REFUND CALIFORNIA ACTIVISTS CONVERGE AT 4 CAMPUSES TO PROTEST UC REGENTS TELECONFERENCE

Refund California activists call for making banks pay and opening the Regents to the 99% at four separate Regents’ teleconference locations – Davis, Merced, San Francisco-Mission Bay, and Los Angeles

After at least 177 arrests of non-violent activists in a month of massive campus protests to make banks pay for education, students and workers will converge on the UC Regents teleconference at four separate locations on November 28th.  The activists will call for the Regents to open the teleconference discussion to all Californians present and to devote the discussion to how to make banks and millionaires pay for public education.

Refund California launched the last month of massive protests on November 9th when more than 10,000 students walked out and marched on banks across the state.  The protesters have called on the financial and corporate elite on the boards of UC, CSU, and Community Colleges sign the Refund California Pledge to support making their banking and millionaire peers pay for public education. Instead of signing the pledge, those board members at both UC AND CSU have had us beaten and pepper sprayed at public protests.  The Refund California Coalition issued a statement today dismissing the phony investigation into themselves that the Regents have proposed since the use of force against protests.

Following the first round of student protests, the Regents canceled its meeting scheduled for November 15-18th rather than face a mobilized student population. The Regents re-scheduled the meeting for November 28th – the first day after the annually scheduled Thanksgiving Day break when many students return home – in order to shut out student protestors.

Financial and corporate elites on the CSU Board of Trustees forcibly expelled hundreds of students and their supporters from the Trustees' meeting on November 16th before voting behind closed doors to increase tuition by 9%, a move that may violate public meeting laws. Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom has since called on the Trustees to hold a revote with “full public comment and members of the media present.”

California’s public education system has been decimated by budget cuts over the last decade, absorbing more than $17 billion in cuts and expecting another $2.5 billion in additional cuts in December. Cuts to public education have been passed onto students and their families. Tuition at the UC has doubled since 2008-2009 and tripled since 2000-2001, jeopardizing the quality, affordability, and accessibility that have long been the hallmark of higher public education in California.