It’s Time to Reclaim Our Future!

Our Future Has Been Stolen From Us!

In every corner of society, we have been forced to pay for this crisis. As students, we’ve seen our community colleges gutted of funds. Over $3.1 billion has been cut from the community colleges since 2002. We face the impossible situation of cuts to classes, cuts to financial aid, and record numbers of students trying to get in. The K-12 schools have been hit even harder, cut by $18 billion since 2008, over 50 percent of their budget. Now California is the worst of all 50 states in its staff to student ratio in K-12 schools. And if students are lucky enough to make it to a university, we now must weigh our decision against the skyrocketing debt we will face if we graduate. In the CSUs and UCs tuition has increased over 290% and 330% since 2000.
For many of us, education is our livelihood, our hope to climb out of poverty, our chance to pursue our dreams, to have the world opened up. But now the doors to that future are being slammed shut.
At the same time, our families, friends and neighbors are being overwhelmed by stressful lives. We’re being thrown out of work by corporations seeking fewer workers or new hires for less pay. We’re being thrown into the streets from foreclosure as banks backed by the government continue to make record returns. For those of us at work, we face more work for less pay. And on top of this, we are forced to pay more for less as gas prices skyrocket and Federal and State governments slash all of our funding for social services.
And here in California, how many of us have family or friends whose lives have been torn apart for no reason by ICE raids. Children are being separated from their parents as family members can be deported without any notice. All for what? Just to put greater pressure on workers here who do not have documentation. The sick logic of the corporations and their politicians is the more desperate undocumented workers are, the easier they will be to exploit at low wages and in dangerous conditions.

These Attacks Are A Choice – Not a Necessity!

The Democrats and Republicans, say these cuts are necessary because the state doesn’t have enough money and the economy is in crisis. The reality is, California has never been wealthier. But the money is controlled by the banks, corporations and the super rich. There is more than enough wealth in the state to fund education and health care, create jobs and allow people to live a fulfilling life. But instead, at the state level and the federal level – the opposite choice is made. Through our jobs, our education, our health, our homes, our lives, that is the solution to their crisis, to make us pay for it.

We Must All Become Organizers!

There is no question that across the country there is an anger that is boiling beneath the surface. But for the most part, we are still isolated and divided. There have been some brief moments when this anger has spilled over into inspiring events around the world. And last February in Madison, Wisconsin, workers, teachers and students from all over the state came to the Capitol in the tens of thousands to protest the Governor’s budget proposal of further cuts to education, social services, and the rights of public workers to bargain for a contract. This past Fall, tens of thousands of people participated in Occupy protests across the country.
But for the most part, these protests have been either too small or too short-lived to make a lasting impact. We have yet to organize everyone together at once – students, workers, parents, families, the vast majority of society being impacted by these cuts to come out all together in one unified voice – that is the task still ahead of us.
We must find the ways for people who have never organized anything before to begin to first bring these discussions into our homes, our classrooms, our workplaces, our neighborhoods. We are the future of this society. And if we come together and organize our forces, we can unleash our power to fight for own interests. But in order to do this, we must decide and take the first steps.
Today can be the day we decide to take that step!