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Two years ago the state budget was $102 billion. At that time California's per pupil spending had already fallen to 47th in the nation. This year's state budget is $84 billion. The public education portion of that budget, around 40%, has been severely reduced. Class sizes are soaring in K-12. Teachers have fewer and fewer supplies. Support staff are being laid off. School bus routes are being eliminated. And now the governor proposes to reduce even more funding from the state budget for vital programs that serve people.
In higher education, thousands of classes have been cut in UC, CSU and the community colleges, at a time when the Great Recession has sent unemployment to 12.2% (the worst rate since 1940, at the end of the Great Depression) and economic refugees are seeking to take college courses to retool themselves. Students are unable to take classes they need to graduate. Part-time instructors have lost courses they taught for years, and as their teaching loads are being reduced, they are also losing their health benefits. The only "solution" offered by the UC Regents and CSU Trustees is to raise student tuition and fees, restricting access to higher education to those who need it most. The Legislature has raised community college fees by 30%, driving away hundreds of thousands of students.
It's time to build a movement to change this picture. The Fight for California's Future is everyone's fight. We need to stand up for education—from early childhood through the universities. We need to defend public health clinics, fire stations, and the programs that help keep California alive.
When people say “we don’t have the money to provide adequate public services,” they are wrong. If California was a country, its economy would be the eighth richest in the world. The problem isn’t a lack of money. The problem is the wrong priorities.
There are two parts to this problem: We have a tax system that does not ask those who have the most wealth and resources to pay their fair share; and we have a broken state budget process.
Wealth has been massively redistributed in California and the nation over the past three decades—in the wrong direction. The top one percent of the economic pyramid own thirty four percent of the wealth. The very richest people are paying less in taxes and keeping more money for themselves. Their luxury consumption and lower tax rates equal the neglect and decline of our public services.
This arrangement is kept in place by undemocratic rules in the state constitution that allow anti-government, anti-public education forces to block the will of the majority of the people of the state and the majority of the Legislature as well. These rules are not well understood by the general population. The general population also does not know how skewed wealth distribution has become.
The Fight for California's Future seeks to bring together everyone who wants to protect public education and services. We are working on direct actions such as the ones that shook the University of California in the last week of September, which called for rolling back student fee increases as well as stopping faculty and staff layoffs and furloughs. We are building political coalitions to change the undemocratic rules that block effective government, such as the requirements for a two thirds vote to pass a state budget or new taxes. And we are working to educate the public about who and what the obstacles are to a better future for all Californians.
This won't change overnight. But with your help, it will change. Fight for California's Future!
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