March 5: Building a Movement, Starting Today

[Better Believe It]

March 5: Building a Movement, Starting Today
By Nick Palmquist
Special to the Daily Cal
Friday, March 5, 2010

Today our newspapers will be dominated by the headlines that March 4 was a historic day for public education. They will say that never before have so many people from all the sectors of education mobilized across the state and country.

They are right that March 4 should be remembered for all of these things. Unfortunately, the real history-making day will have been misquoted. It is our actions and decisions on March 5 that will truly mark just how determined we are to transform our broken education system.

March 4 alone will not guarantee an end to the budget cuts. To fight them, we must start connecting public education with other societal issues, namely the runaway spending on the wars, prisons and banks. This is not because we wish to take on all the issues plaguing our society but because these issues are intruding into our campuses and wallets, whether we want them to or not.

It costs an estimated $1 million to deploy a soldier to Afghanistan for a year and $49,000 to incarcerate a prisoner for a year in California. The state of California spends less than $10,000 to educate one K-12 student each year. The tradeoff is clear and unjustifiable.

Participating in and organizing for the March 20 anti-war protest in San Francisco would be a good start to contesting these misplaced priorities.

So I encourage you to start talking to your friends and coworkers about how to get more involved.

Then bring yourselves and your friends to the Regional Mobilizing Conference that will be held at Laney Community College in Oakland on March 27. From there, we can coordinate and organize for the fight back that will, by necessity, be a long one.

Predictions are that the budget deficits will continue at the same destructive levels for five years if nothing changes. We can change that, but only collectively.

Then, when we are successful, history will remember just how important a day March 5 was.

Please read the full article at:

http://www.dailycal.org/article/108546/march_5_building_a_movement_starting_today