02 May 2013
About 100 protesters, mostly from the trades at the Long Beach City College Pacific Coast Campus with some community supporters from Occupy Long Beach, marched from the PCC to City Hall downtown, about two and half miles.
One student marching was Valerie Boyd, 52, who is taking three welding classes this semester. Boyd went back to school in 2011 to learn a new trade after being laid off in 2009. Boyd said, “I don’t like the idea that they are closing down the trades because when the younger generation get out of high school, they’ll have no trade to go into.”
Another marcher, Panek Peov, 31, who is in the auto body program and has one more class to complete, said he was there to support his fellow students.
A third marcher, who has owned a small business in historic window preservation for five years, said she learned her trade at Fullerton College in the construction sciences, which had been previously cut.
One student carried a sign, with an enormous fist and the phrase, “Students Unite.” One chant was “Students united will never be divided.” Two other chants were “Save the trades” and “Recall the Board.”
One flyer being distributed said, “We destroyed LBCC and ruined students’ lives, next target city of Long Beach” and had images of LBCC Trustees Doug Otto and Roberto Uranga.
Another flyer, which claimed to be from “Students United to Reclaim Education,” in part said, “The current Board of Trustees … has betrayed the people’s trust. Instead of being ‘watchdogs,’ the board has become a ‘rubber stamp’ allowing the current administration to waste huge sums of taxpayer’s money …”
Barry Saks 
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