The New York Times has published a major article on the University of Puerto Rico student strike, after a month of near-total silence from the American press.
The article, which notes that the strike “has crippled an 11-campus system with more than 62,000 students,” compares Puerto Rican student protests to recent student agitation at the University of California.
Not a huge amount of new information in the article, but it’s a good and thorough piece, overall, and worth reading. (I did learn one thing that I hadn’t known, too — that Ricky Martin has tweeted in support of the strike.)
studentactivism.net 
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May 21, 2010 at 2:39 pm
James Logan
My support, as always, goes out to the students.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:
The problem started with voting in a Republican…times are tough and at some point taxes will need to be raised…
But if you don’t show up, rightwingers will and always will. Maybe they don’t understand how the system works, but they use the system…
Many of us who know how the system works, do not use it…do not vote.
And this is usually the result. You can look to the NJ Governor’s race as a bellwether to what’s going on in the nation. LOWEST VOTER TURNOUT IN STATE HISTORY. So what happened next? The rich right showed up…and now, every town or district where the right bothers to show up, is voting down budgets, insisting that teachers be cut because they feel “They get paid too much.”
And yet, those who will suffer, do not show up to the town meetings, at least not enough to stop the rejection of budgets…and the margins by which they lose these ‘townhall’ battles are Thing. In one vote I read that the budget was voted down by 23 votes!
Twenty three people felt that their votes did not count enough to show up…and look what happened.
If it had been ‘overwhelmingly’ in favor of the budget cuts, I would always defer to their judgement, even though I disagree.
But the fact that they are CLOSE means I am right…and more people are realizing this.
I can’t thank the students of these protests, and others, enough for drawing attention to the subject. But, the fact remains…if they can don bandanas, block roads, lock up colleges…
…then they have enough energy to SHOW UP AND VOTE.
…then they have enough energy to FIND OUT WHAT POLICIES ARE NEXT UP FOR A VOTE.
Which means they have no one to blame but THEMSELVES if they do not show up to vote.
Viva la Educacion! (lol, sorry for this poor attempt at a ‘spanish’ educational rally cry!)
May 25, 2010 at 6:22 pm
ForStudentPower
If history tells us anything, it’s that the forces of neoliberalism are rarely defeated at the ballot box, especially when all major candidates are enthusiastic supporters.
It’ll take a lot more than voting to defeat them, and thankfully, the organized students and workers in Puerto Rico are moving in the right direction.