Modesto Junior College Passes Massive Cuts as Madison's Capitol is Retaken

Adam Golub, student rep on Board.
Voted "yes" to budget cuts.

On Wednesday night, the Board of Trustees of the YCCD system passed unanimously, (not even the 'student representative' voted no), sweeping budget cuts which will lay-off staff, gut departments, and shut down entire programs. At one point a veteran in full military garb, angry that the board had reduced the speaking time to one minute stated, "If you want to get me to shut up, you're going to have to fucking shoot me." About a minute later several security guards and Modesto Police officers escorted the man outside. After close to a 5 hour meeting, the board finally came to their decision and the crowd dispersed. There were enough angry people in the room that night to do anything; but it seemed some could only express that rage when there was someone they were angry at, listening to them.

Around the same time that people we trickling out of the MJC auditorium, hundreds of people were streaming into the Madison capitol in Wisconsin, as Governor Walker had passed the bill that would strip government workers of collective bargaining rights. Forcing their way past police, people again occupied the capital building, as chants of "Occupy!" and "General Strike!" filled the air. By Thursday police had managed to clear the capitol once again, but the battle appears far from over.

The Wisconsin Capitol has been
re-occupied.

For weeks, some of those within the MJC student movement have been calling for "civil discussion" and "informed dissent" against the MJC President's plan to gut the college. In a sad irony, the Board of Trustees thanked those in attendance for keeping most of their attempts at dialog with them "civil," right before they sealed the nail in the coffin for so many students. It's ironic, because it's just want the self-appointed leaders of the student movement asked of people. "Keep it civil, don't make us look stupid." They worried about people passing out pictures of the President with devil horns, and if a student with two kids and three jobs had bothered to read the entire budget proposal. Being civil got people nothing. It did however, give those in power a tool in order to keep us in place and from acting up.

People in Madison.

On all sides we're faced with a sickening paternalism. From the student 'leaders,' we are told and directed to act in a certain way in order to 'not offend' the BOT and the administration; the very people we are fighting. On the other hand, the BOT tells us that if we become angry and act out of turn, we are hurting our chances of making our voices heard. (And, if they get really tired of us, they always have the police on their side. Ah yes, the cops. Students would do well to remember that it was the police who were eager and waiting to drag students away at the request of the BOT while students had their voices silenced. The police work for power; they are not a neutral force out to 'make us safe.') It's important for people to see how these two sides re-enforce each other. Those in power need an oppositional leadership to work with that will make sure that the people they are 'representing' stay in line - that their calls for reform don't become calls for revolt.  

Thus, many frame this battle, as well as the struggle in Madison, in 'democratic' terms. "We've just got to make them listen to us," they tell us. If they're bad, we 'vote' them out. If we bug them enough, they'll listen. And when has this worked? Did it work in stopping the war in Iraq? Did it work in stopping the war in Afghanistan? Did it get Guantanamo closed down? Did it get funding for prisons reduced and more money for education? No, the only way to stop these things is through struggle. Besides, it seems that every time "the people" elect someone to represent their interests, they end up screwing us. Obama has failed to do any of the things that he promised when he came in, and has only extended and continued many of the policies that made people want to vote the Republicans out in the first place. Brown may have been elected Governor because people didn't want Whitman in office, but his attacks on poor and working people are just as brutal.

We can look towards the BOT for a moment of clarity. "We listened to you for four hours," they told the crowd gathered at MJC on Wednesday night. The BOT understands one thing to be very true. There were two groups in the room that night: the students and faculty - and them. The struggle that we are faced with is above all, a class struggle. What happened at MJC that night, as well as the passing of the anti-union bill in Madison is not a travesty of democracy, but democracy working as it always has. A small group of elites deciding how to manage and control the effects of the economy on us. We have to move our struggle from being one simply about being against the budget cuts, to being a movement against capitalism itself. And, we have to move our struggle from being a push to influence those in power to being a struggle between two classes who have completely different interests.

As the Crimethinc collective wrote recently:

There’s another way to say this: capitalism has reached its limits and can only produce one crisis after another—war, recession, bailouts, austerity measures. Politicians are being honest when they say they see no other way, but only because they’re not willing to consider the possibility that the system itself is the problem. It’s up to us to point the way to another social system that could distribute wealth and power more sensibly. 

[T]he [Madison] bill was passed by democratic process, the same way countless other bills are passed. Those who protest against it are essentially proclaiming that representative democracy has failed them: they are asserting that there is more legitimacy in angry people occupying the capitol building than there is in Senators doing what they were elected to do. As anarchists, we wholeheartedly agree–workers deserve access to the resources currently being hoarded by capitalists regardless of what goes on in voting booths or politicians’ offices. The question is whether the movement will adopt this position outright, or remain mired in the contradictions of claiming to pose a democratic opposition to the democratic process. [...T]his is not simply a question of politicians being mean: from the capitalist perspective, these austerity measures really are unavoidable. 

But when people talk about there not being any money in the budget, we're literally talking about our money. We're talking about money that comes into the state through taxes, either sales, property, or otherwise. With the economy in a slump, there's less of it coming in. At the same time, corporations are recording record profits, the government is issuing bailouts to banks, and the rich are getting tax-cuts. So, there isn't a lack of money, we simply have very little of it, and the rich aren't will to share theirs.

Record profits for Wall-Street.

So, let's look at how those above us have been doing, shall we? The rich tell us we have to tighten our belts, while theirs keeps getting looser and looser. The extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, enacted by a Democratic-controlled Congress in December with the approval of the Obama administration, pumps $700 billion over the next ten years into the pockets of the rich. Simply in taking the money that banks received for the bailout, the Wall Street recipients could bail out the states out of their own pockets. Combined profits for all American corporations rocketed upwards in 2010, hitting an annual rate of $1.66 trillion in the third quarter. The 400 richest individuals in the United States dispose of a staggering $1.37 trillion in assets, an average of nearly $3.5 billion apiece. US corporations are currently sitting on $2 trillion in cash, refusing to hire workers despite collecting tax cuts that are supposed to be incentives to do so. Hedge funds assets rose to $1.92 trillion in 2010, the highest ever, up from $1.18 trillion at the beginning of the year, and hedge fund bosses stood to collect roughly $186 billion in personal income. The more we are immiserated, the more they can profit.

Some will claim that the next step for the struggle at MJC, or others like it, it to take the right to Sacramento. There, we are fed the same line as we were for attending the BOT at MJC on Wednesday night. If we get enough people together with the "right" message, and act "civil," they'll listen to us. But those in Sacramento aren't looking to give us any of our money that they've already spent. Nor are they interested in taking money away from the elites. In recognizing this fight as a class struggle, we can begin to take sides. We can begin to get organized. We can begin to see that trying to work within this democracy gets us nothing. It is time for us to start playing by our own rules and start taking what we need, when we need it.