Although the crowd wasn’t initially too impressive, students clad in Occupy Long Beach shirts and Guy Fawkes bandanas began making their way through the campus as May Day took hold of CSULB. The student organizations present for the event were Students for Quality Education (SQE), College Democrats, and Political Science Student Association (PSSA) — and they marched, biked, and passed out fliers.
Chants rung loud, ranging from attempts at inspiration — “Into the streets, out of your seats!” — to more direct proclamations for change –“Money for jobs and education, not for wars and incarceration!”
Not heeding the warnings of Dean of Students, Jeff Klaus, the students went into buildings, opened classroom doors, blared bullhorns, and shouted a quick chant before marching onto their next location. Klaus stated, “Students have a right to rally and demonstrate. My job is simply to ensure they do it safely.” Although they are “free to express themselves, it is not appropriate to disrupt classroom time. We want them to achieve their purpose, but that does not negatively have to impact the education of others.” He says that CSULB is successful in it’s ability to work with students and ensure that they are able to voice their thoughts.
Jason James, graduate student in Economics and a heavily involved member of Occupy Long Beach, found that the rallying “was effective at getting the message out, unfortunately lots of students have inertia and need something to trigger them out of their comfort zone.” As for being risky and breaking rules, he says that the march was “spontaneous. There was no set route, and sometimes, you have to break rules to get students’ attention.”
Kayla Crow, President of PSSA, has been in contact with Occupy LB for other events. She states that this event had a “good turnout and was effective in the sense that students understood that something is going on today– it’s not just another day.”
Eric Romero of Long Beach Immigrant Right Coalition feels that “people are pressed way too often, but unfortunately, not enough people get their voices out. This event raises the level of consciousness, awareness, and the “do something” mentality.” “There is a need for rights, justice, peace, and security. People are the cure to an ill society.”
Ryan Serrano, a graduate student, stated, “In the last four years, the on-campus response to protesting has had increasingly fewer participants, which is indicative of complacency. Student feel systematically disenfranchised.” They feel that their participation does not make a different, which is reinforced by the obedience over creative thinking aspect of education. “They blindly trust over question,” he says. “The longer they don’t stand up and wait, the harder it is to make a difference.” He says that with Occupy and May Day, he is “not expecting anything, simply understanding this is what needs to be done; contributing to the discourse.”
From there, the students got on buses, bikes, and carpooled. Their goal: shut down 4th Street. At this, they were not quite as successful as they had hoped as businesses continued to operate normally and traffic flowed fine throughout the day.