August 2020
As we were turning in the manuscript for Free City!, the COVID-19 pandemic was upending life on the planet, and the United States rapidly became the epicenter.
Education at all levels was forced online; what had been one option was suddenly the only game in town. CCSF faculty and students scrambled to cobble together the remainder of the school year. Teachers suddenly had to adapt classes for online learning, using a specific for-profit software. The switch to distance learning was hardest on faculty and students who lacked home access to broadband internet, quiet workspace, and experience with online courses.
Like any deep crisis, the pandemic provided an opportunity to tighten austerity and privatize public services. (Think of the conversion of New Orleans public schools to charters after Hurricane Katrina.) The City College administration ordered more classes slashed, on top of the Fall 2019 cuts. More than 250 faculty lost their jobs, including 60 part-time ESL teachers. Non-credit classes, especially ESL, bore the brunt of the cuts. Wrap-around support programs that helped marginalized students stay in school continued to blink out one by one.
Faculty, staff, and students faced a fight to keep the cuts, the move online, and other crisis-created changes from becoming permanent—but they had some unexpected wind in their sails.
Not two months after the pandemic hit the US, exposing so many social fault lines, the murder of George Floyd sparked a breathtakingly broad and deep movement against police violence and the systemic racism that creates it. The public health crisis magnified the challenges facing City College, community colleges and public education in general, but the anti-racist uprising offered the prospect of meaningful change. Organizers linked defunding the police with investing in education and other people-serving programs, challenging austerity budgeting with concrete demands to reallocate resources and plans for how to do so. Millions of people were taking stock of our history, asking “What are we for, what do we want to build?” Education for all can help answer those questions; it offers a powerful tool for expanding democracy, repairing the damages of inequality, and embodying a vision of a just, peaceful, and creative world.