SFSU Students Rally to "Save the CSU"

I’ve been to a number of protests in my day, and frankly it makes me pretty sad to see that nothing new and creative at Wednesday’s walkout.

I was hopping that I may see some hard numbers that tell me from where the protest organizers want to get the money to “save the CSUs”. Instead of yelling the same old chants that have been recycled for who knows how many generations, and uninformative slogans, I was hoping for maybe some facts and figures on the budget. Hey hey, ho ho, these boring chants have got to go…

Worst of all, what kind of a protest is it when after taking over 19th and Holloway the protest organizers do the job of the police? The police did not even give the order to disperse before these organizers threatened the crowd with arrest and told everyone to get out of the street. I asked one of the officers present if we had to disperse and he replied that no order was given, so not really, but it looks like people are dispersing on their own. What makes the protest organizers think they know what the crowd wants? Looking at how reluctant the crowd was to leave the intersection, it seems the only people afraid of being arrested were the organizers. Sadly is seems they do not know the difference between organizing a protest, and controlling a protest.

"masses" of students? "chanting slogans" "thousands took part" Please. First of all, the masses chanting slogans sounds like someone has read too many slogans in Mao's little red book. Thousands did not take part, maybe 800 did. There were no more than a couple of hundred in the street, and that was supposed to do what? Annoy drivers? Like anyone cares? Most people ignored this little party as they were in class getting on with their educations rather than marching around campus yelling and banging on drums. This is NOT the way to bring attention to your issues. Frankly, it's old and tired.

Mad props to the organizers who put this walkout together and all the folks who participated. I think the two previous posters here have some good critique, although a bit annoying to hear it when they weren't doing any of the organizer.

Y'all are right about blocking 19th Ave. as not necessarily the wisest action for the day, and I actually saw how one local news channel decided to show an angry driver to represent what the action did. That sux, but hey, at least students felt some bit of empowerment being able to make some noise. I think creativity will come out of this, so long as people keep organizing and recognize there is a need for it.

From my point of view, as an outsider who knows some of the orgnaizers but didn't organize for this event, they got a nucleus together and have had little time to get this show rolling. So this action went far, I can only hope it does go beyond boring chants and actually picks up a focus.

At the beginning of the semester there were a handful of people who said "protest the budget cuts at the capitol level, against the governor's policy". Sad it took a while for organizers on campus to realize it, but at least it's happening now.

Down with the budget cuts!

Very interesting reading indeed...