UC Faculty Join "99 Mile March" to Sacramento
Approximately two dozen UC Berkeley faculty will join the "99 Mile March for Education and Social Justice" on Friday, March 2nd. The march departs Oakland on Thursday, March 1st, and will arrive in Sacramento on Monday March 5th for a rally on behalf of public education at the State Capitol Building.
UC Berkeley faculty will join the march on Friday afternoon to walk the stretch from Richmond to Vallejo. "We are marching to draw attention to the plight of public education in California and to implore Californians to re-invest in it," said Berkeley Faculty Association Co-Chair and Professor of Political Science Wendy Brown. "For all its resources, innovation and wealth, California has sunk to nearly the bottom of the nation in per student spending, and our public higher education system, once the envy of the world, is in real peril."
On Monday, March 5th, UC faculty from several northern California campuses will join students, parents, workers, teachers and administrators from all sectors of California public education for a rally at the Capitol Building in Sacramento. According to Richard Walker, Professor of Geography and Co-Chair of the Berkeley Faculty Association, "we are going to the Capitol because re-funding public education is urgent, not only for reasons of equal opportunity and human development but because universal access to high quality education reduces the need for prisons, policing, welfare, and a range of other expensive social services."
Brown agreed, "first-rate and widely accessible public education was the engine of this state for half a century, cutting that engine now is pure folly."
The March 1st-5th "Days of Action on Behalf of Public Education" are endorsed by the Council of UC Faculty Associations (CUCFA), the umbrella body for Faculty Associations on individual UC campuses.