The only person talking about ‘throw[ing] asunder the “heterosexual, white-male dominated, capitalist and oppressive system,”’ is Oren Klein, and this “abuse of rhetoric” reveals a profound absence of knowledge about the student movement on our campus as well as contemporary Left movements, generally. When student-activists talk about challenging interlocking social systems of white supremacy, capitalism, heterosexism and patriarchy, we are speaking from an analysis of modern social structures. That is, we’re not talking about wicked heterosexuals or shady white males or some vague concept called ‘capitalism,’ we’re talking about social structures that privilege being heterosexual, white and/or male and penalize being queer, non-white, and/or female.

So, if you don’t have an understanding of that on your own (and it seems you don’t), don’t presume to put your words into the mouths of student-activists who do.

Similarly, don’t pretend to be on the side of student-protesters (especially those assembled under the banner of ‘democratize education’) when you have reservations about radical expressions of democracy. If you think it’s ‘sketchy’ for students and/or workers to control their own schools and/or places of work, then you’re not interested in democracy and you’d do well enough to leave alone folks who are alone.

However, if you are interested in learning more about the goals of the folks who joined together as ‘democratize education,’ you could simply read their article in the New U from March 29, 2010 (http://www.newuniversity.org/2010/03/opinion/democratize-education/). I would point you towards the second to last paragraph which reads:

‘Our demands are only one approach to the problems facing students and workers in the UC, but it is heartening to see so many students supporting and engaging with them. We support free association, so if you disagree with our approach or our demands, we welcome you to start your own group and make your own demands.’

Then there are a few sweeping statements you make without any factual basis: that ‘our state… is in a crisis where the quality of education is its collateral damage.’ Here you completely ignore every time the student movement has placed the current budget ‘crisis’ and fee increases in the historical context of a decades-long neo-liberal divestment from social services. Our public universities have been under attack since before we were born, this isn’t some new thing that came up when the housing bubble burst. If you don’t know that, how can you possibly consider yourself qualified to say anything to anyone about the subject, much less share your thoughts with the whole school?

Of course, the real issues of logic come into play once you move away from attacking the student movement and move toward the “Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act.” After five paragraphs of clumsily assailing the student movement, you offer two paragraphs of your alternative vision, namely, regulating and taxing (though not de-criminalizing) marijuana.

If that is your vision, it is not hippie-esque or idealistic so much as it is contrived and cynical. ‘Our state would gain enormous quantities of revenue’? Even though the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office only estimates ‘savings of up to several tens of millions of dollars annually’ (from the Tax Cannabis website: http://www.taxcannabis.org/index.php/pages/analysis/) from not incarcerating some offenders, and ‘unknown but potentially major tax, fee, and benefit assessment revenues’ from the legal sale of marijuana.

And we must keep in mind that this source of unknown revenue is coming straight from California’s middle and working classes. Rather than a severance tax on oil drilling (http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jun/15/business/fi-hiltzik15) or simply enforcing the existing tax code (billions are lost each year because wealthy individuals, businesses and corporations short-change on their taxes), you propose yet another sales tax to be paid by Californian workers.

I’m not saying that it’s a bad idea to legalize marijuana, it’s a perfectly fine idea, but be realistic about the current bill. Will there be fewer people sent to jail for drug-crimes or just fewer white people going to jail for them? The Act still carries stiff jail sentences for a number of marijuana-related infractions, like possessing more than 1 oz. of marijuana or possessing with intent to sell. All the act does is allow historically un-policed and un-surveilled communities (middle class white college students like you and I) the protection of the law while leaving unprotected historically over-policed and over-surveilled communities (black and hispanic people, the poor).

Like I said before, this article is confused and uninformed, I offer these comments as a palliative for the misinformation and illogic that readers of the original must wade through.