All throughout the day on March 4, students throughout the country tweeted updates about local actions on Twitter using the #March4 hashtag. (Hashtags are a way for posters on Twitter to find other people’s posts on a particular subject.)

I posted a bunch of #March4 stuff myself, but at the end of the day, I tweeted that I couldn’t wait for #March5. Someone asked why, I and I said “I can’t wait for #March5 because #March5 is what comes after #March4. #March5 is The Future.”

Well, the future is here.

Early in the morning of Friday, March 5, students at the University of Virginia hung a banner from a campus bridge that read “Public Education Is Under Attack — Stand Up Fight Back.”

There was no huge protest at UVA on March 4, no giant rally, no occupation. But activists on that campus are taking that day’s actions as a spur to something new. They’ll be holding a mass meeting on March 19, in conjunction with protests around a speech by Bush administration “torture memo” author John Yoo, and moving forward from there.

#March5 has arrived.