Saturday, November 21, 2009

Protest

As many of you know, the state of California is virtually bankrupt so there are huge budget cuts everywhere, especially in education and healthcare. A few months back faculty and staff members of the university dealt with big pay cuts and now it turned to the students. The UC Regents (board/ bestuur) who are in charge of the entire UC system (which includes 10 campuses all over California) voted here at the UCLA campus for a 1/3 tuition increase for students. On top of that they will cut back drastically in Teaching Assistance (this is done by graduate students and generates income to pay for their tuition) and staff. All this resulted in a big protest and strike for 3 days. Since the UC regents were having their meeting here at the UCLA campus, students from many other campuses came down to LA. The first day of the strike resulted in arrested students, tear gas attacks and guns were pointed at students. There was an army of police and three helicopters circling over campus non-stop.
Many students will not be able to pursue their education and many think that it will be inevitable that the UC system will at one point turn into a private institution. This means a great lost of education for California and probably the only two campuses who will survive a thing like this will be UCLA and UC Berkley and the other 8 might disappear. Of course it is still a long way from that but this is the concern of many.

police was pointing their guns at students


symbolic death of Californian education system


More and more police to come


they were prepared


and prepared they were


one of the UC Regents, yelled at by students, guarded by police



'I sold my cloths to pay my tuition'


Why those big guns?

4 comments:

  1. Here you see the real face of America: guns against inhabitants. Be careful my son.
    Wim

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  2. Wat een mooie foto's!

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  3. dat ben ik, hanna (ik vind het nogal ingewikkeld om gewoon een berichtje achter te laten)

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  4. Hoi Antal,

    Wat spannend, het lijkt wel een Amerikaanse film. Hopelijk heb je er niet teveel last van.
    Blijf uit de vuurlinie.
    Toi toi toi. Mat en Toos

    ReplyDelete