California Students Confront Schwarzenegger's Fascist Austerity

Police were deployed on Wednesday at UCLA to intimidate and arrest students protesting a decision on the part of the finance committee of the Board of Regents to increase student tuition. A few hundred students held a rally at the UCLA hall where the finance committee met, and demonstrations were also held at several other University of California campuses across the state. Fourteen arrests were made at the meeting, including 12 students. LaRouche Youth Movement organizers at the scene reported that the police used tazer guns on some of the students.

Nine LaRouche Youth Movement organizers attended the rally, where they displayed the flag of the mass strike movement, the poster of Obama with a moustache, distributed "Down with the British Empire" pamphlets, and displayed signs with LaRouche's triple curve and LaRouche's call for bankruptcy reorganization now.

While California Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger was visiting the grave of his Nazi father in Austria, shortly after advocating a fascist climate-change policy in Milan, Italy, the finance committee of the University of California Board of Regents on Wed. approved a two-step student fee increase that would raise undergraduate education costs more than $2,500, or 32%, by next fall. The increase was approved by a vote of 10 to 1, with only student Regent Jesse Bernal voting no.

As a result, the annual cost of education at the 10-campus system, not including campus-based fees, would rise to $10,302, about triple the UC costs of a decade ago. Room, board and books often add an additional $16,000. Even higher increases for students in professional schools, such as law and medicine, are expected to be approved. Similar increases were implemented by the California State University system earlier this year.

The tuition increase was prompted by the fact that Schwarzenegger cut $813 million—20 percent—from the UC budget this year, leading to a hiring freeze, furloughs, and layoffs, even before the tuition increase.

The finance committees action was endorsed by the full board today as hundreds of students marched and chanted outside the meeting. After the vote, students rushed the parking decks and staged a sit-in to block officials from leaving. Students were enraged and were screaming at the officials. Campus police and California Highway Patrol officers were nearby, clad in riot gear.

Now the state will be facing even more draconian cuts as it was announced that the state is once again facing a $21 billion deficit.

In another intervention, LYM members intervened at an event attended by 250 students at Mount San Antonio Community College in Pomona, addressed by State Controller John Chiang, who was trying to explain to the students why cuts were being made in education. A LYM organizer intervened, identifying the failure of the Obama policy and the necessity of the LaRouche Plan for financial bankruptcy reorganization and the reimposition of Glass-Steagall. Chiang defended the Obama policy as not a failure. It just needed to be "messaged" more clearly. He also demonstrated his own ignorance by claiming that Glass-Steagall was one of the causes of the problem. After Chiang's pathetic performance, the LYM distributed copies of the LaRouche Plan to the students.