Reclaiming California: CCFT Mobilizes Members Like Never Before

By the time this makes it out, there will be only a few days left until the election (the final and nerve-wracking hour!). With Prop 30 polling hovering at around 50% support, the final outcome could be as close as a few hundred votes.

If we win, I will thank all of you and our statewide CFT and community allies for making this happen. If we lose, I will blame millionaires and billionaires in CA and AZ. Either way, we need to remember that this is only a step in the direction of re-funding education in California, and we will still have longer-term goals for which organizational capacity and community building will be key.

I am super proud of the work that we—both internally in CCFT and within our statewide CFT—have done over the past few months (and the past year).

Locally, we've been focused on the following since the start of the semester: Voter Registration, Teach the Budget (Cabrillo with or without Prop 30), and YES on 30/NO on 32.

Here’s an update on our work:

Voter registration

Over 10% of our members participated in registering students to vote: dozens of you brought voter registration cards to class; several of you registered voters in the quad twice a week for a month, and we held a rally in the quad (see separate story). We also trained over a dozen people to help register students. Altogether, we registered hundreds, if not over a thousand voters, many for the first time.

Teach the Budget

Some 20% of our members (over 100 people) said they would help educate students about Cabrillo With or Without Prop 30. Faculty did this in various ways, from asking students what they’d heard about the initiative, to creating lesson

by Maya Bendotoff
(center, with Sadie Reynolds
and Sarah Henne from PVFT)

plans involving critical thinking around these issues (such as Aristotle and Prop 30), to modifying and sharing the informational materials compiled by CCFT.

YES on 30/NO on 32

Volunteers (about 3% of our members), including some of you, have helped to phone bank ALL of our members! (We called everyone at least twice.) We've directly reached almost half (46%) of our members to talk about Props 30 and 32 (we've spoken with 241 people).
Several of us helped distribute Progressive Coalition door hangers over the weekend (special thanks to faculty emeritus Jane Gregorious, Lynda Watson, Julie Olsen-Edwards, and Elissa Wagner for their help).

In short, we've mobilized our members like never before.

In the final days to the election, our efforts will make a difference. As Anthony Thigpenn put it, “If we can win a quarter of the 13% still undecided on Prop 30, that would put us on the doorstep of the 50% + 1 we need to win.”

Locally we will be plugging in the labor council/community efforts with phone banking every day until the elections and precinct walking over the weekend. If you have a couple of hours to help, please call 566-3565. If you want to phone bank from home, we can send you that info. OR, you can join our COPE Committee tabling at Cabrillo next Monday (from 9-11:30 on the Watsonville campus or 10:30-1:00 in the upper quad of the Aptos campus).

Lastly, PLEASE don't forget to reach out to your family, friends, neighbors. . . (and let it be the strength of the people united that prevails!)

With deep and sincere thanks to all of you for your continued support of public education in this Golden State.