In a celebration of educator and community power, 5,000 people rallied outside SpaceX in Hawthorne Saturday to stand against Trump and Musk and demand a stop to cuts to federal funding for public schools. 

Elon Musk’s SpaceX gets billions in tax breaks and government contracts. Meanwhile he and Trump gutting the Department of Education and threatening to withhold billions of working Californians’ tax dollars which pay for meals for children, support for students with disabilities, and more. 

Saturday’s rally also served as a warning to local leaders. Despite the threat of federal cuts, districts like LAUSD are sitting on billions of budget reserves. Educators will resist any attempts to use federal austerity as an excuse to underpay teachers, cut essential programs for students, or underfund our classrooms. 

We are not in this fight alone. UTLA was joined by more than 100 other local educators at the rally at SpaceX — which was connected to coordinated actions in San Diego, Hanford, San Francisco, and Sacramento. Altogether, on May 17, over 15,000 public school educators, parents, students, and community allies demonstrated in the streets at actions up and down the state.