Turnout was real nice, thousands came out
For those who don't know:
The Facts on Schwarzeneggar’s Destructive Budget Plan:
· Termination of Higher Education Outreach: The 2003-2004 state budget saw a 50% cut in funding to UC Outreach programs that ensure access to quality education for the economically disadvantaged and historically under represented. Governor Schwarzenegger now plans to terminate all remaining state funding (33.3 million) for the UC Outreach programs. This provides zero funding for 2004-2005 and will annihilate these valuable programs.
· Fee Hikes: Arnold wants to raise tuition fees at all community, state, and university of California colleges. He wants to raise community college tuition from $18 to $26 a unit, raise UC and CSU undergrad fees by 10%, and graduate fees by 40%, and turn away 8200 students from the UCs.
· The extra Community College fees don’t even go back to the schools: they go to the state, creating an increased tax on the working class.
· Schwarzenegger plans to even further cut educational spending, meaning that hundreds of teachers and staff will loose their jobs, hundreds of classes will be cut, and the remaining classes will be crammed over capacity.
· Education is a Human Right: Regardless of class, ethnicity, or gender- education is our birthright, a right that our state seeks to deny us with its new budget plan.
We've already seen whats happening in Contra Costa County.. (termination of Counselors, Librarys, Music & Athletic departments) which happens to be a result of Prop 13, which made it so that budgets for schools were determined by the property value of the counties. Before prop 13, school budgets were equally given throughout the state, but after it past, it made it so that depending on how much property value a county has, then thats how much tax is taken to put back into schools. So lets say you live in a poor neighborhood where crime is high, the property value is low, therefore the district receives very little money to be put back in schools. This is just another example of how fucked up a Capitalistic society can be when you are the bottom of the barrel. Healthcare and Education should be a right, not a privilege, these are the basics of human needs in order to suceed in a society based on status.
This is not the first, and won't be the last, we must continue to organize because numbers is all they see, so numbers is what we'll be. 15,000 thousand strong and still counting