UC Santa Cruz Students Join Occupy Movement

 

Over 300 students at the University of California, Santa Cruz joined various local workers' union members and Occupy Santa Cruz protesters for "Occupy Education," a protest against corporate greed and administrative corruption in education. Protesters gathered at noon for a rally on the UC campus before taking to the streets. The group marched down Bay and Mission St. blocking off many major streets in the downtown Santa Cruz area.

By 4:00pm protesters had shutdown Front Street, Pacific Avenue and Center Street to traffic. The group made its way to the US Post Office downtown where another rally was held. Hundreds of UC students banned together, with various union leaders, K-12 teachers, and other community members to voice their displeasure with the latest proposed tuition hikes. The UC regents are meeting to vote on a tuition increase of 16% each year for the next four years. The resulting price for one year's tuition would be about $21,800. Occupy Education was constructed in the same vein as other "Occupy" protests around the world.

"The University of California Regents is a minuscule cabal of members of the top 1% wealthiest people in the country, hellbent on sabotaging our futures for the sake of profit for both themselves and the businesses to which they are enthralled," said Occupy Education, UCSC organizer Cory Knudson. "At the same time, the very political system we are told to regard as fair and just is complicit with this 1%-er profiteering and serves to sustain our current and future poverty, powerlessness and dejection."

The rally at the post office ended in a march to the Wells Fargo bank in downtown Santa Cruz. Workers were still inside the bank when protesters stretched caution tape around the bank before encircling it. The group then began to chant their protests of Wells Fargo's student loan practices, as well as their alleged investments in the private prison industry.

As of 6:00 pm, the protests had remained peaceful and no one was arrested.

**Quotations from http://www.ksbw.com/**

 

Article originally posted at http://www.binghamtonbridge.org/?q=node/2654