[lbo-talk] March 4

[Chuck Grimes]

At UC Berkeley, about 150 people blocked Sather Gate, the main
pedestrian entrance to campus, for a while, although they allowed
disabled students through. Later, a crowd of about 1,000 marched through
city streets to the UC system headquarters in Oakland, about six miles
away. A group climbed onto the freeway, leading to the evening arrests.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-protests5-2010mar05,0,5173927.story

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This sounds about right. I went up the street about one and there was
some traffic stopped briefly and that was about it. No cops, no noise,
basically nada. I saw some people with picket signs hiking back to their
apartments. That's too bad. Basically the day was a dud here. 

Meanwhile the federal aid to education was announced. California and
Michigan were not on the award list. In the California case hopefully
that `loss' represents the teachers unions (and/or school districts)
refusal to agree to teacher evaluation and retention based on student
test scores. Anyway, here is an interview with Diane Ravitch on the
whole move to privatize public education:

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/3/5/protests

There is a particular detail in this interview that was pretty mind
blowing. The Bill Gates foundation gave out grant money to state
agencies to pay for private consultants to write and craft their federal
grant proposals.

CG