After a five-year struggle against an accrediting agency trying to shut down City College of San Francisco (CCSF), a local college that serves primarily working-class students, in January 2017, staff, faculty, and students celebrated a major victory when the school was deemed fully accredited. And college tuition became free for San Francisco City residents because of a municipal ballot measure.

But the fight isn’t over. On March 12, over seven hundred students and faculty rallied on campus and at city hall to protest the issuance of 163 layoff notices for full-time faculty that will result in layoffs of 60 percent of all faculty, full- and part-time. These cuts are based on enrollment, but of course enrollment was devastated when the attack on accreditation scared away prospective students, and the pandemic has further reduced the student body.

If the school is to survive the latest challenge to its existence, it will have to continue fighting. And if similar higher-education institutions around the country are to survive the round of cuts and attacks that have been accelerated by the COVID-19 crisis, the lessons of the CCSF fight should be studied by higher-ed organizers everywhere. Luckily, such organizers can study those lessons in the new book Free City! The Fight for San Francisco’s City College and Education for All.