February 15 Organizing Events for the March 4 Day of Action

BUILD MARCH 4TH AND THE MARCH DAYS OF STUDENT ACTION
TO WIN A UC-WIDE DREAM SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM
AND OVERTURN PROP 209!
MAKE UCLA THE CENTER OF THE NEW CIVIL RIGHTS AND
STUDENT MOVEMENT!

• Defend Public Education at All Levels!
• No More Fee Hikes!  No Program, Faculty or Staff Cuts in Higher Education!
• A Massive Increase in Federal Funding for Public Higher Education!
• Defend Public Education from K thru 12! No More Charters!
• Pass the DREAM Act Now!  Create Campus-based DREAM Scholarships to provide financial aid for Undocumented Students!
• Stop the Resegregation of Higher Education!  Increase Under-represented Minority Student Enrollment – Restore Affirmative Action Now!  No More Separate and Unequal! Overturn Prop 209!
• No More Second-Class Treatment of Latina/o Students and Students with and without papers – Make UCLA a Sanctuary Campus!
• Build the New Civil Rights and Student Movement!

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Schedule of Events for Monday, February 15, 2010:

At the March 23rd – 25th UC Regents meeting, UCLA Chancellor Block and Student Regent Jesse Bernal will be raising a proposal for the UC Regents to create an institutional scholarship fund for undocumented students at the UC – A Dream Scholarship Program for the UC. If passed this resolution will not only give AB 540 students access to much needed scholarship money but it will also represent a declaration by this nation’s most prominent and important public university system that it is a center of social progress, prepared to strike a blow against the second class treatment of Latina/o and immigrant students and to reassert its proud tradition of being the leading public institution in this nation. Winning the UC Dream Act will clear the path for passage of a state wide Dream Act and a federal Dream Act.

Winning the Block/Bernal resolution at the March Regents meeting will not be easy. The most virulent racist sentiment in this nation is directed against immigrant communities. The racist Republican Party has focused a great deal of its attention on immigrant bashing and the Democrats have been all too prepared to either placate that sentiment or offer only a weak defense of immigrant rights. This past fall, our actions, culminating in the assertion of mass power of the new independent student movement expressed in our mass militant actions beginning at the November 18th-19th Regent’s meeting and continuing in the occupations and mass pickets to defend the occupations at UC Berkeley and other campuses, convinced both Republicans and Democrats to oppose new fee hikes for the UC and to address the need to protect public higher education in our state. By organizing mass actions starting on March 4th and extending through the month we can convince the UC Regents to pass the resolution for a UC Dream Act at their March meeting.

The sleeping giant awoken by the great mobilizations in the spring of 2006 is poised to re-emerge to win this fight. The city of Los Angeles - starting with the students in every high school, middle school, community college, state university, and UCLA - can be turned into organizing centers to attain the nation’s first public institutional Dream Act. We must seize this moment and see this struggle as a way to advance our new movement and place this nation’s most dynamic young leaders in the forefront of a growing movement capable of defending public education at all levels and breaking the back of the new Jim Crow in the state that has been its organized center.

We must make this spring a time to build a campaign to restore the promise of Brown v. Board of Education by increasing under-represented minority student enrollment and making UCLA more hospitable to under-represented minority students.

OVERTURN PROP 209 and INCREASE UNDER-REPRESENTED MINORITY
STUDENT ADMISSIONS AT UCLA BEGINNING THIS SPRING

This February, the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action Integration& Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) – the nation’s most successful civil rights organization standing in defense of affirmative action – will bring a legal action to strike down Prop 209. The California action will be modeled on an action filed by BAMN against Michigan’s statewide ban on affirmative action (Proposal 2 - 2006). The action will be brought against the UC Regents and the Governor of California. In 2000, after mass protests at the UCs, most importantly at UC Berkeley and UCLA, the UC Regents voted to reverse their policy banning affirmative action in admissions and to oppose California’s statewide ban on affirmative action. Last year, California’s Attorney General (AG) issued an opinion in a state hiring and contracting case challenging the continued use of affirmative action policies by the city of San Francisco stating that the California Attorney General regards Prop 209 as unconstitutional and discriminatory.

BAMN will ask student, community, labor, educational and other associations and public bodies to become plaintiffs in the suit along with the dozens of Latina/o, black, Native American, immigrant - documented and undocumented, high school, middle school and college and university students to join onto the suit as plaintiffs, and we will ask the UC Regents to pass a resolution consistent with their own prior position and the AG’s position stating that Prop 209 is unconstitutional, discriminatory, and impossible to enforce without denying tens of thousands of brilliant young California Latina/o, black and Native American students equal opportunity and access to our flagship public university campuses.

Such a declaration by the UC Regents would immeasurably advance our struggle to stop the resegregation of higher education, to increase the number of under-represented minority students on our campuses and to make our university a more welcoming environment, and it would strike a real blow against the whole racist California project of defending white privilege and making our public universities more elite, less egalitarian and increasingly more private. The right wing has used California as the launching pad for their campaign to further racism and reaction throughout the nation. Now our new movement gives us the chance to lead a national movement for civil rights, for immigrant rights, for public education and for an equal, egalitarian and just America from this same soil. It is time for this majority minority state to make a new America in our image.

Connecting these two initiatives, the creation of a UC Dream Act and the Overturning of Prop 209, is the best way to first link the struggles of our state’s Latina/o, black and immigrant communities to each other and to also link our campus fight to defend public education to the communities which give us the power to win.

We must use March 4th to launch a series of actions to win a UC Dream Scholarship in the tradition of our actions on November 18th and 19th. Participate in the BAMN sponsored press conference to be held at UCLA at noon on February 15th to announce the filing of the legal challenge to Prop 209. More than 25 LA high school students who have applied to UCLA and are plaintiffs in the suit will speak at the press conference. An aim of our movement should be to see that these students and others who are qualified to attend UCLA from across the state gain admission this spring.  The press conference will include statements by BAMN National Chair Shanta Driver and other organizations and students who support overturning Prop 209. A campus teach-in on affirmative action will follow the press conference and end in an open forum/strategy session on how we organize the state to win the UC Dream Act at the March Regents meeting, to build the struggle to increase under-represented minority student enrollment in the entering class of the fall of 2010 and to Overturn Prop 209 this year.

PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD.

Also, if you would like your organization to endorse the day of events or would like to participate as an individual or have questions please contacts us asap at california@bamn.com or 323-317-7675