Tuscaloosa, AL – Alabama bus drivers are on strike. At the University of Alabama, bus drivers, students and supporters picketed First Transit headquarters the morning of March 1. The Crimson Ride Shuttle Drivers, part of ATU Local 1208, decided to strike after First Transit offered the workers crumbs from the table. At last week’s negotiation, First Transit refused to offer a living wage, job security and decent health care benefits. The Alabama bus drivers, who make $9.50 an hour, decided they had had enough.

Students across the country are mobilizing for a nationwide protest against tuition and fee hikes and in support of staff and faculty facing pay cuts and layoffs. Tens of thousands of students and workers across California participated in demonstrations and building takeovers in November. They were protesting the University of California Regents proposal to increase already skyrocketing tuitions. These protests are inspiring students across the country to take action to demand that universities chop from the top and stop balancing their budgets on the backs of students and workers.

In early November I received a copy of a death threat made against student activists at the University of the Atlantic in Barranquilla, Colombia. The threat was sent out in the name of the “United Self-Defense Forces (AUC)-Rearmed”. The AUC is the largest paramilitary organization in Colombia, though it supposedly demobilized due to government efforts. However, a number of organizations, from Arco Iris Corporation to Human Rights Watch, have reported that para-militarism is actually on the increase, often in the form of new or reconstituted organizations.

Organize! Fight Back!

Today education is under attack. Tuition and fee hikes are closing the doors to higher education. Working class and even many middle class college students are being forced out or are taking on crushing debts. Cuts in financial aid and student services and extra fees for undocumented students are limiting access. Furthermore, programs won through past struggles such Ethnic Studies and campus Women’s Centers are coming under attack. We say “Education is a Right, Not a Privilege”!

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement from the Network to Fight for Economic Justice urging support for the Crimson Ride bus drivers.

Tuscaloosa, AL – Over the last month, students and bus drivers have been working together in order to win a living wage for the Crimson Ride shuttle drivers at the University of Alabama. The bus drivers are not state employees, but are contracted by FirstGroup PLC, a multinational corporation notorious for unfair labor practices.

Tuscaloosa, AL – Bus drivers, with the support of students at the University of Alabama (UA), are organizing a union campaign to win a living wage. The bus drivers shuttle students, football fans and others around the UA campus. Student activists are riding the buses to sign up student supporters for the bus drivers. The 62 Crimson Ride Shuttle Bus drivers work for FirstGroup PLC, a huge British multinational corporation. The union drivers and students are exposing the British company’s big ripoff of Alabama workers and taxpayers.

Minneapolis, MN – More than 75 workers, students and community supporters rallied at Morrill Hall, the central administration building here, Jan. 21, to oppose attempts by President Bruininks and senior administrators to balance the budget on the backs of staff and students.

Chicago, IL – Over 200 workers, faculty and students at the University of Illinois-Chicago (UIC) marched here, Jan. 21, to demand full funding for higher education and an end to threatened furloughs and layoffs. The rally was held outside the meeting of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees. It was called by a coalition of unions, including SEIU and the Graduate Employees Organization (GEO), as well UIC Concerned Faculty, an ad hoc group, and student activists.

The Student Commission of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) met over the 2009 winter break to discuss education rights, building a movement against war and occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq, fighting racism on campus and supporting immigrant rights. FRSO students came from as far as California and Florida, with large delegations from the South and Midwest. With a burning desire for social justice, the national cold wave could not stop them

Students from around the country protested the U.S. government’s plan for a 30,000 troop surge into Afghanistan in early December.

Asheville, NC – Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) held a demonstration at the Federal Building here, Dec. 4, to protest the escalation of the Afghanistan War and to demand an immediate end to the occupation. This action was one of many nationally-coordinated events responding to the recently unveiled troop escalation.

San Bruno, CA – On Nov. 18, the California Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) announced that the state was facing budget deficits of $20 billion each year for five more years . Over the past fifteen months, California responded to a total budget deficit of $77 billion with a combination of cuts in spending, increases in taxes on working people, federal economic stimulus monies and accounting tricks.

Milwaukee, WI – Lining the entryway with banners and loud chants Dec. 3, 100 angry people arrived at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) to demand Karl Rove, former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to the Bush administration, return the $25,000 speaker honorarium allocated to him by the university to speak.

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following call for students to join the protests in response to the escalation of the war in Afghanistan.

Los Angeles, CA – Student protests continued across California, Nov. 20, in the wake of the heavily-protested decision of the University of California (UC) regents to raise undergraduate tuition by a staggering 32%.

Los Angeles, CA – Students from all over the state of California gathered at the University of California regents meeting on UCLA campus Nov.19. They were there to protest proposed fee hikes.

On second day of protests, over 1000 students blockade building entrances and form a human chain around the building where the UC regents were meeting.

Chapel Hill, NC – Twenty students picketed the Board of Trustees meeting, Nov. 18, as the trustees voted to increase out-of-state tuition by $1162 for the coming year at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. The protest was called by Students Against Budget Cuts and Tuition Hikes.