Youth Continue to Fight For Their Future 

By Allison Kilkenny 
The Nation
July 19, 2011 

http://www.thenation.com/blog/162134/youth-continue-fight-their-future

Throughout the budget battles, it’s become a common GOP
tactic to invoke the martyred image of impoverished future
children in order to depict President Obama’s spending plans
as being irresponsible and reckless.

"We keep kicking the can down the road and splashing the soup
all over our grandchildren," said Sen. Tom Coburn of the
nation’s debt.

"It’s a debate over whether we act responsibly so our
children and grandchildren aren’t left carrying the burden of
unsustainable debt," said Senator Orin Hatch.

Ironically, the GOP’s plans to slash budgets in the name of
fiscal solvency will not only likely put any future children
at a permanent disadvantage, but also currently hurt real-
life youth who are now fighting back against austerity.

In addition to groups consisting of young citizens, such as
US Uncut, many other cells have sprung up across the country
opposing the budget cuts.

Local students from Opa-Locka organized and held a protest
Monday to bring awareness to the state of education and how
budget cuts are affecting their future.

Fifty participants in Teen Upward Bound, a teen advocacy
program that assists in reading and life skills, met at the
corner of 13521 NW 27th Avenue Monday afternoon to speak out
about their educational rights.

"The students have really taken to this cause," said
Executive Director Jannie Russell in a press release. "We
advocate at our program students being leaders in their
community at every level."

The students say they held the protest to bring awareness of
steep budget cuts. Opa-Locka is located in Florida, meaning
it falls under the supervision of Gov. Rick Scott, a man who
has gone to war with the education budget of his state. It
was Scott and Florida’s Legislature that cut $1 billion from
education in this year’s budget, a drop of 8 percent, which
equals cuts of $542 per student.

Meanwhile, in California, students are legendary for their
protests, most recently for the sit-ins staged in opposition
to budget cuts at their school. The occupation was in
response to CSU President Milton Gordon’s refusal to sign a
symbolic declaration in defense of public education when Cal
State was facing at least $500 million in cuts during the
next fiscal year.

Now that Cal State students are facing an additional 12
percent fee hike, more protests are likely. When the Board of
Trustees announced the new fees, they simultaneously approved
a salary of $400,000 for the new president of San Diego
State, Elliot Hirshman ($350,000 in state funds and $50,000
from the campus’s foundation), a raise of more than $100,000
from his predecessor’s salary.

When the trustees voted to increase fees by 12 percent,
around 100 students and faculty members were there to protest
the meeting. Lt. Gov Gavin Newsom and student trustee Steve
Dixon also opposed the hike.

While the student protest movement does occasionally have
brief moments of shining promise (California’s sit-ins and
occupations are always heartening to witness), there does
appear to be an endurance problem in the youth protest
community.

For example, U.S. student protests pale in comparison to what
is happening in Greece. Now, that’s for a variety of reasons,
first and foremost being that the U.S. and Greek economic
situation are vastly different and Greece is in much worse
shape than the United States. Additionally, the 2010 Greek
riots were in part fueled by residual anger stemming from
2008 when Greek policemen killed a 15-year-old student.

But why the lack of moxie on the U.S. side? Well, part of the
problem may be that millions of poor kids have already been
priced out of an education. Simeon Talley over at Campus
Progress explains how the disinvestment of education has been
happening for generations.

[A]s Tom Hayden, one of the co-founders of Students for a
Democratic Society, told me "The question for today’s student
is not whether they can read Zinn, Anais Nin or Noam Chomsky,
but whether they can afford to."

Hayden added:

The challenges they (students) face on their campuses are far
different than the past and perhaps more profound. Tuition
costs at UM in 1960 were one hundred dollars, and I can’t
remember if that was for a semester or an entire year. So I
could obtain my degree, edit the paper, go south to the civil
rights movement for two years, return and enter graduate
school, and never feel I was falling behind in the
competitive economic rat-race. A student today falls tens of
thousands of dollars in debt, even after holding two part-
time jobs, a burden which limits their career choices.
Dropping out for social activism brings competitive
disadvantage. When we take these things into consideration
- cost of tuition, cost of living, in addition to possible at-
home issues like helping their family with cost of living
arrangements, health care payments, insurance - suddenly, it
becomes clear that we shouldn’t be disappointed that American
youth are 'lazy', but rather amazed that so many students
continue to fight for a better future despite having the deck
stacked overwhelmingly against them.

© 2011 The Nation

[Allison Kilkenny is the co-host of the progressive political
podcast Citizen Radio (wearecitizenradio.com) and independent
journalist who blogs at allisonkilkenny.com. Her work has
appeared in The American Prospect, the L.A. Times, In These
Times, Common Dreams, Truthout and the award-winning
grassroots NYC newspaper The Indypendent.]

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