Books, Not Bombs: Students Protest A War On Education

A new protest movement is happening in California as bombs fall over Iraq. Young people, who complain that their future outlook is shrinking to military service after high school, are taking to the streets.

		STUDENT VOICES "Basically they would like to cut our budget so that we can't even house the amount of students that we have, or teachers, or even classes." --LaDonna McTiller, student body president, Laney College "I don't think anybody can afford $24 a unit, especially if they're trying to be a full time student to get out of here." --Malikah Floyd, 21, Laney College "I am barely able to afford my tuition right now. If they raise it then I won't be able to. I'd probably have to get another job." --Monique McNealy, 19, City College of San Francisco "I need a few more classes this summer to qualify for my requirements and I just heard from my friends that they might be cutting classes this summer. So if they do cut these classes I won't be able to take the classes that I need to qualify for my requirements." --Yassin Jannah, 19, Laney College "I'm supposed to be graduating this semester, but the problem is that I have one more class to take. And if they do the budget cuts then I can't go, because I wouldn't be able to afford it. As a single-parent mom of two children, it's gonna be very hard." --Christy Corbitt 26, Laney College "'Cuz I'm trying to be somebody, I ain't trying to be no black male statistic." --David Johnson, 21, Contra Costa College "Right now I'm on financial aid. I need to get money just probably to stay here, and if prices do go up and we do get cut off, then I might drop out." --Brian Cane, 20, Laney College "I think they're just trying to get students to drop out so we can go to jail and so they can get more money for jails." --Otis Garnett, 20, Laney College [Reported by Min Lee, a writer for YO! Youth Outlook.]

The immediate crisis confronting students is the governor's decision to target the community college system for deep cuts as he seeks to close a $34 billion dollar deficit. Meanwhile, rising unemployment is making it harder for those who do make it through community college to find a job on the other side.

"In my school we're losing 200 classes this semester alone," said Dayna Johnson, a student from El Camino College. "Now they're saying we may not have summer session at all."

But increasingly, students see a larger problem framing the state's budget crisis. Twenty thousand young people and their teachers from all over California set off down the capitol mall late last month. Shouts of "Books, not bombs!" traveled in waves up and down the line of marchers. Sign after sign condemned the war abroad. "The war on terror," said one sign in the Sacramento march, "is a war on us."

"Unless these budget cuts are stopped," Maria Reyes from Oxnard said, "students like me are not going to be able to continue going to school."

Johnson added, "What the federal government is spending on the war in one day could save the education of all of us."

Though a national recession has turned California's past budget surpluses into a yawning deficit, no help is forthcoming from Washington. Instead, in early April, President Bush demanded and got $78 billion to fight the Iraq war. Democrats in Congress fought to include more money for police and the domestic cost of "homeland security." But neither they nor the Republicans introduced a bill to save California's community colleges.

Governor Grey Davis' proposed solution will likely result in a massive forced exodus of students from the system. Planned cuts in programs designed to retain at-risk students will affect the poor the most, especially students of color -- represented on community college campuses in far higher percentages than at the state university system.