In a building filled with 150 people, U.S. Rep. Lateefah Simon began her speech explaining how her aunt was one of two black women at San Francisco State University who in 1968 helped lead a historic student-led strike that demanded the creation of an ethnic studies department on the campus.
“It started here,” Simon said, “It started here when students and professors alike had to move against the administration to physically take space, and they shut San Francisco State down.”
The building filled with applause during her speech, as the packed building at San Francisco State was holding students, community members, and faculty all across the different California State Universities for the California Faculty Association’s “United To Defend Public Education” statewide organizing conference on Feb. 22.
The conference was a day for fellow activists to organize different events and strategies to protest Governor Gavin Newsom’s $375 million funding cut from the CSU system. The decision has led to a number of universities cutting faculty and programs. The most severe of those so far is at Sonoma State, with numerous departments, degree programs and faculty being cut.
Organized events at the conference included a “Red for Ed” week to be organized by each of the universities sometime in March, and demonstrations to possibly occur at the CSU’s trustees offices in Long Beach and the state capital in Sacramento on April 17 for “National Day of Action.”
The organizing conference had numerous speakers from different universities speak out about the effects of the cuts, as well as other concerns about ICE on campuses, the partnership of the CSU with different AI companies, and the frustrations with the two-tier faculty labor system. Of those speakers, the one that drew the most attention was Lateefah Simon, U.S. Representative for California’s 12th congressional district.
Simon spoke in solidarity with the work and activism being done by the California Faculty Association. She said during her time on the CSU board of trustees, the California Faculty Association demanded she “do the right thing.”
“The organizing prowess of the CFA (California Faculty Association) is not to be played with,” Simon said.
Simon also mentioned the risk public education has at a national level with the Trump administration’s desire to close down the Department of Education. She said she and other members of Congress were blocked from entry to the Department of Education on Feb. 7. The building was locked and armed federal guards were called, and the members of Congress were given no explanation as to why they could not enter the building.
“I was thinking about you all in that moment,” Simon said, “being on the Board of Trustees at the CSU knowing that I was representing 500,000 students and 29,000 members of the faculty who just want to teach, who just want to do the right thing to create a pedagogy of freedom every single damn day.”
Simon also talked about the federal government’s initiative to take down DEI programs in education and how it negatively affects people of color and the LGBTQ+ community. She expressed her personal connection to the issue, as being the only Muslim woman of color to ever be elected in California for Congress.
“There has never been any concessions of democratic opportunity for people of color, for queer people, for trans people, for non-citizen folks,” Simon said, “There’s never been anything given. We have had to take it. We have had to take every single right. We have had to take every single position. We have had to come early and leave late. I want to tell you all today that I am in lifelong solidarity with the professors, with the staff members, and the students of the great California State University.”
