II CITY COLLEGE - In Defense of Education: Ise Lyfe

"I feel responsible as a student to be here. City College is the ground level entry point for poor and working class students, this fee hike which is also proposed for the UC and State Campuses will make it impossible for many of those students to attend school." Arjuna, who is in school to become special Ed teacher for disabled children worries that working class students of color like himself will lose access to education entirely.

As he spoke I was reminded of my own very low-income, formerly homeless families' non-income which would feel the impact of these hikes and make it increasingly difficult for me to attend school at all.

The hikes are being proposed while increases of over 7 billion are proposed to fund California's prisons: This is a 31.9% increase to the criminal Unjustice systems' budget in the last two years.

With the across the board cuts to social services and education proposed I am reminded of the fact that the people of California are always targeted as the way to "find" the surplus rather than the Corporate Welfare recipients (Enron, Halliburton, Chevron, PG& E and of course, Dick Cheney) who stole our state surplus with their (fake) energy crisis in 2001-02 and to this day have not paid our state back what they owe us thanks in part to the govenator's own interest in energy stocks.