3/23/2004: Cesar Cruz, who is a poet, an organizer, and a conflict management consultant at a school in Richmond, was fired on March 23rd. He has been helping to organize a 70-mile march from Richmond to Sacramento during April 9th-16th, of elementary students, parents, and faculty to protest the budget cuts affecting the school at which he worked. Cruz is also helping to organize a youth center near a police-occupied high school, and he was part of a campaign to either get rid of a principal or do away with the position so that the community could run the school. Cruz's supporters believe that the firing is to set an example from the administration to others who want to organize for change in the school system.