In the culmination of a week of protests against proposed budget cuts to education, protesters gathered in the state capitol building in Sacramento on May 9th. Demonstrators chanted slogans such as "They say cut back, we say fight back." Students lead the way and two hundred others joined in, including teachers and community leaders. Students had come from up and down the state, including a large contingent from UC Santa Cruz. Following the chanting, sixty-five protesters committed nonviolent civil disobedience by sitting down and refusing to leave the Rotunda after the Capitol closed to the public for the day. All sixty-five were arrested. Those arrested were held overnight, and were kept with their hands handcuffed behind their backs for the first six hours of their detainment. Only three of those arrested were charged with resisting arrest, while the rest were charged with misdemeanor trespass.

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