SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. - The California Federation of Teachers recently labeled the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC) a "rogue college accreditation commission."

The teachers union and the Save CCSF (City College of San Francisco) coalition believe that the agency is following a corporate agenda in the fight over accreditation of the San Francisco college.

Business-oriented education reform is a familiar topic to those following trends in K-12 public education. Higher education has not been immune to similar trends, with corporate reformers laying out strategies which tend to embrace a more business-type model for colleges. Free-market think-tanks like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) are working in parallel with funders such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Lumina Foundation, increasingly gaining ground in crafting education policy.

Last year the ACCJC, the body that yanked the accreditation of CCSF this July, was one of the recipients of a $1 million Lumina Foundation grant.

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Big Oil pumps over 200 million barrels of oil and 240 million MCF of natural gas out of California’s lands and oceans every year without ever paying their fair share for either. Alaska charges between 25-50%, North Dakota 11.5% and even Texas charges 7.5%.

In fact, California is the only major oil-producing state in the nation that gives oil companies a free ride.

Our schools and colleges are underfunded, our roads and bridges are falling apart, and unemployment remains above 9%. We simply cannot afford to give Big Oil a free ride while Californians are asked to pay more and more. It's time to stop giving away California’s resources and invest in what California needs.

That's why students organized under the name "Californians for Responsible Economic Development" and proposed the California Modernization and Economic Development (CMED) Act to make this change:

$0 (from us) + 9.5% (from Big Oil) =

$1,200,000,000 for lowering tuition and reducing class sizes

$440,000,000 for greener businesses and more jobs

$366,000,000 for parks, counties and cities

Sign this petition to support our ballot initiative and let Big Oil know that the people of California are done giving away our resources.

Big Oil lobbyists have defeated every effort in the Legislature in order to protect their $158 billion dollars in annual profits. It's time they pay their fair share for the oil and gas they extract from our state to sell on the global market.

Visit CMEDAct.org and facebook.com/cmedact to learn more.

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This year's event centered on the concept that leadership is created in the course of struggles along with building on small victories to reach larger gains.

In addition, the usefulness of the internet as a springboard toward face-to-face organizing, with media and petition tools was another topic highlighted throughout.

"Innovative Corporate Campaigns", which could have been more accurately titled Innovative "Anti-Corporate" Campaigns as it featured the strong voices of people who have taken on many large targets and won gains for workers and homeowners who have been the most squeezed by large companies and banks for the last few years, was a particularly engaging panel.

The panelists energetically crunched out a labor 101 primer that will serve everyone who attended for years to come. Cathy Youngblood, the woman who crafted the "Someone Like Me" campaign to put a Hyatt hotel housekeeper on the Hyatt Board of Directors, helped invigorate the panel, while Maurice Weeks, an organizer for the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) in California, drove home the sentiment saying, "Folks are sick of playing defense." Weeks also added that the job of an professional organizer is to organize themselves out of a job and allow the people most affected by the problem to be the ones to take leadership in the struggle.

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