I call it demanding your rights
is a librarian at Cañada College in Redwood City, Calif., who helped organize for the March 4 Day of Action to defend public education and contributed to the SocialistWorker.org roundtable on "Why we're protesting on March 4."
The day after the protests, right-wing commentator Peter Robinson wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal--titled "The Golden State's Me Generation"--denouncing the demonstrators for only caring about themselves. Front and center in Robinson's rant was a quote from Patterson's contribution. Here, he shares his response to the Journal.
WHEN I wrote a contribution about the March 4 protests for SocialistWorker.org a couple of weeks ago (see "Why we're protesting, part two"), I didn't expect to be quoted in the Wall Street Journal by Peter Robinson, a Hoover Institution fellow.
The response below is what I've sent to the WSJ's Letters to the Editor section:
Dear Editors:
I'd like to respond to Mr. Peter Robinson's characterization of the March 4th protests as "the crassest self-pleading." Mr. Robinson's view of reality from Stanford's Hoover Tower is lacking in both empathy and in sense.
At our community college not far from Stanford, we have numerous students who are working two jobs while taking demanding classes--but now budget cuts are causing sections of these classes to be cancelled. We have a student who lives with her parents and six siblings in a one-bedroom apartment in East Palo Alto--but now colleges and universities are scrambling to keep libraries open for study. We have a student who sells his aunt's flan to purchase his textbooks--but now EOP&S [Extended Opportunity Program and Services], the program that helps low-income students, has had its budget slashed.
The protests of March 4 were, indeed, a chance for students to plead for themselves--to plead for a decent education. Mr. Robinson calls this self-pleading; I call it standing up for your rights. He calls it crass; I call it resolute.
While he sits in the Hoover Institution on a campus replete with resources, students attending publicly funded schools lack the basics. An established, middle-class and well-connected scholar in wealthy Palo Alto is suggesting that budding scholars from impoverished East Palo Alto, who lack money and connections, are demonstrating "entitlement mentality and self-absorption," when all they demand is a decently funded education--now that's crass!
Cordially,
David Patterson
Librarian
Cañada College Library
