Refund CA talking points presented at 11/28/11 Regents meeting public comments period

Message for the day -- Open up the Regents to the 99%, Make Banks Pay, No Sham Investigation of the Regents Crackdown on Our Movement to Make Them Pay. 

1. UC students, staff, faculty and community members call on the Regents to support refunding California, including California’s higher education system.  The Regents must sign the Refund CA pledge individually and collectively.  Remember the loyalty oath that the Regents required all UC employees to sign?  We demand that signing this pledge be a requirement for serving as a UC Regent.  Our education leaders must support the public education system as a PUBLIC education system; they should not be collaborating to privatize that system.  UC leaders must oppose the hostile takeover of our public education system by private interests--which would not be possible if that system were still adequately funded.  By virtue of their positions in the private sector, the political world, and the University, the Regents have enormous power to influence the public discussion about increasing revenue for education and public services.  We demand that they fulfill that responsibility now.  We believe this is the only thing the Regents should be talking about at this meeting.  We insist that this meeting be opened up to discussion among all the members of the University community.

2. The Refund CA pledge:

http://www.makebankspaycalifornia.com/the_refund_california_pledge

To the people of California,

As an education leader, I pledge to do everything in my power to make Wall Street corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share for essential services and affordable, equitable public education from pre-K through post doctoral.  I pledge to support:

• Increasing income taxes on California's wealthiest.
• Closing Proposition 13’s corporate property tax loophole.
• Implementing a federal sales tax on Wall Street financial transactions.
• Reducing underwater mortgage debt to Wall Street to improve the economy.
• Reversing tuition increases, layoffs, and cuts to public education and essential services – ensuring good jobs that provide healthcare and a dignified retirement.

3.  In convening his commission, President Yudof is putting the foxes in charge of guarding the henhouse.  The three commission members are William Bratton, former police chief in both Los Angeles and New York City and current chair of Kroll Consulting Company;  Charles Robinson, the Regents' own general counsel and vice president for legal affairs; and last but not least, Christopher Edley, Dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law, and private consultant to Yudof and the Regents on privatization of UC. Two of the three members of this panel designed and oversaw implementation of the policies involved in suppressing protests; all are privately contracted to represent and serve the Regents, not the university community and not the public of California. 

The Refund CA Coalition views this commission, and UCOP’s framing of the issue as one of police protocol, as PR rather than serious, independent inquiry, and as part of a broader effort to obscure and dismiss the critical concerns of our movement.  We join Assembly Speaker John Perez in demanding a truly independent investigation into these incidents, which in our view do not simply represent bureaucratic error and failure of protocol but deliberate violations of protestors' civil rights.