With Covid-19 pandemic and massive demonstrations for racial equity after the murder of George Floyd as the backdrop, the Communities for Our Colleges (C4C) launched a statewide campaign to organize students, parents and educators to fight for investments rather than cuts to community college budgets in Washington state. Using grassroots strategies in big cities and small towns across the state, they successfully challenged the harmful narrative circulating in Washington’s state legislature that budget shortfalls required austerity measures.
C4C’s organizing is a testament to rural-urban unity, revealing their shared conditions, solutions, and strategies, countering the idea that urban and rural communities are divided by culture, ideology, or politics. Nationally, about a third of all college students are at a community or technical college, making lessons from Washington broadly applicable. In this case study, we can see the ways in which civic campaigns generate demands and actions that in turn change a discourse by inserting the experiences, needs, and solutions of students into the public sphere. In a challenging political climate for broadening education access to lower income students, the campaign used student surveys and civic action to organize. Its efforts brought to the universal story of “trying to get an education” new characters and plotlines. From 2020 to 2024, the campaign won five significant pieces of legislation that expanded college access across the state, bringing the campaign’s tenor of inclusion to campuses.
For a deeper dive, learn more here and read the case study in full below. Have questions or comments? Drop us a line at [email protected].