march 4: day of action
llast thursday (march 4th 2010) i participated in a national march and protest against cuts in education funding in downtown LA and was pretty energized to meet many of my union brothers there from all walks of education (K-12 and higher ed, and the CTA, UTLA, SEASU…
i’m not sure what the final turnout was (i suppose around 10,000), but was pleasantly surprised how pleasant and civil a rally of teachers could be. talking to people during the march i think we all were more worried about how the cuts were affecting our ability to teach. it defiantly wasn’t a crowd of disgruntled workers yelling about money. for the time being we all have really great health plans (compared to most private sector workers) and still have a retirement to look forward to. i suppose if things get worse these will be cut also and then i’d figure that there will be 100,000 teachers at the next march.
the music department is currently having its own financial problems and the tenured faculty have decided to cut the classical guitar program which is having some unexpected results. from what i hear once the cutting process started and the knives came out (which for now the classical guitar program lost) then it became pretty easy to call into many other parts of our department. because i’m adjunct faculty i have no say on the matter but i do know that the classical guitar program at CSUF has been the main source of many of the new music musicians i have met and performed with over the last 20 years (and if you include lloyd rodgers’s group it’s the last 40) i assume when the program is phased out USC will be the only real alternative effectively making it impossible for a serious guitarist to pursue an affordable undergraduate education in southern california.
of course with the financial crisis we are in now it all could be akin to rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic.
