Marv writes:
"What you're overlooking, however, is these students a) were not themselves workers, strategically located in factories, offices, mines, and ports with the potential power to shut down parts or all of the economy and b) were transient, lacking any material incentive to organize enduring institutions in their self-interest on campus, defining their self-interest instead as securing well-paid employment on graduation."
The story is more complicated than that: the civil rights movement, in which many students participated, was a movement to broaden the working class to include women, people of color, and the disabled. In essence it was a movement to counter the invidious divisions within the working class, which barred minorities from better paid jobs. This movement was brilliantly subverted by the ruling class into a "me too" quota-based movement which added more divisions: the privileged, the marginally privileged, and the ignored working class.
I agree with Alan that "working class" is not just about how much money you make; the fact that some members of the working class make six figure salaries does not obviate the fact that this thin margin of privilege does not give them one iota of political power.
The fact that I have a savings account and a retirement account does not make me a capitalist.
Joanna