.
I became involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement for the expressed reason that it was the first time I saw any large group of people in the U.S. make the connection between degradation of the environment and the corruptive effect big money has on the political process. ’Big money’ in particular from the oil and gas industry.
We saw that Wall Street can get away with anything they want by corrupting the political process. This point is only underscored by the lack of prosecutions of those responsible for the crimes on Wall Street to this day. By fully understanding how corruptive the effects of big money are on the U.S. political and justice system, one has a better understanding for why the U.S. has failed to address climate change, or ratify the Kyoto Protocol. It’s bad for Big Oil.
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LA Times: L.A. protesters join campaign against Keystone oil pipeline:
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Hundreds of protesters marched on Los Angeles City Hall on Sunday as part of a nationwide demonstration designed to pressure President Obama into rejecting a Canadian pipeline that would bring oil into the United States.
The local demonstration — led by environmentalist and actor Ed Begley Jr., Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) and L.A. Councilman Jose Huizar — was focused on rejecting TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline as a first step in taking action on climate change.
“We’ve seen climate change coming for a long time, but now it’s here, and it’s getting worse faster and causing greater harm than we ever expected,” Waxman said. “There is simply no more important fight for the future of our children and grandchildren.”
A coalition of 90 groups, led by Tar Sands Action Southern California and the Sierra Club, organized the march to coincide with a larger group of demonstrators who converged on the White House.
“You cannot occupy the White House, but you can surround it,” said Bill McKibben, an environmental writer who founded 350.org, whose name alludes to keeping greenhouse gases at less than 350 parts per million. That’s the level scientists believe to be a dangerous tipping point for the planet.
McKibben and hundreds of others have been arrested in protesting the pipeline, which would carry what he considers some of the “dirtiest oil on the planet.” The oil from Alberta, Canada’s tar sand deposits is bitumen, which is heavier, more viscous and contains more impurities, and thus takes more energy to extract and process.
The demonstrations and arrests are beginning to emerge as the largest green civil disobedience campaign in a generation. The target, for the moment, is the proposed construction of the 1,600-mile Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta to U.S. refineries that ring the Gulf of Mexico.
Locally, clean energy supporters also rallied behind a recent initiative by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to wean itself from two out-of-state coal plants that now supply nearly 40% of the city’s electricity.
“That will help reduce our city’s climate change pollution footprint,” said Aura Vasquez of the Sierra Club. “But the time has come for the federal government to take strong action too, before it’s too late and global warming spirals out of control.”
March 1st: National Day of Action on Education
(Photo taken by me at UCSD 3/1/12)
March 1st was a national day of action to reclaim higher education for the 99%.
The LA times writes:
- Rallies at college campuses throughout the state are expected to draw thousands of students and faculty Thursday, part of a national day of action denouncing cuts in higher education.
- Marches, teach-ins and protests against tuition increases, class cuts and other issues were scheduled at Cal State campuses in San Bernardino, Los Angeles, Long Beach, Dominguez Hills and Fullerton and at UCLA and other University of California campuses. Most are allied with the Occupy movement.
- Elsewhere, students in Boston plan to rally at Dewey Square and hundreds in New York City are expected to gather at the Department of Education in Manhattan and march to Ft. Green Park in Brooklyn for a rally.
- Protests are also scheduled at campuses in Minnesota, Florida, Illinois and Washington state.
- On Monday, thousands of students and faculty are expected to descend on California’s state Capitol for a daylong Occupy Education rally.
The O.B. Rag published UCSD’s Public Education Coalition’s statement on today’s action:
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The Statement from UCSD’s Public Education Coalition:
Students, instructors and staff you have a stake in the future of the UC. The public nature of the UC is under threat, but on March 1st we are coming together to defend it.
Students, mandatory fees set by the regents have more than doubled since 2001 adjusted for inflation.[1] At the same time, UCSD’s average debt at graduation increased 20%.[2] In 2009, 48% of UCSD students graduated with debt at an average of $18,757.[3] Since 1990 expenditure per student has fallen over 19%.[4] At the same time state support per student fell 60% while tuition support more than tripled.[5] The UC shifted from public funding toward personal, private funding. This shift was not and is not inevitable. Students: the ability of many of your qualified colleagues to attend a UC is threatened by this shift,[6] but you can help.
Instructors, between 1995 and 2010, while positions for teaching in the UC system increased 48%, positions in senior management increased 182%.[7] In 2007, a retired UC Berkeley professor estimated the excess growth in senior management to cost the UC $603 million annually.[8] As instructors retire they are not replaced,[9] and some of your colleagues at UCSD were recently recruited to a private institution.[10] The UC is moving from academic to entrepreneur. This movement is not inevitable. Instructors: the priority for the UC to attract, retain and support your colleagues has been misplaced, but you can help.
Staff, starting in 1999 the UC regents began to funnel pension fund money into riskier investments. Since 2004 billions of dollars have been invested through private investment firms which are non-transparent, lightly regulated, highly risky, and which have charged the UC tens of millions of dollars so far.[11] The UC’s pension and investment portfolios lost $23 billion in the 2008 financial crisis, some of which were made against the advice of a former treasurer[12] and in full awareness of the risk.[13] The UC is now asking for workers to pay into the pension system as they cut benefits to absorb its losses.[14] The UC privatized and jeopardized its investments. This was not and is not inevitable Staff: The risks taken by the regents promise to harm you, your families, and your colleagues, but you can help.
Students, instructors, staff and Californians: we have been disenfranchised by a public system in which we all hold a legitimate stake. There are 26 regents. Only four are democratically elected.[15] Only one is a student, chosen by the other regents.[16] Not one is a tenure-track faculty member, even though this is explicitly provided for in the state constitution.[17] Neither non-ladder faculty nor general staff have representatives on the board.
Students, instructors, staff and Californians: we have inherited a prosperous state whose government is fiscally self-destructive. Proposition 13 requires a two-thirds vote to raise taxes, but lets a simple 50 percent majority lower taxes and introduce loopholes.[18] Prop 13 sets a 1% cap on corporate property tax-rate, whose revenues are allocated by the state government rather than local municipal governing bodies.[19] This legislation, among other things,[20] has resulted in almost yearly budget impasses.[21]
Since 2004, this governmental malfunction has been taken out on the UC and CSU systems. That year the governor and both university presidents signed the Compact of Higher Education.[22] That document planned to increase state funding barely above inflation,[23] while asking the UC and CSU to “develop their annual budget plans based on the assumption that student fees will increase by […] 10 percent per year on average over the [following] three-year period [2004 to 2007].”[24] The cost of public higher education was deliberately shifted onto the backs of students, undermining the UCs “fundamental missions [of] teaching, research and public service.”[25]
March 1st is just one day of action in a growing movement, but there are any number of ways to support it.
Students, instructors and staff: when you walk out, teach out, march out, or speak out starting at 11:30 am on March 1st you are demonstrating your commitment to the importance of public education in an egalitarian society; you are demanding your role in shared governance of a public institution; and you are defending future generations who will inherit the political, economic, social and educational systems we create for ourselves.
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Footnotes:
[1] Increasing by a factor of 2.55, or 154% both adjusted for inflation. Primary: www.ucop.edu/budget/fees/documents/history_fees.pdf
Analysis: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AqeJDAEDSjt-dFNHb0ZTWU9kenBlUTBaT2JnOGJpb0E&output=html
[2] Adjusted for inflation. Primary: http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/accountability/index/3.7
Analysis: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AqeJDAEDSjt-dGVFOGhRRFcwSkUxRENLZVFmMVhwdUE&output=html
[3] ibid.
[4] budget.universityofcalifornia.edu/files/2011/11/2012-13_budget.pdf
[5] ibid.
[6] The portion of middle class students enrolled in the UC has fallen from 50% to 41% between 1999 and 2009, a period of intense increase in tuition.
http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/accountability/index/3.5.3
[7] Primary: http://www.ucop.edu/ucophome/uwnews/stat/
Analysis: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AqeJDAEDSjt-dHpOOHFJRkFqX2lHNVRMUkJjRGxhX2c&output=html
[8] http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~schwrtz/Part_13.html
[9] http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2011/aug/14/local-colleges-universities-face-budget-impacts/
[10] In the summer of 2011, three UCSD professors were recruited to a private university in Texas http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/29/local/la-me-brain-drain-20110629
[11] Part Two of the “Investor’s Club” report http://spot.us/pitches/337-investors-club-how-the-uc-regents-spin-public-funds-into-private-profit/story
[12] http://www.eastbayexpress.com/gyrobase/parskys-party/Content?oid=1083283&showFullText=true
[13] http://changinguniversities.blogspot.com/2009/11/how-regents-sold-university-down-river.html
[14] http://www-cbo.ucsd.edu/PDF/febj.pdf
http://www.nbclosangeles.com/blogs/prop-zero/The-Horror-Horror-of-UC-Pension-Reform-102074043.html
[15] http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/regents/about.html
[16] http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/regents/about.html
[17] Article 9 §9 (c) http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/.const/.article_9
[18] Shrag, Peter. Paradise Lost: California’s Experience, America’s Future. London: University of California Press, 1999. p. 156
[19] http://www.lao.ca.gov/reports/2011/calfacts/calfacts_010511.aspx#zzee_link_2_1294170707
[20] Others include the financially corrupted ballot initiative process and legislator term limits which push away the best staff members to lobbying firms.
Cahn, Alan Mathew, H. Eric Shockman, and David M. Shafie. Rethinking California. New York: Longman Press, 2010.
[21]http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/02/us/politics/02budget.html
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/02/15/MNSD15UNQH.DTL
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/03/us/03calif.html
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/07/06/BAG0C7H3N11.DTL
[22] “Higher Education Compact Measures”, Introduction www.ucop.edu/budget/documents/compact2004_05.pdf
[23] To increase funding 3% to 4% when the authors should have expected inflation as high as 3.19% (average annual inflation in California between 1999 and 2005) www.dof.ca.gov/html/fs_data/latestecondata/documents/BBFYCPI.XLS
[24] Italics added. www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/compact/compact.pdf
[25] http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/aboutuc/mission.html
