Reistance to college privatization and the decimation of City College of San Francisco: Critically question power and occupy your mind

Throughout our political  engagements these days, the most basic democratic principles of an informed and questioning electorate are being marginalized through the sometimes bullying tactics of those who even challenge one’s patriotism or loyalty for not just going along with the one party, the one institution, the one union, the one president, the one leader, etc.

When did it arrive at as acceptable to no longer question those people we put in their offices to serve us? Questioning and dissent have now become “antagonistic”? And that Orwellian description comes out of the mouth of a college professor in the year 2013? 1984 was published in 1949. Seriously, would you like to take that one back?

We don’t even have to tax our own brains cells much to just look back at what has transpired right here at City College this past year of a Board of Trustees that criminally cut off the voice of the people who elected them and then locked stepped to an organization that bullied them into submission of not questioning their dictates. All of which led to the most undemocratic takeover of our Commons by a compliant mayor and a former Lumina alumnus, Chancellor Brice Harris, through the firing of the same body after they had used them as a democratic front so that they could eviscerate CCSF “legally”.

Hell, wouldn’t a little “antagonism” have gone a long way if exercised by any of those supine trustees we elected? To this day, the only “antagonistic” trustee, and proudly so, was our Shanell Williams, the Student Trustee, the People’s Trustee.

That was the true Profile in Courage. That was the voice that fought back and demanded accountability. The lone voice. There is not a single man or woman on that board who could measure up to Shanell Williams who represented us. To the day I die that woman will always make me proud having observed at City College so many mediocre, go along to get along, collegial cop outs who still pretend that by ducking their heads all will be fine tomorrow.

And this question of “communication” or the lack thereof from the union. From the day I first showed up in August of 2012 with my Occupy comrades, Codepink, the Grey Panthers, with our banners and flyers informing the incoming students, the vast majority of them completely oblivious of what was coming down upon them and their futures, I started hearing complaints of “Where was the union?”

As the months went on and the Coalition to Save CCSF was born through the initiative of Bob Price and Rick Baum, the complaint continued to repeat itself, “where was the union and why were they so silent?”

Of course, if you recall those of us who stepped out of the silent majority of faculty and started arousing the college and the community to the need for radical action, from that very same silent majority, as is always the case of those whose consciences trouble them, we were marginalized as the trouble making, rowdy rabble.

And ironically among those voices who, on several occasions at Coalition meetings, angrily and “antagonistically” questioned the elected representative of their union, were two women who today have apparently had an epiphany these last couple of months, one of them being Wendy Kaufmyn.

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” Frederick Douglas

So let’s continue to demand accountability from whomever we elect to serve us. Have no illusions. Just because you think they represent you, doesn’t mean behind closed doors that they are in fact caring about YOU and YOUR INTERESTS. Remember, the Board of Trustees sold us down the river…and look where they’re at.

That is the civic responsibility we all have___to challenge our elected representatives, to be ever vigilant in assuring that our Democracy and the Commons will not be stolen from us.