On the way home last night I drove by the anti-Arnold protests at Santa Monica College and listened to the coverage on public radio’s KCRW. From what I saw and heard  the protests were a not spontaneous eruption of people desiring to get their voices heard. Instead they were an organized collection of older public employees who simply didn’t give a damn that they were interrupting a college graduation.

How hypocritical.  They deride the governor on education but then interrupt the celebration of students who were finishing up 14 or so years of school with many heading on to universities. I had seen the protesters’ organizational emails posted on left-leaning blogs and KCRW reported that organizers had expected 2–5,000 protesters to show up. But in the end, either the union workers displayed a little bit of last minute civility (or perhaps they just were too lazy to show up) but only a hundred and fifty or so were there.

Our fellow City of the Angels blogger, Mayor Sam, had this to say about the spectacle:

Mayor Sam’s Sister City – Home of Los Angeles Politics

People need to know that the folks who protest Arnold are not regular folks showing up with a magic marker and a placard. This is part of a highly organized, well funded anti-Arnold campaign headed up by some of the richest government employee unions in the state. These organizations get their money by forcibly taking it from their members, many of whom are actually Arnold supporters. But they have no choice, state legislators who receive massive contributions from these unions have written laws that give the unions the legal right to take money from their members, and use it on political causes without their permission. You should also know that a lot of these protesters are government employees who are engaging in these activities on your dime – that’s right – they are on the clock and not at their posts!

The most ironic result was that the result of the protests will likely be counter-productive. Even the normally left-leaning KCRW commented that little was accomplished other than pissing off a great many students and they might have helped more than hurt the governor.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 15th, 2005 at 11:27 am by Insider and is filed under California Schemin'. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.