picture of some of the signs students at Santa Monica College in Los Angeles made for their campout at the college on April 30th after facing administrative and police harrassment
Community colleges across California are facing the wrath of privatization efforts by reactionary forces, most notably for-profit colleges and their surrogates, the corporate media and coin-operated politicians. Both democrats and republicans have been and are continuing to use shock doctrine crisis management to privatize the community college campuses.
One of the recent salvos in the battle in California came with the introduction of legislation, AB515, by Democrat Assembly Member, Julia Brownley, on February 15, 2011. The bill would have set up a ‘corporation’ within the community colleges that could charge 400 times the fees for traditional classes. This, the
access hierarchy, was an attempt by liberals to govern in face of privatization. The bill was soundly defeated (
http://www.aroundthecapitol.com/Bills/AB_515/20112012/).
But the forces of privatization will not stop with one defeat. Both corporate
