Tuesday, 4/8/97
Students must work together for reform
Participation
of masses vital to creating real change in government
By Stacy Hae Lim Lee
You’re standing in the financial aid lines at Murphy Hall,
minding your own business, when some obnoxious person shoves a
flyer in your face and asks you to sign a postcard. You think to
yourself, "Oh no, not another ‘radical’ bombarding me with
propaganda …" So you take the flyer but pretend you are too
consumed with the business of waiting in the financial aid lines to
sign the card, hoping she will go away. Your diversionary tactics
finally work and she moves on to the next person. Since you have
nothing better to do and there are 73 people ahead of you in line,
you figure that you might as well read the flyer.
As you quickly zoom down the sheet, your eye catches something,
Clinton is cutting Cal Grants (State Student Incentive Grants)! I
have one of those – I’ll have to work extra hours to make up for
that if they take it away from me. Oh no, like I don’t have enough
to worry about. Three hours later, you finally reach the front of
the line, only to find out that you forgot your ID card and will
have to come back tomorrow. What a day.
A few weeks later, you’re at home and you remember that today is
the orientation meeting for the Raza Youth Conference. You had
heard about the cool stuff they do and were interested in helping
this year. Excited, you put on your favorite sweater and jeans and
stroll down to campus.
When you get to the room, there’s a sign on the door: "Meeting
Canceled." When you ask the people standing outside why the meeting
was canceled, they tell you that the court case against Proposition
209 lost and Raza Youth Conference is no longer eligible for
funding or room access because of it. Disappointed and confused,
you ponder, "I thought they were exaggerating when all those people
were marching through the streets against 209 and registering
voters …" Then, as if they could read your thoughts, the RYC
people ask you if you had voted or gone on a precinct walk.
Flustered because you don’t want to answer the question, you
pretend you didn’t hear them and quickly make your way down the
stairs. "Vote? My vote wouldn’t have made the difference anyway."
When you get home, there’s a federal vehicle in front of your
building. You see an officer in official type gear approach your
neighbor, a nice Vietnamese student. He says to her, "Miss, you’d
better come with me; according to the new federal financial aid
guidelines, you are subject to deportation after receiving
financial aid for one year." English is her second language so she
is frightened and confused, not understanding the officer’s quick
speech. You go and try to help her, but he quickly brushes you out
of his way, grabs your neighbor by the arm and pushes her into the
federal car.
This madness is not fiction. These scenarios all reflect
legislative changes that have actually been proposed in the state
Legislature or the U.S. Congress over the past year or the
possibilities if court appeals fail.
The House of Representatives was considering House Resolution
2202, the anti-immigrant bill which included cutting financial aid
to anyone not born in the United States. This line was eventually
removed after immediately receiving pressure from the community,
but much of the bill was left intact. It is frightening to know how
our representatives are thinking.
People of color have been consistently targeted in many of these
attacks via welfare "reform," immigrant-bashing initiatives, the
three-strikes initiative, cuts to financial aid and proposed fee
hikes. As the 20th century comes to a close, 18- to 25-year-olds
are the highest age group to enter prison, not schools. There are
13 new prisons proposed for construction in California alone, even
after it was proven that Wilson’s cronies had overestimated the
prison population by 2,000. Hmm, I bet it had nothing to do with
the fact that the prison construction lobby is one of his top
contributors. …
Although these dreary facts drive many to brush it off as "the
way things are," there are those of us who believe that it is
possible to change and that it must change for our communities. But
it is for students to first recognize our positions of privilege
and see our realities; that as students we are also women, people
of color, lesbians, gay, bisexual, low income, disabled, immigrants
and mothers at the same time. Our realities vary from person to
person, but it is in our common struggle to change the status quo
that we will win.
Our millennium is coming … what will it look like? Working
with the University of California Student Association, the external
vice president’s office and the Students First! coalition, we are
working as students and with students to determine our futures. But
we need your help.
Real change does not come from student government but from the
masses of students who participate in deciding what it is that will
make this university and institutions work for us, not against us.
Your participation can range from signing a postcard on the walk,
talking to friends about the campaign and even volunteering time to
reach out to your fellow students. But what is crucial is that we
all become active participants (at any level) in molding our
realities into a livable one.
Drop by 404 Kerckhoff Hall or call us at 825-8545 if you are
interested in learning more about these issues and helping out. You
can also sign up with any of your comrades on the walk with the
Millennium postcards throughout the next few weeks.Stacy Hae Lim
Lee is a third-year geography/environmental studies student with an
Asian American studies specialization.