The 40th Anniversary and Our Protest

This past Thursday, my Ethnic Studies class
celebrated the 40th Anniversary of the 1968
SFSU Campus Strike. For those of you out there
who don't know what that is I will give you a
brief break down. In 1968, the student
organizations on the SFSU campus came together
and went on the longest campus strike in US history.
The strike lasted around 5 months and even the
teachers went on strike and supported the
students. At the end of the strike the students
accomplished in getting SFSU the first and
only School of Ethnic Studies. My classes
Ethnic Studies teacher split the class up
into groups and each group had to come up with
a creative way to pay homage to the 1968 Strike
and to some how create awareness about the
current struggle going on at SFSU to keep
the ethnic studies programs. My group was priviliged
enough to be able to do our "protest" with the
support of our entire class. Now, I myself, am not
someone who likes performing for big crowds, but I
have to say, that now I can see the appeal. And it
was not just that, there was an enegery there with us
that came strictly from the crowd. It was a truly
surreal experience, due mainly to what we were
talking about. If that didn't make sense, I am
sorry about that, so let me try to clearify. What
made the experience so memorable was the fact that
we were talking about the 1968 strike and were
basically walking in shoe prints that had been
created forty years ago. What made the experience
even better was when a lady walked up to us after
we were done and said how she was very moved by what
we had done, because it turns out that she had
participated in the strike forty years ago. There
are videos up on youtube, facebook, and myspace (I
think) of the different groups that participated
in the Ethnic Studies 210 protests, I recommend that
you check it out.