Outside a University of California regents meeting in San Francisco, students protested, a few forcefully, a potential increase in tuition and fees.
In London, the largest student protest in decades occurred, with about 70,000 participants, in opposition to a tripling of fees for universities. All the media attention was given to the marchers who ended up storming the Conservative Party's headquarters, which probably made more of a point than the light-headed reports condemning the attack want to admit. Britain is bracing for more and more such actions.
In Italy, in about 100 different towns and cities, a couple of hundred thousand students and sympathizers marched to protest "cuts in educational funding, the firing of teachers and government's collaboration with businesses in educational reform." Some were teargassed by the police.
In Bulgaria, in Chile, student are beginning to react strongly, spontaneously, and, sometimes, violently to the failed economic policies of their nation's leaders being taken out on them. In other words, if the government wants to extort more cash out of young people, young people are gonna fuck some shit up. If you want change, you don't politely ask for it and hope the powerful will cooperate. You break down the walls of civil discourse and demand change.
Oh, by the way, in California, the UC Board of Regents went ahead yesterday and raised tuition and fees. There were no protesters. American students have a bit more to learn from their counterparts in Europe and elsewhere. "'We're in the middle of midterms,' said UC Berkeley freshman Lesley Haddock, who was pepper-sprayed twice during Wednesday's melee and had her lip split open when she stood too close to an officer waving his baton." Tom Hayden was heard slapping his forehead.
