TESC Community Protests Impending Layoffs, Tuition Hikes, and Shrinking Financial Aid

February 5, 2010
11:30AM – 1:30PM
The Evergreen State College, Red Square
Olympia, WA

At 11:30 AM on Friday, February 5, 2010, hundreds of Evergreen State College students, faculty, and staff members plan to “Walk Out” of their classes and jobs in a protest against Governor Gregoire's proposed budget cuts to higher education, social services, and environmental protection programs. As legislators scramble to solve the $2.6 billion shortfall, TESC faces a $1.6 million cut, bringing the college's 2010-2011 funding to 1999 levels. Statewide, low-income students seeking affordable higher-education may lose many State Need Grants and State Work Study jobs.

Evergreen's Walk-Out, organized locally by the Coalition for a Fair Budget, is part of a statewide response to a call from the Washington Student Association to mobilize against further cuts to higher education and financial aid programs.

The Walk-Out rally, to be held on Red Square, will begin with a performance by the Hungry Emcees, an Evergreen freestyle hiphop group, with food provided by Olympia Food Not Bombs. Following the performance will be speakers including Professor Peter Bohmer, representatives of Seattle's Sisters Organize for Survival and Olympia's POWER (Parents Organizing for Welfare and Economic Rights), and students whose ability to attend the school will be endangered by rising tuition and shrinking financial aid. A march around campus will follow.

A young student from Olympia, Washington was given an english assignment to define what the American identity is. It seemed simple enough to spout the rhetoric of centuries past: "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," throwing in a few "freedoms" here-and-there. Unfortunately, that is not the reality of what is uniquely modern America. The perception of today's America abroad is stained with the wars and poorly operated foreign relationships of days-gone-by. There are starving youth in Africa, and wounded masses on the streets of Iraq and Somalia who see us Americans as their enemies. They are right. We have turned our backs on the wrong-doings, leaving countries torn apart for nothing more than money and oil. We are changing this reality. The American Identity resolves to wash the blood of innocence off our golden name, and bring an ultimate peace to our beautiful world. June 11, 2009 from 7:00pm to 8:00pm The Loft on Cherry 525 Cherry Street SE Olympia, Washington 98501 *We are going to set a strategy for the actions we are prepared to take. I want to make take this group all the way, and really change the world. It's going to take a village to raise this baby up! (Suggested donation of $5 per person to offset the rental of the space.) Visit TheAmericanIdentity.com for more information!

November 5. 2008 from Tarek Milleron on Vimeo.