SRJC students are organizing a kick off March and rally on March 1 in anticipation of the March 5 rally in Sacramento protesting cuts to education.

The SRJC leg of Occupy Santa Rosa holds meetings Mondays at noon and Thursdays at 3 p.m. An off shoot of Occupy Wall Street called Occupy for Education called for March 1 as a day of action for colleges across the nation. Schools everywhere are planning action. SRJC will have a rally at 2 p.m. then participants will march to downtown Santa Rosa.

Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park is holding an all day “People’s University Festival.”

Last week members from the General Assembly of SRJC had an info booth on campus. “We’ve handed out more than 1000 fliers,” said Christina Blout, an organizer and student.

“A lot of students and teachers feel our voices are not being heard and we need to be more active,” Blout said. “So we are being more active.”

So far organizers have two students and likely two faculty lined up as speakers at the SRJC rally, said Paige Picard, another organizer and student.

The march will go from SRJC to the state building on Second and D Streets where there will be a theater show. “We are also going to give out information on next year’s budget,” Picard said.

The rally and march is set for the middle of the day and that might inhibit some students from attending, but Picard is hoping for a good turn out like that of the Doyle Scholarship march last semester. “We have a lot of interested students who signed up for the listserv,” she said.

The SRJC General Assembly will hold an additional planning meeting on Wednesday at noon the day before the march.

The March 1 and 5 actions are in response to budget cuts affecting California community colleges. Funding to SRJC and community colleges across California has been steadily dropping for the past two years, and the 2012/2013 school year looks even worse. SRJC is looking at losing 1,070 full-time students and 400 of its 2,400 class sections.